Can I Cheat Death?

Copyright : Simon Avery | Reviewed by : Ritchardo

Wandering around a fairground in a mood after being stood up by your girlfriend, you decide to have your fortune read. Madame X, the fortune teller, soon tells you that time is running out and that Death is waiting for you back at your house to collect your soul. Only a dangerous mission to swap your life timer for something else with more sand in it can save you. With these words ringing in your ears, you hit the nearest pub.

Graphics

Written using The Quill, Avery?s Can I Cheat Death? Is a text adventure in the purest form of the word as, like all Quill-ed games there are no graphics at all - the programme being incapable of supporting any format other than text. This allows Avery to focus his energy in creating vivid descriptions that leave it entirely to the mind?s eye to visualise and believe me, on more than one occasion in this game: that?s a good thing!

Solid Mode 1 style white text on a blue background, things are easy to read and understand.

Sound

None

Gameplay

Upon loading the player is immediately greeted with a tongue-in-cheek disclaimer asking anyone under the age of 16 or those easily offended to turn off as the author has enough problems with being hounded by irate software censors. This sets the tone for the rest of the game pretty well.

The plot is, of course, absolutely ridiculous. Not to be taken at all seriously, Simon has attempted to craft a game that people will find more humorous than offensive and the game has a real laid back approach, making it feel as though you are trapped in a far fetched sit-com episode rather than a life or death struggle.

Morally on shaky grounds in some sections, it is actually advisable that the pre-game warning is heeded and if you?re easy to offend then to steer well clear as some of the situations that your character gets into are a little risqué to say the least.

Well put together, Can I Cheat Death? will require some thinking out of the box if you are to succeed but there are no absolutely ridiculous flights of fancy that I?ve come across in terms of puzzle solving and although you may have to do the strangest things they are not completely illogical as to severely damage the enjoyment of what is a perfectly acceptable slice of interactive fiction.

A few spelling errors have crept through - ?wondering around? instead of ?wandering around? in the pre-game blurb the most glaring and this does take some of the shine off the package I?m afraid.

In terms of size and difficulty, Can I Cheat Death? is not going to stump you forever and although you may take a while to crack some of it?s puzzles this will tend to be because you haven?t found an object yet rather than not know what to do with them.

Good if you like your text adventures to be near the knuckle and want to play something that you know you?ll be able to crack inside a week, Can I Cheat Death? Is as an adequate game to fill the gap and while some of the more disturbing thoughts might live on for a while, the game is not one that will burn itself on your memory.