I started making games when I was 8. I got a Commodore 64 for my birthday. And I got one game, which was a game called “The Pit” – it’s rather obscure and it’s really shit – and the other thing I got, of course, was a manual. And so the game I finished very quickly, and then I had nothing else to do so I dove straight into the manual.
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.
Bunyip Adventure” is a conventional text adventure that is set in outback Australia. The top half of the screen displays your current static position. The bottom half logs dynamic events. The aim is to catch the Bunyip, a creature for Australian Aboriginal mythology that lives in the still water of a billabong. The game features a host of other references to Australian flora, fauna and folklore:
Matthew Hall‘s Microbee adventure game the “Jewels of Sancara Island” had survived the last thirty or so years as a Turbo Pascal listing has been resurrected by Alan Laughton from the Microbee Software Preservation Project. Hall was 12 years old when he wrote “Jewels of Sancara Island” at a school computer course. He used as his guide the book “Creating Adventures on your Commodore 64”. He explains “it was an adventure game, following the standard themes of the time. You wash up on a mysterious island. You have to find the jewels of Sancara Island and escape!”.
“Pieces of Eight” is designed as an individual or small-group manageable, language-based, educational courseware package. The program, when operating with a small group, promotes dynamic, collaborative interaction and co-operation. Using the software makes students apply a broad range of problem-solving techniques and logical-thinking skills.
“Sherlock” is a 1984 text adventure developed by Philip Mitchell and Beam Software. It was published by Melbourne House. The game is based on the famous Sir Arthur Conan Doyle books featuring the super sleuth Sherlock Holmes, fiction’s most famous detective. You take the role of Holmes, assisted by Dr. Watson.
“The Hobbit” was one of the first major games produced in Australia, and is considered a classic text adventure. In 1985, it was voted number 1 in Sinclair User’s ‘Top 50 Spectrum Software Classics’.