1 ADVENTURES OF A COMMON FROG - LABYRINTHINE GROTTOS, FRIENDLY ROBIN AND EVIL PIRANHA

ZX Spectrum Vega game #0022

Dear Readers,

Today I'll talk about this text adventure game by Terry Braverman and Automata in 1985. I was looking forward to it from the sound of the title! It has a nice title screen which flies by briefly on the Vega. The game is presented with white text on a blue background.

I started out as a lonely frog looking for adventure. I took the lantern and went down to the cavern, which drew out this cool looking cave :) I quite like this!

I went further and the screen went black with white text. I was in the dark now and couldn't see! This was kind of clever too. I couldn't use the lantern for some reason and I couldn't escape, so a piranha came along and ate me! Nooo!

I started again and took a different direction. This time I found a pair of silk men's trousers which was kind of strange. I continued and another cool looking cave was drawn but in different colours this time. This might get tiresome because I can't skip the graphics being drawn.

I continued where an old sunken ship was drawn and it was cool to see the variety. Thankfully, the game doesn't seem to spend time drawing the same graphics again when you re enter an area.

Now... the grottos! There are several of them of different colour, and several of the same colour! When I enter a new one, it draws the cave graphic again but slightly different... I managed to escape the labyrinth of grottos after a while thankfully, but I'm gonna have to write my route down if I decide to explore there again.

I headed back home to my pond and went in a different direction. Going North just pulls me back because of the current. Nice drawing of the water though. It looks a bit like a mountain range too but it's water. Just my imagination going :)

East isn't good either so I headed west. Nice drawing of a sunny slab here and I met a friendly robin that pointed out an exit to the north. Yay, friendly company!

Going further I found some grass and a sharp stone and a mirror. I lit the match and then decided to go back to that dark cave. I found the piranha and mortally wounded it with the dagger(I assume). I then ran out of new things to do so I picked up the pants and shoes along the way and put them on. I didn't feel like navigating the grotto labyrinth so I called it quits for now.

My final score was 15%, taking 95 turns. I quite enjoyed this game for the most part! It was pretty interesting and it was nice to meet the robin and to defeat the piranha. All those graphics were pretty cool too. I quite like this little froggy adventure!