Skool Daze (1984-1988)
In 1984, I got my first computer. It was a zx spectrum 48 and though I enjoyed it mostly playing games, I was from the very start drawn into making some of my own.
So two years later, I was already knee-deep in BASIC and after having written a heapload of tiny binary toys, I made my first little breakthrough. With a couple of BASIC text adventure games, I made first place on a national software competition; actually, I shared it with one five years older student who made a database program for pc.
Only one of the two games survived (this happened long before spectrum emulators became available), titled “Typical Chronical Suicider”. The goal of the game was to kill your character, and there were many different ways to achieve that. It even had early RPG elements, as the player was able to chose his sex and ability to swim. The game drew its main inspiration from the chronical suicider character from Alan Ford comics. Here’s a screenshot:
And the game can be found here, watch out though as it is in Slovene language: World of Spectrum
The other game was about escaping from a zombie island and had some graphics, but alas it’s been lost long ago. I was kind of proud of it though as it had multiple solutions, which was uncommon for text adventures of that time.
My other junior school project that survived the sharp teeth of time was another text adventure, this time written using the Quill system which I modified slightly so I could alter the font and add some graphics. The game was originally ment to be a trilogy, but I only ever managed to scribble up the first two parts before getting involved with something else... “Werewolf” was a horror-themed game, and a lot of inspiration came from other evergreen horror adventure games like Dracula, Jack the Ripper et comp.
You can download the existing copy from: World of Spectrum