A weird house stands on the edge of a sheer cliff. Its strange twisted turrets looming out of an always gloomy sky. No wall seems straight, no corner a right-angle. Not surprisingly no one lives there - well no human that is.
People say the richest man in the world spent his last days there. Strangely, no one ever saw his body...
You have decided to learn more about this mysterious building, perhaps it contains some abandoned treasures that will reward your curiosity.
Haunted House may be found as a type-in game in Write Your Own Adventure Programs pp. 33–37, a free PDF of this book is available for download from Usborne Publishing (scroll to near the middle of the page).
The full game covered most of the listed platforms, but a special cut-down version of the game was included for the ZX81.
John Elliot maintains a web page about this game which includes the original Microsoft BASIC version (as well as versions for IBM Disk BASIC and Cassette BASIC), the typed-in ZX Spectrum & ZX81 program, and ports to C and Inform.
Marc Lepage ported the game to Lua and Scratch.
In 2019, the original Usborne game was ported to the TRS-80 MC-10 by Jim Gerrie.
The game Haunted Manor, for VIC-20, appears to have been largely based on the original Usborne adventure.
The game Waverton Castle on the Microbee is an enhanced version of this game.
[+] Users who have solved this game
[+] Users currently playing this game
I still have the book for this adventure, including my pencil notes for converting it to the standard Sharp MZ-700 BASIC.
You can play the original here: http://bbcmicro.co.uk//game.php?id=2123
or the expanded version here: http://bbcmicro.co.uk//game.php?id=2124
The version at http://bbcmicro.co.uk//game.php?id=2123 seems to have a couple of bugs:
- I didn't encounter the ghosts
- If you use the verb "SCORE" after picking up all the treasure, the game crashes "Mistake at line 1570"
Really good game. The Vic20 worked flawlessly. You can download this port needed a 16k memory extension here: http://www.vic20listings.freeolamail.com/book_writeownadv.html#hh
I do so love games where you spend ages trying to break through a wall with an axe and SMASH WALL, BREAK WALL WITH AXE, HIT WALL WITH AXE ad nauseam fail to work. Eventually you find SWING AXE is the only correct option. It's not even logical. I can swing an axe at nothing. Hitting a wall is is a non negotiable action. If you can't construct clever puzzles, stimey the player with an opaque parser eh?