The Quill system is a complicated one and can make for some very complex stories with well described and detailed locations. Barsak wasn’t one of those. The location descriptions were sacrificed to make the game seem large with around 120 locations, but with only so much memory to accommodate the adventure, descriptions were kept to a minimum. It is described elsewhere as “more a series of death-traps to overcome by utilising the right object at the right time than a series of puzzles to be solved”.

It’s a game that suffers too much from sheer frustration, which many of these games from the early days of text adventures do. Puzzles that expect something that the user couldn’t possibly know about, dying from lack of food or water after a strict number of moves, making exploration challenging if not near impossible. It isn’t that Barsak isn’t solvable, but it is designed to be started again and again after dying many times and learning from those deaths. The best games, I feel, did not do this, with the emphasis in later 80s adventures being on fun rather than difficulty. However, like all Quill games, there is a SAVE function and anybody that has read one of my earlier adventure game reviews will know that SAVE OFTEN is a mantra I swear by. Barsak is no exception.

There isn’t much information on the (presumably) Napolitano siblings, and I can not find any information about a follow up game or indeed any other game written by them after Barsak.

The aim of the game is to collect all nine treasures and be carrying, or wearing them, at the end to complete the adventure. You start off in a road in a forest and you really need your imagination to paint the scene. The locations are barely more than a couple of sentences, but exits are shown which makes map drawing much easier. You will need this map, because a few wrong turns or too many tries will result in, yep, your death. The issue here is you’re not entirely sure without multiple tries how far wrong you’ve gone or even if the situation is recoverable, so utilising the SAVE function is perhaps of little use early on, and trial and error may be the better strategy. It isn’t very long before the messages start to appear that you are hungry and dwarves, bless them, obviously have a very low tolerance for hunger.

Food can be found relatively early on, although even then you can’t waste turns by LOOKING or trying to EXAMINE anything, but water is more difficult to find. I played through quite quickly the first time and didn’t read all room descriptions. That’s not surprising as most descriptions are so boring you kind of gloss over them, so I missed the clue for the first puzzle which is vital to get some water to prevent you from dying of thirst.

So, by trial and error and diligent map making, as well as tuning into the clues in one particular room, we end up fed and watered and no longer in mortal danger. We can now concentrate on finding the treasures!

Just because hunger and thirst are no longer the grim reapers following us around the map, it doesn’t mean we can’t die arbitrarily and often. Just walking into a room can do this, as can using the wrong word to utilise one of the objects you’re carrying. I ended up with about 18 save files over the course of the game and it was just becoming so tedious.

From here we’re basically exploring and collecting items. It’s easy to forget what you are carrying at times so don’t forget to check the inventory now and then which will likely jog the memory and give you some clues, but also there is the usual annoying carrying limit (oh thank you D&D for magic pockets!) so you’ll need to be careful with picking up and dropping stuff. This part of the game is map heavy and it will be vital to keep a track and make sure you’re not straying too far. Also, you’ll need to drop some items to allow you to pick others up, going back to retrieve them again when needed. Mark these on your map! I’d suggest once you pick an item up that you save the game. Saving often really helps, and naming the save files correctly is also very important so you don’t overwrite previous ones!

So, lots of wandering around and picking up items and yes, the frustration continues. I’m all for working out puzzles and trial and error of course, but (slight spoiler) who would think to drop a teddy bear near a zombie would prevent death and provide a piece of treasure? It’s guess trying everything until you find the right move is part of the reward.

Another annoyance. There are various situations where you need to kill an an enemy, at least ones that aren’t pacified by teddy bears that is, and to do so you just have to guess what word and what item to use. You can try HIT, USE, STAB, SMASH, THROW, WAVE with the axe, foil and other times and it’s literally just pot luck as to what works and what doesn’t. Again (need I say it) saving is your friend!

