The Alchemist

Ezekiel Throgmeister, commonly referred to by the villagers as The Alchemist, has left you in charge of his currently-running experiment while he attends to other pressing business. Can you succeed in completing his task?

The Alchemist is a large text-only interactive fiction fantasy game, very much in the 'old-school' style. It was written from the ground up for the PC using qBasic64, and has a comprehensive and powerful parser.  Included in the game are detailed HELP instructions. Also inbuilt is full scripting (commands SCRIPT and UNSCRIPT) 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.

Incidentally, there are no NPCs.

One idea which I have nicked from Garry Francis is inclusion of the command FULLSCORE. This will detail the actions you have taken so far which have increased your score. Thanks, Garry!

For this game I have provided hints, a walkthrough and maps. If these are not used it will prove to be a challenge for most players.

Previously I restricted saved game files to a length of eight characters, but I have increased this to twenty to allow for more-meaningful file names. Only letters and numbers are permitted in the titles of saved games.

For atmosphere there are some decorative/non-functional rooms and a very few red herring items. Several MP3 files are included in the downloaded zip file to produce sound effects, but presence of these files is not essential for the game to run. Sound effects may play either automatically in certain locations, on the occurrence of certain events or as a result of the command LISTEN. Sound functionality can be toggled off and on using the command SOUND.

I can't over-emphasise that new players should read the HELP instructions before starting play. Although a lot of the information given therein will already be completely familiar to most players, there are some important specifics such as the method of taking items from containers and also the ability to define function keys to implement commonly-used commands without the need to type them in full.

There are an additional two pluses to this game...

1. There is no possibility of sudden unexpected death.
2. There is essentially no inventory limit.  (well, actually 3,000 units)

An unwinnable position can be reached in only one situation, but you are warned in advance and are advised to save your position which should avoid disaster.

Although written for windows on the PC it could be run on Linux using WINE and also on MacOS using a Windows emulator such as CrossOver.

Many thanks go to Christopher Merriner and Roger Durrant for help in beta testing.