Mirror of Khoronz, The - Review

Mirror Of Khoronz is a truly splendid update of Derek Haslam's unpublished sequel to his Gateway To Karos which came out on the Acornsoft label.

The definitive version is now on his web site (765kb in size).

I have play tested this new RISC version for the Archimedes and it is everything I like in a piece of IF - large, full of great puzzles, a good back story and abounding with humour and NPCs.

The mimetic feel of the game is exacerbated by the fact that left, right, forward and backward work indoors. This took me a while to get used to, but logically speaking it makes more sense than traditional use of the compass rose. There is a maze in the caves I should warn people of but it is navigable in the usual way.

The left hand side of the screen displays the directions you can move in and some common commands are available via buttons here too. There is also a retrace button should you become hopelessly befuddled, a certainty given the complexity of this game. It feels like an old mainframe adventure which has been mated with a modern piece of IF with a multi word parser and an inclusion of the traditional IF abbreviations.

You will come across a clever chess/word puzzle, a sea monster, a band of marauding bandits, pirates and skeletons amongst other impedimenta. All told nearly double the size of the original mainframe Zork and unlike some large creations it doesn't feel that is has been made bigger just for the sake of it; the Odyssean feel of the game demands its length to work correctly.

It is to be hoped that the fact it is only available via Archimedes' emulators doesn't lead it into obscurity.

The author tells me that he is hoping to release a RISC version of Gateway To Karos as well as a third part of the trilogy tentatively named The Far Islands.

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Parser/Vocabulary (Rating: 8/10)

I rarely needed to use more than two words for the parser but had no real issues. Non takeable objects can usually be referred to. A good inventory limit too. No light, hunger or thirst daemons.

Atmosphere (Rating: 8/10)

Well written descriptions; prolix when they need to be.

Cruelty (Rating: Nasty)

It is easy to die at certain points in the game - the bandits are particularly nasty and it always advisable to save before entering new territory.

Puzzles (Rating: 9/10)

Derek's imagination really takes off in this game. There are a nice combination of short, one line posers and some longer chaining ones which need the traditional pen and paper treatment. Timing is important more than once.

Overall (Rating: 8/10)

Great fun for the patient traditionalist. Large, well written, pretty much bug free and a nice readable interface. Setting up the RISC emulator was the trickiest part for me. I ended up using RPCEmu.