Continuing like this, we eventually get to a scroll with some writing on it. Trails are better than snares. As far as I can tell this is useless and slightly odd information. It means nothing and relates to nothing. I can only think it is a leftover item from a puzzle that didn’t make it in to the game. Back and forth, back and forth. Remember you should wear as many items as you can, especially the treasures, as you find them.

Eventually, after one of those annoying labyrinth sections where you just have to guess the exists and each location description is the same, you’ll get to an ante-room where, if you have all the treasures either on or about your person, a gateway appears. On entering this gateway you see a book which you need to sign and here’s another oddity and random move, you can’t sign the book with the lantern lit. I had to look that up as I don’t think I’d have ever thought of doing that.

If you think this review reads negatively about Barsak, well that’s because it annoyed me which I think is the exact opposite of what a game should do. It’s hard to strike a balance between playability and difficulty I know, but Barsak does not achieve this at all. Having said that, I admire the size of the game and number of locations. Having programmed games myself in The Quill I know how hard it can be, so hats off to the Napolitanos for creating this adventure. And it isn’t dreadful, really. It would have given younger me a lot of play time for the money, a lot of map making and a lot of lateral thinking which back then is what I loved more than anything else. A disk drive would have made it much more playable with quicker load times for the saves, and of course all modern C64 equivalents (Ultimate C64, VICE etc.) have disk drive capabilities built in.

I think on balance I would recommend playing this game, but be prepared for a long quest, a large notebook and meticulous organisation of your save files. If you are armed with all that information and still want to play Barsak, I think you’ll enjoy it.

_{A difficult and frustrating game at times, but ultimately rewarding with a long playtime and satisfying ending.}

The post The Adventures of Barsak the Dwarf appeared first on SoundHog.

Followers of Revival Records over on maston or, over time, various other social media sites will have seen me mention this obscure oddity before.

It was found in a box of 7-inch singles from an old record shop close down, in the days when they were closing down and not opening up like today! It looks, to me, handmade or at least home produced, and is possibly a promo single for something? It could just be a vanity project or a bunch of kids having a laugh and self-recording for fun.

The ‘label’ is Idiot Records but not sure that means anything concrete.

I have/had it pinned to my profile for a while now in the hope somebody will eventually come across it and have an aha! moment. Last night, somebody requested the audio to see if it rang any bells, and it reminded me that I did record it and clean it up a bit many years ago – luckily I found it easily this morning as I’d also imported it into iTunes back then.

So here it is in all its glory. It’s been years now so I’m not expecting anybody to suddenly recognise it, but if anybody does know, or remembers a time when they were young, foolish and in a daft band called The LDV’s, then please do let me know!

The post The LDVs – Video It! appeared first on SoundHog.

If you search for Adventure International today you’ll find various outdoor pursuit companies and holiday operators. The one we are interested in was founded in 1979 by non other than Scott and Alexis Adams, who basically pioneered adventure games on home computers. In fact Adventureland was the very first commercially available text adventure! They were hugely successful until 1986, and even had a partnership with Marvel releasing three Questprobe games based on the Marvel characters The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, The Human Torch and the Thing. I own physical copies of Spider-Man and The Hulk, and no doubt we’ll get around to all three of those games eventually.

At their peak the company employed over 50 staff, operating out of Longwood, Florida, but the video game crash which started in 1983 ultimately claimed Adventure International and they went bankrupt in 1986. In 1980 the source code for the text version of the game was published in Soft Side magazine, something which sounds crazy today. It obviously didn’t do the company any harm though, and they went on to publish 30 games and over 300 more from other independent programmers.

The Game

The purpose of our adventure is to locate treasures and return them to their proper place. After an intro screen explaining what an adventure game is and how to play them (you should ALL know that by now!) the game begins. Having said that, it took me way longer than it should have to realise you had to hit return to see the location description, and return again to see the graphics. Without knowing that it would be a struggle! I found that mechanism a little clunky and going EAST from the text description screen, for example, just gave you O.K. and it isn’t until you hit return again that the screen is drawn and the description is available (after hitting return again). Clunky.

