Review scoopings 4/5 · Mar 8, 2022
Great Look And Quite Good Gameplay Make This Stand Out Amid The Many Text Adventures
Look: 9/10 Yay another graphic Apple II text adventure. It'd been awhile. And I loooooove the graphics right from the title screen, it's animated and the alien's eyes and hand move. I'm such a sucker for Apple II colors and graphics in general. This title screen gave me Putt Putt Goes to the Moon vibes--getting me excited for the 90s …
Look: 9/10
Yay another graphic Apple II text adventure. It'd been awhile. And I loooooove the graphics right from the title screen, it's animated and the alien's eyes and hand move. I'm such a sucker for Apple II colors and graphics in general. This title screen gave me Putt Putt Goes to the Moon vibes--getting me excited for the 90s PC games ahhhh. 
And indeed, once I got through the somewhat boring spaceship screens, Saturn returned to the heavily Putt Putt Goes to the Moon vibes... and I like that the teleport window thing to and from the spaceship changes colors. Lots of that effect in this game, but it's warranted. 
Ok ok I will stop now but omg even the bridge reminded me of that Putt Putt game. Perhaps this was an influence. 
Oooo Venus was beautiful, and its own unique look 
The cave was, fittingly, a bit boring (look-wise), but the sprite for the key reminded me of the upcoming adventure games like Zelda etc. 
Sound: 7/10 Ironic for a graphic text adventure, this was one of the best parts :-p Loved the sound when the warp drive engages. Not a huge fan of the teleport window sound, tho. And well honestly, pretty much every sound other than that first one (warp drive) was a bit annoying :-p Still... heh. Unique for a graphic text adventure.
Play: 7/10 Sheesh a bit lengthy, especially after playing some Spectrum text adventures namely Mysterious Adventures. But oh wow, this got really unique. You wind up getting a mission what felt like mid or late game (to me heh) from Lord Deebo. Fun premise and fun execution indeed. But as it goes on and on, it starts to drag a bit. At least for these almost-mid-80s text adventures, I've been preferring the shorter ones, except that great one about Jason/many myths. Also, quite a lot of navigation in the latter half of the game.
Feel: 8/10 Beautiful, fun, cute, and well-done. Awfully nice aliens/gruds heh. And wow I looooove the moving fan animation in the cafeteria/mess, not to mention the very smiley cute grud/alien ha. Not to be redundant, but again, Putt Putt Goes to the Moon bears so many resemblances to this game's screens. I like that it's "easy", albeit long, but it felt almost cheaply easy like with me messing up the Big Bat part and getting lost--yet someone as inept at these games as me managed to figure it out on my own heh.. Maybe that's why I like it so much indeed :-p I suppose I really should say it's forgiving not necessarily easy.
Attachment: 8/10 Definitely one I will remember, and one of the more likely-to-replay text adventures. But like I've said before, text adventures really have to stand out to be a for-sure replay. These graphics come close, and the gameplay is overall good, but definitely not striking enough for frequent replays.
Completion: 100% Playtime: ~ 1 hour