Status mrmiffmiff May 25, 2022
An extremely interesting curiosity. Games like Hunt the Wumpus are one thing, but Wander was a system for designing full-on text adventures in the sense we'd understand them today prior to Colossal Cave Adventure. I had no idea it existed until I started the whole video game chronology thing. I've only played Castle so far (the only game whose extant …
An extremely interesting curiosity. Games like Hunt the Wumpus are one thing, but Wander was a system for designing full-on text adventures in the sense we'd understand them today prior to Colossal Cave Adventure. I had no idea it existed until I started the whole video game chronology thing. I've only played Castle so far (the only game whose extant version probably predates Colossal Cave Adventure), but I will come back to this system at the appropriate time. The version we have definitely has flaws (what with not being able to restore a save), but for the time, the overall concept seems rather robust.
Castle itself is... middling. It's interesting, really, but I've never been a fan of these extreme timers in text adventures. Also it contains jokes you'd expect of that crowd from that era. But really it has a few fun puzzles, nothing overly special but definitely innovative.