Countdown to Doom

About the Author...

By profession a theoretical research oceanographer - and an occasional anthropologist and magician - PETER KILLWORTH fell in love with adventures when he discovered 'Colossal Cave'. His own first attempt at this new art form ('Philosopher's Quest', originally published by Acornsoft) sold 25000 copies.

'The programming', he recalls, 'was totally functional, and fairly crude by my current standards. But the plot and the puzzles were good. It's very easy to write a bad adventure (it just needs hard work); but a good one needs plotting like a novel, the appropriate writing skills, and the ability to create new puzzle types instead of just repeating old patterns'.

His family occasionally see him away from his computer terminal at home. They do not play adventure games.

...About the Adventure

You set off from Earth in your one-man ship, and are soon orbiting Doom.

Doomawangara - Doom for short - with its weird climate that varies from desert to jungle, glacier to swamp; the home, aeons ago, of the Ancients, whose crumbling dwellings at last begin to show up on your scanners, their images giving you the feeling that they're watching you - not the other way around. Doom, famed across the Galaxy as a potentially lucrative source of income, its surface littered with crashed treasure ships, rapidly corroding in the intensely volatile atmosphere. Only those known as adventurers would dare to land.

You make one more pass over the enticing planet, wondering if you have the courage. The decision is made for you when your ship comes under a sudden and violent attack that sends it tumbling out of control until it hits the surface with a force that could have killed you.

You pick yourself up and survey the wreckage, knowing that both you and your ship are well and truly doomed unless you can find the spares to repair it in time...

GAME SIZE: Medium. RATING: Medium.

Also from Topologika...

'PHILOSOPHER'S QUEST' by Peter Killworth

Peter's best-selling adventure sees you wishing you hadn't waved that old magic wand you found in the junk shop off Market Street. For when you did, the atmosphere turned inside out, taking you with it. And when it turned back again, the shop - and the shopkeeper were no more...

GAME SIZE: Compact, but with unexpected twists. RATING: Difficult.

Source:

From the back cover