itch.io

Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it.

Thank you. When you read the book, I'd be interested to see what you think of all the additions I made, as there are quite a few, but I tried to retain the spirit of the original. (I'll bet that red herring was gold coloured.)

For the benefit of others reading this, Candy64 sent me some more details in a private message on the intfiction.org forum and I sent him a few hints.

Thanks. Probably classic feel, but with all the modern niceties. At least I hope so.

I'm hoping there won't be any updates, but if you find any bugs, please let me know.

We had a record number of registrations this year, but less than 10% of of registered users submitted a game. We normally get about 20 to 25%, so I'm wondering why it was so low. Is there something we can do to improve the submission rate next year?

I'll start.

I normally submit a game just to boost the numbers. I had a great idea this year, but didn't allow myself enough time to do the necessary research and design due to all my other commitments. I'll still write the game when time permits, but it may not be for a while.

How about you?

You can download it from the itch.io app, so the downloads you were seeing in your analytics were probably from that. A download link is much more convenient, so thanks for adding that. You'll now see more downloads.

Glad you liked it.

Yes, that's a bug. I have fixed it but I haven't uploaded the fix yet, as I was waiting to see if anyone found any other glitches. Thanks for reporting it.

Playing the games is half the fun. Good luck for next year.

A very generous anonymous donor has donated US$200 for first prize. Not only that, the same donor is donating a text adventure related ebook for every entrant. In order to make this work, we have to have some rules so that this offer is not abused. See the updated prize rules on the home page for further details. In particular, don't submit games that don't meet the competition rules, as they will be disqualified. At the time of writing, I have already disqualified three games. The main issues were that they were not even remotely like a text adventure, had already been published and/or used generative AI.

Here is a list of text adventure related ebooks that would qualify as prizes. If you know of others, please add them in a reply and I'll add them to the list. They must be available from Amazon and cost under US$10.

A Guide to ZX Spectrum Adventure Games: 1982 - 1985 by Shaun McClure

A Guide to ZX Spectrum Adventure Games: 1988 - 1990 by Shaun McClure

Creating a Text-Based Adventure Game with Python by Thomas Starr

Creating Text Adventures in Python by Mike Gold

Essential Adventure Games for the ZX Spectrum by Shaun McClure

How to Design Adventure Games by Shaun McClure

The Little Book Of Adventure Game Programming in C# by Huw Collingbourne

The Little Book Of Adventure Game Programming in Java by Huw Collingbourne

Text Adventure to RPG: Coding Interactive Fiction by Amara Hawthorn

You forgot to update the release number. We now have two release 1.1s with different release dates.

That fixed it. Thanks for the fast response. It was lucky that I noticed it early before too many people downloaded it.

The Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64 versions start in a Deep Forest. The MS-DOS version doesn't seem to work. When I ran it under DOSBox, the opening screen and first few moves looked like this:

Any ideas?

Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I think the theme is a bit different to what you'd normally expect to find in a text adventure. The original game was very cruel and I had to work really hard to eliminate the sudden death, guess-the-verb, unwinnable situations and moon logic. I probably wasn't 100% successful in the latter, but there are lots of subtle clues for those that are prepared to examine everything and take notes along the way.

Thanks.

Thanks. That would be appreciated.

Sorry to disappoint you, but there's no third part in the original Bonaventura Di Bello series. The way Gianluca extended the ending on this one, it's really screaming out for a sequel. Let us think about it. We're open to suggestions.

Thank you. There's more to come.

Thanks for playing it.

Wow, you're really ripping through these games. We'll have to pick up the pace.

Thanks. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

With all these games, it's always fun to explore, examine everything, try unusual things and maybe find a few Easter eggs along the way. When you're finished, there's always the extra challenge of trying to complete it in the minimum number of moves.

Thanks. I never thought about the spelling aspect, but I see what you mean. "Pete" is certainly easier to type than "platypus". When playing, I think I referred to all the animals by name.

Indeed. It was also fun to write.

Thank you. It's kind words like this that make it all worthwhile.

Thanks. I hope you enjoy the others just as much.

Things like name generators are quite acceptable, as they invent something from nothing using simple algorithms based on rules and patterns. I've never seen one that uses generative AI. (I'm not saying they don't exist, I just haven't seen one.)

Re LLMs, that's correct. The competition is about human creativity, not machine-generated slop.

Thank you. It's nice to know that these little touches get noticed.

Oh, no! We'll miss you. Your game last year was fun.

The email address is up to you. You might feel more secure if you offer testing on the Discord server (there's a channel for that), then people can send you a personal message.

Thank you. If you find any bugs or have any suggestions, please let me know, as I'll probably do a post-comp version.

It's not just a translation, but a complete rewrite with lots of extensions. The aim was not just to bring it to an English audience, but to bring it up-to-date for a modern audience. That means no sudden death, no (or very minimal) guess-the-verb, no moon logic, no unwinnable situations, richer descriptions and so on. You can still get killed if you ignore the in-game clues (which you may want to do just to see what happens), but you can always undo.

Your new release is release 1, so there are now two versions of release 1 dated 13-Jun-2025 and 04-Jul-2025. This is confusing and causes complications for database entry at CASA, IFDB, IFWiki et al.

Oops. Thanks for that. Another fix for the post-comp release.

For anyone that's really stuck, if you can't wait for me to respond, don't forget that there's a HINT command that's very helpful, sometimes too helpful.

I've sent you a step-by-step solution for the last few moves in a private message on intfiction.org.

Would anyone like to see the map and solution? I normally don't publish these until after the comp.

I think you've missed something. I can't say too much for fear of spoiling it for someone else. Just remember that you're trying to resurrect two people, not one.

You can only write the correct spell on the parchment. Anything else fades away. Remember what it said in the spell book about the spell you're trying to use.

You can only TALK TO ESMERALDA or ASK HER ABOUT <something>.  I think you meant the latter. There's currently no response for the crystal ball, but I can add that in a post-comp release. You can ask her about a lot of things. As an example, EXAMINE CRYSTAL BALL mentions the future, so ASK ESMERALDA ABOUT FUTURE is a good one to try.

Thanks for the bug reports. I'll fix those in a post-comp release.

You won't find a key for the drawer, so you'll need to pick the lock. Have you been to your aunt's bedroom yet? If not, that should be your next goal. (Hint: You can't get in through the bedroom door.) 

After talking to him, I did: I, STATS, W, W, W, W and he wasn't there. Would you like me to send my transcripts?

If you're a Discord user, there's some interesting  servers for text adventures and interactive fiction, including Adventuron and PunyInform, and some of the competitions, such as SeedComp, ParserComp and this one. The Text Adventure Literacy Jam server has announcements (of course) and some interesting discussion on game development, testing requests, help with puzzles, and so on. The traffic isn't heavy, but it's nice to be part of the community. Much better than Facebook.

I kept a transcript. When we got back, I talked to Andy and he rushed off in the direction of the Hackspace exit. I then checked every location and he was nowhere to be found. I talked to Julie, Stephan and Carl and they all congratulated me on finding Andy, but that's it. (I also checked the other time periods, but no sign of Andy.)

I've rescued Andy and he's gone back to his wife. The other characters in the hackspace have congratulated me for rescuing Andy, but the game doesn't end. What now? How do I get it to end?