Curses (video game)
| Curses | |
|---|---|
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| Developer | Graham Nelson |
| Publisher | Self published |
| Designer | Graham Nelson |
| Engine | Z-machine |
| Platform | Z-machine |
| Release | 1993 |
| Genres | Interactive Fiction, Adventure |
| Mode | Single player |
Curses is an interactive fiction computer game created by Graham Nelson in 1993. Appearing in the beginning of the non-commercial era of interactive fiction, it is considered one of the milestones of the genre.
Writing for The New York Times, Edward Rothstein described the game as "acclaimed."[1]
Plot
[edit | edit source]
The player plays the part of the current owner of Meldrew Hall. In the course of searching the attic for an old tourist map of Paris, the protagonist steps into a surreal adventure to uncover a centuries-old curse that has been placed on the Meldrew family. The goal of the game is to find the missing map, and thus annul the curse.
Development
[edit | edit source]Curses was originally developed on an Acorn Archimedes using Acorn C/C++, before Nelson moved to his Inform programming language, which was simultaneously released.[2][3] It was the first non-test game developed in the language.[3] It is distributed without charge as a Z-Code executable. The Inform source code is not publicly available.
Innovations
[edit | edit source]Curses contains some innovations that contribute to its appeal.
- Managing the player's inventory by automatically placing items in a container to make room for an object needed in hand (such as placing an item in the rucksack when reading an entry in a book), eliminating the tedium of having to manually drop one item before picking up another.
- Commands places and objects, displaying all the locations visited and all the objects seen during the game.
See also
[edit | edit source]- Jigsaw, another Graham Nelson game, from 1995
References
[edit | edit source]- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ a b Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
External links
[edit | edit source]- Curses in the Interactive Fiction Database; the entry has some coverage, reviews, and links to both the original release (version 7) and the most recent one (version 16)