Microdeal
£19.95
When you load Tanglewood you are presented with a
control panel dotted with switches and dials surrounding a large
black window which fills about three-quarters of the screen. If you
use the mouse to click on one of the numbered switches on the left
of the screen the window immediately fills with a colourful bird's
eye view of a strange land.
The land of Tanglewood is enormous. Roads and rivers criss-cross a
variety of colourful landscapes and allow you to explore around
3,000 squares of the 12,000 or so which form the grid across which
your five robots, or, to be more accurate, your Mining Mobiles can
travel. The roads and rivers lead to a variety of terrains such as
lakes, swamps, forests and gardens — not to mention the Purple
Cabbage Maze!
The variety of terrains is one of the main challenges of the game —
none of the mobiles are capable of travelling on all the terrains.
The limitations of your mobiles are further complicated by the fact
that they are all ropy second-hand equipment, bought cheaply by your
uncle who wants you to recover some vital documents for him. They
are either lacking in programs or equipment, or liable to break down
at a crucial moment!
It is very easy to start playing. Just pick a mobile and steer it
round the roads or rivers with the mouse. You will discover lots of
interesting places such as T'nglian (the local inhabitants) bases
and trading posts, matter transmitters, subways, telephone boxes,
and, hopefully, a few useful items. One warning here, you MUST keep
the sound on when exploring new areas or you will never find
anything. A ping indicates a find. If you stop where you heard the
ping then the item you have found will appear in a small window near
the bottom of the screen. The game is completely mouse driven.
Pointing at switches on the screen, pressing mouse buttons, and
moving the mouse allows you to issue the equivalent of GET, EXAMINE,
USE, DROP, SAVE, RESTORE, etc. You can also access the
lists of programs and data which provide each mobile with its own
special abilities, e.g. Number Three could use his Anti-Gravity Data
to enter the swamp, if only the Gravity Reducer hadn't been lost in
a lake during an earthquake!
The graphics are so good that just exploring the main map and
learning how all the mobiles work is great fun and would have
provided a more than adequate adventure in its own right, but there
is far, far more to Tanglewood. A number of the locations you
attempt to enter will ask you to confirm R-P transfer. Once you
accept this you will find yourself in a maze. There are three quite
different types of these, each providing an excellent set of puzzles
to solve.
The Mines is a 'platform game'. You get a sideways view of a small
area which scrolls smoothly as your mobile (visible in the centre of
the screen) moves along the tunnels and up and down ladders and
ropes, and presumably up and down the elevators as well if only you
could get them working! The problem of mapping the mines is
exacerbated by the fact that your lousy second-hand mobiles won't
work properly. Number Three won't go down ladders, Number Two won't
climb up ropes, and Number One has lost his mining data completely
and won't even go in! Working out how to map the mines and get the
three mobiles to co-operate to reach the final treasure is
practically a fully-fledged arcade game in its own right!
In the Forests, Under-water, the Swamp, etc. you get a completely
different view. You now see what the mobile can see ahead of itself,
and you move by using an arrow to indicate TURN LEFT, TURN RIGHT,
TURN AROUND, or MOVE FORWARDS. Because of the severe limitations of
your equipment all you can tell is the kind of terrain you are in
and which directions have exits, i.e. this is the visual equivalent
of 'You are in a maze of twisty passages all looking the same'! You
are not allowed to drop items to mark locations, and even worse, the
MOVE FORWARDS arrow, as well as causing movement CAN also, with no
indication, cause a change of the
direction in which your mobile is facing as he enters a new
location! Mapping some of these is a nightmare!
Somewhere deep in the Opposition Control Centre is the document you
need in order to win the game. Again the view is different, now you
are looking down the corridors of a three- dimensional maze. You can
see walls and turnings ahead of you and also the Yellow and Red
spots which mark Elevators. These mazes provide many challenges: the
elevators won't all work for you and some are only one-way; the
mazes are enormous — covering well over 500 locations and when you
get to the highest security area, your mobile's visual scanners
start malfunctioning!
Apart from the sheer problem of mapping the whole of Tanglewood, the
game also has some excellent logical puzzles for you to solve,
ranging from understanding the alien culture of the T'nglians to
finding a way into the Walled Garden and, to add to the Arcade feel
of the game, there is the problem of the enemy mobiles which zap
yours, and the fact that you are racing against time. Don't be put
off by that if you aren't into arcade games — you will soon discover
how to avoid the enemy — and there's always SAVE/RESTORE! — and it
is possible to finish the adventure in less than half the allotted
time, so it is not too much of a race once you have solved all the
puzzles.
As in most programs of this size there are a few minor bugs — watch
out for the following rare occurrences and you should be able to
avoid problems:
Apart from Stones/Crystals all other items are unique. If you find a
second one of anything it's probably best to go back to your last
SAVE position. (If you find a T'nglian Communications Protocol
diskette deep in the mines then you should restart the game from the
beginning — fortunately this appears to be extremely rare, neither I
nor the writer of the program can reproduce the bug!). If the screen
ever appears to be jumbled, or bits of things appear where they
shouldn't be or you lose the mouse pointer, then you should reload
the game and go back to your last RESTORE. You should be able to
repair both holes — if your equipment vanishes after one hole then
RESTORE and try again.
Tanglewood really is quite an amazing game, with tremendous scope
and lots of variety. Pete Lyon's graphics are impressive, and Ian
Murray-Watson's program will keep you guessing. I thoroughly enjoyed
it. I'm sure you will. Let's hope for lots more of the same.
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