What … Is This?
If you’re like my brother and me, you love old-timey computer games almost more than the latest and greatest shoot-em-up. For as long as I can remember, my brother and I have loved playing classic puzzle games like King’s Quest, Commander Keen (yah, I realize that’s not really a puzzle game), and, later, games like the Myst games.
As such, after years of my brother and I writing our own useful programs, Andrew had a brilliant idea. “Hey, why don’t we write an old-school adventure game with lousy DOS graphics? You know, in the fashion of King’s Quest and the like?”
This was an idea through most of 2008, began development in 2009, and became what it is now sometime in 2010. Obviously, we could have put effort into making these graphics cutting edge … but that would kind of defeat the purpose. We intentionally made this game for nostalgic purposes.
The music is pure genius, I must say. Any likenesses you may here throughout the game to other old-timey games you’ve played is purely coincidental. Don’t sue us.
Alright, I Follow. So Who’s Ernie?
Ernie was my dog. I don’t say “was” because he’s dead or anything terrible like that−I say “was” because he now belongs to my brother. I now have a new dog named Dante, and he and Ernie get along great. But I digress.
When Andrew started developing The-Yet-To-Be-Named-Old-School-Game, he needed something to fashion it after, and he wanted it to be something he and I had in common, since we had the same affinity for such games. Ernie must have been trotting by at the time, because he decided to make him the main character. And thus development began.
Uh, I Didn’t Play Old-Timey Games. What Do I Do?
Use the arrow keys to move the Ernie character around. When you walk up to an object you’d like to do something with, type the action. Then press enter. Yes, type. For instance, if you walk up to a shiny object on the ground, try typing the command “get key” and pressing enter. Don’t know if it’s a keep? Try the “look” command to see what’s around you. Be specific. If you see a person, type “look person”.
The key to these old game typing commands is verb noun. So to talk (verb) to aperson (noun), you’d type “talk person”. Don’t know the name of the person? Type “look” and maybe the description will tell you the name of the person in the screen.
Type “inventory” to see a list of the items in your … you guessed it … inventory!
Oh, and as I said before, this was intentionally made as a DOS-style game. That means your mouse won’t work at all. If you’d like to access those menus at the top, press Alt and use the arrow keys to navigate.
The Nerd-Speech in This Post is Minimal. Anything to Add?
Yah. The game can also be run on Mac, if you’re interested, but the build isn’t as stable, and, frankly, I didn’t feel like dealing with getting it to that state. Deal with it. If you’d really like to see the game run on Mac, you’re more than welcome to brave the build yourself. You can find it on Andrew’s code repository here. Don’t say I didn’t warn use. Seriously. Not a pretty build. And even if you do get it to build, I’ve only gotten it to run a few times, and it does crash from time to time.
And speaking of crashing, it may crash a bit on Windows Vista. I don’t think we got all of the Vista bugs worked out because, well … it’s Vista. Not worth our time. But it worked consistently on Windows XP and Windows 7. Anyway, you know, we offer this game with absolutely no guarantee or warranty. And it should work just fine for you. I promise.
Conclusion
If you’re a fan of the classics, or you just really like stalking the work I do, or you just want to take my old dog on a walking-tour of my parent’s house, it’s certainly worth a play through!
And, since a lot of the commands and scenarios on this game are very Laird-specific, I’ll leave comments and such enabled on this page so people can post and help each other out if absolutely necessary.
