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Pen and the Dark, The

Mosaic Publishing info 1984

Language:
English
Authors:
Keith D. Campbell info
Systems:
BASIC info
Platforms:
BBC/Electron info, C64/128 info, Spectrum
Genres:
Based on literature info, Science fiction
Related:
Bookware [1: Pen and the Dark, The, 2: Width of the World, The, 3: Saga of Erik the Viking, The, 4: Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World, The, 5: Nomad of Time, The, 6: Snow Queen, The, 7: Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾, The, 8: Archers, The, 9: Twice Shy, 10: Raffles, 11: Alice, 12: Amulet, The]
Entered by:
dave, Exemptus, Gunness
Added:
10-05-2010
Edited:
19-01-2025

Synopsis

We play the part of Fritz van Noon, leader of the Unorthodox Engineers, who has been called to the planet Ithica by Dr. Maxwell Courtney to face the problem of The Dark. The Dark is a gigantic mushroom-shaped structure of unknown origin which is totally black and seems to absorb all forms of energy. The shadow cast by the Dark's dome over the surface of the planet is called the Pen, short for
Penumbra. It is a zone where strange physical phenomena take place. Our goal is
to find out the nature of the anomaly and somehow solve its mystery.

Notes

Based on the eponymous short story from the collection The Unorthodox Engineers by Colin Capp.

A Dragon version was almost ready but never released due to the platform's lack of sales.

A sequel, The Subways of Tazoo, was planned but scrapped.

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Images

Image
Pen_and_the_Dark.png Pen_and_the_Dark_1.png PenAndTheDark.gif PenAndTheDark.gif pen_dark_bbc.png

Rating

Average User Rating: 4 (1 rating)

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User Comments

Exemptus (12-10-2022 22:40)

This adventure is unorthodox, like the engineers it depicts, but not in a good way. Too coarsely coded and ill-balanced. It is arguably a single-problem task, which is so long-winded to solve that it becomes tedious very quickly. The existing walkthrough is just a descriptive sketch of actions and is missing some parts, so I have written a literal one.