Examining things on screen or in the description can offer up further graphics.

Like all adventures from these days, you’ll need to map as you go. You’ll also need to get comfortable with being frustrated – that is part of the fun after all! Actions are not always obvious but, as a hint, if you see something with a magical word on it is probably worth carrying that item and saying that word in various situations.

Limitations of the vocabulary and interpreter soon become obvious. UP is not recognised, for example, but U is. It is also strictly two word commands – GO IN HOLE or GO TO STUMP are not recognised. GO HOLE, GO STUMP etc. are. It is fairly quick to get used to but can be a bit annoying. Actually, I realise that isn’t quite true – some one word commands are accepted such as SWIM, E,N,W,S,U,D and others.

Anyway, that last paragraph was a bit of a clue and if you do things in the right order fairly early on in the adventure you’ll find the location where you are supposed to dump your treasures and check your SCORE.

This adventure, whilst still very early on in the genre, is head and shoulders above some of the ones we have played thus far. It is a proper adventure game, and it was the reason I fell in love with text adventures. Games would get more complex, bigger, more in depth, they would have better graphics, but as far as game play goes and problem solving, Adventureland shows why Scott Adams is regarded as one of the best in the business.

One thing I quite like about Adventureland is that when you die you are sent to Limbo – only a specific direction can get you out of limbo and you get to live again. The other thing to mention is that you’ll come across chiggers – nasty little things that bite you. If that happens you need to take something that heals you – a sign early on in the game, by the dragon, hints to what that something is. If you don’t heal, your bites get infected and you eventually die, and getting from limbo to where you were can be very frustrating. The key here, and I say this on literally all games that allow it, is to save your game often. Nothing is as annoying as having to retrace all your steps and hard work because you forgot to save your game.

This game, it has to be said, is hard. It takes some lateral thinking and if you play it properly it will take you some time away to ponder and ruminate on solutions. I remember spending a lot of time in school thinking about what I should have tried or how I could solve a particular problem, and rushing up to the bedroom when I got home to put my theories to the test. And there we have the brilliance of a good adventure game in a nutshell. They gave me so much more than a shoot-em-up or platformer ever could.

Couple of other gotchas – the lamp will not last forever, you will need to be economical with it, and don’t drop your treasures off as soon as you find them, they may be useful elsewhere first.

You will die – it’s pretty impossible not to – and this is where your save games come in. You only get 10 save slots (0-9) so use them wisely and overwrite slots as required.

The sense of achievement in this game is huge – solving the problems does fill you with a sense of pride and it is clever writing, not treating the player as an idiot but also giving enough subtle hints along the way to help you out. I’m not sure I’d recommend this one unless you’ve played a couple of easier adventures first, although saying that this is the first commercial game so logically you should start here.

One thing Adventureland will definitely give you is a good grounding for the games to come.

Before I end the review, a special mention to Brian Howarth who ported this game to the Commodore 64. He worked with Scott Adams a lot and ported more than 17 games across to the commodore and other home computers. He also wrote his own original games such as The Golden Baton and The Time Machine and had a film deal for The Gremlins and TV deals for Robin of Sherwood and Supergran! We’ll be covering some if not all of Brian’s games in this series.

Rating

One of the best. Only not 5 stars due to slight limitations with vocabulary and too many deaths! There are better to come, but at the time this was the definitive adventure game.

Music & Context

I have tried to find out the month of release for this game but failed, so 1982 will have to do.

Released fairly early in 1982 was English Settlement by XTC. This has become one of my favourite albums ever but I was limited fund wise as a kid in 1982, so only had the single, Senses Working Overtime. I played this a lot back then (still do) and I am certain this would have been playing in my room as I was tackling Adventureland.

Also music related, in the news in 1982 The Who began their ‘Farewell Tour’.

