''The Guild of Thieves'' is an

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 ...

game by

Magnetic Scrolls Magnetic Scrolls was a British video game developer active between 1984 and 1990. A pioneer of audiovisually elaborate text adventure games, it was one of the two largest and most acclaimed interactive fiction developers of the 1980s. ''Magnet ...

first published by Rainbird in 1987. The game takes place in Kerovnia like the previous game ''

The Pawn ''The Pawn'' is an interactive fiction game for the Sinclair QL written by Rob Steggles of Magnetic Scrolls and published by Sinclair Research in 1985. In 1986, graphics were added and the game was released for additional home computers by Rainb ...

''.

Gameplay

The player's character is "an aspiring member of the infamous Guild of Thieves" and is to steal all the valuables that can be found in and around an island castle. The game features "extremely atmospheric"Alt URL
/ref> descriptions and 30 artistic renditions of key locations. Included in the game package are a faux newsletter of the Guild of Thieves titled ''What Burglar'' providing instructions and hints for the game, a ''Bank of Kerovnia Trading Account Card'', a guild contract detailing the arrangement between the player's character and the Guild of Thieves and small dice.

Reception

The game was voted Best Adventure Game Of The Year at the

Golden Joystick Awards The Golden Joystick Awards, also known as the People's Gaming Awards, is a video game award ceremony; it awards the best video games of the year, as voted for originally by the British general public, but is now a global event that can be voted ...

. ''

Dragon A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted as ...

'' complimented the game, calling it an "exciting sequel" to ''

'', citing its "witty dialogue, outstanding graphics, wry humor, and challenging puzzles". ''

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 ...

'' in 1988 approved of the game's sophisticated parser, British humor, and high-quality graphics. It concluded, "the game must be highly recommended and it is ''tough'' ... it compares well with the best of

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''. ...

". The magazine's

Charles Ardai Charles Ardai (born 1969) is an American entrepreneur, businessperson, and writer of award winning crime fiction and mysteries. He is founder and editor of Hard Case Crime, a line of pulp-style paperback crime novels. He is also an early employe ...

in 1992 called its puzzles "pretty good, requiring a certain amount of ingenuity ... None are particularly memorable, though. The game is good, but lacks the sparks of innovation that would elevate it above the level of dozens of similar games". ''

Antic Alphanumeric Television Interface Controller (ANTIC) is an LSI ASIC dedicated to generating 2D computer graphics to be shown on a television screen or computer display. Under the direction of Jay Miner, the chip was designed in 1977-1978 by ...

'' stated "The outstanding graphics of The Pawn are matched by those in Guild of Thieves. High-resolution pictures transport you into a medieval world of thieves, castles and treasure. The only complaint I have about the Atari XE/XL version is that most of the detailed graphics had only shades of one or two colors."

Legacy

The game was re-released in 1992 as part of the ''Magnetic Scrolls Collection''. The new version had an updated UI and came with an art poster depicting the island. In June 2017

successfully recovered the

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 wo ...

of The Guild of Thieves (and other games) to remaster and re-release them. In December 2017 the remastered and enhanced edition of the game was published.

References

External links

''The Guild of Thieves''
for the Atari 8-bit family at Atari Mania

for the Atari ST at Atari Mania * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Guild of Thieves, The 1980s interactive fiction 1987 video games Acorn Archimedes games Amiga games Amstrad CPC games Amstrad PCW games Apple II games Atari 8-bit family games Atari ST games Classic Mac OS games Commodore 64 games DOS games Fictional guilds Golden Joystick Award winners Magnetic Scrolls games Single-player video games Telecomsoft games Video games about crime Video games developed in the United Kingdom ZX Spectrum games