''Fooblitzky'' is a

board game Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a comp ...

-style

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

published by

Infocom Infocom was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called ''Cornerstone (software), Cornerstone''. ...

in 1985 and designed by a team which included

interactive fiction '' Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the ...

authors

Marc Blank Marc Blank is an American game developer and software engineer. He is best known as part of the team that created one of the first commercially successful text adventure computer games, ''Zork''. Career Blank first encountered Don Woods and Will ...

and

Michael Berlyn Michael Berlyn (born 1949) is an American video game designer and writer. He is best known as an implementer at Infocom, part of the text adventure game design team. Brainwave Creations was a small game programming company started by Michael Ber ...

. It is unique among Infocom titles for not being interactive fiction and for being the first to incorporate graphics beyond

ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...

characters. Unlike most Infocom games, it was only released for the

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

Atari 8-bit family The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE, ...

, and

IBM PC compatible IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. ...

Gameplay

Infocom marketed ''Fooblitzky'' as a "Graphic Strategy Game", and gameplay was compared to that of ''

Clue Clue may refer to: People with the name * DJ Clue (born 1975), mixtape DJ * Arthur Clues (1924–1998), Australian rugby league footballer * Ivan Clues * Tim Cluess Arts, entertainment, and media ''Clue'' entertainment franchise * ''Cluedo'' ...

'' and ''

Mastermind Mastermind, Master Mind or The Mastermind may refer to: Fictional characters * Mastermind (Jason Wyngarde), a fictional supervillain in Marvel Comics, a title also held by his daughters: ** Martinique Jason, the first daughter and successor of th ...

''. Two to four players travel around the virtual city of Fooblitzky, spending "foobles" and attempt to deduce what four objects are needed to win the game (and then obtain them). Players purchase objects in stores and can visit City Hall to have their possessions evaluated. Much in the same style as Mastermind, the player is told ''how many'' of their objects are correct, but not ''which ones''.

Release

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

As a test, for the first six months ''Fooblitzky'' was only advertised to those on Infocom's mailing list, although others could order it from the company. It sold very poorly; Infocom sold only 8,225 copies through 1986, the fewest of the five titles introduced in 1985, and from 1987 to 1989 the number of copies returned exceeded those sold. ''

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through ...

'' 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 In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desi ...

between computers like the company's

text adventures '' Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the ...

, and criticized the Atari version's resulting graphics as "jerky and slow". ''

COMPUTE! ''Compute!'' (), often stylized as ''COMPUTE!'', was an American home computer magazine that was published from 1979 to 1994. Its origins can be traced to 1978 in Len Lindsay's ''PET Gazette'', one of the first magazines for the Commodore PET c ...

'' 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.

Legacy

In ''

Zork Zero ''Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz'' is an interactive fiction computer game, written by Steve Meretzky over nearly 18 months and published by Infocom in 1988. Although it is the ninth and last ''Zork'' game released by Infocom before the company ...

'' one of the possible magic words needed to win the game is ''fublitskee''.

References

External links

*
Infocom-if.org's entry for ''Fooblitzky''
{{Infocom games 1985 video games Infocom games Apple II games Atari 8-bit family games DOS games Digital tabletop games Video games developed in the United States