Hal's Blogs

Quite by accident I found this Java version of the classic Infocom text adventure. It's based on the books by Douglas Adams, and was co-designed by Steve meretsky. To the uninitiated in the world of text adventures: The game is entirely text based, like a book. You can navigate the world and advance the plot, and do actions through typing out sentences. Even for its time, this game was advanced enough to understand advanced boolean sentence structures. (ie: "Take the satchel and then put the satchel on the table"). Whereas other similar games could only understand one or two words at a time (ie: "Take Satchel").

It may seem primitive but these games really made you use your noggin. I also loved how the game came with lots of goodies to compensate for the lack of graphics and sound. This one in particular came with a red "don't panic!" button, a cotton ball (representing some sort of fluff that is an integral object in the game), a small empty baggy with a label that claimed it contained a microscopic space battlecruiser (har har), and more.

Play it now here: http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.html