Treasure Hunt

Treasure Hunt dates from 1982, the absolute prehistory of the IBM PC — the machine had been on the market for barely a year and only a handful of games existed for it. This one belongs to the first attempts at a three-dimensional experience on an office computer: a maze seen through your own eyes, drawn with simple lines in four-colour CGA graphics.

The premise is fully described by the title. Somebody has dropped treasures throughout a maze, and you walk its corridors collecting them for points. The maze is randomly generated every time, so it cannot be memorised, and you get a two-dimensional automap that reveals the corridors you have already walked — a remarkably civilised feature for 1982, and one that plenty of later dungeon games did without.

The strangest thing about the game is what it lacks: enemies, time limits, danger of any kind. Treasure Hunt is a pure stroll. You can examine the maze as slowly and thoroughly as you like, admire the wireframe perspective and methodically hoover up treasure after treasure. Either you embrace it as a meditative scavenger hunt, or within five minutes you realise there is nothing to lose here — and therefore nothing to win. Both are legitimate reactions.

Today its value is mostly archaeological. It shows what 3D looked like before the term existed, and how the first PC authors borrowed ideas from elsewhere: the maze crawling recalls both board games and arcade labyrinth games, slowed down to the pace of an office machine. As a five-minute glimpse of the year when PC gaming was only just being born, it is a trip worth taking.

You can step into the maze on oldgame.cz right in your browser, nothing to install.