Mode(s) Single player Series Mysterious Adventures Genre Interactive fiction | Initial release date 1983 Developer Brian Howarth | |
Platforms ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit family Publishers Channel 8 Software, Digital Fantasia, Paxman Promotions Ltd. Interactive fiction games Strange Odyssey, Voodoo Castle, Pyramid of Doom, Adventureland, Pirate Adventure | ||
Waxworks is a text adventure game by Brian Howarth and Cliff J. Ogden. It was originally published by Digital Fantasia in 1983 for the Commodore 64, Commodore Plus/4, ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro. It was the 11th game in the Mysterious Adventures series.
The story is about a waxworks in which the protagonist is trapped. Escaping involves finding statues of famous people (like Hillary and Tenzing).
Whilst some of the statues are exceptionally easy to identify, others are not so simple without acquiring the necessary clues earlier in the game. For example, identifying the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George is exceptionally problematic without first finding a clue to his whereabouts. It was also noted that, owing to limited graphics capacity, several of the statues bear a striking resemblance to actor David Niven.
Critical reaction
CRASH magazine reviewed Waxworks in their July 1984 issue. The text parser was described as "eccentric" but with "some noteworthy flexibility", being a modified verb/noun form that also allows adverbs and conjunctions ("QUICKLY GET THE LAMP, SWORD, CLOAK AND STAFF", for example). The graphical display was also highlighted, making up for the absence of long room descriptions.
Your Commodore thought the game was not as good as the Zork series and with inferior graphics to rival title Dallas Quest. Overall it was considered to be "a standard adventure with standard graphics."