I had already by then formed my love of The Who largely from playing my brother’s collection, but also because they were among the first albums I did own as a kid. I remember thinking of them as somewhat past their best by the time their farewell tour was announced so I wasn’t surprised. The Who for me were all about the late 1960s and 1970s, and so I accepted the fact that they were no longer to be around. Silly me

The post Adventureland 1982 appeared first on SoundHog.

I have been messing around with apple shortcuts lately and now have three I’m really quite pleased with – I am sharing them here with the caveat that they may not do what you need or want them to do! Please do use them as a base for your own though, or as inspiration for other stuff. The more I think about and get to know how shortcuts work the more things I think of adding in or creating. For example I haven’t even started looking at APIs yet, and if I can get the Discogs API working with it then that opens up many possibilities.

For now though, here are the three I am regularly using.

Create Songlink URL & Copy To Clipboard

This I find really useful for hashtag games on mastodon, or for simply sharing a track with family friends via Signal etc.

The basic flow is:

• Get details of now playing track in Apple Music
• Build URL based on songlink syntax and in markdown format
• Copy URL to clipboard

Then you can paste that URL anywhere you like – I use it for music hashtag games and it saves a lot of typing!

Grab it here

Post Now Playing Track to Mastodon & Buffer

This takes the songlink URL further and uses it to post details about the currently played track in Apple Music.

The basic flow is:

• Get details of now playing track in Apple Music.
• Build URL based on songlink syntax
• Uses a few regular expressions to clean up artist and track names for hashtags
• Checks if the file is local or cloud and sets that to a MusicLocation variable
• Prompt for extra comments (or leave blank)
• Build the post body
• Post to mastodon via Mona

Grab it here

Music Recognition to Mastodon & Buffer

This does a similar job but takes the track details from Shazam.

The basic flow is:

• Open Shazam and recognise music (error if no song found)
• Save track to playlist of your choice
• Get current location
• Read in tracks in Apple Music playlist and get latest item
• Get track details
• Save track artwork to local folder
• Create basic Alt Text for image (working to improve this)
• Use regular expressions to tidy artist name for hashtag
• Prompt for music recognition source – user can put things like a TV programme or venue/restaurant etc.
• Create image attachment from local folder (based on artwork above)
• Build post
• Post to mastodon

Grab it here

I’ll build some more out over the coming weeks and months and post them here if I think they will be of interest.

Let me know if you use them and if you find them useful!

The post No Shortcuts In Life appeared first on SoundHog.

I have been thinking about a cyberdeck for a while now, looking to create something out of a raspberry Pi or other single board computer, something to resemble the Free Write or the old Alpha Smart devices. I just wanted to have something ultra portable with little distraction and no purpose other than writing. Then I came across the concept of a writerdeck, or Write Deck – a cyberdeck specifically for the purpose of writing.

Reading other blogs and searching for writerdeck projects it became clear that a lot of what I wanted to do could (and perhaps should) be achieved with an old laptop or tablet and keyboard. Not so much fun maybe, but after all I wanted to end up with something productive, not overly complicated and a solution that just works.

So I took on board the advice, and repurposed an old iPad that I hardly ever used.

I even had an old folio case in a drawer with a keyboard and stand, again going unused. So once all charged up and, for the keyboard at least, a change of battery, I had something with potential. I looked for the best minimal, distraction free writing apps and ended up simply using Apple Notes in full screen mode. Lots of advantages to that of course with iCloud synch meaning I can continue back at home on the MacBook. I removed almost every other app apart from WordPress so I can share directly from Notes to a new draft on either of my sites, but even that isn’t vital as, like I said, I can always resume from my laptop.

So I have got myself exactly what I wanted – something very portable, lightweight, distraction free and most importantly something that does the job I wanted it to do perfectly. Oh, and it didn’t cost me a penny! (I mean, a ‘new’ penny. Obviously I paid for this stuff at the time.)

