The original box art for Wychwood from a print ad. A box with a drawn version of the title splash screen on a black background The box is tilted with a price of 3.95 highlighted in a starburst below it.

non-violent
solved by pure logic

Wychwood

You have just been released from prison where
  you shared a cell with Jonesy.
   Unaware that he was talking in his sleep, Jonesy
     gives you a very good idea of where he hid
      the last from a bank robbery
       You are sure it is hidden somewhere near
         Wychwood Manor. To a man with your
          criminal talents this should be a doddle.
           But......nothing is ever as simple as it seems

Story and Game by

Larsoft Adventure Games

Implementation by

ferkung's profile picture, a white monospaced font with a parser prompt reading 'look' on a green background. ferkung
A low-resolution black-and-white 1-bit image from the original game. An open concrete and wrought-iron gate leads to a lifted slab in front of a gothic mansion. Above it all is the title in a bat shape, reading Wychwood.

Wychwood

Wychwood was originally released in 1985 by Geoff Larsen of the British company Larsoft.

It was originally created with the use of The Quill. This implementation is based on Version E4.

An emulated version of the original BBC Micro game is available online in the Complete BBC Micro Games Archive.

A walkthrough is available at The Classic Adventures Solution Archive.

This version was implemented by ferkung in 2022 in Inform 7 and has IFID 737E14C7-3C0E-4FA4-9280-A2453694F808.

Play In-Browser Story File

Reimplementing a classic BBC Micro text adventure

Picking up the text adventure authoring software The Quill as soon as it was released, Geoff Larsen published six games over the course of four years. He garnered nearly instant acclaim for his moody atmospheres and ingenious puzzles.

Sold for a few pounds each, Larsoft's games show a deep knowledge of The Quill, with a particular fascination with real-time puzzles. For example, in Wychwood, you have a limited number of turns to complete the adventure.

Why Wychwood?

Interactive fiction is typically thought of as an enthusiast's genre. The UK Microcomputer Scene was filled with enthusiasts who just wanted to create.

Geoff Larsen was seemingly just a person who made some cool games. And Wychwood is one of the best examples of an early microcomputer text adventure written in The Quill.

To be fair, the game is crude: signposting is spotty and multiple softlocks exist. For context in the scope of mainstream commercial interactive fiction: Wychwood was released the same year as A Mind Forever Voyaging in the US and The Pawn in the UK.

Many interactive fiction fans have never heard of Larsoft's games, even though his games were considered a gold standard of a specific type of game at a specific time. With some interesting plot threads, a few solid puzzles, a timer-based game loop, and some design choices worth debating and talking about, I personally found Wychwood extremely compelling not only as a period study, but as a parser game design example.

Gameplay Notes

This reimplementation is based on playthroughs of the E4 Version available on the Complete BBC Micro Games Archive.

While the goal was to recreate the experience of playing the original game, there are seven major changes to the game:

Development Notes

The development for this game, for better or for worse, was streamed live on Twitch. The code is available on GitHub.