- #MYSTERY HOUSE GAME WITH DEMON IN BASEMENT SOFTWARE#
- #MYSTERY HOUSE GAME WITH DEMON IN BASEMENT CODE#
Mark Marlow reviewed Mission: Asteroid, Mystery House, and The Wizard and the Princess for Computer Gaming World, and stated that " Mystery House is considerably more difficult and provides many traps for the unwary in a wonderfully Victorian setting." Ĭomputer Gaming World in 1996 ranked it fourth on the magazine's list of the most innovative computer games. Including its 1982 rerelease through the SierraVenture line, 80,000 units were eventually sold worldwide, making it one of the best-selling computer games at the time. To the Williams's surprise, what Roberta had initially considered a hobby project sold more than 10,000 copies through mail-order. The couple took out an advertisement in Micro magazine as On-Line Systems, and mass-produced Ziploc bags containing a floppy disk and a sheet of instructions, to be sold at US$24.95 (equivalent to $82.05 in 2021).
#MYSTERY HOUSE GAME WITH DEMON IN BASEMENT CODE#
The game's code was completed in only a few days, and was finished on May 5, 1980. The resulting game is a text-based adventure with a depiction of the character's location displayed above the text. Ken found, however, that the resulting digital drawings were too large to fit into a 5¼-inch floppy disk, so he devised a way to convert the images into coordinates and instructions for the program to redraw the lines of the scenes rather than static images, as well as writing a better version of the VersaWriter scanning software. Roberta drew seventy scenes for the game. Ken suggested that adding graphical scenes to the otherwise text-based game would make it more interesting for players, and the couple bought a VersaWriter machine, on which users can trace over a line drawing and convert it to a digital drawing. Ken agreed and borrowed his brother's Apple II computer to write the game on. Recognizing that though she knew some programming, she needed someone else to code the game, she convinced her husband to help her. Īdvertisement from the June 1981 issue of The On-Line Letter for some of On-Line Systems' Hi-Res Adventure games, including Mystery House She was also inspired by the board game Clue, which helped to break her out from a linear structure to the game.
Roberta decided that she could write her own, and conceived of the plot for Mystery House, taking inspiration from Agatha Christie's novel And Then There Were None. They began to search for something similar but found the market underdeveloped. He bought the game and introduced it to his wife, Roberta, and they both played through it. Looking through a catalogue, he found a game called Colossal Cave Adventure. One day, he took a teletype terminal to his house to work on the development of an accounting program.
#MYSTERY HOUSE GAME WITH DEMON IN BASEMENT SOFTWARE#
It becomes obvious that there is a murderer on the loose in the house, and the player must discover who it is or become the next victim.Īt the end of the 1970s, Ken Williams sought to set up a company for enterprise software for the market-dominating Apple II computer. However, dead bodies (of the other people) begin appearing. Initially, the player has to search the house in order to find a hidden cache of jewels. Green, a surgeon Joe, a grave-digger Bill, a butcher and Daisy, a cook. The mansion contains many interesting rooms and seven other people: Tom, a plumber Sam, a mechanic Sally, a seamstress Dr. The player is soon locked inside the house with no other option than to explore. The game starts near an abandoned Victorian mansion. I hope we see more stuff with this nice aesthetics again :)Īnd excuse this shameless promo and this long ass essay.Screenshot from the opening scene of Mystery House I hope you keep this good work up man, and again don't take my complains the wrong way, I really enjoyed this nicely creepy game and the reason why I'm saying these stuff is because I can see that this game could be something really nice and I believe with small tweaks its gonna pop out more. My complains tho is the controls was a bit hard, garbing stuff and placing them sometimes could feel really buggy, and the last stage before making the child into a literal sandwich, was really hard, it took me about 30 minutes to actually beat it which i had to cut down alot in my vid.ĭont take this the wrong way i was actually enjoying this game too much until it started to feel like an endless fight with the demon child in the last fighting stage which made me it feel a bit sad.īut hey it was a game jam's game so its really so impressive for alot of reasons. and I really really liked the fast movement of the child, like him peaking around, was really creepy for some reason like its actually something alive not just an image being moved by some script/animation.
Thanks for making this nice game i really liked the style of it and the "poor" drawn aesthetics that made it feel really creepy and good in its way.