"Fun Adventure clone for the Apple, but not mind-blowing"

I guess Copts and Robbers is different enough from Atari's Adventure to be a game in its own right, but the programmers certainly pushed it. It's a game with three levels where you are a white dot who must find four stars, place them in a treasure chamber(which you must also find!) and then take a fleur-de-lis there. On the way you must open the coffins that contain them(some coffins have mummies!) and avoid chasing mummies and ghosts that may take items from you. You also have to work your way through a pretty complex maze. The game increases in size from 16 to 25 screens as the level increases, and the screens become more detailed as well. If a mummy touches you for an extended period, you are killed and must restart(you actually can restart any time, which is nice if you're lost) so there is no way to lose(''Unless you're a QUITTER! YAAH!!'') Each level has the same amount of items(some of which can repel mummies,) but it's tougher to hang on to your items at higher levels.

You don't use many keys. A, Z and the arrows propel your dot; two in a row make him run, and hitting any other key makes him stop while he's running. The key R puts you back at the start square but does not restore the items. When a mummy is chasing you it's a bit hard to ''make a cut'' as you need to do on the later levels where the walls zigzag a bit.

Here's a basic rundown of the levels. The first level has no ghosts and few mummies, who are not fast. The stars are very close to you, as is the key, and a little legwork should win you the game without much trouble. The rooms aren't connected in any particularly tricky way, and outside of the chamber you don't need much fancy stepping to get from one place to the next. The second level features ghosts, a maze of similar rooms(going west and east may not bring you back where you started) with better-defined areas on each side, and a lot more walls off at different directions in each individual room. The third level, while it doesn't have the second level's detail, has all the baddies as well as a cute notion where many of the rooms are divided vertically and horizontally in half with a thin wall, making it hard from your perspective to see a cohesive map or plan a trip. Without mapping this, you won't make much progress, and if you can remember it, get off your duff and use your mind for better things.

Graphics and sound are simple, like Adventure. A bumping sound alerts you that a mummy is about to kill you, and you get ticking sounds when you drop or take or lose an item. Each room is one of four colors--orange, green, blue and purple--and although the items can be distinguished they're not terribly detailed. Interestingly the star changes colors(blue to orange and back) when moved horizontally. It's funny how the mummies seem to be wearing stripes. Overall, the developers did not focus on graphics, though. The one technical flaw with the graphics is that there are rooms that border on one edge that do not have equal wall lengths. The result is that you enter a room and are pushed back. If you hold an arrow key down you'll flash between two rooms. So the overall room maps could have been checked better.

Copts and Robbers is an enjoyable parallel game to Adventure, with probably a little added difficulty and more mapping skill required, but there are too many instances where you'll be left waiting around because a ghost deposited your item in a wall and finding the magnet is a hopeless proposition, or you'll be cursing the fact you couldn't move keys quick enough to avoid a ghost or mummy. In addition, the game came out three years after Adventure and has little extra to show for the greater memory it requires, so we are left to wonder how ambitious the developers really were. Still, it's a reasonably creative effort that will leave you pleased if you can win the harder levels. Although the path to the treasure chamber can get tedious on the lower level, and that the coffins and treasures are always in the same places will sap some excitement from the game, those who can perservere will like this. Even if they find the title pun as bad as ''Rush 'n Attack.''

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/14/01, Updated 01/14/01