THE FOX
by Flame Achron

Review: David Whyld

Background: (from the intro) You are [name], in a quest to save Florand, from the Distant Fox of D'narolf, in the paralell land.

Hardly the kind of introduction that makes you sit up and take notice, is it? Then again, the quality (or otherwise) of the introduction is pretty much par for the course for the rest of the game so it's at least a good indicator of what is to come.

The Fox isn't a game many people are likely to enjoy. It features minimal room descriptions - most being little more than a line in length with no attempt made to add any depth - NPCs who can't be interacted with aside from buying items from them, bad spelling, worse grammar… and, if that wasn't bad enough, you find right at the end that you can't complete the game if you picked the wrong class at the start!

Other annoyances pop up in the form of a troll that disappears partway through a combat and isn't seen from again after that. (Is this ADRIFT's combat system moving the troll after it dies and not telling the player about it, or just a weirdness on the part of the game itself?) Overall, you'll probably be through the entire game in a matter of minutes as there are no puzzles to solve here and the bulk of the commands that need to be entered are directional ones. Move from point A to point B, kill a troll, enter point C (assuming you're a Sorcerer… if not, bad luck. You can't finish the game) and you're there. Certainly the easiest game I've played for a long time, but if I was asked what the point of it was I'd be hard pressed to tell you.

Oh, and it also features a truly jaw dropping description for an item called the warrior sword: THIS IS A SWORD FOR WARRIORS. Classic.

3 out of 10