Genre(s) text adventure Developer Adventure International | Initial release date 1979 Designer Scott Adams | |
Series Scott Adams Classic Adventures Platforms Commodore 64, Apple II, TRS-80, Atari 8-bit family Publishers Adventure International, Texas Instruments, Star Craft, Inc., The Software Exchange Similar Scott Adams Classic Adventures games, Interactive fiction games | ||
Mystery Fun House is a text-based adventure program written by Scott Adams, "Adventure 7" in the series released by Adventure International. The game setting was a fun house that the player had to explore in order to locate a set of secret plans, solving puzzles along the way. Mystery Fun House was produced in only one week and was among the less easy games in the series.
Contents
Description
Published by Adventure International, this text-based adventure game was one of many from Scott Adams.
Gameplay involved moving from location to location, picking up any objects found there, and using them somewhere else to unlock puzzles. Commands took the form of verb and noun, e.g. "Take Wrench". Movement from location to location was limited to North, South, East, West, Up and Down.
The player of this game must navigate through a maze and a shooting gallery, charm a mermaid, and turn off a steam calliope that is so loud the player's instructions are misunderstood – a reference to the "Loud Room" in Zork I. Violent solutions to puzzles are discouraged by a gameplay feature which sees the player character ejected from the fun house by a bouncer whenever certain commands are typed.
Releases
Mystery Fun House was among a number of classic Scott Adams adventures made available for free download by non-profit gaming organisation Infinite Frontiers in 2003. It was also included as part of magnussoft's C64 Classix compilation for Windows and Mac CD-ROM.
A Sinclair Spectrum version was planned but never released.
Reception
Electronic Games in 1981 warned against beginners to adventure games playing Mystery Fun House because of the difficulty, but stated that for others it "should provide a rousing good time".