''Mystery Fun House'' is a text adventure game written by

Scott Adams Scott Raymond Adams (born June 8, 1957) is an American author and cartoonist. He is the creator of the syndicated ''Dilbert'' comic strip, and the author of several nonfiction works of satire, commentary, and business. ''Dilbert'' gained nation ...

, "Adventure 7" in the series released by

Adventure International Adventure International was an American video game publishing company that existed from 1979 until 1986. It was started by Scott and Alexis Adams. Their games were notable for being the first implementation of the adventure genre to run on a ...

. The player explores a

fun house A funhouse or fun house is an amusement facility found on amusement park and funfair midways and is where patrons encounter and interact with various devices designed to surprise, challenge, and amuse them. Unlike thrill rides or dark rides, fu ...

explore 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 most difficult games in the series. A

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as t ...

version was planned but never released.

Gameplay

Gameplay involves 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 A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...

and

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...

, 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 In Greek mythology, Calliope ( ; grc, Καλλιόπη, Kalliópē, beautiful-voiced) is the Muse who presides over eloquence and epic poetry; so called from the ecstatic harmony of her voice. Hesiod and Ovid called her the "Chief of all Muses" ...

that is so loud the player's instructions are misunderstood – a reference to the "Loud Room" in ''

Zork I ''Zork'' is a text-based adventure game first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. The original developers and others, as the company Infocom, expanded and ...

''. In one room is a trampoline that the player can enter, deposit items, and then exit. The player can then carry the trampoline around, regardless of how much it is holding, thus extending one's carrying capacity indefinitely. Violent solutions to puzzles are discouraged by a gameplay feature which sees the

player character A player character (also known as a playable character or PC) is a fictional character in a video game or tabletop role-playing game whose actions are controlled by a player rather than the rules of the game. The characters that are not control ...

ejected from the fun house by a bouncer whenever certain commands are typed.

Reception

Electronic Games An electronic game is a game that uses electronics to create an interactive system with which a player can play. Video games are the most common form today, and for this reason the two terms are often used interchangeably. There are other common ...

'' 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".

Legacy

''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 magnussoft Deutschland GmbH is a German computer game developer and publisher. The company is seated in Kesselsdorf, close to the Saxon capital of Dresden. In Europe magnussoft are well known, primarily for their releases of collections of sof ...

's ''C64 Classix'' compilation for Windows and Mac CD-ROM.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mystery Fun House 1979 video games Adventure games Adventure International games Apple II games Atari 8-bit family games BBC Micro and Acorn Electron games Commodore PET games VIC-20 games Dragon 32 games TI-99/4A games TRS-80 games Video games developed in the United States