Castle of Riddles

[davidn]

I've been rediscovering old BBC Micro games again.


You are standing south of the wizard's
castle which stands on a hill above a
vast forest to the south. Paths go
northeast and northwest around the
castle walls, and a dark gateway leads
north into the castle. The castle
walls are unclimbable, but there are
ledges and ramparts visible far above.

:N
As you move north, a portcullis
crashes down behind you, blocking the
exit
It is pitch dark

:N
You got eaten by the warlock's spider
in the dark
Oh dear, you're dead
You have scored 0 out of 250
Would you like another game?
?BOG OFF



Even this, however, doesn't come anywhere near the level of condescension of Granny's Garden, which I should remind everyone featured this exercise in interactivity:


Can you see a cave?
> NO

Yes you can.
Do you want to go in?
> NO

Yes you do.

Comments

[deviant-gent.livejournal.com]

I got eaten by manticores on a daily basis. Good times.

[davidn]

Even when I was about eight years old, I remember being annoyed with Colossal Cave and how, if you didn't have the lantern, it would just make up "pits" that otherwise weren't mentioned in the room you were moving into.

[deviant-gent.livejournal.com]

Especially if you were in geographically awkward places for pits to exist, like the top floor of a house.

I thought it was a stroke of genius for a puzzle in Zork Zero to involve filling up all the Colossal Cave-esque pits, but in doing so you release the Grues unto the GUE.

[davidn]

I never really played the Zork games, but I've meant to because I think I would enjoy their sort of self-aware sense of humour... my dad had something called DUNGEON.EXE that many years later I realized must have been the first Zork under a different name, but all I remember about it was that I used to be scared of flooding the dam.

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

For some reason, I had it in my head that if your torch goes out in Shadowgate you somehow fall down and break both your legs. Actually, I got it confused with another death that does involve falling and breaking both your legs, but letting your torch go out (or deliberately extinguishing it) makes your character flail around and... "Smash!! You fall face first to the floor!!" That's a game over.

[davidn]

Seeing as the protagonist in Shadowgate dies from things like looking at a sword in the wrong way, it's no great surprise that he can kill himself by stumbling around in a darkened room even if there's nothing really hostile in it! I remember that other death you mentioned, as well - climbing down a perfectly intact-looking ladder results in you just running out of ladder below the cutoff of the screen, and plummeting at least seven inches to the ground below.

There are some things about classic games I don't miss.

[kjorteo]

Eaten by manticores? Are we talking A Triangle Morning's Which-Way Adventure now?

[davidn]

You had to ask! I have bad memories of that :)

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Is that second one seriously real? Is the whole game like that?

[deviant-gent.livejournal.com]

It continues to be heinous, but for completely different reasons.

[davidn]

Yes, it was quite a famous educational game in the 1980s... as far as I remember, those adventure bits were just sort of vehicles to transport you between various other minigames, but they never even tried to disguise the fact that there were no real choices in them!

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

I almost wonder if they weren't meant as parody, if it's so blatant... was the genre familiar enough by then?

[davidn]

I'm not sure, really... Granny's Garden doesn't really so much have a genre as it is just a list of things that happen, but the nearest thing to describe it as would probably be "adventure". Actually, "storybook" might be a good one, though it has adventure elements in it - it would explain why it doesn't really bother with the illusion of interactivity much, and it doesn't seem all that self-aware about it!

[davidn]

Actually, as if the reach of Youtube should ever be doubted, someone has uploaded a video showing their 'reluctant adventures'! I should amend my previous comment to say that yes, the entire game is indeed like that.

[kibet.livejournal.com]

I remember the dragon collar game being much harder than that, I thought the dragon used to lose the collars some time. But memory lane, very good.

[goodbyebartleby.livejournal.com]

I find text adventure games a lot more fun to write than to play.

[davidn]

There is that :) I don't think that I ever actually completed a full text adventure, but there's something very fulfilling about getting a base engine for them to work, especially if you can put any text parser cleverness in there...

[kibet.livejournal.com]

Oh and I just had a wee look and they have an updated version
http://www.4mation.co.uk/cat/granny.html

[davidn]

Remarkably, they're also still selling the BBC Micro version after all this time (for £14.95, honestly). Perhaps some schools haven't evolved past the Micro yet... curiously, I can't find any videos of the Windows version!

