Pawn, The
Magnetic Scrolls 
, Rainbird 1985
- Aka:
- QL-Pawn
- Language:
- English
- Authors:
- Anita Sinclair , Geoff Quilley, Hugh Steers, Ken Gordon
- Systems:
- ELTHAM
- Platforms:
- Amiga, Amstrad CPC , Amstrad PCW , Android, Apple II, Archimedes , Atari 400/800, Atari ST, C64/128 , iOS, Macintosh, PC , Sinclair QL , Spectrum, Spectrum Next
- Genres:
- Fantasy, misc., Surreal
- Entered by:
- dave, Eriorg, Gunness, Starscream, stefanm, Strident
- Added:
- 10-05-2010
- Edited:
- 04-09-2020
Synopsis
Plot
The Pawn is an adventure game set in the magical world of Kerovnia during a period of tremendous social upheaval. Recently, King Erik, the present ruler of the land, has started to lose his hold on the Kerovnian peoples and can no longer rely on their loyalty and supreme devotion to support him through times of war, famine and personal bankruptcy.Many political commentators have attributed this decline in popularity to Erik's steadfast refusal to reinstate the citizenship of the Roobikyoub dwarfs who were banished en masse soon after the assassination of the beloved Queen Jendah II and have never since returned.
The dwarfs were thought to be the sole instigators of the assassination plot but the real facts were kept well behind closed (and locked) doors.
Needless to say the dwarfs were of immense economic importance to Kerovnia with their relentless efforts to produce the smoothest, strongest malt whisky this side of the Obakanga valley and they are sorely missed in these days of economic gloom (not least for the quality of their whisky).
In the absence of the dwarfs, the drinks market has been dominated by the Farthington Real Ale Company (which has had some rather dodgy dealings with Boris Grunchkev O.K.B.) and by the Romni gnomes who produce a refreshing spring water. Neither of these two influential groups wish to see the dwarfs come back on the scene to take a large slice of the market but the people of Kerovnia, many of whom are beginning to suspect that the dwarfs were completely innocent of the assassination, vehemently disagree.
Standing in the middle of all this is King Erik who becomes more and more unpopular the longer he leaves his decision, and, to top it all, there is a general election on the horizon.
At this point, you arrive on the scene. You will be the principle player in the game and the story unfolds according to your decisions and actions.
The program will describe where you are, who (or what) is there with you and what they are doing. It is then up to you to choose what you wish to do and tell the program in plain English (well almost!).
You'll have to discover the goal of the game and the best way to achieve it by utilizing the items you find on your travels, conversing with characters and exercising your imagination.
Notes
The original game was coded for the QL and was text-only. Once Rainbird got interested in it, they insisted on including graphics.An official remastered version of the game was released in 2017 by StrandGames for PC/macOS/Linux and Android/iOS.
In 2020 an officially authorised version of the remastered edition of the game was released for the Spectrum Next; see here.
Resources (Upload file)
- Solution
- by Gunness
- Solution
- by Hopalong
- Hints
- by Ken Hart
- Hints
- by Sylvester (in German)
- Further Info:
- Review at The Good Old Days
- History of the game
- YouTube walkthrough
- Search at Atari 8-bit Forever
- Search at Atari Legend
- Search at Atari Mania
- Search at CPC-Power
- Search at Gamebase64
- Search at Lemon Amiga
- Search at Museum of Computer Adventure Game History
- Search at QL Wiki
- Search at Spectrum Computing
- Search at The Tipshop
- Search at World of Spectrum
[+] Users who have solved this game
[+] Users currently playing this game
Fantastic graphics for the time - making the game a little slow, though, as long as you had them switched on. Good story, very good descriptions and a strong parser.
I guess that part of the game's legacy can be attributed to the fact that it was the first to sport an Infocom'ish parser, a huge vocabulary AND ohhhh.... pictures!
But honestly, compared to their later efforts (particularly Jinxter and Corruption), The Pawn seems fairly disjointed, with too much weirdness for weirdness sake, and some really odd puzzles.
And don't get me started on that ending...
I was surprised at how slapdash this game is right from the beginning. In a forest surrounded by trees? Why not examine them? The parser defiantly responds, "you can't see any trees here."
Likewise many other objects. One tree is climbable and is described as having a door next to you on its west side. Go west? Nope; the door is suddenly on the east! Logistical bug number one.
This all in the first couple of locations. When it comes to saving positions in DOSBox-X, I continually received "oops, bad file!" I scratched my head for ages until I tried hyphenating the game folder title, i.e. The-Pawn allows for saved positions but when the folder is named "The Pawn" the hard coded path cannot be found. I can't think of another game which possesses this tortuous conceit.
Clearly great leaps were made between 1985 when this first born child of Magnetic Scrolls came tentatively into the world and the standards met by Guild Of Thieves in 1987.
Canalboy, I read "One tree is climbable and is described as having a door next to you on its west side" as the door is on the west side of the tree and not that the door is to your west. As for your problems saving the game, just remember that although MSDOS will accept spaces in file and directory names it does not like spaces in file or directory names, and thus working with any file/directory so named is problematic.
I have played a number of old DOS games with spaces in their names in DOSBox-X (Castle Ralf, Monster Rally) ad infinitum and never had this problem before. It works OK using the ten default saved slots but not with the MS parser.
I am also surprised at the poor grammar and numerous misspellings that stud the game.
Regarding previous comments. Playing the Amiga version, you can examine "trees" without any problem (you get a description), but not "tree", because the parser refers to the ancient tree which you can climb up. So, if you go in another location and type "examine tree" you will get the answer "You can't see a tree here", even if the description say something about trees; so you have to "examine trees" in plural to get the according description.
"Set into the west side of the tree trunk...", is the description about the wooden door, and as another member correctly pointed out, it doesn't mean that it's in the west.
Lastly, no problems for restoring/saving a game.
I found the game quite good actually, with nice puzzles and a bizarre plot, but remember, this was their first attempt.