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 ElliSoft.

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 ElliSoft.

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!

The post Adventure Quest by Level 9 appeared first on ElliSoft.

First of all, after buying a Raspberry Pi OS image to the SD card, I followed the documentation – nothing outrageous here, just followed it through and made all changes as recommended. The only thing I tweaked was media size limits (including local emoticons) as I have a large 1TB SSD to play with so wasn’t too bothered about limiting sizes. Oh and despite the documentation stating otherwise, I changed the default database from Postgress to Sqlite.

The location of the hierarchy ‘gotosocial’ I put on the external drive for obvious reasons.

After installation (basically just downloading the binary from the address in the documentation) I started the service up and it just worked!

Dynamic DNS

I had at first just added an A Record for the subdomain to point to my router’s external address, just to get things working. I have now enabled the ASUS DDNS service and pointed a CNAME record to my new DDNS domain. That was surprisingly easy and works well.

Port Forwarding

Also, of course, I needed to add port forwarding from the router to the Pi ports, ensuring the firewall was ON! And of course this requires a static LAN IP set for the Pi itself.

Backup & Restore

After playing around with it for a couple of days, the next step is making sure backups are working and recoverable.

By far the simplest way to back up is to stop the service, and then compress all files and copy them to a backup location. Something like:

In theory then a restore would simply be a case of expanding the file to the correct location. I may at some stage get another cheap Raspberry Pi to test the restore process.

I’ll have to play around a bit more with this and create a way of moving the file offsite and into the cloud, but for now this is working ok.

Next steps, tweaks and improvements will appear here over the coming days/weeks…

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On the 27th November 1842, John flew into a (drunken?) rage and ended up killing my 4th Great Grandmother, Sarah Rack and, presumably, her unborn child. The court papers describe how he beat her and it makes horrible and harrowing reading. He was convicted of manslaughter at Lincoln assizes on 8 March 1843 and he was sentenced to 10 years transportation.

Other reports have him sentenced to imprisonment at Lincoln Castle. John, however, was found in the records aboard the prison hulk ship the Warrior, docked in Woolwich, and given the conditions and reputation of Lincoln Castle prison at the time, that seems to have been by far the better option for John.

However, he never left England.

For some unfathomable reason, a few years later, he was pardoned by Queen Victoria.

Victoria R
John Williams et al
Free Pardon
Whereas the following persons are under sentence of transportation on board the Warrior Hulk at Woolwich they having been convicted of felony at the times and places hereafter mentioned. Viz
John Williams at Welchpool in March 1843, Hy Biggs Horn Gardener at Hereford in March 1843, Wm Martin, Geo Jarvis, Chas Martin and Hezekial Folkes at Chelmford in March 1843, Morris Thomas at Haverford West, Edward Lilburn and John Britcliffe at Lincoln in March 1843, Edward Shenton, Jas White and Thomas Johnson at Stafford in March 1843, Neil Mc Gilvary at Glasgow in September 1842 and Jas Whistow at Chester in April 1843.
We in consideration of same circumstances humbly represented unto us are Graciously pleased to extend our Grace and Mercy unto them and to Grant them our free pardon for the crimes of which they stand convicted. 
12 April 1848

The irony is their children did well, and some moved down under of their own accord! The Britcliffe’s are alive and well in the UK and the Southern Hemisphere, and I guess I’m living proof of that!

This is the first post of some genealogy stories as I get back into researching the family tree – who knows what else will come out of the woodwork…

PS Thanks to Mike Dawson for the transcription and images above.

The post Does Every Family Have One? appeared first on ElliSoft.

For some reason SEQ files always give me problems and it’s usually because I forget to use the correct flags, especially ‘a’ for appending. Leaving the ‘a’ out on creation, remembering the ‘w’ and ‘r’ for write and read. Basic (no pun intended) stuff I know, but I code fairly infrequently these days and always have to remind myself of the unforgiving syntax.

Anyway, lets get rich.

Option 1 just creates a new data file to disk.