You can pick up an old iPad Air for around £50 on eBay, and folio cases are ridiculously cheap now for early iPads. I assume something similar can be achieved with an Android tablet but for me at least, immersed in the apple eco system as I am, the iPad made sense.

Anyway, I have used it now a few times ‘out in the field’ and it is a joy to write on, I just wish I had thought of it sooner!

The post writerdeck appeared first on SoundHog.

My physical media of choice happens to be vinyl LPs. I have waxed lyrical (no pun intended) on why this is before, here and on mastodon, so I won’t go into the reasons for choosing this format. Suffice to say vinyl is very important to me for many reasons.

So here are my ten albums.

The Who – Quadrophenia

This is the album I have had and held the longest. My brother took me into Our Price records in Croydon for my birthday (I was 14) and told me to choose a record. I went straight to this, and I still have that copy on my shelves. I have had it for 40 years and have never, ever grown bored of it. You’ll have to prise this album from my cold dead hands when I’m gone.

The Who – Tommy

I flip flop between Quadrophenia and Tommy when asked what the best album of all time is. It all depends on when I listened to each one last, or how I’m feeling, or the weather or something. I don’t know, but they are both truly excellent and groundbreaking in their own ways. Tommy is a masterclass of telling a story through music, an art form that few have ever matched.

The Jam – All Mod Cons

For me this is the moment The Jam came of age. The first two albums are excellent and an undeniable tour de force from a band and songwriter so young, but All Mod Cons remains my favourite. Weller’s genius at song crafting is obvious throughout. The iconic imagery on the cover and inserts shaped how me and my mates dressed for quite some time!

Billy Bragg – Brewing Up With Billy Bragg

I think I have seen Billy Bragg live the most of any artist. From his early days carrying around his amp and speakers in his rucksack, I followed him on Red Wedge tours with The Style Council, The Communards etc. and, latterly, on solo gigs. His music was an absolute eye opener and a breath of fresh air. It’s not an exaggeration to say Billy shaped my political views, as well as sang the most perfect and painful love songs. He understood a generation perfectly.

Secret Affair – Business As Usual

I realise as I type this that this list is fuelled by nostalgia. Secret Affair were part of my youth in a big way. I was quite young when the whole mod revival thing kicked off, but just old enough to be enthralled by it all. I went all in. There are many, many exceptional albums from that era and that movement, but this is the one that means the most to me.

Jethro Tull – Thick As A Brick

I came to Tull relatively late. I had heard them before but for some reason had always dismissed them as slightly odd or a bit stuffy. I was SO wrong. When I got them, I really got them, and I became obsessed for a while. Thick As A Brick (another concept album – a definite theme developing) is by some way my favourite of theirs.

The Smiths – The Queen is Dead

A remarkable album from a seminal band. Yes, Morrissey is a shitty person now. I don’t know how or why that happened but I still believe he wasn’t a shitty person back then. Either way, I choose to ignore that and continue to love this album, and I make no apologies for that decision.

XTC – Skylarking

I could have chosen any XTC album, especially English Settlement, but Skylarking is the one I have the most nostalgia for and memories of. I have mentioned a few times that one of my best friends’ dad managed XTC so I had early access to this album, and others – we absolutely played it to death all summer. A great, great album.

Green Day – Dookie

This album coincided with me falling in love. My now wife and I would listen to it back to back in the car and it holds a special place in my heart because of this. It’s a great album, but it wouldn’t be on this list without those memories. As it is, I couldn’t be without it. I didn’t get this on vinyl until relatively recently.

The Beatles – Abbey Road

Over time, Abbey Road has become my favourite Beatles album. It’s a masterpiece. The medley on side 2 is some of the best music I have heard. In any case, I couldn’t in all consciousness leave The Beatles out and this album pips the other ones to the post, which is no mean feat.

So that’s it. An exercise in futility, maybe, these lists always are, but those are the ten albums I’d currently save from a burning house. They have been with me through thick and thin, are old friends, and I hope remain friends for many years to come!