[kibet.livejournal.com]

I am trying to remember the mystery game that was like Cluedo for the BBC. I am thinking that it was called something like 'Mallory towers' but may be wrong. Another game I used to play was 'catch' which was a fishing and trading game.

[davidn]

Oh, here might be an ideal time to ask - do you recall a game that was a text adventure, played in a 'window' in the middle of the screen, with a black plant that slowly grew up the left and then right hand side that was meant to represent the black magic growing? I've been trying to work out what that one was for years (and indeed, an unsuccessful guess as to its title was what led to this post).

The list I was looking at (which may cause popups) lists a Cluedo as well as a Mallory Manor - that second one sounds like it's too close not to be it!

[kibet.livejournal.com]

Can't remember the flower one, sorry.

Mallory Manor, that's it! I am surprised that I remembered the Mallory part of it. It was the youtube video that reminded me of it as when the person wrote Malorie as a password, it gave me a flash of memory and thought it was a nod to the game. Then I saw the name of the user as malorie.

Oh I just looked up and saw no 'Catch' so that might not be the title but did see Beachhead and Chuckie Egg! Incidentally, I was remembering that I used to play Zork: Grand Inquisitor, which was the updated version with the video cutscenes that was so prevalent in the nineties. With Erick Avari as the Grand Inquisitor and Dirk Benedict as an indiana Jones rip off.

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

I realise that had I been subjected, as a child, to a game with a similar level of condescension as is displayed by Granny's Garden, it really is quite possible that I would have become a rebellious lawbreaker for the rest of my life.

I also would possibly support the clearfelling of every tree in existence. How dare the magical ones not have the grace to identify themselves?

[davidn]

It's strange, the things that we just accepted back then :) When I first downloaded the BBC version of Granny's Garden, it was as the result of talking to a friend at university and remembering about all these games we used to play in school... the funny thing was that even though it was about 15 years since he'd last seen it, he could remember which tree was the right one, first time.

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

When my dad was an undergraduate, Glasgow University had a text based game on their system.

The intro ran something like thus.

WELCOME TO THE TEXT BASED ARCADE GAME. THIS GAME IS ONLY AVAILABLE TO PROFESSORS. ARE YOU A PROFESSOR Y/N?

N

BYE

and then, it would take you back to the beginning

WELCOME TO THE TEXT BASED ARCADE GAME. THIS GAME IS ONLY AVAILABLE TO PROFESSORS. ARE YOU A PROFESSOR Y/N?

Y

YOU ARE STANDING IN A DUNGEON ...

[davidn]

Looks like my own efforts, before I discovered the world of variables :) Well, you have to admire its optimism for the honesty of its users!

[pookatimes.livejournal.com]

Don'tcha just love Granny's Garden? I need to play that again, just so I can finish it this time.

[davidn]

From what I remember, it took several save states! It seemed to be designed so that luck played an important part in it - you could try throwing a stick at the snake, but then the stick would turn out to be a magic wand, which would summon the witch sprite and give you nightmares for a week. It has a sort of casual cruelty not unlike Shadowgate sometimes.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Hah! Look what Kotaku wound up writing about. :)

http://kotaku.com/5611907/not-everyone-played-the-oregon-trail-you-know

[davidn]

Wonderful :) I certainly had the impression that Oregon Trail was the equivalent of this for Americans - we had Granny's Garden, Flowers of Crystal, Dragon World and some others. It's strange that these few games seem to have been common to every single school.

And I was very proud of beating Oregon Trail on my first attempt when Whitney showed it to me - the BBC Micro games had a Sierra-like no-turning-back cruelty that ensures you can't get through them except by luck. (I remember cheating at one game by finding the manual stowed somewhere on the computer desk, which described which floors you shouldn't go to in a building to prevent the coyote getting you). And I'm glad to learn from that Kotaku thread that the coyote/the wolf/the witch from these scared the life out of everyone and it wasn't just me.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Is it cheating to read the manual for the game you're playing? Furthermore, if dying is sheerly luck, weren't the developers the ones cheating?

[davidn]

When the "manual" contains a basically complete solution to the game, then I think so - as far as I remember, the section of the manual I found listed things like "Root 3 of the tree has one of Bewgo's teeth. Root 5 has a treasure chest. Roots 6, 8 and 9 will make the Coyote appear."

Although I didn't exactly feel guilty about it seeing as the game had no skill to it whatsoever and was just an exercise in typing in random numbers to see if you died or not.