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→Thief
The cursor serves several purposes. For one, it allows you to move from room to room. When you position the cursor over an object and press the joystick fire button, the name of the object will be displayed at the bottom of the screen. Pressing the fire button while moving the cursor reduces its velocity, which is critical when moving about in tight quarters such as the maze.
By moving from room to room youcan figure out the floor plan of thehouse, which is always the same.However, locating the safe is morethan a matter of moving from room toroom. Since you are told you willencounter a locked door somewhere inthe house, you may assume that youwill need to have a key to unlock it.Finding the key can be difficult. Then,1too, to open the safe you 'will need acombination to the lock. This you willfind somewhere in the house. The keyand combination are hidden in differentplaces each time you play thegame.
The block graphics used in Thief aresimple and, for the most part, representational.You can tell a chair from acouch and a dinner table from a coffeetable. Color, too, is used to good effect. Each room appears as a singlescreen so that Thief is actually aneleven-screen adventure. Joysticks are used 3$ the principalsource of input. Input from the keyboardis required to enter the combinationto unlock the safe. I found theprogram to be crash proof except whenI was required to enter the combinationI managed to get an error messageon my second try, which resultedin hc1lf half the room I was in ;it at the timescrolling off the top of the screen. Iexited the room and then reenteredand everything was as it was supposedto be. ==Ease of Use: == What difficulty there isin playing this game lies principally inmaneuvering the cursor around thescreen, which is not difficult at all. Theobject of the game is straightforward. ==Documentation: == I was disappointedin the manual that comes with Thief.For example, under the categoryAlarmed Doors, it read$reads: "One door iswired and must be disarmed beforeyou can pass through it.·' " There a re are nohints as to how to disarm the alarm. Imanaged to figure it out myself but itdidn't seem to make much differencebecause the alarm can be set off at thispoint without any apparentconsequences. ==Value: == Young teens' and childrenseemed most amused by Thief. Duringthe testing stage, I found severalroughly drawn floorplans fashioned byyoung hands littering the computerstation. I take this to be a good sign.
'''— JK'''
