Nightmare Planet is a text adventure that I ported from a book released in 1983. The book is by Mike Grace and named “Commodore 64 Adventures - A guide to playing and writing adventures”. I studied this book meticulously for months and months because I wanted to begin to understand how a text adventure system for the Commodore 64 was made by someone who was an enthusiast of playing adventures. I worked through the whole book and when finished, I had constructed my own Commodore 64 adventure, different from the book. My wife wanted me to somehow take my Commodore 64 BASIC program and put it on the mobile phone. I guess when you don’t know the limits of something, then requests like that seem natural, right? About 12 months later I had built a fledgling small system and I had used the Nightmare Planet 1983 as my project or proof of concept that my fledgling system could do something like play a text adventure. My project began in November 2024 and I have finally been able to take that games code and produce a web browser version to share.
Please remember that it is from 1982. I tried to stay faithful to the original story with some caveats. The way you win is slightly different than in the text, in case you go find it and read about the game. I also expanded the puzzles and added a few along with some easter eggs.
This game represents an absolute labor of love and I really just wanted to share it. I hope you like it.
If you click anywhere on the running game except on the game’s scrollbar or the input area, trying to type input doesn’t work. It took me a while to workout that I could continue to type by clicking on the invisible input area next to the “Now what?” prompt.
I was going to stop playing because I thought it was some kind of focus issue for the itch.io embed, so maybe other people might assume the same. Maybe the input area should be automatically focused for keyboard input?
That’s valuable feedback and I will look into that. Making the web interface has been a real learning curve. There are little gotchas everywhere. I appreciate the feedback.
edit: This issue has been addressed and now the focus returns to the input when typing after it has lost its focus. All future browser releases will have this in them so thanks greatly. I wish I could buy you a beer or something.
I’ve played some more to try and finish the game but I think I’ve got stuck with one puzzle to left to solve (trying to get past the eel). When I checked the CASA walkthrough for the original game the solution is something I’ve already tried to do, but I’m not sure how many other ways I can phrase that action. Are any of the puzzle solutions changed in this version?
Also, I did find that occasionally I would get a message that I cannot pick anything else up when trying to pick up an object, but I’ve even had this happen when carrying nothing and trying to pick up the blaster. I think there must be a bug in there somewhere - moving seemed to fix it.
I played it up to the eel and was able to vanquish the eel. You did find a bug in the inventory system. In this game it was supposed to be limited to 5 inventory items max. At some point I broke that. I have 9 things right now so it wouldn’t surprise me if the bug triggered on a strange number of items. I can send you a message and tell you how to defeat the eel or I can just put it here. It is up to you. I will be fixing the inventory bug and maybe relaxing the eel bit. This was my first port and I did it quite awhile back and I started out not really knowing what I was doing.
I updated the browser version to fix the inventory bug. I also added something which may ease your pain point. I sent you a DM to talk more about it. Thanks!!! I really appreciate the feedback and that you have given it a go. You are probably the first person that I know of to play this port of the original. I’ll say this about some differences between the original and the port. The original had a strict VERB NOUN dialect. You can be more expressive. If you type HELP in game or at the title screen it will explain it better and show you examples.
Can I suggest that you remove the game from the itch.io iframe, as the frame is truncated in my browser window, making it unplayable, as I can’t read all the text. To fix this, under the project’s Embed options, select Launch in full screen. Contrary to what it sounds like, this does not open the game in full screen, but opens it in the full browser window.
Can you also do the same for your TALJ game entry if you haven’t done so already?
Hi! I have fixed the settings for all the games. Thank you so much for pointing that out. What a pain point that is hard to notice. I’ll put this on my checklist of things to set when pushing to itch. The offline version will be fine and it has a resizable window frame.
edit: Regarding the font size proper, in game supports syntax to adjust the font size. The syntax is ‘command size ###’ where ### is a number from 4 to 25. The default setting is 12. This also works in the PC version. There are other commands but this one seems appropriate to tell you about.
Actually, that would probably be me. I finished the game by 22nd April, 2 days after upload, reviewed it on the IFDB, and reached out to you on itch but didn’t get a response.
So I’ll try asking here: can I make a game with this system? I’ve read both your Reddit posts on Nightmare Planet and Mad Candy IF Studio. In both, you provided links to NP 2025 and The Final Mask on itch, but those only have the html embeds for the games, not download links for MCIFS.
Hi, thanks for the interest! Regarding Itch, I am not aware of any user reaching out to me about the IF studio. Would that come as an email or in some itch based inbox? As far as the IF Studio is concerned, I was planning on taking the feedback from TALP2026 and evaluating it. The Studio and system have been under near constant development since I started this project in Nov 2024. The Studio is probably ready for user acceptance testing. As far as documentation goes for it, I have a 50 page Word document that is more of a reference. I want / need to make a guide to the studio proper and its options. I’d love to have someone use the system and provide feedback that I can use to make it better / more user facing / more author facing.
Depends on your site settings. It was a review for NP25 though, so you could check your project reviews to find it.
I don’t know what that is, but sure, I’ll wait.
I’d love to. New IF authoring systems are always fun to try. You could host a game jam on itch for games made with MCIFS. Get some more visibility that way.
I’d be glad to share the internal build with you. It is software that runs on Windows 10 & 11. It produces a game file or zipped browser bundle that are played by a player. The player can be on Windows, the web browser (ala Itch), and an Android mobile application. The studio proper has a “Test Adventure” menu that launches your design into the Windows player for play testing. There is also an Android APK that puts the player on the mobile. Like Windows, It plays the files that the studio produces. The studio produces a single file that acts like a cartridge. It contains everything that is seen on the screen minus text that is generated by the system. I usually share at this level through Google drive where I can limit it to email addresses. DM me and we can work out the bits for you to try it out.
edit - Just let me know. I’ve got a zipped up package that is ready to share via Google Drive as am email share link. I put my Word documentation in it. It expands to a 4 files. One is the executable program that launches the studio.
edit2 - I’ve bundled it up with half a dozen project files for examination. These will have to do for a manual outside of the reference. In one adventure I am working on, based on Ghost Stories of the Antiquary, there is a library location. In the library is a tome object. The tome is readable. Reading it puts up a menu to pick any chapter and read it. Each page in the chapter, usually 3 or 4, is paginated. You press enter to go on. When the chapter is done it goes back to the menu. The text is the actual public domain short story the adventure is based upon. Pressing enter just takes you out of it. It demonstrates rich CYOA mechanics in the form of a readable book and menu choice processing. I only use it a little in the TALP submission but it forms the backbone of talking with the NPC that follows you around on your quest.
If you are going to setup a windows system, you don’t need a m$ account as much as people like to say you do. I setup all my machines with local / offline accounts. There is a step during setup that lets it bypass attaching a login to an email.
edit: Virtual box on Linux is your best bet. I think it is free and it runs W10/W11. The player is based on .NET 9.0 and the designer on .NET 8.0. Both 100% supported in Virtual Box. If you encounter anything, it is the automatic DL and install the .NET runtimes for a windows application that is running on a system that needs the runtimes but doesn’t yet have them.