MISSION SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA -- Softworks today announced the winners in
its sixth annual (1992) contest for the best computer text adventure game
developed using the Adventure Game Toolkit (AGT) system.
The Adventure Game Toolkit is a computer program which allows MS-DOS,
Macintosh, Amiga and Atari ST computer users to create their own "interactive
fiction" or text adventure games. Games developed on one of these computers
may be played on any of the other computers.
It didn't seem possible! We got more and better entries in our 1992 contest
than ever before. Our faithful judges played and replayed these wonderful
games. They tirelessly rated and re-rated the innovative and the classic.
As we tallied the results, it became apparent that we could not possibly
declare one winner. And so, for the second year running, we have two
winners...and a new category! From high atop a pile of entries,
walk-throughs, and judges' ballots, we hereby declare the WINNER in the
INDIVIDUAL CATEGORY ($100) to be
CLIFF DIVER: INVESTIGATOR FOR HIRE -- PURCHASED SIGHT UNSEEN
By Pat Farley
and the WINNER in the SPECIAL GROUP EFFORT ($100) to be
SHADES OF GRAY -- AN ADVENTURE IN BLACK AND WHITE
By Mark Baker, Steve Bauman, Belisana, Mike Laskey, Judith Pintar, the
hercules/Assoc. SysOp, and Cindy Yans
More about the winning games:
CLIFF DIVER: INVESTIGATOR FOR HIRE -- PURCHASED SIGHT UNSEEN -- "Contrary
to popular belief, the life of a private investigator is not one of hot cars,
flying bullets, and loose women." -- so begins this story about Cliff Diver,
P.I. This game is the second of a series of interactive novels featuring
Cliff Diver, a private investigator living and working in San Francisco.
Cliff is cut from the same cloth as such famous PI's as Sam Spade and Philip
Marlowe.
Pat Farley's first Cliff Diver adventure won first place in the 1990
contest. We're delighted to join Diver again. In this adventure you and
Cliff search for lost paintings. Pat Farley's game has everything a good
adventure should have. The judges agreed that this game shines because Pat
writes so well and his game very faithfully recreates the sound and feel of
the classic "hard-boiled" detective stories of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell
Hammett. High praise indeed!
SHADES OF GRAY -- AN ADVENTURE IN BLACK AND WHITE -- Shades of Gray was
conceived, written and coded by seven people: two from England, two from the
East Coast and three from the West. They have never met each other, never, in
fact, spoken to each other on the phone, nor even corresponded by mail. The
entire project was managed through E-Mail, from within a private CompuServe
Gamer's Forum.
The game begins with you waking from a nightmare into another nightmare
-- even more frightening: "You wake painfully, from a fitful sleep, to find
yourself surrounded by three shadowy figures....After a horrible dizzying
moment, the shapes come into focus -- vampires, they are vampires, and they
are nonchalantly discussing your fate....The swarthy one wants to kill you out
of hand. The second argues against. 'He has tasted blood. He's one of us
now....' What blood have you been drinking? The thought of turning into a
vampire frightens you: never to be able to face the light of day again, never
to see Hilary laughing in the sun. But who is Hilary? You can't seem to
remember anything. Not even who you are." This marvelous, mammoth game is as
innovative as Pintar's previous winner, COSMOSERVE, which tied for first place
last year. The Judges were unanimous in their praise of SHADES OF GRAY. This
game blows us away!
OTHER WINNERS
The 1992 winners circle also includes 15 great Honorable Mention
Games (in alphabetical order by title):
ALIENS LAUGHED AT MY CARDIGAN -- by Andre M. Boyle -- This is a takeoff
of a "Hitch-hikers' Guide to the Galaxy" with a little Star Trek thrown in.
WHAT? NO ALCOHOL FREE MINERAL WATER?! -- also by Andre M. Boyle -- You wake in
the data banks of a computer. Your life depends on performing Herculean tasks
set by the none-to-benevolent computer.
THE CAVES OF DYANTY -- A SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURE -- by Nathan Fritz --
The planet Dyanty had been the home of an incredibly advanced race which
mysteriously disappeared long ago. You are one of the archaeologists working
to recover the colossal cities of the ancient Dyantians.
THE DETECTIVE -- by Kit W. Carson -- You're detective John L. Bloom and
an attractive woman has hired you to find her missing husband. Your
challenge: to bring a glimmer of brilliance to the world of detecting.
JOURNEY INTO XANTH -- by Neil Sorenson (based on Piers Anthony) --
Welcome to Xanth, where everyone has a magical talent. Some talents are
useless but your talent is the conjuration of a magic mirror of communication!
THE LADY IN GREEN -- By D. F. Stone -- Friday night at a quiet 18th
century hotel and return to the family were on the agenda. In your planning
you hadn't counted on...the lady in green!
MURDER OF JANE KRANZ -- A DETECTIVE ADVENTURE -- by Christian Andersen --
You are a famous detective in London during the madcap 1920's. The Yard
summons you to a murder at Victoria Street 221B.
OKLIB'S REVENGE -- by Sue Medley -- Sergeant Oklib himself "volunteered"
you to find the King's missing staff. You are off on a classic quest vowing
that you'll find your way back and show Oklib just what you think of him for
doing this to you!
