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Review
Castle Adventure was created by David Malmberg on the PET computer using a BASIC adventure engine created by Scott Adams for the TRS-80. Adams published and explained his engine in Creative Computing Magazine (August 1979), Byte Magazine (Dec 1980) and Softside (July 1980). It is the same engine which underlies adventures like Adam's "Pirate Adventure." However, unlike Pirate Adventure, which only has a few treasures, there are many more treasures to be found in Castle Adventure. The world that Malmberg creates is also much more internally coherent than what one typically finds in Adams' early adventures. The dangers are much less arbitrary too and on the whole I found the experience much more satisfying and less frustrating than Adams' Adventure 1 or 2. That being said, Adams adventure "driver" software is what I found most interesting and how Malmberg was able to apply it to a new story. However, one annoyance is that there tends to be some lag between entering a command and receiving a response. This is, I think, a legacy of the complexity and flexibility of Adams' driver software, so players of modern IF might find the experience a little frustrating. However, if you are curious about how the art of IF Basic adventure programming was spread and can appreciate some of the slowness of an 8-bit Basic game, this adventure is certainly worth a try.
(Spoiler - click to show)In the version I played there seemed to be some quirks with the guard routine. I'm not sure if there is supposed to be only one guard, but it seems like this should be the case. For example, one can fight the guard and be defeated and thrown in the dungeon. After escaping the cell, one can defeat the guard who is rendered unconscious. Despite being unconscious you can still run into a (another?) guard and end up back in the dungeon cell, but the cell door remains open and one can still find the unconscious guard. Also, the unconscious guard has keys, but as far as I can tell, they are never mentioned and cannot be "searched" for. One must simply think to "get keys" after defeating the guard.
