If your idea of fun is exploring a deserted mansion covered with dust and cobwebs, then you'll probably enjoy Ooze. Especially if bumping into an assortment of ghosts and ghouls doesn't frighten the wits out of you! And of course there's Ooze, too - he's the Master Of Evil who rules the roost at 555 Rue Morgue, where the game is set.
The player takes the role of Ham Burger, who has recently inherited 555 Rue Morgue from his uncle, Cheez Burger, who died in a horrific accident in the cellar there, having just taken up residence, he soon discovers some disturbing things about the place - and it's not just the spiders! However, the resident ghosts turn out to be quite a friendly crowd, and Ham soon decides to join them in an effort to eliminate the feared and hated Ooze.
Ooze is a text adventure, with a graphics system almost identical to that pioneered by Magnetic Scrolls. This means it's not only a little dated for a new release, but being so obviously similar, it invites comparison - and basically the graphics are nowhere near as good. On the plus side, there's lively title music, and plenty of decent sound effects, including eerie laughs, creaks, and bumps.
In a text adventure, not surprisingly, it is the text output that makes the game. There is plenty of it, but on the Amiga version I played, 80 column while text on a black background, with no alternative size is a difficult read if you're using a TV. Other foreground colours are available through a COLOR command, but the manual does not list the colour codes.
Room descriptions are long and well written, apart from the odd text decompression glitch; but they tend to lack humour, and are not always well arranged, making it difficult to determine the exits and objects of interest in the rooms. Function key F2 lists the exits concisely, and I soon found I was using it automatically each time I entered a new room. Other function keys are provided for routine commands, including F3 which is a sort of SCORE, displaying courage, charisma, health and hit points.
Text output also includes responses to the player, produced by the parser's interpretation of the command entered. This parser leaves a lot to be desired. MOVE SHEETS (on the bed) gives: "Unfortunately I can't see leaves here", whilst EXAMINE LEAVES when leaves are present, returns: "Unfortunately, I can't see a flyer here". And as for DUCK, when one of the spooks threw a fireball at me, all I got was: "Yo! Chillout! I'd prefer nice complex sentences." ... Yuk!
Overall, the game itself, whilst hardly Infocom-standard, is not all bad, offering an atmospheric haunted house theme. A pity then that it is dogged by a number of frustrating little difficulties that, given the hardware of today and the adventure experiences of yesteryear, should be a thing of the past.
1st November 1989