Dinkum

Baf's Guide

A treasure hunt set in the Australian outback, mostly in an abandoned gold mine. Contains puzzles, but you'll spend most of your time running from randomly-distributed monsters through undistinguished tunnels. Treasures and junk are also randomly distributed. There's no real "save game" feature. Invoking the game with a special flag gives you a "data recorder" with which you can store sequences of moves to a file, but the random aspects limit the utility of this item. Also, using it at all locks you out of the endgame. Apparently, the author wants you to play the whole thing in one sitting. (Why?)

-- Carl Muckenhoupt

SynTax
Reading the various README files gives the impression that Gary Allen has gone to a lot of trouble to rewrite and re-programme the game many times; getting rid of various bugs, improving the coding, and adding yet more Australian content. So he has my admiration for all the effort he's put into Dinkum over the years, but really, the Giant Radioactive Wombat lurking in level 49 of the Acme mines was just too much for me. After a fortnight's play, no mapping <sob> and frequent deaths I think I'll retire gracefully from this particular text adventure.
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