And then moves on to the lottery results input screen. I’m not really sure how much data will fit on a file yet, so I’m guessing at around 2 months of past results can be created without too much problem. I’ll then as a phase 2 work out how to merge all past months data together when predicting. For now I am just going to enter July and August 2024’s results to date.

And so on for all the weekly results.

Option 2 in the main menu adds to an existing file, so I tested this a few times by stopping my input and returning to the file to add a few more lines.

And I added an option 4 to give me confidence the numbers were being input and stored correctly.

So a small set of data really. Still, that shouldn’t stop the prediction from being 100% accurate….

As simple as that. All I have to do now is work out what to spend my money on.

Anyway, there we have it. A bit of fun but that won’t stop me inputting the whole of 2024’s past results and beyond with a ridiculous optimism.

I’ll tidy it up a bit and create a 2024 data file then put both up here for people to mess around with.

That’s if I haven’t moved to Monaco of course…..

The post I’m going to be rich, rich I tell you! appeared first on ElliSoft.

Now, fast forward almost 20 years, my incentive is slightly different – I need to get fitter after a long time sitting behind computers, and walking and cycling are my preferred methods of exercise, so geocaching seemed like a great way to motivate myself.

I was pleased to be able to reactivate my old account seamlessly, and see that my old finds and hides were still listed. I live in The Cotswolds, and I’m a huge The Jam fan, so the name seemed fairly obvious to me back in 2005 and I think still works today.

I was also excited to see how many caches are available today! I think it must have exploded around lockdown or something, or maybe it just carried on growing in popularity without me knowing, but there are a lot. Some things have changed though. I have noticed many more micro caches being hidden as opposed to the more traditional, small lunch box size that seemed to be the norm when I started. This is fine, and micros are fun to find, but it greatly restricts what can be placed in the cache. The small and medium ones too seem to lack anything of any note – people are simply not leaving things in the cache, probably as there are just too many of them. One of the fun aspects of geocaching for me was travel bugs – I released several myself and have a currently active one in circulation. These too seem fewer in number, although I did pick one up in France recently to bring back to the UK.

But it is still unquestionably fun though, and gets me out there and a bit more active, so it’s all good from that point of view. I have also got a nice little second hand GPS unit, a Garmin eTrex 10. Most people seem to use their phones nowadays and that’s fine of course, but when I started out, using a dedicated GPS was the done thing, and it just seems right to carry on using one today. Plus it mounts nicely on the bike without risking a broken iPhone in the event of a mishap!

I have just got back from France where I found over 20 new caches to kick start my geocaching adventure, and even my now grown up kids have caught the (travel) bug and have created their own accounts. Something fun for us all to catch up about.

With the way the world is today, a nice simple hobby that gets you outside and has you searching for small, large, interesting treasure chests, and that also takes you to some interesting places you’d never otherwise visit, has already made me happy. And happy is good.

I’ll blog here about some of the more interesting caches I come across, with periodic updates on my travel bug, my hides and interesting areas I discover.

The post All Around The Wold appeared first on ElliSoft.

Day 1 looked deceptively simple, with part 1 completed in pretty quick time. The only real problem was the large amount of data caused memory overflow issues, so I split it into 4 separate parts for the data statements.

I’ll list some code segments with explanation on how I did it below, but I don’t want to post the answers for this current year on here for obvious reasons.

First off, declaring the variables:

I used two subroutines to do the number crunching. It’s not very complicated, this one is used to find the left most number. It’s first set to 100 so we have a benchmark to compare against later on. It then simply loops through each character based on the length of the string and compares it to a digit.

LN (Left Number) is set to a multiple of 10 to satisfy the problem – so if 3 is found first, it needs to be set to 30 as we want to add the single last digit of the string to it. i.e. if the last digit found is 5 then the value for this line would be 35.

Once a left number is found, the loop obviously needs to exit to prevent it finding any more numbers – so we exit as soon as LN is less than 100 (i.e. any of the other values).

