Latinorum

Back in the mid-90s when Doom was all the rage, I was in high school and had dreams of video-game-writing glory, so one afternoon I cracked open the game’s level editor to see what I could make of it. Confronted by the blank grid, I was momentarily at a loss for what to create, and defaulted to trying to map out the dorm I was sitting in. This was fun while it lasted, but unfortunately the building’s defining features were its two high stairwells, which were impossible to so much as gesture at in Doom’s 2.5-dimensional-on-a-good-day engine, so thus my dreams were dashed. But I always think of that when I come across a my-dumb-apartment game or something similar, because for all that it’s easy to roll one’s eyes at the lack of inspiration, and be frustrated by the way real-world places feel like they’re full of redundant rooms, illogical connections, and gratuitous empty space when experienced in a virtual context, it’s also worth trying to get back in touch with the impulse that gave birth to them: the wonder at being able to conjure up something from nothing, the impulse to domesticate a strange new digital world by recreating someplace familiar, the thrill of recognition when hard work finally makes it real.

Latinorum makes it easy to dwell on the positive side of that dichotomy. Per the author’s note, this is a rewritten version of a game he wrote when he was likewise in high school, updated and rewritten but still very much of a piece with that early era of IF (like, it requires a C64 emulator to play, for one thing). The real-world origins would be obvious even without this paratext, though – the school you explore has a bunch of near-identical classrooms, features like blackboards and closets that are scrupulously implemented but rarely have anything plot-related to offer, and a confusing map with exits that don’t always make sense, all of which means it feels too idiosyncratic to be made up.

But while I don’t have any nostalgia for this vintage of IF, much less this particular Italian secondary school, the game still manages to be worth the fifteen minutes or so it takes to play through it. For one thing, you’re given a clear goal that rationalizes why you’re exploring this particular deserted place – you’re trying to steal an exam paper the night before the test so you can get a good grade, which is cheating, sure, but a fun enough jumping-off point for a short adventure. For another, the game keeps things short and easy enough that it doesn’t overstay its welcome. There’s some light object-manipulation puzzles and some locked doors, but the two-word parser makes solving most of these straightforward, and the game is free of hunger timers and unwinnable states; the only old-school touch I noticed was one puzzle near the end where I had to manually OPEN a BOOK despite EXAMINING it seeming to indicate that I had already flipped through it, which is a little annoying but nothing a trip to the thoughtfully-provided walkthrough couldn’t solve.

Beyond that, the game leans into its scholastic setting with some fun, gentle gags: I like that it opens with a cheery “alea iacta est”, and this bit of description when you check out a paper airplane made from folding up a page from one of Kant’s books made me laugh very hard:

"The legendary Critique of Pure Reason. The aircraft, made from a sheet of notebook paper, took off from an unidentified bench, but due to a malfunction in the control systems, landed at the feet of the Philosophy professor who was explaining (so to speak) Kant."

That “(so to speak)” is 10/10, no notes.

Is Latinorum one for the ages? No, it’s a slight thing, but there are worse jaunts to take down memory lane, and it makes me positively disposed towards the games the high school students of today are even now making, recording their experiences for future generations yet to come.

This is a fairly short but well done classic text adventure fitted into the memory of a Commodore 64 / emulator. I played the "play online"-version and except for the initial load and when saving/loading your progress, the responses were almost instant.

• The story is simple but fine enough for this type of "classic" text adventure: Go figure out what the latin test will be about, then copy the necessary text from the text book somewhere in the school. Along you will need to solve several puzzles.
• Of course, some games back in the days had better stories which would have improved this game some. Also, there are several latin phrases but I never learned latin so for me that was kind of wasted, though I could of course had translated it online if I bothered. But it was good enough as it was.

• At times the game was too helpful as opening an item or door often simply required e.g. OPEN DOOR when holding the right item, rather than specifying with the INSERT command. Speaking of commands, all verbs are given when typing COMMANDS so technically, this is a "limited parser"-game so no fighting the parser luckily!

  So despite the game being too easy, this was a charming little nostalgic piece :)

Adapted from a SpringThing26 Review

Played: 4/18/26
Playtime: 45min

I don’t have the unbroken runway with this hobby to know if “pull-forward” games (the opposite-yet-not of “throwback”, where ancient implementations are dragged kicking and screaming into today’s IF scene) are a recent phenomenon, or a low-key throughline throughout IF’s history. Aaron Reed, you have left me unprepared here! Certainly in my 4 years of engagement I have seen enough of them to recognize the category. This iteration is a reimplementation of the author’s unpublished Commodore 64 work, complete with online C64 emulator.

