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Title           Search
Game Type       Puzzle
Company         (C) 1991/92 by Alan Farrell & Growling Dragon Software
Players         1
Compatibility   A500 and >
HD Installable  Yes
Submission      Brian C. Horner (nairbrian@hotmail.com)

Review
Search: a game where you are not chased by anything and no points are
awarded. Ultimately, this is a puzzle to be solved (with no time limit).

That's how the documentation file describes this pleasant maze game
created of tiles. The tiles can be blank, hold letters, be walls, floor,
holes to fill, energy to grab, or different kinds of teleporters.

A level can simply be a plain maze to negotiate; a maze with a task to
solve (i.e. finding false walls); or a maze with imbedded questions to
answer. Of course, a maze can have tasks and questions.

Concerning the questions, the level designer (see below) can have a
question/statement written on the floor & provides possible answers with
different paths associated with each answer. The player takes the path
associated with the answer he/she thinks is right.

The layout of the screen is fine. The main play area takes up most of the
left side of the screen. On the right are the keys available during play.
The game's title is under the list of keys. Although I would have liked
the play area to be somewhat larger, this is mostly due to my having a
rather small monitor compared to ones you could purchase today. It doesn't
feel cramped, it's just that anyone who read the text file would know the
few keys that are necessary and they didn't have to be listed on-screen.

I would say that there are only 6-8 colours used, but there doesn't have
to be for this basic game. It looks okay and too many shades of tiles
could be confusing. Also, note that you won't find any sound effects or
music. This is also fine me, as I suspect that most people would get
annoyed with it and want to turn them off anyway.



Your position marker is a yellow/red circle. Move with the 4,8,6,2 arrow
keys on the number pad (or with the ones on the main keyboard if that is
what you want).

The other important key is the asterisk. "SHIFT 8" or the asterisk on the
number pad, both work. You use this to place a copy of your marker at the
present location. You can then just wander around and whenever you want, a
press of the asterisk will send you back to where your copy marker is.
There's no other way to shut-off the copy marker, however. Thus, it is
best to use this in a limited manner. If you place the marker and travel
really far, you know that you will have to go back to that marker before
you could use another.

If you want to stop, you can quit back to the title screen; but I
discovered that this only works with a capital Q. There's no save-feature,
which is unfortunate.


The marker always remains fixed and the maze will move in the opposite
direction of the arrow you pressed. Although the movement is not smooth
scrolling and it just jumps, I like it better this way.

However, everything is rather fast if you hold down a movement key. You
can also use the joystick for control with a press of the "SHIFT J"
toggle, but nobody should do this since the capability is buggy. The
problems are: everything becomes a blur, it is faster than moving with
keys and you can't easily control where you want to go; using the shift
key on the right with J doesn't toggle the joystick, while the left one
does (I've checked my right shift and it is not my keyboard); and the
firebutton on the joystick does not place a pointer (as I expected it to,
although it wasn't mentioned in the documentation).

Single keypresses are the way to go because of the things you need to
notice and possible words to be read.



Yeah! This comes with a full-featured level designer. I believe it will
take some time to make levels, but the editor is well-made and you should
have no trouble with following it and the documentation. It should be
noted that this, as well as the game, both multitask.

It's too bad that you only get six completed mazes/puzzles. I investigated
them a bit using the editor,  not too long because I still wanted to play
them,  and they look to be fairly large. I look forward to trying my hand
at making some of my own.



If you enjoy maze games that are more than just the usual 'stroll through
the corridors and find the exit', pick this one up from the Aminet and
enjoy. It's another example of a game that doesn't need to be flashy to be
fun.


10/1/2002; TESTED ON A1200/68030@40mhz/32megs fast RAM

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