I have a short list of games that I’d like to lump together. In past months I’ve shifted the focus completely to games for a week or two at a time, but truth be told, I don’t think anything I have here is particularly earth-shattering.
On top of that, I think part of the audience drifts away when too many games take over for too long, which I can respect. 😐 Variety is the spice of life, but always give the people what they want. So for those reasons, I’ll dish these up in the same way as the conglomerate posts of last week. This will help clean out my list, and tomorrow we can jump back into boring console gizmos. 😉
Abura Tan: I’m a rootin-tootin cowboy, battling mimics and mutants.
As you can see at right, I did succeed in playing Abura Tan from within DOSBOX. I was only half interested in actually compiling it, since it was mostly .cpp files and lacked the normal source structure I’m used to (in other words, I’m hopeless without a working Makefile … it’s embarrassing, I know). If you try to run this in DOSBOX, hunt down a working csdmpi5b.zip package and decompress it to the same folder as the DOS executable. Otherwise, you’ll get errors. Not in Debian or Arch/AUR.
block: What fresh hell is this?
With one action per keypress, your “character” has the option to move objects around the screen in a way that will allow exit from the level. Maps warp in torus fashion, so falling through the bottom of the level places your caricature at the top of the screen, and so on. It’s not a terrifically exciting work and devolves quickly into a turn-based action game, but it’s not terrible for 1999. Truth be told though, if you want something more like Lode Runner, grab oldrunner instead. Not in Debian or Arch/AUR.
bombardier: Undoubtedly the worst possible solution for an emergency landing.
bombardier is sufficiently entertaining to keep from becoming just another console gimmick, but it’s not going to overshadow other text-based masterpieces. Probably most entertaining are the status line messages that thank you for bombing Bill Gates’ house, or congratulating you on your birthday. 😕 Other than that, it succeeds as a faithful text-based rendition of the original game, and has no qualms about stretching to fit terminals larger than 80×25 (and will kindly ask you to resize your terminal if it’s too small, without barfing up an electronic hairball … which is a nice change). tl;dr … a decent game, but not likely to keep you busy longer than a few minutes. In both AUR and Debian.
chimaera: A thing of hybrid character and fanciful conception.
The description and the source code bill chimaera as an “infinite” adventure, which I believe means “open-ended,” but that might be a misunderstanding on my part. If there is a specific quest or plot to fulfill, I couldn’t find it in the brief time I played chimaera. The game is capable of interpreting very brief, very simple two- and sometimes three-word commands, but the real beauty of chimaera might be its extensive range. The packaged HTML file explains the game’s history, and brags of roughly 20,000 possible mathematically generated locations, with the subtle goal of dragging as much treasure as possible back to your base. If that’s the case, then chimaera is indeed quite an accomplishment. Not in Debian or Arch.
frobtads: Makes the imaginary-text-adventure-world go round.
Listing frobtads here is doubly asinine, since anything I showed you in action would most likely be a separate game with frobtads only as the medium of delivery. Another level of futility crops up in that the frobtads package — which is both AUR and Debian — contains compiler and other tools. So let’s just call this a wrap, and I’ll suggest it if you’re interested in playing or developing text adventures. I do feel obligated to mention that there are graphical analogues for frobtads, and similar tools for other operating systems. Game themselves are available from the creator of tads.org, or from other sites.
gnuminishogi: The smaller board doesn’t make the game any less irritating.
-c — caused errors when given a value of 5. This suggests to me that gnuminishogi is hard-wired to accept the 5×5 board and stripped armies … or I have fouled something up again.
Either way, the argument against including gnuminishogi as a discrete game is perhaps more powerful: The commands and arrangement are the same as its larger brother, which means gnuminishogi suffers the same dreadful play and obtuse interface as its predecessor and its extended family. Consider only if you’re desperate for something to do, and don’t have the time or patience for a full round. Otherwise, ignore.
mindsweeper.awk: Prepare to have your mind swept.
I’ll be painfully honest though: While I admire it for its uniqueness as an awk program, I have so little enthusiasm for Minesweeper games on the whole that I can’t really vouch for mindsweeper.awk aside from its basic functions. Whether it’s really a viable game or a worthy challenger for the Minesweeper-Clone-of-the-Year award … is for someone else to decide. 😐 awk -f mindsweeper.awk for your consideration.
moo: I am endeavoring to construct a mnemonic circuit using stone bulls and cows.
For one, you have the option of watching the computer play against itself — or as this program calls it, “watching Dick play.” You can also go head-to-head with the computer (which I never won), or play by yourself. The computer shows your failures and successes through a code of bulls and cows, which accounts for the unusual name. Scoring is kept by the number of guesses you require to solve the code. This is not in Debian or Arch/AUR that I could find, but fear not — it will take all of about 15 seconds for you to download, decompress, compile and play. One more thing — before you dismiss this tiny game out of hand, be aware of its historical significance.
nct: What’s that? You’re looking for another Tetris clone?
The difficulties arise in that sometimes blocks fall through one another, and I’m not sure if that’s intentional or not. It may be that there is some esoteric rule that nct subscribes to, which makes that oddity a feature and not a bug. But given the age of the program (some timestamps reach back to 1999) and the fact that it’s not in Debian or Arch, I don’t hold out hope for updates. Then again, considering how many hundreds of Tetris clones there are, I’m not too concerned either.
paranoia: At your service, citizen.
paranoia is a computerized “choose your own adventure” game in the same vein, originally released in the February 1987 edition of Space Gamer/Fantasy Gamer. The game is primarily text-driven, but generally only accepts input as choice A or choice B. The setting and atmosphere may not necessarily appeal to you, and it’s not a text adventure per se, so you might see this more as an electronic book. If you remember the original tabletop game, it might amuse you a few times through. But if not, it might be little more than tl;dr. 😦 A Python port exists. Not in Arch or Debian.
seabattle: Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!
By all rights, seabattle should have warranted a post on its own, but we’ve run across (aground on?) a lot of Battleship renditions in the past, and most of them would outstrip seabattle on features it can’t compare to. I’d happily endorse this as an alternative to the illustrious bs, and definitely score it easier-to-use than netships. For a single-player Battleships game that’s easy to play and enjoy, this gets a definite thumbs-up.
Tom Bomb-em: I think there’s a spaceship in there somewhere.
The sad part is, the curses rendition is utterly unplayable, with no readable text and only the vaguest semblance of action on the screen. I included it here because, yes, it does work as a console game, but only in the widest possible definition. The SDL version works fine for me in Arch, but unless you’ve seen what the game does in its graphical state, it’s impossible to even know what keys to press to start the curses rendition. Not in Arch or Debian, in spite of dating back to 2000.
That clears out the leftover fractured games from my list, and allows me to be a little more discriminating with console entertainment in the future. After all, there are thousands of games available to you in a text-only atmosphere, and you can afford to pick and choose your arsenal of amusements. 😉
Inconsolation 
Try Tom Bomb-em with a very large terminal window and tiny font; it’s basically rendering the graphics that show up in the SDL version, I think, and needs more “resolution.”
Enjoying your posts greatly,
Matt
Thanks Matt. I hadn’t thought to give it more space. I’ll try it and see how it goes. Cheers! 😉
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