Somewhere, Somewhen

Somewhere, Somewhen is a large text-only interactive fiction fantasy game (with some humour)  written from the ground up for the PC using qBasic64.  It is uploaded as a zip file, and all contents of this file (with the exception of Read Me.txt) must be present in the game folder for the game to run. It can be run from Windows or in a DOS window. After unzipping, double click on the file "Somewhere, Somewhen.exe" to run the game. Included in the game are detailed HELP instructions and hints (command HINT) in a form similar to invisiclues. These can provide a gentle nudge or a downright spoiler - the player's choice. Also inbuilt is full scripting, with the ability to view the script file in-game via the HISTORY command. The script file can be deleted as an option in the DELETE command. If the file 'Walkthrough.txt' is placed in the game folder, it can be accessed 'in-game' by the command WALKTHROUGH.

Somewhere, Somewhen is far from being a simple game and will take many hours, if not days or weeks, to complete without assistance. On the up side, the built-in hints (and the accompanying map files and walkthrough)  mean that you're never going to be completely stuck at any point.

With the exception of suffering a fatality, which can of course happen, as far as I'm aware you can't paint yourself into a corner or get into an unwinnable situation in this game as could happen with some of my very early games.

On 8-June-2021 I discovered an obscure but significant bug which affected the restoring of a game in a specific situation. This has now been corrected, but unfortunately saved game positions from previous versions can no longer be used.

Many thanks go to Christopher Merriner for his invaluable help with play testing. Other extremely useful input in the developmental stages was given by Kenneth Pedersen from Denmark, who had originally contacted me last January for help with my game Time's Enigma. Indeed it was he who informed me of the existence of ParserComp and persuaded me to write a new game for it - this is how Somewhere, Somewhen came into existence.  Two other testers started out with apparent enthusiasm but didn't last the pace, and dropped completely off the radar at an early stage.