Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!psuvax1!vu-vlsi!swatsun!garth
From: garth@swatsun.uucp (Garth Snyder)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: opinions wanted: Fool's Errand
Message-ID: <1560@tulum.UUCP>
Date: 31 Jan 88 19:24:46 GMT
References: <963@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Reply-To: garth@swatsun.UUCP (Garth Snyder)
Organization: Swarthmore College, Swarthmore PA
Lines: 39

glassner@unc.cs.unc.edu (Andrew S. Glassner) writes:
>
> Has anyone played the game "Fool's Errand" on the Mac?  Is it any good?
> About 4 months ago a friend mentioned the game to me with high marks, but
> I've never seen it.  Is it shareware or buyware?  Is it fun?

The game is essentially a bunch of about 60 puzzles bound together with a
kind of mystico-medieval plot.  The main character of the story is the
fool, who is on a mission to search the land for fourteen lost
treasures.  The story of the fool's journey is inscribed on a long scroll
which is divided up into a number of segments; with each segment is
associated a puzzle.  As puzzles are solved, more and more pieces of the
scroll become readable.  There are always a number of puzzles
outstanding, so you will very rarely be blocked by the need to solve a
particular puzzle to continue.

After all the puzzles are solved, there are some meta-puzzles that must
be solved.  I can't comment on this aspect of the game as I am only at
the point of having solved all the first-order puzzles.  When you
complete the game, the manual promises a four-minute animated display;
there is an animated prolog as well, but it is much shorter.

In my opinion, this game is one of the best ever.  BUT you have to like
puzzles.  In particular, you must enjoy word-search puzzles, jigsaw
puzzles, and word-scrambling puzzles, since about half the puzzle
inventory is drawn from these categories.  The other puzzles are all
pretty much unique and unclassifiable, and range from bizarre
Mac-interface puzzles to brilliant procedural puzzles to clever "find out
what the puzzle is here and solve it" problems.  There are also a few
coordination puzzles.

The software is supplied on three 400K disks, and is not copy protected.
It runs just fine off of my 60M LaCie hard disk.

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Garth Snyder            UUCP: {seismo!bpa,rutgers!liberty}!swatsun!garth
Swarthmore College      ARPA: garth@boulder.colorado.edu
Swarthmore, PA 19081    ALSO: {hao,nbires}!boulder!garth
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