7 /10 1 Votes
Engine ZIL Initial release date 1985 Publisher Infocom | 3.5/5 My Abandonware Genre(s) Puzzle/Board game Developer Infocom Mode Multiplayer video game | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Platforms Apple II, DOS, Atari 8-bit family, MS-DOS Designers Michael Berlyn, Marc Blank, Paula Maxwell, Poh C. Lim Similar Infocom games, Board games, Other games | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fooblitzky gameplay pc game 1985
Fooblitzky is a board game-style computer game published by Infocom in 1985 and designed by a team including interactive fiction authors Marc Blank and Michael Berlyn. It is unique among Infocom titles for not being interactive fiction and for being the first to incorporate graphics beyond ASCII characters. Like most Infocom titles, it was written in highly portable ZIL, but was only made available for the Apple II, IBM PC, and the Atari 8-bit family. It was not ported to the most popular home computer of the time, the Commodore 64.
Contents
Infocom marketed Fooblitzky as a "Graphic Strategy Game", and gameplay was compared to that of Clue and Mastermind. Two to four players travelled around the virtual city of Fooblitzky, spending "foobles" and attempting to deduce what four objects were needed to win the game (and then obtain them).
Players purchased objects in stores and could visit City Hall to have their possessions evaluated. Much in the same style as Mastermind, the player would be told how many of their objects were correct, but not which ones.
Fooblitzky for the atari 8 bit family
Feelies
Each box contained four sets of laminated game boards and erasable markers which could be used to track the progress of a game. Two sets of documentation were also included: a set of "quick-start" guidelines ("The Bare Essentials") and a more detailed set ("Official Ordinances").
Reception
Computer Gaming World called Fooblitzky "a fun way to spend time with a few friends", stating that the advertising comparing it to Mastermind and Clue was correct. It noted that the game began as an Infocom project to see if graphical games could be written for easy porting between computers like the company's text adventures, and criticized the Atari version's resulting graphics as "jerky and slow". Compute! stated "probably no game on the computer software market today gives one the feel of playing a board game as much as does Fooblitzky", adding that the principles Fooblitzky used were the same ones that made Monopoly popular. Cautioning that because it was so different from other computer games that "it probably isn't for everyone's tastes", the magazine recommended Fooblitzky for those seeking a game for families to enjoy.