THE FAMOUS FIVE <1> Five on a Treasure Island Enigma Variations Now, for the first time on a Home Computer, Enid Blyton's greatest creation "The Famous Five" star in their own computer game. Faithfully recreating the world of Julian, Anne, Dick, George and Timmy the dog you can control any of the children as they solve the mystery of the "Treasure Island". Fully endorsed by the Blyton Estate, this is a fun to play interactive graphic adventure that closely follows the plot and unique atmosphere of the world famous books. You can control the actions of any of the gang (except the dog - he is more interested in the nearest tree!) and can change from one of the gang to the other or watch as a character goes off to "do their own thing". Although based on the children's books this game has been carefully designed to be challenging to all age groups and contains almost all of the locations in the book (many with pictures) and has loads of problems to solve. The command parser has been developed over 3 years and can understand complex sentences and commands. THE GANG ARE READY AND WAITING FOR YOU TO JOIN THEM IN THEIR GREATEST ADVENTURE YET! (c) 1991 Darrell Waters (c) 1991 Enigma Variations Ltd LOADING INSTRUCTIONS C64: Cassette: Press Shift and RUN/STOP. Press Play on tape. The game will load and run. Disk: Type LOAD "*",8,1 The game will load and run. Spectrum 48K: Type LOAD "" and press ENTER. The game will load and run. 128K: Press ENTER at the loader prompt. The game will load and run. Amstrad CPC: Tape: Press CTRL and the small ENTER key. Press play on tape. The game will load and run. Disk: Type RUN "DISK" and press Return. The game will load and run. FAMOUS FIVE was written using the "Worldscape" technique. Worldscape allows for the existence of many characters in the game who are fully independent and animated. The flexibility of the system ensures that any character (personality permitting) is capable of doing anything that you can! The plot and characters in FAMOUS FIVE are closely based on Enid Blyton's book "Five on a Treasure Island". No knowledge of the book is assumed at any point, enabling people who have never read any of the Famous Five books to get to grips with the game without difficulty. However, reading the book will help in the playing of the game. Beware, many new problems have been added and many have been changed altogether. The Famous Five are Julian, Dick, Anne, their cousin George and George's dog Timmy. At the start of the game, George's mother, Aunt Fanny, has invited them to stay with her in Kirrin. You star the game playing Julian, but you may swap to any of the children at will. PLAYING THE GAME The screen is divided into windows. The top displays any graphics, location descriptions and actions performed by any characters present. If the screen fills with text the message "more" will appear and you should press a key to continue. ENTERING COMMANDS The lower window is for text input. The FAMOUS FIVE can understand most of your commands in everyday English! As a general rule, sentences should contain a verb and a noun; eg. PICK UP THE BOX or just TAKE BOX. When an instruction does not concern an object, just the verb can be used; eg. WAIT. English grammar applies and usually the order of the sentence is not important; eg. GIVE DICK THE SANDWICHES or GIVE THE SANDWICHES TO DICK have the same effect. Prepositions such as ON, OFF, INTO, OUT, etc. can alter the meaning of some verbs; eg. TURN ON THE WIRELESS SET. You may use the word "AND" in the same way as you would in English. You can perform more than one action at a time such as TAKE THE BOX AND THE MONEY or DROP THE MONEY AND GO NORTH. * "THEN" may be used in a similar way. * Multiple commands may also be entered by placing a comma between your instructions such as - EAT SANDWICHES, GO NORTH, CLOSE DOOR. It is very important that there is a space after each comma. The words "ALL" and "EVERYTHING" may be used along with most verbs, to perform an action upon all objects present or carried by you; eg. DROP EVERYTHING, OPEN ALL. Directions can be abbreviated to just their first letter; eg. N for North, NW for north-west. You may abbreviate all words to their first four letters; eg. TELL UNCLE QUENTIN TO EXAMINE THE WINDOWS could be typed as TELL UNCL QUEN TO EXAM THE WIND. Input is limited to 62 characters or 16 words. All words after this are ignored. (32 characters and 8 words on Spectrum.) DELETE removes your last keypress. Function key F1 (EDIT on Spectrum) can be used to pull back your last input and allow you to alter it. Where present function keys are predefined to useful words. Try them and see. Whilst playing the adventure it will become necessary to pick up objects and carry them with you. Often these will be food, drink, or they may help you to overcome some problem which you come across later on. Sometimes, they may have no use to you whatsoever! You will find some objects just