Frustrated gamers playing text adventures would inevitably find themselves at some time typing a string of expletives into the hapless interface only to be rewarded by a snide comment or just more stonewalling from the game. Infuriating and often very punitive on the player the punishing nature of these games made the actual mastery of a text adventure a special pleasure.
The Microbee was an Australian computer designed, built, and marketed by Applied Technology, in Gosford, N.S.W. Originally released in February 1982, it was intended for the schools market but also had a wide and deep following amongst home users. A considerable amount of software was published locally for the Microbee, through Honeysoft. Many titles were games.
Ross Williams was part of a small Western Australian company that designed software for the Exidy Sorcerer. After developing Grotnik Wars for the Sorcerer, Williams later ported Grotnik Wars to the Microbee, and started his own company, notably named Grotnik Software. Grotnik Software produced a number of games for the Microbee, including Bunyip Adventure (1984), Grotnik Wars(????) and Link (1985).
Grotnik Software was founded by Ross Williams. It was a one man team. Williams had previously been making software for the Exigy Sorcerer. Grotnik is known to have developed three games for the Microbee – “Grotnik Wars” (1984), “Bunyip Adventure” (1985) and “Flip” (1986). Grotnik appeared to stop trading and was removed from the Microbee Market in 1988.