Adventure games

Background

When this game popped up on a 'new Speccy game' article, I was immediately struck by the impressive stylish dithered (is that the right word?) graphics, so I thought I'd better check it out.

To summarise, this is:

• ...an English translation version
• ...of a Spanish adventure game Los Elfos de Maroland (authored in DAAD adventure writer)
• ...which itself is a remake/port of the original PAW-authored Los Elfos de Maroland from 1993.

Hopefully I've got all that right. If not, let me know. Anyway, as much as I'd genuinely like to challenge myself with a text adventure in a non-English language, I thought I'd stick to the English one as it's been kindly provided to us.

I've tried to avoid any spoilers/puzzle solutions in this article, though I've added quite a few graphics (as they're ace) which might give away a few locations you might encounter.

The Game

As you can probably guess from its title, this adventure has a fantasy setting; dark powers, elves, wizards, dragons and shadowy evil figures all get a mention early on.

We're also given our starting point in the world, which is on one of a series of islands. I had a quick look at the original 1993 game; it includes a map, which unfortunately isn't present in the later version.

Spoiler alert - I didn't visit all the islands on the mini-map. I'm not sure whether the adventure was originally more expansive, or if the author planned a multi-game epic, but only a few of the map's locations featured in my playthrough.

Anyway, you're a wizard's apprentice called Ged. As befits any young unassuming person in any fantasy setting worth its salt, you're tasked with saving the world after your master was killed by an accidentally-summoned evil power.

The game comes in four parts - we start off in the port of GOIL in the land of BEIL, in search of some elven wizardy types.

Each part only has a handful of locations, meaning you don't have to make a map. I suspected that I might have be floating back and forth between parts and/or islands. But as it turns out, after you progress from one part to another, you don't need to go back.

It is possible to leave an item behind in a previous part (I did it once) - one of my adventuring bugbears - but it's very obvious what you're missing, and it takes next to no time to complete each part once you know what to do.

Vocab is pleasantly easy, and I found the game isn't particularly strict on the phrasing you use. During the adventure you can chat to people using SAY (e.g. SAY CAPTAIN "HELLO"), and I felt a decent amount of thought had been put into character responses. At time it did feel like a short, but proper, conversation was evolving.

Characters will sometimes follow you around and you can tell them to perform certain tasks to help you on your quest. Often in adventures I've found instructing characters challenging, as it's difficult enough to figure out what I need to do, let alone other people. But in this case it's easy to work out when you need to ask for help.

EXAMining things in this game is recommended - inspecting pretty much everything resulted in a decent and helpful description. It's clear the author has put a lot of thought into the parser as well as the game's pleasant graphics.

Talking of graphics, as you can probably tell by this review, they're all monochrome (not being familiar with DAAD I'm not sure what the norm is for ZX Speccy graphic output). But I didn't particularly mind. Graphics aren't limited to the game's locations either; some short interim scenes have additional graphic screens, occasionally even more than one, giving the game a 'cutscene' feel at times.

After a bit of island hopping, I got to the end of the game pretty quickly. The game was much shorter than I expected, especially given that it's in 4 parts. I would guess the graphics probably take up a bit of space, as there's no skimping on the location pictures. I haven't seen an .RZX recording yet, but I suspect it'll be one of the shorter ones.

Summary

I quite enjoyed playing Elves of Maroland. I do like a solid classic fantasy setting. The story was entertaining enough, and I liked the interactions with the characters I encountered.

For quite an epic storyline the game feels fairly short; I appreciate an author who wants players to complete their games though, even if puzzles are perhaps a tad on the easy side. You're usually faced with a single aim/obstacle at a time, and each part only contains a few objects and locations, so you'll be flying through it. The hardest thing I had to get my brain around was figuring out how to wrangle the multiple +3 disks using my Speccy emulator.

Conversely, this does mean that the few deaths you may experience don't feel like a setback; it takes seconds to get back to where you were. And I'd rather the attention to detail (graphics, parser, responses) than an overly expansive game with little player feedback.

I've said it elsewhere (repeatedly probably), but if you don't normally have the patience for graphic/text adventures, consider trying this one. At times - particularly with the 'cut scenes' - it feels more like an interactive novel... You won't need to make a map, and can probably finish the game in one or two sessions.

A big thanks to Dwalin for bringing Elves of Maroland to my attention with its reboot - and particularly the English translation. Will definitely look to try some more of these.