QUEST FOR THE BLACK PEARL -- by Ralph W. Varble -- In this
Indiana-Jones-type-adventure your old Professor begs you to meet him. He
knows the location of the fabled black pearl. You must reach it before the
volcano erupts.
RERUNS AGAIN -- by Neil Sorenson -- In this dizzy adventure you are
inside a world made of television reruns (Gilligan's Island, Star Trek, Brady
Bunch, etc.) Seek the answer for the age old question: Is there life after
syndication?
THE TEMPEST: AN ADVENTURE BASED ON SHAKESPEARE'S PLAY -- by David R Grigg
-- All the elements for adventure are here: searches, shipwrecks, castaways,
villains, and maidens to rescue. You play Ferdinand, prince of Naples, in
this adaptation of the Bard.
TIMESQUARED -- CHAPTER ONE -- CENTROPLIS -- by Bert Lee -- You are about
to graduate from the Chronos Academy, class of 2098. However, before you
graduate you have a great adventure! Bert's the author of APPRENTICE --
TESTING OF A MAGICAL NOVICE -- one of the Best of 1991.
WHAT PERSONAL COMPUTER? -- by John Minson -- Ah, the joys of computer
journalism. Jet-setting around the world, huge amounts of dosh, instantly
attractive to members of the opposite sex. At least that's what you thought
when you started!
WRAITH BLASTER -- by Ken Dibble -- Young, naive, but adventurous, you are
bent on making your living as a trader and explorer in the great galaxy. This
is a trading game with the object of acquiring wealth.
ZIM GREENLEAF'S LABORATORY -- By Melody Grandy -- You are exploring a
sorcerer-botanist's laboratory (complete with common and Latin botanical names
if you're so inclined.) With nasty creatures that attack you, valuables to
find, and the challenge of getting back to your own dimension, this game has
something for everyone.
WINNING GAMES AVAILABLE
All of the winning games are available from Softworks in a special six
disk set for only $ 30. The disks are ZIPped -- so they actually contain more
than 5 megabytes of goodies when they are unzipped to their playable form.
EARLIER CONTESTS
Softworks has sponsored five earlier adventure game writing contests.
The winner of the first contest was ALICE, written by Douglas Asherman. ALICE
put the player in the role of Alice in Wonderland, meeting many of the same
characters described in Lewis Carroll's 19th-century book while also adding
some humorous 20th-century perspective.
The 1988 contest winner was A DUDLEY DILEMMA, by Lane Barrow, a Ph.D
candidate at Harvard. In this game, the player assumes the role of a Harvard
student in his/her quest for knowledge, adventure and a diploma. Along the
way, the player experiences a student sit-in and meets panhandlers, MIT
students and other bizarre characters roaming Harvard Square.
SON OF STAGEFRIGHT, by Mike McCauley was the 1989 winner. In this game,
you play the role of an actor (or actress) trying to get out of an old,
abandoned theater. This is an adventure game in three "Acts", where each Act
has a different theme and a different challenge. The game is fun(ny),
frightening and very clever.
CRIME TO THE NINTH POWER by Patrick Farley was the 1990 contest winner.
In this game, the player helps Cliff Diver, a San Francisco private
investigator escape from the deadly milieu of the Zamboni crime family's
secret headquarters. A "hard-boiled" detective adventure in the style of Sam
Spade or Philip Marlowe!
In the 1991 contest, we had a tie for first place: COSMOSERVE - AN
ADVENTURE GAME FOR BBS-ENSLAVED by Judith Pintar, and THE MULTI-DIMENSIONAL
THIEF by Joel Finch.
COSMOSERVE - AN ADVENTURE GAME FOR BBS-ENSLAVED -- as might be guessed
from the title -- is an adventure that takes place inside a BBS or Bulletin
Board System (complete with sound effects for logging on, switching the
computer ON and OFF, etc.) COSMOSERVE is a very, very original, innovative
and unusual game!
In the game THE MULTI-DIMENSIONAL THIEF, you play the role of a thief
faced with the challenge of rooms "borrowed" from other universes and
permeated with a number of useful items including the infamous "portable
hole." Filled with wonderful puzzles that will remind you of Infocom's
finest, THIEF is extremely well-written, clever and very funny.
AGT BACKGROUND
The Adventure Game Toolkit has been favorably reviewed in a number of
personal computer publications including "PC Magazine", "Computer Gaming
World", "Big Blue Disk", and "Public-Domain Software & Shareware." According
to those reviews, AGT "allows for creating remarkably complex and
sophisticated games in a fairly simple way," that "anyone with an ounce of
imagination can create adventure games...similar in layout and sophistication
to those from Infocom," and "the process is easy...and you'll have hours of
fun doing it." AGT was the winner of the Adventure & Strategy Club's Golden
Chalice Award for 1992.
The Adventure Game Toolkit is distributed as shareware, so that MS-DOS,
Macintosh, Amiga and Atari ST computer owners can try out the program before
buying it. Copies of the program disks may be obtained from user groups,
bulletin boards, and authorized disk vendors for a nominal fee, or directly
from Softworks. Included on the program disks are a dozen sample adventure
games with complete AGT source code. Registration is only $20, or $40
including a printed copy of the 223-page manual, which can also be purchased
separately for $25. Registered users may also purchase the Pascal source code
for AGT for only $50.
For more information, contact Softworks, 43064 Via Moraga, Mission San
Jose, CA 94539. Telephone (510) 659-0533.
