Good to see an independent
house produce something
original, rather than the
usual Middle Earth clones,
and you have to admit that
the start of this
GAC'd two-parter is
certainly different: "You are in a
spheroid, swimming in gooey albumen.
The sound of someone knocking comes
from outside." Assuming you can
extricate yourself from that situation,
you go on to face a task so obviously
different that I wonder no-one's
thought of it before, as the aim of this
game is to die.
The plot and the problems, so far as
I was able to get before peeking at the
cheat sheet, are well thought out and
logical.. The story mainly takes place in
ancient Egypt and you are Kteth (no,
not Keith, Kteth), a falcon-headed
minor God, who presumably spends
part of his time looking for falcon-headed minor goddesses to take round
the Cairo wine-bars. But when he's not
doing that he's enjoying the blissful life
of a typical Egyptian Godling, till,
wouldn't you just know it, someone
comes along and cocks it all up.
Namely your dad, Set. He bumps off
Osiris, the big cheese among Egyptian
Gods, and so the whole family gets
booted out of Paradise. You have
friends in high places, though, who
recognise your innocence, but to
regain your Godly status you'll first
have to find the Book of the Dead,
which tells you how to die and travel
back again to the Other World.
Enjoying all the facilities that
GAC
provides, such as the decent parser,
TEXT/GRAPHICS options, IT/THEM
options and so on, the only drawbacks
to
The Book Of The Dead seem to me to
be the redesigned old-fashioned
character set, which is very hard on
the eyes, and the rather slow response
time. But they're minor faults in an
otherwise unusual game, and one well
worth sending off your pennies for.
| Ratings given by other magazines |
|
|
| Info supplied by the SPOT*ON database |
| YS Cross-references |
| |  | The Book Of The Dead/The Essential Myth (UK) | YS22 | NEWS |
| |  | The Book Of The Dead/The Essential Myth (UK) | YS22 | NEWS |
| |  | The Book Of The Dead/The Essential Myth (UK) | YS24 | NEWS |
| |  | The Book Of The Dead/The Essential Myth (UK) | YS65 | NEWS |
| Some info from Sinclair Infoseek+SPOT*ON |