CASA ::

Does anyone know anything about THE TOWER, or CAMBRIDGE?
Part of the recently discovered 6 TWIG SYSTEMS SOFTWARE games (only 2 are adventures) that formed the "Twig Treasure challenge" where £10,000 could be won.
Was it a case of solving the adventures to get a clue to the location of a a physical treasure? or was it just a lottery? or even a scam with no real prize?

The games are now available on bbcmicro.co.uk should anyone fancy having a go at solving or hacking them.

P.S. one of the games still has a genre of "Unreleased game" on CASA

I'd be surprised if anything came of the competition. The whole venture seems to have been a big leap for Twig, who had previously released golf (admin?) software.

Even the news articles and adverts are a little vague about the actual mechanics of the prize... although they do say details will be provided along with the games.

News articles refer to "solving" six (sometimes five) games...

"But if you can solve the first five you may be eligible for the Countdown Quiz, whose winner will receive £10,000".

or

"To score high on the games... you'll need to use brains rather than brute force. But do well at all six, and you'll be in the running for DLT's Monster Challenge, and a prize of £10,000".

When 10 competitors have solved all the games, they'll be a televised final in London to pick the lucky - or skilful winner.

From the full page colour advert:

"All the games are independent puzzles but each has a clue. Unravel the clues and put them together to solve the riddle. The first 10 who can will be finalists in my Ten-Grand-Slam to win a cool £10,000."

Re. the golf admin software though... Windfall magazine mentions this module system (for the Apple II) had a collective cost of £1842.50!! If they had any takers for that perhaps, they did have a spare £10K lying around to run a competition with.

I tried to play the tower. Not a very interesting game. Each time you enter a room with an object you can investigate two objects and have to leave one of het three behind (you start with two objects in your possession). Objects you leave behind cannot be taken again. So if you make a wrong choice you have to restart the game. The game has 40 objects so this will probably mean starting over a lot of times.

The game only knows the following few commands:
N,S,E,W,NW,SW,NE,SE,U,D,LOOK,NORT,SOUT,EAST,WEST,UP,DOWN,OUT,QUIT

The game has 71 locations.

When you have finished the game you get the text:

You have done well, and may now reap the benefits of your efforts.
In order to progress, here is what you must do:
1)Plot your route to here
2)From which town was the merchant derived?
3)Who was imprisoned within the walls
4)Send the solutions to Twig at the address on your registration card"

I still think the game is crap, but because it is too hot today to do anything else I’ll keep playing The Tower for a while.

I looked at one of the other games. The Quiz. You get 105 open questions of which you have to answer correctly 100 questions. If you do so you get the following text:

Congratulations- here is your clue:
1) What are the correct solutions to all the questions you answered
2) What was the last question before the final session
3) How many seconds passed?
Send the solutions to Twig Systems Software, 6 High Street, WENDOVER
Bucks. along with your name, address, and registration no.

This game is also very hard if you don’t look at the code. If the answer for instance is a name of a person sometimes you have to give a full name and sometimes only a last name or only a first name. This is however not indicated in the question.


Returning to the tower I solved a few things. One was a binary code written on a horses bit. 101000 010001 001010 011011 001010 100100 000110 010001 000011 011101 101000 011110 001100 101101 001010 011101 010010 000110 001010. This gives the message : THE MERCHANT OLIVENCE. I assume this is the answer to the second question.

I’ll first finish my map. I never went to The tower, but luckily I found a 1948 tourist guide of the tower between my book collection with a map and some backgrounds. I understand that to finish the game you have to reach the Martin tower and give certain objects to Colonel Blood ( the one who in 1673 tried to steal the crown jewels).

I finished the map, I found the location of all the objects but one of them I did not manage to get yet although I have an idea. I found an inscription:

)e 6u4 305pr 54wr7 t05 RP&* 000=E+

Anyone any idea what it could mean? The binary code was easy, but this one I did not understand.

Some puzzles solved. A few more to solve.

I don't know if the inscription makes any sense. I tried several decoders, but I don't know if it is needed or if it is just a red herring. I just solved one of the remaining puzzles. One more puzzle to go and the game has been solved.

I've finished The Tower. I've uploaded a map and a walkthrough.

Alex wrote: Wed Aug 12, 2026 3:54 pm I found an inscription:

)e 6u4 305pr 54wr7 t05 RP&* 000=E+

Anyone any idea what it could mean? The binary code was easy, but this one I did not understand.

Yes, I have an idea in fact. It is possibly a key, or a series of keys, for the code on the disk. Parts of the text of the game are encrypted with a XOR cipher on disk; for instance, the block at location 29184 reads: but if we use the key B1F1C031 (hex) it decodes to My guess is that if you translate the parts of the code from ASCII to binary you will find respective keys to decode the encrypted blocks on the original media. Of course, this may or may not be useful without the original media; some of the blocks seem to have been carried over to the salvaged software, but there is no way to tell if these are complete, or what this points to. I don't have the time to explore the possibilities, but maybe some with more curiosity wants to have a go at it. This may not have to do with the game but with the related ARG competition.

Ok could be.