The post Ten Albums To Take To The Grave appeared first on SoundHog.

Your donation, big or small, makes a difference. £33 could fund a new dementia specialist Admiral Nurse to spend an hour helping a family in the community, offering practical solutions and emotional support to cope with their loved one’s distressed behaviour.

You can support me by donating here.

This post will be updated throughout May with progress, and pinned to the top of my blog for the duration.

Friday, 1st May.

27.6 miles to go!

Saturday 2nd May

26 Miles to go

Sunday 3rd May

23.2 miles to go

Monday 4th May

21.8 miles to go!

Wednesday 6th May

20.7 miles to go!

Thursday 7th May

19.2 miles to go.

Saturday 9th May

16 miles to go.

Wednesday May 13th

14.3 miles to go.

Tuesday 19th May

11 miles to go

Tuesday 26th May

5.5 miles to go!

28th and 30th May

31 miles total – goal achieved!

The post Dementia UK – 31 Miles Walk in May 2026 appeared first on SoundHog.

Although originally a type in, this game was published by The Guild, a homegrown software label set up by Tony Collins, himself an adventure game author in 1991, who ran the label until the autumn of 1993. As well as self published games, and those from other authors, The Guild built up a large public domain collection, and this game was one of those. We’ll likely come across quite a few of The Guild’s titles during our adventures.

Originating as a type-in this game is obviously written in BASIC and is a pretty small, text only adventure.

So, our buccaneering reputation preceding us, we have been chosen to recover some gold for some prince or other from a dangerous, fierce dragon. The prince needs this gold to fight an evil king, apparently.

We start, as we so often do, at the entrance to a cave.

There is nowhere really to go except into the cave, so we do that. We find ourselves in a passage leading south. Being small, we can’t expect too much from the parser, and although a door is mentioned there is nothing that can be done with it. Even LOOK DOOR tells us nothing. I guess we ignore that for now then.

There is a boat at the bottom of this passage which we can miraculously pick up and carry, but without giving too much away, it is of little use yet.

This is very standard adventuring stuff – with the help of pencil and notepad to map out moves we soon find our way around to the door we saw at the entrance to the cave, picking up the obvious things we come across along the way. The parser, as mentioned above, is very limited – the usual commands don’t work and the game uses LOOK instead of EXAMINE which always jars me, but it is just about usable. It can be frustrating though, especially as it recognises TOSS but not THROW, for example.

So, back to find the dragon (if you found the dragon too soon you’ll realise now the power of the sword!) and the gold. A fairly simple puzzle presents itself to escape back down to the boat storage area and to a more useful boat, before we can get to the prince and give him the gold.

No. No, I don’t want another go.

A quick adventure (15 mins max?) and with the aid of a mapping tool or good old pencil and paper it is extremely easy to solve, the poor parser aside. I would have been happy enough with this as a type-in but if I’d spent any money on this it would be very disappointing. Having said that, I have played worse games

Next time we’ll be playing Adventureland from 1980, released by Adventure International (Thunder Mountain in the USA). Actually, we’ll play the 1984 graphic version of the game.

Until then, try not to get hoisted on your own, or anybody else’s, petard.

The post Adventure Without A Name appeared first on SoundHog.

Ray Hoffmeister coded this game (an appropriately beery retro name!) in CBM BASIC and it’s the only one attributed to him on Gamebase 64, but it is recorded as being published by Binary Zone PD who have been around since 1990. Binary Zone distributed public domain games on disk and cassette and are still around today.

On loading up the tape image we’re presented with the above screen before being told we have a limited supply of air and a back pack that will only carry 3 items. Putting the familiar sinking feeling one gets with these PD games to one side, let’s see what the planet Zeeble has in store for us…

This is one of those adventures that has minimum location descriptions, but reveals a lot more when you type ‘look’, so the key here is to move, map and look around. It’s a small adventure, and limited in terms of vocabulary and has a weak parser. It also isn’t particularly logical and gets stuck in some place. Having said that I quite enjoyed it.

