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Nowadays we still get games with tiny vocabularies,
but usually they are subtly disguised as something else.
Kobayashi Naru is one of these, but don't let
that put you off -- I reckon that for the throwaway
price it's worth a fling, if only to get your penny's
worth of frustration.
This
adventure has a very original screen presentation --
lots of icons scattered around the top, which you select
with keyboard or joystick. Suppose you select USE .
. . The program then highlights one of the words in
the location description, or an item from your inventory
and you move this highlight until you settle upon the
word depicting the item you wish to USE. Then you press
FIRE (or the space bar) and the command is executed.
My only grouse is that if you select QUIT by mistake
you don't get asked for confirmation and find yourself
right back at the beginning of the game before you can
say Kobywhatsitsname.
That's
quite a neat little system for £1.99. The game itself
involves choosing one of three quests and returning
from it with an object -- get the three correct objects
and you join with the immortals, having completed the
Naru and entered the Order.
Harmless
claptrap; nice screen design; unusual gameplay system;
infuriating puzzles; some nice small-scale graphics
that show your current location, the objects you carry
and occasional textual reports on your surroundings;
and various little bits of scrolling window display
and a nice redesigned character set . . . Well now,
that's not a bad list for £1.99, is it? If you've got
money to waste, why not waste it? And if you haven't,
don't fret, because you're not missing anything earth-shaking.
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