<!--
	Title: (SOFTWARE GALLERY) Bureaucracy
	Author: Mike Hinshaw
	Source: Run, v4(10)
	Date: October 1987
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

<div style="color: #004488; font-weight: bold; padding: 0.25em; float: right; font-size: 2em;">A+</div>

<blockquote style="margin: 1em inherit; font-size: 1.25em; font-style: italic;">"Wait in Line"<br>
"The Check Is in the Mail"<br>
"That's Not My Job!"</blockquote>

Bureaucracy is so good that I hate it. I've only played it for a few hours, and
I've decided that the author is on to something. Like all great text adventures,
it's exquisitely frustrating to play, Inspired by Douglas Adams, the same
man who brought you The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Bureaucracy is the
best text adventure lo come my way in a long time.

The premise of thee game evolves out of the fact that you've just landed a new
job in a new town, and the usual paperwork hassles are bogging you down.
You begin the game by going through some typical red-tape and waiting For
your paycheck so you can go to France to train for your new job. You have no
money, and it looks like it's going to be a long day.

Unlike other text adventures, you have a special monitor of your progress:
your blood pressure. It's a good monitor of when you should sit and wait,
since waiting lowers your pressure. However, many activities automatically
raise it, as do wrongly stated or misspelled commands—it's likely that
you'll have high blood pressure for much of the game!

Bureaucracy uses most of the standard abbreviations for the major commands,
like giving directions or taking inventory. All the other commands,
however, require the first nine letters of each word.

The documentation is set up with a very complex introduction from your
bank. You have a copy of the letter that your new employer sent you, a passport
and a few easy-to-find clues. The manual is clear and gives enough examples of
play that you should have no trouble jumping right into the game. Do read
the documentation, however, even if you are very familiar with text adventures,
because there are clues scattered throughout.

One thing to note: This program requires an 80-column monitor, If you are
in 40-Column mode, all you'll see is a message stating that you need to be in
80-Column mode.

Bureaucracy is frustrating—a perfect mirror of bureaucracy in real life. It's
easy to sympathize with the character's feelings of confusion. Comments by
Adams appear throughout the program and add humor to the game.

I laughed a lot as I played Bureaucracy. It will bring hours of puzzling
and baffling fun to anyone who plays. It's so entertaining that you won't even
notice the almost complete lack of graphics after just a few minutes of play.
For all you text-adventure fans, Infocom has done it again. *(Infocom, Inc., 125
CambridgePark Drive, Cambridge, MA 02140. C-128/$34.95.)*

<p class="bold right" style="font-variant: small-caps;">Mike Hinshaw<br>Tulsa, OK</p>
