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SpeedIF​_Argonaut.zip
Contains asciargo.z5
Requires a Z-Code interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links. (Compressed with ZIP. Free Unzip tools are available for most systems at www.info-zip.org.)
Walkthrough and map
by David Welbourn

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ASCII and the Argonauts

by J. Robinson Wheeler profile

Mythological, Satire
2003

Web Site

(based on 17 ratings)
2 reviews

About the Story

In this wonderfully laconic spoof of the Scott Adams style of adventures, you play as Jason of the Argo, tasked by King Pelias to bring the Golden Fleece to him or die. Surprisingly both entertaining and tricky, this game is a gem among speed-ifs.


Game Details


Awards

Winner, Best Use of Medium - 2003 XYZZY Awards

Editorial Reviews

Baf's Guide


One of Speed-IF's gems, this game brilliantly reproduces the style and appearance of a Scott Adams production. Room descriptions are sparse, objects are simple, and puzzles are fiendish; though the game is fairly short, you should expect to restart four or five times before you get the sequence of play correct. Nostalgia value isn't the only thing the game has going for it, though: its terse messages are often hilarious, and it manages to compactly include the elements of several major episodes from Greek myth. The result is unusual but stylistically seamless and extremely satisfying.

-- Emily Short

SPAG
What impressed me about the map though, was that there were some fairly crafty puzzles buried in its structure. These puzzles typically revolved around strategic inventory management; the net effect of which was that if you solved certain puzzles too early, you could put the game into an unwinnable position. Unwinnable positions aren't new to IF and certainly not new to Scott Adams games, but unlike many of those games, the unwinnable states here were not caused as a result of poor game design choices. Rather, they were caused by what I feel was the author forcing the player to conserve his limited resources in an attempt to come up with a strategy that took into account the entire game as opposed to one individual puzzle.
-- Francesco Bova
See the full review

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Member Reviews

5 star:
(3)
4 star:
(9)
3 star:
(2)
2 star:
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Average Rating:
Number of Reviews: 2
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
An all caps, minimal Speed-IF homage to Adventureland., February 4, 2016
by MathBrush
Related reviews: 15-30 minutes

Adventureland was the first commercial adventure game, written by Scott Adams. It was all caps, with short, simple sentences and basic verbs.

This game is a homage to that, a Speed-IF with 7 treasures, an interesting map, and several enemies.

The game is actually very appealing; people haven't changed in the last 40 years, and there is a reason that adventureland was appealing back then. Pure minimalism really stokes the imagination. I got the same sort of feel I have talking to characters in the original Zelda game.

It's short, but difficult. With the small number of combinations possible, however, it should be possible to beat it. Pretty fun!

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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A nice take on a old classic., October 16, 2013
by theqbasicwizard (Leduc, Alberta)

A game that has a nice mixture of mythology and humor. This game is a wonderful take on the story that a lot of us already know. The detail is so wonderfully described that this is a must play for anyone. I enjoyed the character description, the amount of detail put into each room, and the dialogue was quite funny.

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ASCII and the Argonauts on IFDB

Recommended Lists

ASCII and the Argonauts appears in the following Recommended Lists:

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Polls

The following polls include votes for ASCII and the Argonauts:

Games that simulate their own aging by Beable
I'm looking for games that pretend to be another, older game - sort of like Repeat the Ending and LAKE Adventure - or that contain elements within them that are supposed to play like an older game - like And Then You Come to a House Not...

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I'm a Chinese guy who is really interested in text-based stuff, but my English is not very good for me to play games with hard English. Especially games with slangs every where. So I'm just looking for games that really written in easy...

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