If you look around and there is an object in your location, you’ll generally need to pick it up for use later on. Some clever swapping of items is required to keep within the pack limit of 3. You should eventually end up at a cave of ice and, ahhhh, there are Zeebs here! If you got here before finding the things you need (namely stones and a pistol) then run away and find them.

Once the Zeebs scramble and the ice door of the cave is melted, you move inside. Some annoying logic follows with dropping stuff and picking stuff up, but you should eventually end up in the cave, near a metal chest carrying a raft and a parachute.

Getting the chest open is a bit annoying. If you are using VICE or the C64 Ultimate save a snapshot as you can easily blow the thing up and you’ll need to start again. The key is to keep the chest ticking softly. If it ticks loudly then that press is wrong. Start with one colour, then trial and error until you get all three ‘softly’ options and the chest clicks open.

Once that’s done we want to go back to the high mountain where we first used the rope (you’ll need it again here) and drop the raft. Then a jump and a climb down with the rope lands us in an area where there is a radio waiting to be fixed with the wire. Do that, turn the radio on, and Bob’s your Zeeble.

And that is our reward, complete with spelling mistake.

This small adventure played ok, a little inconsistent and slow in terms of code and the parser really struggled at times depending on location, but it worked, it was fairly logical in that the player knows what they need to do. It reminded me a lot of PD games I used to be able to afford and although I can’t remember ever playing this one, I think it would have certainly provided enough entertainment in a late peanut butter sandwich and coke fuelled afternoon.

Back in sequence next time with Adventure Without A Name from The Guild Adventure Software.

The post Adventure on the Planet of Zeeble appeared first on SoundHog.

Right, where was I? Oh yes, just finished up escaping from Cleopatra’s Pyramid, had a little break (19 months), got myself a brand new Commodore 64 Ultimate, had a nice cup of tea and thought it was about time to get back in the saddle.

As it happens we’re on to one of the proper big titles now. 1982’s Adventure Quest from Level 9. Level 9 games were my hearts desire in 1982/84. I used to look longingly at adverts in magazines, but they were either only available on disk, out of my price range, or very often both. Eventually cheaper cassette versions did start appearing in the UK (not all though, if I am remembering correctly) and I certainly did manage to get hold of a couple, but they were still very expensive for my pocket money budget. When I first got back into the C64 around 15 years or so ago, Level 9 adventures were the first titles I collected. It was simply impossible for me to envisage back then how readily available all the commodore software would be today and how easy it is to use thanks to kit like the Ultimate 1541 and the new 64 Ultimate.

Adventure Quest was not Level 9’s first game but it was the first alphabetically, and as I am sticking to that ridiculous notion, it comes next in the list. It is part 2 of a trilogy of games, initially released separately, which featured themes and names inspired by (stolen from) the books of J. R. R. Tolkien and so became known as the Middle-Earth Trilogy before being expanded and rereleased together in 1986 as a compilation. At that point the references to Middle Earth were removed and the trilogy was retitled Jewels of Darkness.

There are many in depth reviews out there of Adventure Quest, so this won’t necessarily be another one, but I will share my thoughts on playing through and try to give a feel for the game.

The first thing to mention is this is a large game for an 8 bit platform, something Level 9 were famous for, and a sophisticated adventure given it all fitted on one disk. As the included manual explains, this is achieved with the use of A Code.

Adventure Quest is not written in ASSEMBLER or BASIC, either of these would have made it too big – and BASIC would also have been too slow. Instead it is written in a super-compact language known as ‘A-CODE’, which is specially designed for writing adventure games.

So let’s dive in. We start outside a small brick building and like all good adventurers the first thing to do is probably go inside. Already we are slightly overwhelmed with the amount of objects and information available. This is the point you need to get your notepad and pencil out. Mapping is hugely important and clues will be found along the way, so a notebook should be the first item in the bag when packing your essential adventuring kit.

