Gaming

A while ago I bought the modern version of "Bards Tale" on Steam on a whim (it was on sale for literally a couple of bucks), which also included the three original games in an emulated Apple II format.

But instead I'm playing the DOS version, through DosBox on my Linux laptop. I'm regretting it a bit, I should have probably gone for the Commodore 64 version for maximum retro feel. Plus the music on the Dos version is utterly unbearable.

Sword and Sorcery games really are not my thing so I didn't last very long. I'm more interested in exploring than battling, and I got tired of grinding through the random encounters and then having to interrupt exploring a dungeon to resurface to recharge my hit and spell points.

I recently found a program for drawing maps for text adventures. I always found the map drawing part (on paper) really annoying since I'd never know where to start on a page and I'd invariably run out of paper on at least on side. Then part of puzzle was figuring out how rooms were arranged, and having to that on paper meant lots of trial and error, draw & erase and the map in the end would be a complete mess. Having a program where you can move rooms around at will and draw complex connection actually makes it fun! And you get a nice clean map in the end.

So I got back into some old Infocom text adventure games. I just finished "Leather Goddesses of Phobos" and had great time (and now have some beautiful maps Cleveland, Mars and the Venusian Jungle to show for it). Now I'm wondering which game to play next...