Home Computing Weekly


The Secret Of St. Brides

Author: C.J.
Publisher: St. Bride's School
Machine: Spectrum 48K/128K

 
Published in Home Computing Weekly #126

Frankly, I had grave doubts about reviewing this. An adventure game set in a girls' boarding school didn't really seem likely to provide much competition for the more "fantastic" type of game that is the norm among adventures (dwarves, spaceships, that sort of thing). However, I really quite enjoyed it once I started.

It seems that St. Bride's is a real honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned girls' school in Ireland though there are no details in the instructions, I assume that this adventure was written by one or more of the pupils there. The plot casts you as Trixie Trinian who is visiting the school in the present day, but discovers that all the pupils and staff really believe they are living in the 1930's. Accompanied by your friends, Cynthia and Fiona, you must seek out the school's bizarre secret and restore normality.

The game was written with, and makes good use of, The Quill and The Illustrator by Gilsoft. It's by no means perfect as there are a number of responses which, though quite predictable, are not catered for. In one location there are some stairs "to the North, leading up", but though the command "Up" is accepted, "North" isn't. This is a fairly typical flaw, but even so, I found some of the problems quite bizarre, and the "jolly hockey sticks" humour is nicely done (not as ghastly as it could have been).

Not, perhaps, la creme de la creme, but a good effort and with a novel setting.

C.J.

Other Spectrum 48K/128K Game Reviews By C.J.


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