Without giving too much away, there is just no way you are going to know what to pick up, what to consume, and what to look at in more detail yet without trial and error. And this is what makes these games so great. Unlike a quick blast of Space Invaders, these games occupy your thoughts through school days (or work days!) and solutions and ideas can come to you when least expected. Rush home, try it out, feel on top of the world and move on to the next puzzle. Needless to say, make frequent use of the save feature!

I’m going to cover the first important puzzle here, so read no further if you want absolutely no spoilers.

If you go outside and look around (remember to map everything!) you will come across an area where you are stumbling over sharp stones and you can see a rare orchid two feet above you. Getting here requires getting lost in the forest, a common Level 9 mechanism, but careful mapping and trial and error will help you find your way through. Try every direction, and save, save, save. We need to get that orchid and use it later on to woo a unicorn. If only we had something to stand on! Right. The small table from the brick building. Why didn’t I pick it up when I had the chance? Well firstly you can’t just go around picking up and carrying everything as, like in real life, there is a limit to what you can carry. It’s a good lesson to learn as going back for stuff once the puzzle becomes more clear occurs throughout Level 9 adventures.

If you’ve been mapping correctly, finding your way back to the building should be straight forward. Or, as we haven’t really done too much yet, you could simply ‘quit’ and start back there again. However you do it, note the white dot over the door here. You can’t do anything with it, but white and black dots are important later! Now, get the small kitchen table, ignoring everything else, and retrace your steps to the orchid where you can stand on the table and reach it. NB randomly wolves may start stalking you. You will have a few moves to scare them away by throwing anything at them but if not they will attack and kill you. It’s worth remembering not to go empty handed anywhere! If this does happen, remember to pick whatever item you threw back up.

Worth mentioning also that carrying the table restricts you from climbing other things, such as huge oak trees you may come across. In that case just drop the table, climb up and down and grab the table again. If you’ve been exploring and mapping you’ll know the area I mean. Get to the orchid and drop the table. Simply asking the game to ‘get orchid’ works as it is assumed you are climbing the table at this point.

Leave the table there and continue exploring. If you come across an onion (it’s actually garlic) then get it and eat it. We know garlic is very good for warding off certain blood sucking baddies! Continue exploring (and mapping!) and eventually a wizard will give you a scroll to read. Make a note of it in your notebook.

Return to your map and try other directions you haven’t ventured down yet. We need to get to a clearing with a unicorn. You may have already come across it on your travels. Now we have the orchid we can give this to the unicorn and follow it north. There are some pipes to pick up and a medallion, and if you’ve been mapping correctly you’ll see we’re not too far from our starting point, the brick building.

With the scroll clue and the other items we have found it feels like the adventure has just started. And you would be right thinking that.

I have deliberately not given a ‘walkthrough’ of this first area but more of a strong guidance – you’ll find exploring, getting into trouble, back tracking and problem solving will be required throughout this adventure. Who knew unicorns liked orchids for example? That you can’t pick an orchid without a table? That you can’t climb a tree whilst holding a table? Well, maybe I knew that last one. But things like simply throwing any object at the wolves took me an age to realise the first time around.

With all Level 9 games it’s a case of writing everything down, trying and interacting with everything you find in all situations, and thinking firmly outside of the box. It isn’t meant to be easy, but it is meant to be solvable. There is a lot of love for this adventure out there and rightly so, it’s a great advert for the genre.

Oh, and those white and black dots I mentioned earlier? They are teleport dots. Going through an exit with a black dot will transport you back to its corresponding white dot. This is very useful for going back to retrieve objects you have left behind either on purpose or accidentally.

Level 9 were my absolute favourites back in the day. Along with Infocom they provided the very best in adventure gaming and I don’t think these text based games would have survived without those two giants of the genre.

The D64 game file can be found in lots of places on the internet, or there is a browser playable version at the Internet Archive here. And remember, save often, map precisely, and note down everything!

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