Goblin Towers - Classic 1980s C64 Text Adventure Release

Text Adventures were many of our first forays into video gaming. Similar to the Adventure stories we would get as books each adventure was usually a unique, and fulfilling story combined with puzzles, traps, loot, and enemies. The latest Genesis Project release on csdb is one such classic adventure game: "Goblin Towers" by Supersoft It features the game's cover art, some hints, a map and walkthrough if you get stuck, as well as both 1983 and 1987 versions of the game. 1987s release features a unique font set, bezel graphics, and your score is displayed throughout the game, as well as more detail about each of the game's locations. For a more simplified experience, you can play through the 1983 version, which was written in assembler and retains the default colour pallette of the C64 BASIC screen, but otherwise, plays the same story as the later release.

You start in an abandoned cottage, near a goblin infested castle, full of loot, which you must liberate if you are to complete the game. You must do this by first navigating the maze like forest until you find the castle entrance. Your inventory capacity is limited, so any loot you discover must be taken back to the cottage, where you can drop it to increase your score and rank. Fighting involves taking multiple hits at enemies with whatever weapons you can find. Although I wasn't able to take the goblins weapons when I killed them. Command help can be found in the docs provided, or by issuing the INFO command in game.

If you're a fan of Text Adventure games, then you'll find this has a few nice touches which stand it ahead of the crowd. Using objects with each other involve simple, easy to learn commands. Progress can be saved at any point of the game, and the system of finding and retrieving the castle's treasures is fun. The game also has maze areas, which you'll get lost in very easily, as all the locations seem to look the same. But you can help yourself through these areas by mapping them yourself, and by dropping some of you inventory to use as landmarks. Overall a very nice adventure game, with a fun, but not infuriating level of difficulty. Go north and plunder!

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Review by Hayesmaker
twitter: @hayes_maker