''Curses'' is an
interactive fiction computer game created by
Graham Nelson
Graham A. Nelson (born 1968) is a British mathematician, poet, and the creator of the Inform design system for creating interactive fiction (IF) games. He has authored several IF games, including ''Curses'' (1993) and '' Jigsaw'' (1995).
Educat ...
in 1993. Appearing in the beginning of the non-commercial era of interactive fiction, it is considered one of the milestones of the genre.
Writing for ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', Edward Rothstein described the game as "acclaimed."
Plot
The player plays the part of the current owner of Meldrew Hall. In the course of searching the attic for an old tourist map of
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
, the protagonist steps into a surreal adventure to uncover a centuries-old
curse
A curse (also called an imprecation, malediction, execration, malison, anathema, or commination) is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to one or more persons, a place, or an object. In particula ...
that has been placed on the Meldrew family. The goal of the game is to find the missing map, and thus annul the curse.
Development
''Curses'' was originally developed on an
Acorn Archimedes
Acorn Archimedes is a family of personal computers designed by Acorn Computers of Cambridge, England. The systems are based on Acorn's own ARM architecture processors and the proprietary operating systems Arthur and RISC OS. The first mode ...
using
Acorn C/C++
Acorn C/C++ is a set of C/C++ programming tools for use under the operating system. The tools use the Norcroft compiler suite and were authored by Codemist and Acorn Computers. The tools provide some facilities offered by a fully integrated dev ...
, before Nelson moved to his
Inform
Inform is a programming language and design system for interactive fiction originally created in 1993 by Graham Nelson. Inform can generate programs designed for the Z-code or Glulx virtual machines. Versions 1 through 5 were released betw ...
programming language, which was simultaneously released.
[
] It was the first non-test game developed in the language.
It is distributed
without charge as a
Z-Code executable. The Inform
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...
is not publicly available.
Innovations
''Curses'' contains some innovations that contribute to its appeal.
* Managing the player's inventory by automatically placing items in a container to make room for an object needed in hand (such as placing an item in the rucksack when reading an entry in a book), eliminating the tedium of having to manually drop one item before picking up another.
* Commands ''places'' and ''objects'', displaying all the locations visited and all the objects seen during the game.
See also
*
Jigsaw (video game)
__NOTOC__
''Jigsaw'' is an interactive fiction (IF) game, written by Graham Nelson in 1995.
The game begins on New Year's Eve of 1999, with the player discovering a time machine enabling them to travel throughout the twentieth century (includi ...
, another Graham Nelson game, from 1995.
References
{{reflist, 30em
External links
IFDB entry€”the
Interactive Fiction Database The Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB) is a database of metadata and reviews of interactive fiction.
In November 2023, the database contained 12,969 game listings, 12,784 member reviews, 51,762 member ratings, and 17,040 registered members. Some ...
entry has some coverage, reviews, and links to both the original release (version 7) and the most recent one (version 16).
Baf's Guide to Interactive Fiction entryalso covered the game, but the site is down since 2013.
1993 video games
1990s interactive fiction
Video games about curses
Video games about time travel
Video games based on Greek mythology
Video games developed in the United Kingdom
Single-player video games