What’s With Computer Games? Nothing Less Than Survival of World

Through one door in the bowels of the evil warlock’s castle waits a dragon. And you know from cruel experience the creature is to be avoided unless you want the kind of suntan you get on Mercury. At high noon.

But you’ve got to do something because your last torch is flickering out, and soon you’ll be stumbling around in the dark. So you open a mysterious trapdoor and descend into the gloom.

Too late you realize your choice of exits wasn’t so wise after all and you scream as you plunge to your doom. “Thou art dead!” the grim specter of death mocks, accompanied by mournful organ music.

Shadowgate from Mindscape Inc. ($49.95 retail) is an engrossing adventure that can provide hours of fun for owners of Macintosh and Amiga computers (versions for other computers are in development).

The Macintosh version, which requires 512K RAM or above, blends great graphics and sound with a fairly standard good-versus-evil plot. The tongue-in-cheek result is a delightful adventure that will strain your ingenuity to the limit.

As the manual says, nothing less than the survival of the world as you know it is at stake when you take on the Lord Warlock, so pay attention.

The game screen presents a detailed picture window of your position in the castle at any given moment, a command window, an inventory window and a text window where the results of your actions are displayed.

Shadowgate is simple to play, difficult to survive. To open a door, for example, simply double-click on it with the mouse or point to it and choose “open” from the command menu. Depending on the situation, you can “operate” objects, open them, close them, eat them, hit them, examine them or speak to them, although I have yet to find one that will speak back.

To open a locked door, for example, you would click on its key in the inventory window (assuming you have got it), then the “operate” button in the command menu and then on the door itself.

Examine everything; hidden exits abound. Be sure to stock up on lots of torches and save your position to disk often; there is no way to tell when an action will have a fatal outcome, and if you haven’t saved, you’ll have to start over from scratch or from your last saved position.

I’m not sure what the ultimate goal of Shadowgate is, other than to somehow survive the dungeon, beat up on the warlock and ensure the “rescue of untold thousands from eternal darkness.” But I have had hours of fun trying to figure it out, and I can highly recommend it to young and old alike.

Shadowgate from Mindscape Inc.; List price: $49.95; Copy protection: yes; System requirement: Macintosh 512K, Amiga (versions for other computers in development).

Solitaire Royale from Spectrum Holobyte ($34.95 retail) is the perfect solution for a rainy weekend. This handsome package includes eight solitaire classics, as well as three other card games for kids, that are sure to delight the most hardened solitaire buff (or anyone else with a streak of masochism).

The player has a choice of Pyramid, Golf, Klondike, Canfield, Corners, Calculation, Three Shuffles and a Draw, and Reno. All eight are beautifully implemented, complete with the sound of shuffling cards, and detailed rules for each game are available on line at the touch of a button.

Available for IBM machines and Apple’s Macintosh, play is simple and straightforward. In the Mac version, for example, to move one card or pile to another, you simply click on the top card in the stack, then click again on the destination pile. You can also move the cards “manually” by dragging them with the mouse.

You can restart a game at any point, repeat the same shuffle and deck (useful in the event you misplayed a winnable deal) or try your hand at a different game.

You can also take back moves, change the appearance of the background of the cards or “peek” into piles to see which cards are present. Should you win a game, you will hear a crowd break out in cheers; a nice touch.

The program also includes a “tournament” mode, in which you and any number of friends can compete for points, either one game at a time or through all eight. In tournament play, the computer gives the same deal to each player.

Unlike real solitaire, however, cheating is impossible. But the ability to peek into piles lets you come close in so that if you look through the face-down cards at the beginning of a game you probably can avoid misplaying a deal.

And even if you do misplay, the program will let you start over with the same deal and shuffle.

Solitaire Royale is an excellent way to waste 10 minutes or so when you simply must take a break from the real world. But take heed: The games are addicting, and it’s quite likely you will waste far more than 10 minutes at a stretch trying to win just one more game.

Solitaire Royale from Spectrum Holobyte Inc.; List price: $34.95; Copy protection: yes. System requirement: Macintosh 512K or up, IBM 256K.