Eamon

Also known as: The Wonderful World of Eamon

Developer: Donald Brown

Eamon, sometimes called "The Wonderful World of Eamon," was a text-based adventure game, but with a lot of RPG elements added in…and it was freeware, to boot. Created by Donald Brown in 1980, originally just for the Apple II, Mr. Brown didn't just give his game out for free, but he encouraged people to add to it and modify it. As a result, there are literally over a hundred games with Eamon in the game title (Wikipedia says over 280) since each one is a unique adventure running off of this game. If the internet bad been around in 1980, think of how popular this game could have gotten. Even without the internet, Eamon still found ways to gain popularity. When the internet DID finally become a mainstream thing, Eamon continued to survive due to fan sites and the like. Anyway, here's how the base Eamon game works - you start out with a character that has three attributes - agility, charisma, and hardiness. Agility determines how accurate you are with weapons and how likely you are to dodge an attack. Charisma determines how easily you can befriend folks and also helps determine the prices that a character will pay for supplies. Lastly, hardiness determines how much a character can carry or lift, as well as how much damage they can both inflict on enemies or take from them. You're also given 200 gold to start with and you've got to use that to purchase weapons and armor, supplies, and to learn magic spells. If there's any cash left, you can store it in the bank. As you go on adventures, you can earn more cash to get that fancy, expensive stuff that you couldn't initially afford. And, well, that's basically the base Eamon game. This is called the Main Hall, and the base game is essentially just here to create characters to use in add-on adventures that other users created. Once done with your character, it wants you to put the disk for the adventure that you'll be headed out on. From there, Eamon is a pretty standard text-based adventure game with the quality of the game being largely determined on who wrote the adventure that you're currently playing. The version of Eamon I played also had "Beginner's Cave" on the disk with Main Hall, which was an introductory adventure designed to help players get a feel for how the system works, though I'm not entirely sure if Beginner's Cave was included with every version of Eamon, or if it was only the Main Hall initially. Anyway, I died by reading a book that turned me into a fish…and since I was a fish out in open air, without a drop of water in sight, I perished. This beginner died as a fish in the "tutorial" dungeon. If you like text-based adventure games, but want some turn-based combat and RPG elements tossed in, Eamon can be a fun time. With hundreds of adventures to go on, you could be playing Eamon for a long, long time…

Review added: 12/11/2025

Escape

Also known as: N/A

Developer: Muse Software

For a game released in 1978, Escape is pretty impressive. Not only that, but back in the 70's, most games lasted only a few minutes at a time. Escape is a game that you can sit down and spend a rainy afternoon playing. Options to save and load a current game are even included due to how long a single playthrough can potentially take. Essentially, in Escape, you're in a giant hedge maze. The game is in a first-person perspective and you gradually move through the maze, trying your best to reach the exit. If that was the whole game, I'd be somewhat impressed with Escape as it is, as I imagine that it would have been amazing, back in the late 70s, to navigate a 3D maze like this...and Muse Softare did release a game like that earlier in 1978 called Maze Game. However, the gameplay in Escape is a little deeper than simply finding the exit. Along the way, you'll come across people in the maze. Some of these people will always tell the truth, some will always lie, and some will do both. By interacting with these people, you'll get clues as to how to reach the exit…or you may get thrown completely off track if you trust the wrong people. These people will also give you items like passes, maps, and compasses…which, much like the people you encounter, the items may be accurate or may provide false information. Determining who is giving you accurate information and who is giving you false information is the key to finding the quickest way out of the giant maze that you're in. That simple aspect feels like it gives a whole new layer to the game , making Escape a must-play game for fans of maze games. For its time, Escape really was a fantastic experience that was one of the first games to bring the maze genre into three dimensions. And quite honestly, even today, almost 50 years after it was released, it's still an enjoyable game to play if you want a nice, relaxing stroll through an early 3D labyrinth while a bunch of folks lie to you.

Review added: 12/06/2025