Holiday merriment with many past guests and minimal editing!

Retro Adventurers Jason and Nick chat about the year that was including recent developments in classic adventure open source, plans for 2026, and more with many of our past participants:

Robin Raymond, author of Kingdom of the Seven Stones (Episode 9)

A separate chat with Ron Martinez (Episode 11) will be published in a later episode.

Parsely tabletop game

Nick's unfinished PunyInform book

Nick and Jason deliver holiday cheer straight from Santa's Grotto in the form of two 1980s Christmas classics. First up is the bite-sized Quill adventure A Spell Of Christmas Ice by Mike Turner, originally published on the tape-based 16/48 Magazine for ZX Spectrum users. For the main course, enjoy Brian Howarth's very British adaptation of the very American monster mayhem classic Gremlins.

Curl up by the fire with your favorite picturebook adaptation of a Hollywood blockbuster, listen, and enjoy the season!

16/48 Magazine Issue 12

A Spell Of Christmas Ice, stand-alone tape image

Mike E. Turner (IFDB)

Gremlins: The Adventure (IFDB)

Gremlins: The Adventure (MOCAGH)

Level 9 Archive (Github)

Andrew Plotkin's analysis of Zork I-III becoming open source

Original cover photo by Gy21dds

No one has reviewed more text adventures and works of interactive fiction over the past decade than MathBrush. A self-described newcomer to the scene he has nonetheless posted over 3,600 reviews and counting of games old and new, along with creating or collaborating with others to create 30 games of his own.

MathBrush's thousands of reviews

MathBrush's IFDB profile

MathBrush's games

Intfiction.org profile

Get ready to type out every letter in "dodecahedron"!

Nick, Jason, and Ben play two games steeped in math, science, and trippy physics in this episode. Beyond the Tesseract by David Lo is the appetizer course, a game originally designed in TRS-80 Level II BASIC, then ported to C and published on a variety of platforms before later being reimplemented in Inform 6 by Andrew Plotkin. A self-professed "abstract adventure", you'll have a better time with it if you paid attention in school.

The main course was published in 1984 for the BBC Micro by the Association of Teachers of Mathematics (UK) and goes by L: A Mathemagical Adventure. It's a core memory for many who were young and remember their school experiences with BBC Micros, but does the plot to rescue the fair maid Runia from the Drogos hold up today?

Beyond the Tesseract (IFDB, includes playable link)

L: A Mathemagical Adventure (IFDB)

L: A Mathemagical Adventure (playable online, BBC)

Beatle Quest for BBC Micro

Shawn McClure's How To Design Adventure Games (IntFiction.org)

WE'VE GOT TEXT ADVENTURE SIGN!!

Ben, Jason, and Nick stooge their way through two comedy games. First up is the 1993 Matt Barringer "classic" Detective as put (unofficially) through the wringer of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew by CE Forman and a collection of subsequent riffers. One player was (and remains) completely baffled by this format in which a man and two robots are forced to watch a bad movie (slash play a bad game) for the entertainment of two mad scientists, against a backdrop of scenery bought for peanuts.

Then they take on Delta 4's treatment of Terry Pratchett's Discword in The Colour of Magic, a waiting simulator disguised as a four-part comedy adventure. Watch out for the end of the world!

The Colour of Magic (IFDB)

MST3K: Detective (IFDB)

Detective, author's original version (IFDB)

Discworld on Page and Screen, Part 2 (The Digital Antiquarian)

Review of Detective (SPAG #5)

MST3K Satellite News

Discworld Emporium

Ben, Jason, and Nick set sail for adventures new and old on this episode, starting with 10 CAVE ADVENTURE, so named for the number of BASIC lines making up its entire codebase. They then head to the Commodore VIC-20 for a crack at Young Arthur's Quest before journeying to the not-so-long-ago 2021 release Captain Cutter's Treasure, a neo-retro style adventure created in the PunyInform system.

Captain Cutter's Treasure (IFDB)

Young Arthur's Quest (Renga in Blue)

Young Arthur's Quest (MobyGames)

10 Cave Adventure (Spectrum Computing)

8-Bit Show and Tell's breakdown of 10 CAVE

Ben, Jason, and special guest Dave "Velociraptor" of This Week in Retro take on a double dose of robot-themed games. First up is Souls of Darkon by Andy Walker, published by Taskset and Bug-Byte for Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, and Commodore 64. The robot "Komputa" aids the player on their quest to combat a variety of dread evil forces.

For the main course we take on Epyx's text adventure adaptation of Isaac Asimov's novel The Robots of Dawn, written by Jon Leupp. The team note the substantial departure from the book's plotlines, the surplus of empty offices, and some inconsistencies between the Apple II and Commodore 64 versions.

Ben solves a decades-long gaming mystery, plus there's a cat and a mouse and only one of them survives to the end of the episode!

Souls of Darkon (MobyGames)

Souls of Darkon (MOCAGH)

The Robots of Dawn (MobyGames)

The Robots of Dawn (MOCAGH)

The Robots of Dawn (playable online, C64)

The Robots of Dawn (playable online, Apple) 

The Robots of Dawn by Asimov (novel, Wikipedia)

Creator of games including Hadean Lands, Spider and Web, and Shade, as well as a long-time maintainer of Inform and participant in Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation (IFTF) leadership, Andrew "Zarf" Plotkin was also a teenager once. And back then he wrote Inhumane, as covered in Episode 27.

Jason and Nick welcome him to the program discuss the creation of Inhumane, the evolution of his work as a participant in the modern interactive fiction community, and the prospects for another "Infobom" title in that parody vein.

Zarfhome (personal homepage and contact info)

IFDB credits

IFTF

A Change in the Weather

Praser 5

Grimtooth's Traps

Episode image from The Book of Adventure Games II

All the way back in Episode 1 we promised to play Level 9's Knight Orc. Ben and Jason chip away at that obligation by playing... the first of three independent-load sections of the game. (We're working on it!) They do their best to navigate the aptly-named "KAOS" engine and assemble rope. (So much rope.)

But first, a clearout of news and listener mail, and a visit to the wry parody of Infidel, Andrew Plotkin's Inhumane. The game is loaded with death traps and unlicensed appearances by famous characters, including a cameo from the villain of Episode 20's Mask of the Sun.

Knight Orc (IFDB)

Knight Orc (playable online, BBC version)

Inhumane (IFDB)

Inhumane (playable online)

Retro Gaming Books collection

How to program a text adventure in C

Dog Star Adventure (IFDB)

Evertop PC

Mystery of Arkham Manor (Spectrum Computing)

Mystery of Markham Manor (IFDB)

Rick Hanson (IFDB)

Ben and Jason take on the text adventure distillations of two uniquely British phenomena.

First up is the "prolific musical innovator" genre with Number 9 Software's Beatle Quest, a psychedelic trip into lots and lots of Beatle song concepts and name-checking.

For the main course, the duo explore the "slobs in space" phenomenon through the storytelling of shareware highlight Jacaranda Jim by modern-day InfoSec celebrity Graham Cluley. It's one of Ben's all-time games, but can he convert his American collaborator?

Beatle Quest by Garry Marsh (IFDB)

Beatle Quest (playable online, ZX Spectrum)

Jacaranda Jim by Graham Cluley (IFDB)

Jacaranda Jim (play online or download)

Christopher Drum's Infocom Zork on Cosmopolitan 

Graham Cluley's computer security news (YouTube)

Cover photo CC-BY 2.0 khakidoggy