I had a go at writing a text adventure using Inform6/PunyInform (Coming soon - Duck! Me?). The .Z3 file is linked at the bottom of the page. Originally I wrote this in 6502 assembly for the BBC Master 128 before deciding to port to PunyInform and extend it a bit.
Please note the description in the topic title, this isn’t modern IF, it’s an old-fashioned puzzle game with a wafer-thin plot and dated concepts like darkness, And, yes, there are a couple of things you can do to make the game unwinnable, although I’ve tried to make these somewhat obvious. Because of this I’m not expecting a lot of interest here, but I’m happy to receive constructive feedback should this appeal to anyone.
Technically still a beta, but it is playable. See the link on the page to StarDot for some history/discussion.
It’s not a huge game, my non-optimal walkthrough is ~330 moves.
And long live the peculiar medical condition doctors have come to diagnose as APRA (adventurePC-related amnesia).
The treatment seems to consist of encouraging the patient to wander aimlessly through abandoned hallways or tunnels and to engage in unmotivated theft of everything lying around.
Just a quick heads up should anyone actually want to play this game, the web site linked in the top post no longer exists, but you can still download the latest beta from the StarDot forum. It’s in the .ZIP file linked to the top post and you don’t need to sign up for an account. There have been no changes to the game since my original post here.
Tip: It’s easy to upload a game to https://borogove.io/ and get a playable link. You can choose whether the link should be included in the public list of games on the site or not.
@EdwardianDuck I am going to review it for ZZAP!64, likely December issue. Would you be able to update the StarDot post and also provide a C64 image? Or should I link this separately? I created one via Ozmoo online.
@8bit_era Hello. Sorry for being a bit dense, but what’s your expectation for updating the StarDot post? Other than a couple of minor text changes in response to feedback, I’ve nothing planned. In terms of a C64 release, I guess I can do that via Ozmoo online, but where would I post it? As per the StarDot post, I’ve given up my own website due to lack of interest in maintaining it, so I’ve no obvious place to host a C64 build. (Ab)using StarDot for this seems a bit cheeky.
@EdwardianDuck One solution probably would be an IFDB entry. You can upload dedicated disk images for other systems, e.g. BBC Micro or C64. We can keep a copy of the image I created for the test in ZZAP!64, but we won’t maintain changes. Another option would be adding your game to itch.io, which is what I do for my games as well, see here for reference: Hibernated 1 (Director's Cut) by Stefan Vogt. Itch.io has the advantage that you can basically maintain any build and get optional donations from those that love your game(s).
I added the listing for your game to IFDB when I saw this morning that there wasn’t one. At present, the only download link points to the ZIP of the current Z5 version at stardot.org.uk site, the author is listed as EdwardianDuck, and the description of the game is based on the introductory text plus >X ME.
You may want to upload a copy to the IF Archive (upload form at IF Archive File Upload) for long-term storage.
It turns out that this game is quite buggy, so if you are playing it, please bear this in mind. I’ll be digging in to the reported issues when time permits.
Interesting. The Northern Duck issue doesn’t appear in beta 16 which was built with an earlier version of PunyInform. All the portraits are cheap scenery, so that’s something concrete I can investigate, as that extension has been improved.
I’ve pulled the release from StarDot pending resolution of some fairly serious bugs. I would recommend not playing copies which exist elsewhere at this time.
