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Have Orb Will Travel.zip
Contains Have Orb Will Travel/Have Orb, Will Travel.exe
Windows Application (Compressed with ZIP. Free Unzip tools are available for most systems at www.info-zip.org.)

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Have Orb, Will Travel

by Jim MacBrayne (as Older Timer)

Fantasy Adventure
2023

(based on 3 ratings)
1 review

About the Story

You've spent a lifetime travelling and solving problems for others, but on this occasion have you bitten off a little bit more than you can chew? Where will you find that elusive orb, or has The Council's faith in you been misplaced?

'Have Orb, Will Travel' is a text-only interactive fiction fantasy game, very much in the 'old-school' style. It was written from the ground up for the PC using qBasic64, and has a comprehensive and powerful parser. Included in the game are detailed HELP instructions, and it also has comprehensive hints, both implicit and explicit, which can be accessed using the command HINT.

It is written for Windows on the PC, but can also be run on MacOS using Cross Over or on Linux using WINE.


Game Details


Awards

57th Place - tie - 29th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2023)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Long old-school game with hard maze and complex puzzles, November 22, 2023
by MathBrush
Related reviews: 2-10 hours

This is I think the 5th Jim MacBrayne game I’ve played, and I think it’s definitely the most fair and well scoped of them that I’ve played; either that or I’m simply getting used to their internal logic.

These games are all written in a custom engine that is remarkably smooth, as least here. For those new to Jim MacBrayne games, the most unusual feature is that if an object is in a container or on a supporter, you can’t take it; trying to will say ‘You don’t see any…’. I believe this is due to the fact that tracing through the contents of all the supporters and containers is too hard for the engine to handle. Instead, you have to say TAKE ALL FROM ____. There is a shortcut specifically for that (F1).

Anyway, the main idea of the game is that you are hunting through a cottage and adjoining area for a mysterious orb, with clues left behind by a circle of elders.

Most of the puzzles revolve around enigmatic devices that you have to figure out, interspersed with riddles and codes that explain how to use them.

I was able to get pretty far on my own; although I only got 70 points by the two hour mark, when I checked the walkthrough I was about 40% through the game. The puzzles are tough but fair; the place where I got stuck was due to not remember a clue from earlier.

The setting is very abstract, and much like Zork in its mix of fantasy and modern aesthetics.

I was glad to play this game, and hope Jim MacBrayne is able to enjoy coding up games for a while to come.

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