Covert art for Journey
Journey is an interactive text adventure from the mind of Steve Baker. In an early feature article in Softalk Magazine Roberta Williams mentioned a number of text adventures which had influenced her work. She had mentioned Colossal Cave and that she had also played every single Scott Adams adventure she could get her hands on; which is not surprising. What WAS surprising is that she also mentioned Journey from Steve Baker as influential.
Steve Baker worked in the video games industry and continued to produce games until 2006. He worked for Apple and Atari and was responsible for the Atari 5200 port of Defender. He has his own website where you can learn more about his background and game experience.
Journey is a treasure hunt. You have a limited number of moves to find nine items and then place those items in a safe within the mansion. The nine items are as follows:
- lantern
- key
- coin
- knife
- matches
- crowbar
- diamonds
- silver spoon
- rope
The game is also based on a 350 point scoring system. You receive points for accomplishing various tasks in the game as well; such as successfully unlocking the door in the mansion.
There are various ways that you can die within the game (somewhat abruptly I might add) and if you do perish and restart than the items will be randomly scattered throughout the game again. We’ve seen this before with both of Gary Bedrosian’s games: Lords of Karma and Empire of the Over-Mind.
The game locations are a bit varied as well somewhat disjointed. The mansion has two floors to explore while underneath the well there are sewer tunnels. What was surprising is that you can also end up in Downtown Hollywood of all places. This created somewhat of a disconnect for me and the cohesiveness of the game locations didn’t resonate well with me.
This game is very hard to find but if you would like to play this text adventure you can download the game HERE. There really is no plot to speak of here; the game ends when you find all nine items and place them in the safe and then quit. There might be some replay value here if you become enamored with the prospect of trying to score as many points as possible. I have one more game left to review for 1979 and then we’re moving ahead to 1980. I am excited to share the 1980 list I’ve compiled with you.