Wolfman

Wolfman is a 1988 text adventure written for the British label CRL by Rod Pike and Jared Derrett. Pike was the author of a peculiar line of horror adventures — Dracula, then Frankenstein, then this werewolf tale — and his games were graphic enough that the British film censors at the BBFC started attaching age certificates to them. Wolfman earned an 18 rating for its gory pictures, an almost absurd distinction for what is mostly a work of text.

The story unfolds in three parts. In the first, the protagonist wakes with bloodied clothes and no wounds of his own; a dead girl lies nearby, and the awful conclusion is that he himself is the werewolf. He must escape vengeful villagers and begin searching for a cure. Part two flips the perspective — you play Nadia, his fiancée, who has been kidnapped. Part three returns you to the wolfman as he sets out to rescue her.

Mechanically this is a traditional adventure built with the Professional Adventure Writer: type commands, read responses, and admire the occasional location picture that sets the scene. Pike's strength was never puzzle design but atmosphere; his prose leans into dense gothic description, dread and guilt, unusually adult material for late-eighties computer games.

In all honesty, the parser is narrow, the pacing slow, and death often serves as your main teacher; solid English is a prerequisite, too. Judged purely as a puzzle game, Wolfman is average for its day. Judged as a horror artefact from the moment games first brushed against film censorship, it is genuinely fascinating.

You can play it at oldgame.cz straight from your browser, with nothing to install.