1993: Curses (Aaron A. Reed’s “50 Years of Text Games”)

The latest in Aaron A. Reed’s monumental project” 50 Years of Text Games” focuses on Graham Nelson’s programming language Inform, and in particular his game “Curses.”

“You have to get a coin from the temple of zeus to buy the ekmek,” explained one responder. “To do that you need to use the rod of luck. To use the rod of luck you have to change the nature of the universe.” Gradually more and more people decided to give this new game a shot, downloading it via FTP and running it on their InfoTaskForce interpreters just to see what all the fuss was about. It would soon become all anyone on the newsgroups was talking about, and remain that way for most of the next two years.

Curses begins, as mentioned, in the present-day attic of an old British estate called Meldrew House. As the latest Meldrew, you’ve climbed the stairs in part to search for an old tourist map of Paris, but also to escape from the bustle of your family preparing for a trip to the continent.

Source: 1993: Curses