 Description | The C16/Plus4 version misses only the color change (the original ineffective POKE has been left in the code unmodified), but otherwise is a faithful conversion of the C=64 original.
The original game is poorly written, buggy, and unfair to the point of being impossible to complete.
A partial list of bugs (and fixes):
- Asking for your condition (command 5) actually sips one unit of water. The player is not informed of this as the previous "sip" value is first printed, but can lead to immediate game over. A fix would be to add a GOTO in line 820. Oddly, this line is missing (810 is followed by 830).
- In the randomly occurring sandstorm (lines 1270-1320), two random numbers are generated. One should be the distance you move, the other should be the direction. There's a 50% chance of one of two things happening - however, in both cases you move back, making all the complicated IFs and GOTOs (and generating a random number) pointless.
- When you die, the game should one of 5 random messages. Due to a bug, only one of these is every printed. This could be fixed by changing the GOTO target in line 1430 from 1560 -> 1460.
It's interesting to note that there's a Swedish version of this game (which can be found here). Everything is very similar, but the code is significantly different. The previous two issues are NOT present in this version (the sandstorm can randomly move you ahead or forward, and the ending messages are properly printed).
The biggest problem is with the core gameplay. Each time you ride your camel, you randomly travel 0-9 KMs, while the pygmies travel 2-12 KMs. Since they are faster, they will always catch you. You can try to ride faster, but that exhausts the camel faster, and the pygmies travel even while you rest.
You travel 5 KMs on average. That's about 40 turns to reach the goal of 200 Kms. Assuming the pygmies weren't faster and you didn't have to rest, this means on each turn you have 50% chance of beating the pygmies. On the second turn it's 50% of 50%, etc. After 7 turns, your chances are less than 1%, and you would have to last 40 turns.
In conclusion, this game should probably be skipped and forgotten.
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