These implementations have a specific aura to them: they simultaneously harken to a day when computer capabilities were more tantalizing promise than reality, and invoke a youthful creative impulse, getting its hands around virgin technology and bending it, however imperfectly, to its will. You get both of those in spades here - a very small, very tight geography of locked doors to navigate around, littered with sometimes useful, sometimes red herring objects.

I found it to be reasonably smooth (with two exceptions), especially notable given its Italian-language authorship to this English reader. A key design choice, which I question whether was present in the original, was to highlight interactable nouns in the text. This compromise runs the risk of leeching away some of the promise of parser play, but in exchange bypasses the ‘flounder for implemented noun’ pockets that can occur. Especially for a work (at least initially) created by a new-to-form author, this tradeoff is WELL worth it and made the experience pretty robust.

The story this is in service of is hilariously of-its-(original)-authors-age: you must cheat your way to passing a test! No moral judgement, no exploration of transgression, just a very pragmatic this-must-be-done task. The completely un-self-conscious tone of the protagonist’s execution of this mission is a subversively funny baseline that sturdily supports the whole thing. The puzzles themselves are pretty uncomplicated affairs: finding keys, tools, or other artifacts to unblock obstacles until the test key is finally yours. For its age, I found it amazingly friction-free, much more so than games I played back in the day.

There were two aspects that did grate at me over time. The first was its emulator performance. Either through code complexity or as a deliberate design choice, the emulator seemed to recreate the key lag of 80’s hardware, so much so my 2026 fingers routinely outpaced the UI, skipping letters I for sure typed. This happened a lot. This is a piece of the experience that does not weather the intervening years well. Like watching 1970s cinema, the PACING is the ‘of its time’ artifact that holds up the least. Our contemporary expectations are just too far removed to see it as other than intrusive.

The second artifact seems pretty specific as well. You can >TAKE objects, but not >GET them. Now, this is petty for sure, but as a parser fan those neurons are burned pretty deep. My fingers stretch for the ‘G’ key before I know what I’m doing. By FAR the most repeated sequence of the game was:

>GET [something]
%@#$($#
>TAKE [something]

So, so many reps. There was a flash of red in my vision every time it happened, but honestly both those artifacts were also kind of endearing? They served as omnipresent reminders of WHAT I was engaging with, which, given the modest nature of the narrative, deserved its place at the table. It is telling to me that even its most dated gameplay paradigm - inventory management - did not spark my ire. It felt fully of a piece to the rest of the work and I (acharacteristically) just rolled with it.

This was a slight, sly, simultaneously smooth and chunky experience that evoked its provenance quite well, and unlike others of this pedigree never wore out its welcome.

(I should note the 'GET' shortcoming seems to be subsequently updated, so future players be comforted!)

Spaceship: Hermes
Vibe: Too Cool for (Old) School
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I would have to engage Vax/VMS instead. Is there an emulator for that? Y’know what, don’t bother looking it up. OF COURSE THERE IS.

This was one of the more enjoyable modern commodore 64 games I've played. Short, good parser, to the point, amusing.

You play as a schoolchild trying to break into a school in the 80s to copy the latin exam so that you can cheat on the real test day.

The school is pretty big, with some areas gating off others. Gameplay is classic parser style with picking up objects, examining them, and using them to open up obstacles.

I do recommend typing COMMANDS to get a list of commands.

There are some red herrings and an inventory limit but the red herrings added to the charm and the inventory limit was very generous (I picked up almost everything and only had to drop a couple of things).

A nice way to spend 15-30 minutes.

Originally posted on intfiction. Minor edits were made

Back when I was in high school, the oral exams for Spanish class terrified the (non-Hispanic/Latine) student population. We had to take a historical figure from a Spanish-speaking country and give a talk about them to the teacher and the rest of the class, a former Jesuit and very strict, He would grill us on our technique and pronunciation mistakes mid-presentation, with a lot of scathing comments directed towards the hordes of people who did Simón Bolívar or Gabriel García Márquez (although all he had to say to the guy who did Augusto Pinochet was “Oh! Very controversial” and a B+ grade).

In Latinorum, you’re also a student experiencing dread over language exams, although you’re Italian, it’s the 1980s, it’s ‘merely’ a written exam, and the good thing about written exams is that you can steal the test materials and cheat from them.

The game is much more friendly than I was expecting from it being a Commodore 64 game made over forty years ago (the C64 was quite a bit before my generation). The limited two-word parser, small scope, interactable objects being highlighted, and lack of death/no-win states means it’s approachable. I was never in any doubt about what to do despite an abundance of red herring items to pick up (and limited inventory space). Some of the writing was funny, I was reminded of all the dread my classmates and I had to go through preparing for the exams. A good way to spend fifteen to twenty-five minutes.