Castaway

Baf's Guide

You're stranded on a tropical island, and must find a way to return to civilization with as many treasures as possible. A farily primitive game: two-word parser, runs in 40-column mode only. One of Button's easier adventures - the author labels it "Introductory".

-- Carl Muckenhoupt

SPAG
The mixing of the rescue theme with the treasure hunt theme produces some bizarre results. Though you will probably spot the ship a few moves after landing, you will avoid signalling it until you've gotten all the treasures. In real life you'd be much more concerned that the ship might leave. [...]

Castaway is not up to scratch by 1995 standards, but one must remember that it was written in the pre GAGS/LADS/AGT/TADS/Inform days of 1986. Under the circumstances, putting out any shareware text game at all was an impressive feat.

-- Graeme Cree
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Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 1 Write a review

This is probably one of the easiest of Conrad Button's games, the story of how you were CASTAWAY on a deserted Pacific island and returned with ten treasures. This is a game from the dawn of shareware text adventures, with only a 40-character width DOS screen and the internal speakers to work with. It's gonna be a bit rustic. And calling it a "story" is generous. But Castaway is a good choice if you want to learn how things function in a ButtonWare game. Which I did.

It's an interesting window back to see how far we've come, what we've forgotten about, and what we've doggedly held onto.

It occurred to me how myopic IF treasure hunts can be: those treasures are mine! Who cares who left them there! Backstory of the island's previous inhabitants -- who needs it? Not you, when there's *treasure*.

NPCs stayed put and kept their mouths shut. None of this "conversation" nonsense. Even inanimate items were quieter; only some items got descriptions. I could go on, about the two-word parser, etc. but...

... this is not really the place for an in-depth critique of all of Button's games. Consider Castaway as a training ground for progressing to his other games.

Forty rooms. Ten treasures. One parrot. Kickin' it old-school. Introductory level. I had fun. Maybe you will too.

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