robotspacer’s adventure corner

Infocom’s Deadline

Continues Tuesday, December 10 at 9 PM EST

“Deadline is one of Infocom’s most difficult games,” according to Emily Short, “and requires a number of playthroughs to win.” The packaging sets up the scenario: “A locked door. A dead man. And 12 hours to solve the murder.” This was Infocom’s third game, after Zork I and Zork II, and their first foray into feelies—physical items included in the game package that recreate objects from the game world.

I’m playing Deadline as part of DOSember, a month-long celebration of DOS games, so I’ll be playing the DOS version. I’ve always appreciated the white-on-black look of DOS text adventures, so it’ll be fun to finally play one that way. I have little hope of finishing this game in one month, so we’re getting started a bit early.

Conquests of the Longbow

Continues Friday, December 13 at 9 PM EST

Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood is the second and final game in Sierra’s Conquests series, originally released in 1991 for MS-DOS. As with Conquests of Camelot, it was designed by Christy Marx, and builds on a significant amount of historical research. This game features lovely VGA graphics in 256 colors, and a fully point-and-click interface that uses icons to determine actions, instead of typed commands.

I’m playing Conquests of the Longbow for DOSember, a month-long celebration of DOS games. I recently purchased a boxed copy of the game, so I’ll be sharing that on stream, including the printed manual. This is a well-loved game and I’m excited to finally play it.