''Fooblitzky'' is a

board game A board game is a type of tabletop game that involves small objects () that are placed and moved in particular ways on a specially designed patterned game board, potentially including other components, e.g. dice. The earliest known uses of the ...

-style

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

published by

Infocom Infocom, Inc., 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), Cornerston ...

in 1985 and designed by a team which included

interactive fiction Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text Command (computing), commands to control Player character, characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narrati ...

authors Marc Blank and Michael Berlyn. It is unique among Infocom titles for not being interactive fiction and for being the first to incorporate graphics beyond

ASCII ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...

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

Apple II Apple II ("apple Roman numerals, two", stylized as Apple ][) is a series of microcomputers manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1977 to 1993. The Apple II (original), original Apple II model, which gave the series its name, was designed ...

, Atari 8-bit computers, and IBM PC compatibles.

Gameplay

Infocom marketed ''Fooblitzky'' as a "Graphic Strategy Game", and gameplay was compared to that of ''Clue (board game), Clue'' and ''Mastermind (board game), Mastermind''. 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 buy 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 Video game journalism, computer game magazine that was 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 199 ...

'' 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 desig ...

between computers like the company's text adventures, and criticized the Atari version's resulting graphics as "jerky and slow". ''

COMPUTE! ''Compute!'' (), often stylized as ''COMPUTE!'', is 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. ...

'' 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 which made ''Monopoly'' popular. Cautioning that because it was so different from other computer games "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 video 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's ...

'', 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 Apple II games Atari 8-bit computer games Digital board games DOS games Infocom games Video games developed in the United States Multiplayer video games