Mindwheel

Mindwheel, from 1984, ranks among the most unusual attempts to move a computer game closer to literature. Brøderbund published it as an electronic novel, and a working American poet contributed to the writing, an approach with essentially no precedent in the software of the day.

The game is text-based. It describes places in prose, you type what you want to do, and progress comes from solving puzzles and conversations. What separates it from ordinary text adventures of the period is the language: the descriptions are genuinely literary, carrying imagery that rarely reached home computers, and several puzzles treat poetry and language itself as tools rather than merely tracking an inventory. The box also contained a printed book that formed part of the game, without which certain situations could not be cracked.

The Commodore 64 suited this kind of work precisely because no graphics were required. The text fitted on disks, the parser ran in memory, and the author could build a scope that would otherwise have been impossible. It also means the game today looks exactly as it was always meant to look.

It is now more an object of interest for literary-minded players than ordinary entertainment. It demands solid English, patience with the parser and a willingness to take notes. Anyone who meets those conditions gets one of the most ambitious pieces of writing published on a home computer in the eighties. On OldGame.cz you can play it directly in the browser, so at minimum you can see what an electronic novel actually looked like.