The Trap Door

Moby ID: 21118
Commodore 64 Specs

Description official descriptions

Berk is trying to obtain a chest of treasure from within a castle inhabited by the Bad Tempered Thing. This involves completing five tasks, although a learner mode in which only 4 are required is also provided. The first task is to provide a can of worms, whilst crushed eyeballs must be provided for task two. You then need to boil Slimies, fry eggs (getting them is a dilemma in itself), and then force everything back into the trapdoor. These tasks must be completed before Thing’s Angry Meter reaches its limit.

As fans of the TV show will recall, the Trap Door of the title seals in numerous strange monsters, and in the game some are harmful and some are a hindrance, depending on the task at hand, so be careful which ones are released. Remember to close it, as spooks will be released if you do not – these require food to be pacified. Boni and Drutt appear regularly – the former giving cryptic morsels of advice, and the latter eating spiders and getting in the way. You can prepare for one task while completing another, so pay attention to items which may be useful, and think about what they are likely to be used in conjunction with.

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Critics

Average score: 84% (based on 9 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.3 out of 5 (based on 9 ratings with 1 reviews)

Old time adventure/puzzle

The Good
This is probably the first adventure game I've ever played. It's actually a bit difficult to put it in a definite genre, but I'd say it is an adventure/puzzle game, although quite original.

This game is based on a clay-animated tv-show, of which I have only seen a few episodes. It's cute, and a bit weird, just like the game.

You control Berk, a strange creature who lives in a castle. Berk's best friend is a skull, and his boss is never seen, but often heard. In the game, the boss constantly requests things of Berk, and it's your job to complete these quests.

These missions can be quite hard to complete. The first one is very straight forward. The boss wants some worms. Just open the trap door and let some worms out, then pick them up, put them in a jar and send them up the elevator. Yummy. The boss is happy.

I also remember a quest where the boss wanted some fried eggs. In order to do that, you had to let a giant bird out of the trap door. Then you had to shoot something up the bird's behind by using the trap door as a catapult, and then you had to hurry and catch the egg in a frying pan. Then you could fry it on the stove. It might sound easy, but it wasn't.

Usually the trap door was very unreliable. You never quite knew what to expect when you opened it. More than often, a terrible monster of some kind would come out, one which was more or less impossible to get rid of.

The graphics were very good at the time. The animations of Berk was excellent, and the castle was fun to explore. I also enjoyed annoying the talking skull.

The Bad
First of all, this game is difficult. You get few, if any, hints on what to do, and even if you know what to do it can be hard to perform due to bad controls. Also, it's sometimes hard to tell what the objects are supposed to be, due to the primitive graphics.

Had this game been done today the interface had surely been a simple point and click, which would have been much better. As it is now, everything takes ages, since Berk moves so slowly and the controls are so flimsy.

The sounds are not much to write home about. In fact, you'd do best to turn them off.



The Bottom Line
This is a cute and original adventure/puzzle game that had some good ideas, but that was unfortunately poorly realised. In the end this game is fun for a few minutes, just walking around, playing with the trap door and annoying the talking skull, but to actually play it and try to solve the quests is painstakingly difficult, slow and annoying.

Commodore 64 · by Joakim Kihlman (231) · 2008

Trivia

Chris Yates of Sensible Software was a fan of the game. While talking to C64 magazine Zzap! about the obsession some programmers had with special effects over gameplay, he noted that it "is the most brilliant game I've played for ages. It isn't particularly well presented, but It's such an interesting, mentally stimulating game."

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Game added by Martin Smith.

Game added February 9, 2006. Last modified October 22, 2023.