Valley of the Minotaur by Nicolas van Dyk Fantasy 1983

About the Story

"Valley of the Minotaur" is an EXTREMELY obscure (effectively non-existent, I fear) 1983 IF game developed exclusively for the Apple II-series of computers. Its author, Nicolas van Dyk, won a game-writing contest sponsored by Softalk magazine; the principal prize was he got his game commercially published. The game was a treasure hunt in the style of Zork I, and relied on a simple, two-word (verb-noun) parser. In addition to the collection of the various treasures, there was a secondary goal of slaying the evil Minotaur. Despite its relative technical unsophistication (as compared to the Infocom games of its day), it was a VERY large game which occurred in a huge & evocative island setting, requiring the use of both sides of its 5.25" floppy disk. The game was very quirky, and may have actually had some (minor) bugs.

Game Details