BERMUDA PROJECT 

 BERMUDA PROJECT is a graphic action-adventure written by Mirrorsoft
and published by Microdeal, the game division of MichTron. Loosely
connected to the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle, BP offers
excellent graphics, easy gameplay, witch doctors, hostages, 
scorpions, piranhas, save option, mouse control, and copy
protection. The Atari ST version, which requires 512K and a color
monitor, is the basis of this review. 

 While many Microdeal games are just plain tough (think of JUG or
TETRA QUEST or GOLDRUNNER II), BERMUDA PROJECT is closer to an
introductory level of difficulty. For the most part, the puzzles are
logical, straightforward, and not too tricky, which means even a
newcomer to graphic adventures shouldn't have much trouble. Although
there seemed to be a frustrating glitch in the game's opening
puzzle, no one else I know of (including Microdeal) has had a
problem with it. In any case, the game is easy to learn, and play is
smooth. 

 While you're on a private flight from New Jersey to Barbados, your
plane encounters a storm and is struck by lightning. It crashes on
an uncharted Caribbean island, and although you survived, you're on
your own, with no guarantee that you'll remain alive. Thus, your
BERMUDA PROJECT is to stay alive long enough to get off the island. 

 The island is part desert. You'll need to find water (that doesn't
have piranhas in it) and something to put it in; you'll also have to
deal with the scorpions. The natives are savages with primitive
hairstyles; they kill first and ask questions later. There are sand
traps in the desert, sometimes with bodies in them. Furthermore, 
there's another plane on the island: It didn't crash; it landed. The
passengers disembarked, opened their luggage, and then vanished. 

 The ST screen display consists entirely of the island, which
scrolls as you move your character. The landscape changes color, 
depending on the terrain. There are rocks, bushes and plants, 
cactuses, huts, palm trees, and a river that divides the island. The
voodoo village is surrounded by a large fence whose turrets are
topped with skulls. 

 BERMUDA is entirely mouse-controlled. Move the mouse and you move
your character; move him to the edge of the screen and he'll walk
along, unattended, until an obstacle stops him. Press and hold the
right button to bring up the command window (Examine, Get, Drop, 
Use, Attach, Detach, and Options); move the mouse to highlight a
choice and press the left button to invoke it. 

 Selecting Examine (or any command) brings up a second window with
another menu, which again is invoked with a left-click on the
highlighted choice. Selecting Options lets you save and reload up to
four game positions (you'll need a formatted disk), restart the
game, or check your progress, which is indicated by a percentage. 

 The BERMUDA PROJECT package comes with two copy-protected disks. 
The instruction manual doesn't tell you much about the game itself
(enough to play it, of course), but it does have an article called
"The Bermuda Triangle: A Legend Revisited," which told me a few
things that I didn't know. 

 BERMUDA is an easy and enjoyable game. Graphics and animation are
excellent. You can hear the sound of the sea. The mouse worked
better here than in most mouse-driven games, and play is
straightforward and uncomplicated. Description windows have
appropriate pictures, along with text descriptions that scream for a
good copy editor. 

 The command parser is adequate; items usually have only one use and
puzzles have only one solution, which means that game responses to
commands other than those which solve the puzzle are the same. This
is a problem that afflicts many graphic adventures, since more time
is spent creating screen images than on ferreting responses to all
the weird input gamers think up: Parsers these days have nothing in
common with those of Infocom, or even Magnetic Scrolls. However, 
these comments are not meant to dismiss BERMUDA PROJECT, which is a
good-looking and easy-playing game worth your time and effort. 

 BERMUDA PROJECT is published by Microdeal and distributed by
MichTron. 

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253