SUB FINDNUMSL (TEST$ AS STRING * 96) STATIC
L=LEN(TEST$)
LN = 100  'set to an unfindable value - only required for LN
FOR I=0 TO L-1
    M=MID$(TEST$, I, 1)
    ' Test for left numeric only
    IF M="0" THEN 
    LN=0 
    END IF
    IF M="1" THEN 
    LN=10 
    END IF
    IF M="2" THEN 
    LN=20
    END IF
    IF M="3" THEN 
    LN=30 
    END IF
    IF M="4" THEN 
    LN=40 
    END IF
    IF M="5" THEN 
    LN=50 
    END IF
    IF M="6" THEN 
    LN=60 
    END IF
    IF M="7" THEN 
    LN=70 
    END IF
    IF M="8" THEN 
    LN=80 
    END IF
    IF M="9" THEN 
    LN=90
    END IF
    IF LN < 100 THEN ' We need to exit the loop as soon as a numeric is found
    EXIT FOR
    END IF
NEXT I
    ' Left most digit found
    ' End subroutine
END SUB

The subroutine for the right most number, imaginatively called FINDNUMSR, is almost identical except for 2 differences. We set RN to the single digit as opposed to a multiple of 10, as that will be added to LN, and we don’t exit the loop, meaning we keep going until the end so that RN holds the last value in that string.

With the SUBS setup it’s just a matter of cycling through each input line, calling them both, and totalling up the values as we go.

And as I said, I did this 3 more times for the other 750 lines of data, which yes is a bit cheaty but then XC=BASIC makes me lazy.

Part 2 was trickier as we had to find actual strings of digits that would take precedent over the digits themselves, so if the string looked something like ‘iuskjnineij5hkjlcnd6slkj8klmsstwo‘ the result we want is 92.

To accomplish this I just did more of the same and added extra logic into both subroutines, again exiting the loop early for the left number and letting it complete for the right number.

    'Part 2
    IF M = "o" AND MID$(TEST$,I+1,1) = "n" AND MID$(TEST$,I+2,1) = "e" THEN
    LN=10
    END IF
    IF M = "t" AND MID$(TEST$,I+1,1) = "w" AND MID$(TEST$,I+2,1) = "o" THEN
    LN=20
    END IF
    IF M = "t" AND MID$(TEST$,I+1,1) = "h" AND MID$(TEST$,I+2,1) = "r" AND MID$(TEST$,I+3,1) = "e" AND MID$(TEST$,I+4,1) = "e" THEN
    LN=30
    END IF
    IF M = "f" AND MID$(TEST$,I+1,1) = "o" AND MID$(TEST$,I+2,1) = "u" AND MID$(TEST$,I+3,1) = "r" THEN
    LN=40
    END IF
    IF M = "f" AND MID$(TEST$,I+1,1) = "i" AND MID$(TEST$,I+2,1) = "v" AND MID$(TEST$,I+3,1) = "e" THEN
    LN=50
    END IF
    IF M = "s" AND MID$(TEST$,I+1,1) = "i" AND MID$(TEST$,I+2,1) = "x" THEN
    LN=60
    END IF
    IF M = "s" AND MID$(TEST$,I+1,1) = "e" AND MID$(TEST$,I+2,1) = "v" AND MID$(TEST$,I+3,1) = "e" AND MID$(TEST$,I+4,1) = "n" THEN
    LN=70
    END IF
    IF M = "e" AND MID$(TEST$,I+1,1) = "i" AND MID$(TEST$,I+2,1) = "g" AND MID$(TEST$,I+3,1) = "h" AND MID$(TEST$,I+4,1) = "t" THEN
    LN=80
    END IF
    IF M = "n" AND MID$(TEST$,I+1,1) = "i" AND MID$(TEST$,I+2,1) = "n" AND MID$(TEST$,I+3,1) = "e" THEN
    LN=90
    END IF
    ' End of part 2

The total run time, for both part 1 and part 2 in the same script was 12 minutes 56 seconds.

This screen shows just 1 part completing – there were 3 more after this and I totalled up the output for my answers.

The post Advent of Code 2023 Day 1 appeared first on ElliSoft.

This year, actually my first year, I will be attempting to solve each problem in XC=BASIC. The main advantage of using XC=BASIC is, of course, the modern IDE and the slightly more flexible way I can get data in. The way AoC works is they give you data inputs for the problems, and sometimes these are quite large amounts of data. XC=BASIC helps overcome some of the limitations of CBM Basic while still allowing it to compile down and be run on the Commodore 64.

