Game

So I got on a bit of a text adventure kick. We’ll be seeing a lot of them in the coming bit. This is a 1981 graphical text adventure by none other than Sierra Entertainment, who’d go on to be fucking humongous in the 80s. But this is still pretty dman early in their career. Hell, they’re still just called “On-Line” at this point, they’re not even Sierra yet.

This is one of the games in the “Hi-Res Adventure” series, a series of games for the Apple II that are text adventures, but with graphical images to show a general idea of where you are. A cute idea for the time, though the art is usually pretty…. rough. There’s this vibe that early Apple II art has that just tells me it was made by people who never actually learned how to make art. Perspective is wrong, things are just off, and god forbid if we get humanoid shapes. You don’t NEED to have the graphics on if they’re distracting though.

One of the weirder things about this is it’s actually a port. This was made by someone named Larry Ledden for Atari 8-bit computers. Sierra acquired the rights to port it and make a graphical version, which they did, though Ledden isn’t even given credit in this version.

Game

Cranston Manor is a simple game with a lot of the trappings of other text adventures of the day. In it, you just sneak into the manor of a dead millionaire and steal the 16 treasures that are kept inside. That’s very Zork. In Zork, your goal is to wander around, solve simple puzzles, explore, and find treasures to bring back to a central location. This is basically just that, but with a manor.

As a text adventure, it’s perfectly fine. A little confusing at times? But the puzzles aren’t overly complex. Like for example, uh, there’s a robot that follows you to make sure you don’t steal anything. But he’s afraid of mice, so you take some cheese and mice start following you, so he runs away from you. Simple, right?

Over all, this isn’t a text adventure anyone remembers or talks about, but it’s an interesting blip in Sierra’s history!