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This was an early adventure that first made a name for itself on the BBC Micro and Commodore 64. There were grumbles that the Speccy would not be able to cope with all of its graphics, but in the end out of 180 locations, 150 were illustrated. Your task is to explore the forests, caverns and paths of the valley, collecting treasure. Along the way you will encounter a variety of other characters for you to interact with, some of whom are far from helpful. A strong fantasy adventure in the traditional mould, which also made use of the Currah Microspeech unit. Perhaps only the random behaviour of some of the other characters spoils it a little.

Twin Kindom Valley was a graphical text adventure game released for the ZX Spectrum by Bug Byte software in 1984.

Twin Kingdom Valley was a mythical place where two kings lived. In the game, both sets of royalty had a strong dislike for each other, and the details of this were given to you at the start of the game.

This ZX Spectrum adventure was notable for it's many options, allowing you to tailor the gameplay to suit your needs. You could have no graphics, always show graphics, only show graphics in a place you have not visited, long text descriptions of the location and so on. Impressive stuff.

The aim of the game was to make yourself rich by collecting as much treasure as possible and stashing it away in your rented hut. Simple enough to tempt even the novice adventurer.

There were touches in the game such as graphics of buildings getting larger with each move towards it (a bit like Lords of Midnight) and various characters wandering around the valley, going about their business. Some of these characters would attack you - so an early priority was to get yourself some weapons (broadswords and wooden clubs were pretty good) for offensive use.

ZX Spectrum Twin Kingdom Valley Start Location There were 150 locations in all, ranging from forests, caves, the obligatory maze, castles and even an inn. Visiting the inn could be fun, but repeated drinking of beer sapped your health (not as much as being hit with a sword though!)

Your health level could be restored by finding a safe spot and waiting - but don't wait around too long without some water to drink.

The usual commands were available, N,S,E,W, Look, Examing etc - the verb/noun parser was pretty good and didn't really hit you with any strange demands or wording to solve puzzles.

As usual, items collected would prove useful later in the game (keys to open doors, jugs to carry water etc etc) and the game had enough depth to keep you interested. With it's many locations, touches and humour and interesting characters, Twin Kindom Valley was a decent adventure game for the ZX Spectrum that was not overly taxing.

An interesting point was Twin Kingdom Valley supported the Currah Microspeech unit - it would read each location description to you as you moved around the game. Let me tell you it could get really annoying after a while!

All in all, Twin Kindom Valley was a decent adventure on the Spectrum and was perhaps suited to the more casual adventurer.

The new version of the game (2006) can be seen online at the official site: http://web.archive.org/web/20120204212705/http://www.twinkingdomvalley.com/

The original BBC Micro version had 176 locations, the C64 version had 190 locations, and a new mobile version of the game was written in August 2006, which had 200 locations. This mobile version was developed by Silicon Magic with the help of the original game's author, Trevor Hall.