Game 8: Castle of Doom: Introduction

I see the castle, but what about the doom?

United States
Released 1987
Developer: Foxware
Date Started: 23 June 2025

Guess I’m off to my first multi-part review or rather my first playthrough: Castle of Doom by Foxware, released in 1987 as Public Domain software, with the source code being released as Shareware. This is a textadventure featuring graphics, think the later Infocom games. The developer freely admits this is “designed as a demo for programmers more than a commercial-quality adventure” but that you “still (hopefully) have some fun”. Let’s see if I do.

The starting location, I’m talking to that old man, Seth. The game claims he’s sitting on that rock, but either that’s a magic hovering rock or a just a poorly drawn sitting posture.

Two points unfortunately annoy me right from the start: First, for some reason I have to make to click into the input window on each new screem, otherwise the game won’t accept any input. Second, after dying (yes, it’s one of those games), some internal state is not reset properly, and even after I respond with “Y” that I want to try again, I’m back at the death screen after my next input. Guess that’s a case for FS-UAE’s save state feature.

Of course I get maimed by a crocodile after the first 5 minutes, leading to my first death. Nicely drawn crocodile, though.

What I’ve gathered so far: * The old man on the rock is called Seth, and he wants some “reward” before he’ll tell me anything useful. * I can move around the dirt, discovering a hole. Trying to meddle with the dirt again leads to some insect stinging me, makeing my finger swell up. Not sure if that will have any consequences later. * My only way seems to be north to the castle gate, which is locked. There’s a moat with some shiny object in it, but trying to reach it leads to a crocodile biting my arm off, killing me.