Computer Gamer


Terrormolinos
By Melbourne House
BBC/Electron

 
Published in Computer Gamer #8

Terrormolinos

It's always a pleasant change to find an adventure game which does not involve dungeons, dragons, spaceships or aliens. It is rarer to find one with a real sense of humour but Terrormolinos is exceptional.

The game takes place on a horrible package tour to an equally awful coastal resort in Spain. Accompanied by your troublesome family, the challenge is to survive the trials and tribulations of your holiday and to keep your wits about you and take souvenir photographs to prove that you were actually there.

You start off in your dingy home in Slough panicking to pack at the last minute. This involves searching high and low through the house for essentials such as your passport, swimming trunks, the essential camera, and last and certainly least, the rest of your family. If you fail to get everything together before the taxi arrives you fail before you begin. If you succeed then you're well on your way to the holiday of a lifetime (hopefully only once in a lifetime).

Terrormolinos

Beryl and the two kids turn out to be a real pain in the hacienda, wandering off and getting into trouble and you spend a fair amount of your time acting like a human sheepdog to keep everyone together. Occasionally you might like to take a photograph, assuming you have found somewhere to buy a film, but you have to be choosy because you only have twelve exposures and ten of these must be the correct shots to win the game.

Each time you take a photo the shot develops on the screen using a system which the programmers call Saucivision. The graphics look like those naughty seaside postcards which you send out to make your maiden aunt blush.

There are sufficient problems to keep you on your toes throughout the adventure, fighting off vicious sharks, avoiding sunburn and suffering the torments of Spanish nightclubs (surely a remnant of the Inquisition). I even found myself in the wrong adventure at one point. My mother told me told to follow strange men around!

Terrormolinos was created by the authors of Hampstead, and it shows. I get a definite hint of sadism from their previous effort and this new game twists the knife. The problem is that the situations are recognisable to anyone who has ventured on a package tour where the main problems are the other tourists and the fact that the place is full of foreigners. You even pick up a smattering of Spanish as you wander through your nightmare.

This must rate as one of the most awful adventures which I have ever played. Gloriously awful and superbly awful.