DUNGEON ADVENTURE

Jubilation reigns in Minas Tirith! At sunset yesterday the city was
besieged by a sea of orcs, with more arriving every hour, and it seemed
that the defenders were doomed. But at sunrise, the watch looked out
over an empty plain - the attackers had given up the assault when on
the point of victory.

Initially, the only reaction was stunned amazement. But gradually a
rumour began to spread: first whispered in quiet corners, lest the
telling should make it untrue, but eventually shouted in every street..

"The Demon Lord is dead!"

When this was confirmed by the Wizard's council, a two week carnival
was announced - the provisions hoarded against a long siege were
lavishly dispensed and the population proceeded to enjoy themselves as
you would expect.

But a few people, yourself included, thought along different lines as
follows: 1) The Demon Lord must have been very rich; 2) If He really is
dead, His treasures may be unguarded; 3) When the orcs marched south
they cut a swathe of destruction through the countryside but they moved
too fast to completely loot the area; 4) So, if I were to ride swiftly
north, I'd have no problem in finding provisions and could probably
reach the Black Tower in ten days. The wizards would never have
repaired their teleport system by then, so I'd very likely be the first
person there. 5) This could make me incredibly rich.

You gather together all the lethal weapons you can get your hands on
and leave within the hour.

All goes well. You have taken a team of horses and make very good
progress indeed (aided by Horseshoes-of-Speed, a Staff-of-the-Seasons
for fodder, night-sight goggles etc `donated' by a cavalry barracks)
and after eight days are nearing the Black Tower, lair of the Demon
ex-Lord.

Then, about a mile from the tower itself, you are riding through a
seemingly-deserted forest when a spell is cast! Your anti-magic
defences spring into action but too late.. you fall to the ground
asleep.

Some time later you wake, cold and wet, on a sandbank north of a wide
river. All of your weapons and magic are lost. It seems that you were
robbed and then your body thrown into the river but that, rather than
drowning you have survived long enough to be washed up on the shore.

The only problem is, what to do now? Can you take on the Dungeons of
the Demon Lord unaided? It seems you have little choice as this is
where the game starts...

"Good Luck! You'll need it!"

The Game

Dungeon Adventure is a full scale adventure game with well over 200
individually described locations, 700 messages, about 100 objects etc
etc. You will have to solve a very large number of puzzles while
collecting the treasures left by the Demon Lord!

To play Dungeon Adventure, load it from cassette and then simply enter
English phrases to tell the computer what you want to do (eg. MOVE
NORTH, FILL THE POT, CLIMB THE CLIFF, LOOK AROUND). The program will
act as your eyes and ears (and NOSE!) to describe your surroundings.

In fact, Dungeon Adventure is amazingly easy to play - you don't need
to be able to find the cursor keys blindfold or hammer the space-bar
for hours. But it will probably take weeks (or months) to complete!
Fortunately you can use the SAVE command to store the current state of
the game and return to everyday life for a while, resuming play later.

How to Load and Start

Dungeon Adventure is a 32K machine program, designed to run on the 48K
Spectrum.

It is made up of two parts: a very small BASIC program and a large
machine code program which does all the work.

To load it, enter LOAD "" (press J; SYMBOL-SHIFT + P; SYMBOL-SHIFT + P;
ENTER) and the game will automatically load and run when you play the
tape, using either side.

When you eventually finish with the game, press BREAK (CAPS-SHIFT +
SPACE) or enter QUIT to return to BASIC.

To restart (eg. if you press BREAK by accident), enter GOTO 100 (press
G; 1; 0; 0; ENTER) and the game will be continued where you left off.

Instructions

Unlike our other games, Level 9 Adventures contain few instructions
within the programs (though there are a lot of hints in room
descriptions etc). We feel that this type of game is very easy to play
and that the space is better used for more rooms and puzzles etc.

The program asks "What next?" whenever it expects you to enter another
command. Simply type an English phrase to tell it what you want to do
and press ENTER. The program will act on your request, ask you for the
next command, and so on.

Please ignore all of the BASIC keywords marked on and around the keys
of your Spectrum - except for DELETE, which works as usual. You should
type all words in full (though you can use abbreviations to save
typing. See on).

The program has an extensive vocabulary of English words (over 200) and
looks at each entered command, picking out the words it knows and
`guessing' your meaning from these. You are advised to keep
instructions fairly simple.

Dungeon Adventure provides considerable freedom in possible commands,
but to help you get started some possibilities are summarised below:

INVENTORY (What am I carrying?)
MOVE EAST (Move east)
NORTHWEST (Move northwest)
WALK INTO THE MOUTH (Move in)
TAKE THE WOOD (Take something)
DROP THE BODY (Drop something)
GIVE MONEY TO TROLL (Give a bribe)
SEARCH THE HAYSTACK (Search for hidden things)
WEAR BELT (Wear something)
WAVE WAND (Wave something)
PUSH BUTTON 1 (Push button 1)
NIBBLE THE MUSHROOM (Eat something) 
WALK DOWN THE SLIPPERY SLOPE (Move down) 
WHAT'S MY SCORE? (How well am I doing?)
EXAMINE SWORD (Look closely at object)

To save typing, words can be abbreviated (eg. EAST to E and NORTHWEST
to NW).

Three special commands are also provided:

Command Meaning

QUIT Abandon the game, returning to BASIC (you have to answer a Y/N
question to check that you mean it, and are given the chance to start
over again).

SAVE Save the current state of play on tape. Enter SAVE in (full) and
then, having started one of your own cassettes RECORDing, press any key
to save the state-of-play.

RESTORE Restore a previously saved game from tape so that you can carry
on playing. After typing RESTORE, start the cassette on PLAYBACK.

Scoring

You score points for collecting treasures and leaving them in the store
room. There are also bonusses for getting rid of undesirable beings
(though, to discourage massacre, only the worst enemies give you a
bonus).

On the debit side, you lose points if you manage to get yourself
killed.

Hints

* Almost everything in Dungeon Adventure has a purpose, and you can get
an idea as to what this is likely to be by EXAMINing an object.

* Resurrection is possible, and uses a machine which is initially
situated very close to where you start the game. By default it only
works while you remain close to this machine, and you must register
your body pattern for it to work at all.

* The setting for Dungeon Adventure is a "cave network" that was
originally the headquarters for the Demon Lord. Some parts are now
blocked off by rock falls, but it may help you to bear in mind the
original functions (if you can guess them) of the accessible parts.

* In response to user requests, there are several ways of carrying a
lot of objects at once!