Jacaranda Jim

Jacaranda Jim was the first IF I ever played. It was, to put it mildly, not a brilliant game; the tone is wacky-morose-snark in that Douglas Adams style that's unbearable when done by anybody other than Douglas Adams. It was clearly aware of this. The world doesn't make a vast amount of sense now, and it made even less sense to an eight-year-old. It kills you a lot. It traps you permanently in certain rooms. It has a sidekick character, Alan the Gribbley, who is both revolting and useless. When I wrote off for the map and my one hint, the former turned out to be larger by several orders of magnitude than the area I had actually managed to explore.

There were, however, a number of puzzles that I managed to solve. They didn't really resemble anything that might be considered a plot, but I gained a good deal of satisfaction from them anyway. And I played and played and played it, despite everything, because I understood that this was a medium vastly more appealing than anything else available at the time, if only the content wasn't so horrendous. So I owe it a fairly substantial debt, despite all.

Moreover, it introduced me to a number of words, including 'bootleg' (there is an evil Software Pirate) and 'plinth'.

This was the game that got me into Interactive Fiction all those years ago. I remember many a lunchtime rushing down to the computer lab to see if I could get any further.

As far as IF goes, it's very old school, focusing mostly on puzzles. Some puzzles are quite easy, whilst others are quite tricky. There's a main 'theme' to the game, that once you get makes progress much easier. Regardless, you do get killed, often, and without warning. An 'undo' feature would be handy here.*

Also, the game is 16-bit, which makes it difficult to run on 64-bit versions of Windows without using an emulator such as DosBox.*

Regardless, if you like traditional Text Adventures this is a must-play game, that should keep you entertained for a good few evenings.

Out of interest, has anyone ever managed to get more than 2255 points out of 2400? If so, please drop me a line.

(* Shameless plug - Both of these problems can be worked around by playing the ADRIFT port of this game)

My friends and I loved Jacaranda Jim when it turned up on "cover disks" around 1990. Coming back to it after all this time, it's still enjoyable. Some of the surprise deaths can be a bit irritating, but the voice which the game was written in is quite pleasant (similar to "Humbug", the author's second release), contrary to the other review on here - I do wonder if it might appeal more to British players.