Apple II game exploring a castle
 

I remember only a few, sparse details about this game, but I remember playing it on an Apple II in school in the early 90s and having a lot of fun with it. Hopefully someone here will be able to help out.

This was an old game on a 5.25" floppy disk, which I played in the early 90s (maybe 1994?) but had to be several years older than that. It was your basic treasure-hunting game where you are exploring a mysterious castle or mansion and collecting treasures. You would enter simple commands like JUMP or TAKE GOBLET, a goblet being one of the treasures.

It was presented in 2D side perspective, in simple monochrome line drawings, where your avatar could be moved around, and if you left the screen on the left or right you would enter a new room. You could also go up and down stairs. Since the room was 2D, the stairs went down from a gap in the floor, and if you decided you didn't actually want to go down the stairs, you had to JUMP over the gap. It was easy to forget to jump and then find yourself going down stairs you didn't mean to.

That's about all I remember at this point. :wacko: But I'm fairly sure that I could answer some yes/no questions if anyone has an inkling about what the game might be.

TLDR:
- Played in 1994, but the game was years older than that
- Apple II on 5.25" disk
- Monochrome, line-drawn graphics with a simple text parser
- Explore a castle/mansion, collect treasures
- "Side scroller", an entire floor consisted of one dimension left to right, but you could go up and down stairs
- If you didn't want to go down stairs, you had to jump over the gap (I forget how the game handled going up stairs)
- No music or speech
- Adventure game

Thanks for any help. :)

Hi,

I can't help you with this unfortunately, but I would like to thank you for your precisely, and most importantly, very well written query. I wish every user would be this careful in terms of grammar. A lot of them miss the point by not taking their time to word their post correctly. Have a nice day, and find what you seek.

- Tracker

Thanks for the kind words. :)

I've tried to track down a very similar-sounding, and equally obscure game in the past - it might be what you're looking for as well.

The game is called "Dark Tower", and is about exploring King Arthur's abandoned castle. There's some text-based entry ("U SWORD"), and some action (press "W" to start walking forward, space to jump). I played on the Apple IIe as well, although I believe there was also a C64 version.

Picture of the starting room:
https://imageshack.com/a/img811/7805/rwf6.png

Picture of jumping over stairs - the top half of the guy is missing due to my poor timing with the screen-cap software. Jumping was very flickery (although it doesn't matter, since you have no control once you've jumped)
https://imageshack.com/a/img842/8110/frlj.png

There's at least one other game with the same (very generic) name from that era. This is the one in the "Twistaplot" series.

Wow, thanks! That has to be it. Although I didn't have an "aha" moment, I played the game and everything was as I remembered it: the navigation, the text, the jumping over stairs, even the goblet. So if this isn't the exact game, it's one that plays just like it.

Thanks to your new leads, I did some additional searching and checked out the other available Microzone images, but none of them seemed to contain any other game that was similar to Dark Tower. Unfortunately, the list of Microzine images isn't comprehensive.

Another game that sounds similar is Crickety Manor. I saw this game mentioned several times, but unfortunately nobody had a link to a disk image or even a screenshot.

As for Dark Tower itself, did you manage to complete it? I got a substantial way through the game before I got stuck at the sea monster in the Baths room. The description implied that I needed something heavy to whack it with, but I explored every other room and wasn't able to find anything. My inventory contained the key, sword, diamond, knife, bottle, turnip, and goblet.

Thanks again for your help!

I've beaten it since re-finding it (never managed as a kid, as far as I recall), but I couldn't tell you off hand. I'll give it a shot this weekend and see if I can figure it out again.

Well, "this weekend" was last weekend. :) Any luck?

*bump*

It's long past that weekend. :p Have you had any luck figuring it out?