So, to get me started and by way of a bit of a ‘toe dipping’ exercise, I am going back to AOC 2022 and completing the first few days. I’m not interested in leader boards or competing online. I will be taking my time with each problem and solving them in my own, no doubt incorrect and inefficient way.

This is day 1.

You can find the full text of the problem here and, obviously, if you want to try this out for yourself, stop reading now as the answer is given below!

The first part was relatively simple, define an array, add the data, then cycle through the values adding them up and comparing them to the last highest value, which gives us the elf carrying the most calories compared to its pals.

I replaced all the blank lines in the large dataset with a zero to indicate the end of one elf’s total calories and the start of the next.

So you can see each time a zero is encountered we can total up the calories and compare to the last elf.

You’ll see there I also set a LOW counter which is needed for part 2 of this challenge. It basically sets the first load of calories, in this case 53308, to LOW and uses that to compare against later, along with the HIGH value.

So, a relatively gentle one to start with but very glad I did it as I now have my XC=BASIC development flow set up again properly and I have reminded myself of the little foibles that the language has – I’m looking forward to starting 2023’s calendar!

Oh, and for what it’s worth, I got 2 gold stars for this problem

This is probably going to keep me busy until well into the new year, after which time I will be returning to adventuring! I’ll try and squeeze another 2022 problem in before the 1st….but no guarantees!

Thanks for reading.

The post Advent of Code Prep – 2023 appeared first on ElliSoft.

Philip Newton is attributed as the original author of the TRS-80 listing, and it looks like Nathan Butcher was involved (or wholly responsible) for the Commodore conversion. I could only find one listing for Philip Newton, this adventure, but Butcher appears to have many listings and releases under his name, mostly conversions, some of which we will no doubt cover in this series.

So, let’s start the adventuring….

We start at our camp, outside the tent and with all four major compass point exits available.

OK, so obvious first move, Enter Tent right? Nope.

I have to say, my heart sinks when this is the first thing you come across. I understand the limitations, believe me I do, but this stuff is important for a good experience. So, after typing VERB and having a look through the limited list, the only one that makes any sense is GO. So, Go Tent, of course.

All items appear to be randomly placed in one of two maze locations. The first maze location is the Hot, Sandy Desert, and is a bit of a nightmare. The map doesn’t really make any sense with random directions either taking you back to your camp or another hot, sandy stretch of dessert.

You’ll need to pick up all the objects you find along the way in the Desert, providing you don’t come across the Scorpion of course (it will eventually sting and slowly kill you) and make your way to the Pyramid for the next frustrating maze. You’ll need the Flashlight, Sceptre and Backpack before entering, which you should find in the Desert somewhere, and you should also have dropped all of the treasures found thus far back at the tent.

Once you make your way to the Pyramid, the game is made even more maddening by a randomised roaming mummy who can strip you of your inventory and scatter the items around in the catacomb maze. If you are lucky the mummy ignores you or simply shouts ‘Go Away!’. You can also wave your Sceptre at the mummy sometimes to make it disappear, but you need all the stars to align for this to happen, and you need to have found the items you need in the Desert without being killed by a random Scorpion. The fact you need to go back and forth makes it almost impossible to complete.

I made quite a lot of use of the SAVE feature to stop getting killed or stripped of my possessions too frequently, but it soon became far too tedious to continue. I never did finish getting all 25 treasures back to my tent and quite honestly the sweet, lingering death of a scorpion sting was blessed relief.

It isn’t actually a bad game, certainly not the worst text adventure I have played, but the BASIC listing and typed in nature of the code kind of showed, and an attempt at being cutting edge with randomising mummies and scorpions just made for a frustrating experience. There was too much random luck involved and too little problem and logic solving for my liking.

Having said that, I am already sitting here thinking, well, I got 14 items….maybe I’ll try again for the full 25! I’ll give it some time and maybe revisit one day. That in itself might persuade you to give The Adventure of Cleopatra’s Pyramid a go…

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