The Black Tower

The Black Tower is a large text-only interactive fiction fantasy game, very much in the 'old-school' style. I originally wrote it in Microsoft BASIC for the Commodore PET in 1983, but although it is pretty dated, with mazes, possibility of sudden death and ability to get into unwinnable situations, I thought the basic concept sound enough to merit re-writing it  for the PC using qBasic64, and this is the result.

It is most certainly a challenging game, and very unforgiving.

In this more modern version it has a comprehensive and powerful parser, and 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. 

I have provided a walkthrough and maps, but no in-built hints are available.  If the file 'Walkthrough.txt' is placed in the game folder, it can be accessed 'in-game' by the commands WALKTHROUGH or WALKTHRU.

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.

Although there are some mazes, decorative/non-functional rooms and a very few red herring items, I have very much reduced these from the original version and for those mazes which I have kept I have greatly reduced their complexity. There are actually very few red herrings (offhand I can only think of four, and they are all in the same general area).

One concession I have made is that the inventory is essentially unlimited, which is very different from the original game and should make things a little easier.

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 or on the occurrence of certain events. 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 supporters, and also the ability to define function keys to implement commonly-used commands without the need to type them in full.

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.

Grateful thanks go to Rafael Martins for help in beta testing. There are no doubt some bugs and oversights still lurking in there, and if you come across any I'd be glad to hear of them.