Game #63: Mystery House

Mystery House was not the first game to use graphics in 1980. Role playing games had already been using graphics for years. Applying graphics to an adventure game, however, was unprecedented as previous story-based adventure games were entirely text based. Mystery House has the notoriety of being the first “graphic adventure” game.

One day Ken Williams took a teletype terminal to his home to work on the development of an accounting program for the Apple II. He was rummaging through a catalog which accompanied the terminal and found a program called Colossal Cave Adventure. He and his wife Roberta both played it all the way through and they immediately began to search for something similar. They were surprised how underdeveloped the market was at the time. Roberta Williams liked the concept of the text adventure very much but she thought that the player would have a more satisfying experience with graphics or images. She began to work on her own game, a detective story inspired by Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.

Ken then spent a few nights developing the game on the Apple II using 70 simple drawings which had all been made by Roberta. They packaged the software in Ziploc bags containing a 51/4-inch disk and a photocopied paper describing the game. It was sold in local software shops in Los Angeles County. Mystery House was a huge success. It sold a record breaking 10,000 copies at $24.95 apiece which was amazing for the time. In 1980, that same year, Ken Williams founded On-Line Systems which would become Sierra On-Line in 1982. Their experience with Colossal Cave Adventure would have a “colossal” impact and influence on video game history.

I had thus far only been playing CRPGs and text adventures of the period. I knew that I just had to experience what was considered THE very first graphic adventure. I was just as excited to experience this particular game as I had been to experience Zork I; the first Infocom title.

The game starts outside an abandoned Victorian mansion. Once you make your way inside of the house you are soon locked inside with seven other people: Tom, a plumber; Sam, a mechanic; Sally, a seamstress; Dr. Green, a surgeon; Joe, a gravedigger; Bill, a butcher; and Daisy, a cook.

Initially it seems that you, as the player, are competing with the seven other individuals to find a cache of jewels hidden somewhere in the house. However as you begin to explore the house the dead bodies begin to pile up as it becomes obvious there is a killer loose in the house.

I initially thought that I was going to have a much harder time with the graphics than I did. However I thought that the wire frame graphics depicted in the game were more than adequate enough to convey to the player what was needed. It took me a little bit of time to get used to the graphic adventure format as well being that I had been immersed in nothing but CRPGs and text based adventures. I initially had a hard time with the game. I started out by making an initial map of the house and collecting items that I thought might be useful but then I found my forward progression come to a screeching halt.

I finally found a use for the butterknife that I found in the kitchen sink which opened up exploration of many more locations. There were still a couple of sticking points in the game that halted my progress for some time. I mistakenly thought that the skeleton key which I found in the basement would open up the locked chest in the attic. I initially thought it was a parser issue until I realized I must find a second key.

The discovery of that second key DID become a parser issue. I knew that I needed to properly manipulate something in my possession to put out the fire which I accidentally start in the dining room. I was unsuccessful in my first few attempts to put out the fire and I just figured I would solve the problem by skipping that particular crisis all together. That turned out to be a mistake.

The other mystery I knew I needed to solve was that of the ladder in the attic. I wasted a lot of time up in that attic experimenting with the game’s parser. I would learn later that by visiting a new location I would trigger the ability to use the ladder.

It took me some time but I was eventually able to solve the game on my own except for one area. A text adventure trope is carried over into this graphic adventure; the obligatory maze. You find yourself in the latter third of the game in the forest just outside of the mansion. The forest itself is a maze that needs to be navigated. I spent probably a good two hours dropping items and mapping out all of the forest locations and yet I could not figure out how to return to the mansion. I finally resorted to peeking at a walkthrough that I found online and discovered that besides north, south, west, and east, I have to choose to go UP at one location and then that will deposit me outside of the kitchen door. Despite the fact that all the forest graphics that were depicted were exactly the same. This almost qualifies as not fair and I am glad that I did “cheat” and peek at a map because I’m not sure I would have returned to the maze and typed up and down in each location (there are many).

I eventually encountered the killer, which turned out to be a bit creepy, and ended up having to shoot the individual. Once the mystery of the killer had been solved all that was left was to find the jewels that were hidden somewhere in the house. The encounter with the killer revealed a final clue which helped with the search. Once the jewels were obtained it was a simple matter of leaving the house by successfully unlocking the front door.

I enjoyed my experience with this game. I felt it was important to experience first hand the period’s very first graphic adventure and the game which would launch an empire. I was fearful that what I viewed as now primitive graphics would be a poor replacement for the theatre of my mind where the text adventures were played. This turned out though to be an entirely different animal and experience and I am glad that I took the time to play it and savor it.