lying around but others will be hidden or kept inside cupboards, etc. These will have to be opened first. To pick up and carry an item with you simply TAKE it; eg. TAKE THE POCKET MONEY. To check on what objects you are currently carrying around with you, type INVENTORY or simply I. To get rid of an object again, you merely DROP it; eg. DROP THE MONEY. You may also give objects directly to other people; eg. GIVE THE MONEY TO ANNE. OTHER PEOPLE During your travels you will meet many other characters, most of whom are independent. Conversing and interacting with them will be essential to completing the adventure. Often, other people may be able to do some- thing you cannot, or might have valuable knowledge about something. Asking someone to break something might be useful if they are stronger than you, or asking someone to examine something might prompt them to reveal some- thing they know or have noticed about the object. You can ask people to perform actions useful to you by using one of the following formats: ASK DICK TO TAKE THE ROPE or SAY TO DICK TAKE THE ROPE or TELL DICK TO TAKE THE ROPE. These can be abbreviated to just the person's name if you wish; eg. DICK TAKE THE ROPE. You can ask people direct questions by using the word "ABOUT"; eg. ASK AUNT FANNY ABOUT GEORGE or AUNT FANNY TELL ME ABOUT GEORGE. * If you just wished to be friendly, you could try - TALK TO GEORGE or SAY TO GEORGE HELLO. Don't expect everyone to fall over themselves to help you. In some cases you might need to use some kind of persuasion, or do some kind of favour for them first. Whether someone cooperates with you will depend upon a number of factors, such as how they are feeling, what they are currently doing, how they feel towards you, etc. Some locations you visit will have no natural light and you will not be able to see anything unless you have with you an object which gives off light such as a lantern. You may travel in total darkness if you wish but beware, it is very easy to become lost and disorientated! CHANGING CHARACTERS You are able to become any of the human members of the Famous Five and to continue playing by taking over their role. This is done by using the "BECOME" command; eg. BECOME JULIAN. This feature allows characters to split up and lets you switch between them. Indeed, some problems you encounter can only be overcome by splitting up in this way. To split up ask a person to move to another [location]; eg. TELL ANNE TO GO SOUTH. Type WHO AM I or simply WHO to remind yourself which character you are playing. Some tasks are better tackled by a particular person. The following may help: Julian - Is the oldest and the most intelligent. He is also quite strong. Dick - Is the greediest and has the thinnest build. He is also quite strong, but perhaps not as strong as Julian. Anne - Is the youngest. She is also the weakest and the most easily scared. Anne tends to look up to Julian. George - Is the bravest and has a quick temper. She likes to be treated as if she were a boy and is the best swimmer. George can be difficult at times! FAMOUS FIVE is ideal to play with your friends as a multi-player adventure, with each person controlling a character and taking over every few turns or so. SPECIAL ADVENTURE COMMANDS VERBS or V - Gives a list of accepted verbs and special commands. LOOK or L - Fully describes your current location. Any people or objects present will be shown. INVENTORY or I - Lists any objects which you are currently carrying. SAVE - Saves your progress so far. Please do not use the original tape or disk. RAMSAVE - Saves your progress so far to RAM (computer memory). BEWARE, this will be lost when the computer is switched off! Feature is not available on all versions. LOAD - Re-loads a saved game from tape. RAMLOAD - Re-loads a save game from RAM (where available). SCORE or SC - Gives your score so far as a percentage. PAUSE or P - Pauses the game until a key is pressed. This is useful because normally, if nothing is typed after a short while, the program will assume that you wish to "WAIT". PIX/NO PIX - Turns graphics on/off. QUIT - Quits the game and allows you to re-start from scratch! HINTS AND TIPS (1) - Have a pen and paper handy, as some messages will only appear once! (2) - Make good use of the EXAMINE verb to get more information about objects and people. (3) - Remember, other people can carry things too. (4) - Try to change characters regularly. Often, certain characters will notice or do something in certain situations which would otherwise be missed. (5) - Don't rush through the game. Not only will you miss much but your enjoyment of the game will also be very much reduced. Good luck and try not to get on Uncle Quentin's nerves! Based on the books by Enid Blyton. Designed by Colin Jordan. C64 version by Andrew Brown. Graphics by Sam Mohabull. Program (c) 1991 Enigma Variations Ltd. Characters and plot (c) 1991 Darrel Waters Ltd. * Not on Spectrum version.