[ADRIFT] The Quest For More Hair

“The Quest For More Hair” by Matt (Dark Baron)

Background: you’re an adventurer called Liqid who is bald and has decided to go on a quest for more hair.

What the…?

Yep. You read that right. An adventurer called Liqid. Who is bald. Who is going on a quest for more hair. No wonder I don’t remember much about the game from when it first came out. I probably took one look at the introduction (littered with spelling mistakes as it happens) and quit it five seconds later. The fact that it was credited to someone with the bizarre name of Matt (Dark Baron) didn’t help matters much either.

There are so many things wrong with the game that making any kind of progress is a constant guess the verb battle. Or, more appropriately, ‘guess what the heck the writer was thinking’. Want an example? Well… one room has a rusty bell in it that needs to be rung. But does RING BELL work? Nope. RING RUSTY BELL? Nope. Seems you need to put RING THE BELL in order to get the game to understand what you want. Grrrr.

The game also makes use of ADRIFT’s built in combat system which is every bit as bad here as it is in every other game I’ve played that has used it. Most of the time, it’s simply a case of typing KILL DRUNK WITH SWORD until either you or the drunk fall down dead and seeing such wonderful messages as this

You HIT Drunk with the Sword. Drunk hits you.

You HIT Drunk with the Sword. Drunk hits you.

You HIT Drunk with the Sword. Drunk hits you.

You HIT Drunk with the Sword. Drunk hits you.

displayed on the screen. Anyone who thinks that combat systems have no place in a text adventure would certainly be speaking from a stronger footing if they played this game.

What else is there to say about the game? There are numerous spelling mistakes – a few in almost every sentence – as well as more grammatical errors than you’d see if you attended the Grammatical Errors Convention; there are descriptions for very few of the items mentioned in room descriptions (and the ones that have descriptions are seriously lacking (the key carries the wonderful description IT IS A SMALL BRONZE KEY)); item names begin with capital letters (Sword and Cabinet) for no apparent reason; a location with a pit that kills you a turn after you enter it (some kind of event runs that moves you over the pit and then plunges you downwards to your doom, whether or not you actually wanted to do that or not); a ferry man armed with a (sic) Schmitar; and unhelpful and often sarcastic responses to reasonable commands.

All in all, this is one terrible game.

1 out of 10