Castle of Fear (The Micro User type-in) - 1

Game Description

Castle of Fear is a text adventure that was published in August 1984 edition of The Micro User magazine as a BASIC type-in. The input method is restricted to a small set of command keys (representing compass directions, GET, DROP, INVE, ATTACK etc).

Castle Of Fear: instructions (but they don't give away much!)

Game Locations

All the game's 27 locations are accessible to you from the start (although one room is a trap and has no exits; at least the game does warn you not to enter!).

There are no typical adventure-like puzzles involving keys or other problems to be found. However there is a troll who wanders the rooms, randomly dropping or picking up jewels (you are unable to pick these up). There are also 3 coins to be found in the castle which you can collect. The type of coin you pick up is determined by how many you are holding already; your first coin is denoted as a Bronze coin; the second is Silver and the third is a Golden coin.

Game Objective

The magazine blurb for the game points out that it was written so that even the person who types it in cannot work out how to solve it. Having said that, the game offers no real clues as to its solution that I have been able to find, so I took a look at the code in more detail. Fortunately, unlike the last text adventure game I looked at (Adventure by Program Power) the code is not obfuscated greatly and can be examined fairly readily.

Castle of Fear: game in play

The instructions merely instruct you to "escape" from the castle and give you a time limit of 100 turns in which to do so.

From examining the program code, to win the game you must to collect all three coins and then place one each in 3 consecutively-aligned rooms in the castle. The trick here is that the type of coin (Bronze, Silver or Gold) is decided when you actually pick it up, based on how many you are carrying already. If you are carrying no coins, the next coin you pick up will be Bronze; if carrying one coin then the next will be Silver; if carrying two coins then it will be Gold.

At the same time, a wandering troll is attempting to do the same with the jewels found in the castle. Caution: if the troll succeeds first, then you are struck to death on the spot!

Castle of Fear Disk Image

An image of the game suitable for playing with the BeebEm emulator can be found at the 8-Bit Software site. Click here for a direct link to the image (zipped).