Prequel Game!

Don't you just love text adventures?

Well, we've built one (of sorts) for you to play in preparation for the new record. But why?

I can remember my Dad reading the Hobbit to me as a child, Bo Hansson's "Lord of the Rings" LP  gently humming in the background, and my imagination literally burst.

Gandalf's Fist? Frodo's Hand?

... Great record by the way. After abandoning how to figure out how to play the Ghostbusters game on my Commadore 64, Bill Murray's synthesised robo-voice a mocking taunt with every defeat by Zuul, I decided to delve into the world of mirth and magic that I experienced during story time, a world I could now fully immerse myself in and follow in the footsteps of wizards, dwarves and brave warriors. The world of "The Hobbit Text Adventure for Commadore 64".

Oh Yeah! Did that game cover look badass! Smaug the dragon going to town on some sci-fi landscape! It looks like whoever scanned this image cropped it due to there being just too much awesome on screen. "Can't wait to slay some spider-beasts!" exclaimed the Six year old Master Marsh.

I rewinded and loaded the tape (remember those?) and waited for Seventeen Millennia  for the scrawls of coloured lines to load the game (praying to Iluvatar that my Mam didn't start to vacuum downstairs and crash the damn thing).

Eventually, I was confronted with a series of epic landscapes, beautiful in their pallet, majestic, as if straight from the mind of ol' JRR himself...
 

...perhaps not.


The game was a logistical nightmare. Especially for a child. Hours and hours trying to navigate a maze of confusing syntax:
 
"Thorin offers you the map"

..."Take MAP"

"I do not understand the word 'map'"

Grrrrrrrr!!!! Let's play a game of "guess the words the computer understands". Type in the wrong word and a troll eats you. Lovely.

...."lets take another stab at Ghostbusters", child Marsh defeatedly exclaimed.

'Yay!! What child doesn't love fork-lift operation and bodyshop budgeting?'
 

So, that brings us around to the "Gandalf's Fist Text Adventure Prequel Game"!

The basic premise: The "game" takes place before the events that transpire during the 'concept' of our upcoming record. The last thing that happens in the game is the first thing that happens on the album. During the game, various characters, settings and themes are hinted at but we're not giving anything away! Not only does this create a mysterious setting within the game, but also allows us to keep the (quite frankly EPIC) story of our next concept album under wraps for a little while longer!

There is still a maze of different locations, which you will have to navigate (as in the C64 days of yore) but gone is the annoying syntax lottery, now you simply need to select from multiple choices to progress in the game. It's impossible to die, but if you make the wrong choices you may find yourself lost for a little while in our maze of darkness!

As a little incentive, should you reach the end, there's a little prize waiting for you! Should you unearth any codes on your cyber-travels, they are currently only redeemable at our bandcamp page! Well worth the effort!
 
Ready? Of course you bloody are. Click the button below to play!
 
Enjoy!

Dean.