Treasure Hunt is a puzzle box masquerading as a text adventure. The game was created in 1978 by Lance Micklus for the TRS-80. I could find no packaging or documentation of any kind but Nathan P. Mahney of CRPG Adventures found this short blurb in Softside Magazine:
Here is the plot hook or introduction screen from Treasure Hunt:
I had mentioned in a previous blog post that the influence of Colossal Cave upon other games was far reaching. Up to this point we have seen what seem to be staples in commercial adventure games in 1978: a treasure hunt involving a number of treasures or items that need to be collected and a maze that you are going to have to navigate yourself through. While this game certainly has both it is more than that.
When I first sat down to play Treasure Hunt I made the mistake of assuming that it was a simple little game whereby all you need to do is navigate through the caves and collect the treasures. I was actually biased with ‘fools gold’ on my first playthrough because I was able to collect 15 treasures. Things went from bad to worse at that point.
There are 95 total caves that are numbered 0 to 94. Cave 0 is the entrance & exit and where you can safely deposit the treasures that you find. Each cave lists the other caves that it is connected to by number and you merely choose which cave you want to go to next by typing in the number. It looks like this:
When I first started to play I would list the cave number and then alongside that cave number I would list the exits that you could reach. Like this 50: 25, 49, 73. Each time I visited a particular number I would circle it so that I could easily see the path I had not taken or what numbers were left to reach. Sounds easy enough right? Wrong
There are a number of hazards and problems that are introduced as you play.
- There are pits that you can fall into that immediately cause death. There are three of these pits in the game and so you have to work around the pits by avoiding those cave numbers
- There is a pirate in one of the caves and if you do not avoid him he will take your treasures and scatter them about to other caves and your hunt for those treasures will have to begin anew (with a lantern that is running low)
- You can experience an earthquake which shakes the entire cave. I did not understand what the big deal was at first until I realized that each time there is an earthquake (yes they are random and can occur multiple times) that it changes the locations of each of the items in the game. I cannot even begin to tell you how devastating this is.
- There is a giant bat that can randomly swoop down, pick you up, and deposit you in a different part of the caves. When it does this you drop all of the items you are carrying and they are randomly scattered about the cave. This too is particularly devastating.
- There is a dragon located in the caves that will kill you unless you are carrying a particular item……….
These hazards presented a problem for me because of the way that I had decided to map the cave complex. There is an additional wrinkle or complexity to the game. Some of the treasures or objects are needed to acquire or activate other treasures or encounters. You can only carry three treasures at any one time and you cannot drop a treasure. So you must avoid picking up certain treasures but remember where those treasures are located so that you can use them later to solve the game’s puzzles.
This is where I pause to introduce Jason Dyer’s excellent Renga In Blue and the All Adventures project that he is working on. They say imitation is the best form of flattery and it was his idea to begin the All Adventures project which led me to the decision to do something similar. My absolute favorite genre in computer gaming is the role-playing game and particularly the dungeon crawler subset. While my primary goal was to play each CRPG in the year in which it was published I could not ignore the fact that I am a voracious reader and love puzzles. If I focus solely on CRPGs then I am missing out on an entire world of adventure so I decided instead to take a page out of Jason’s book and play and blog about every adventure game ever made in chronological order. There was an individual named Peter who had commented on Jason’s own experience with Treasure Hunt. I am sarcastically paraphrasing (because it was anything but simple in my opinion) Peter who offered that there was indeed a pattern to the numbers and that they could be mapped into overlapping rings. I admit to being humbled by this individual because he made it sound so simple and then he provided a most excellent map. I wadded up my own maps in disgust and I instead used Peter’s map which Jason posted and I will now provide as well. Once I had this map in my possession it made things much easier.
It then became a simple matter to work through the puzzles and acquire the treasures. Even when the bat deposited me in another area of the caves and scattered a couple of the treasures I was able to quickly regroup because of Peter’s wonderful map. The puzzles are unique and fun to work through. One of my favorites involved the dragon. Now normally I do not like to provide spoilers for the games I am playing through. It is my hope to accomplish three things with this blog: 1) to leave you with an appreciation for the history of computer games and how they have changed through the years and influenced other games that would come after 2) that each game is a work of art to be appreciated and that programmers and the people who have created these games should be considered artists; and 3) that reading about my experiences with these older games may entice you to attempt to play them and experience them for yourself. I love to create my own hand drawn maps for the games that I play but I felt like having Peter’s map improved the experience for me. In fairness, I likely feel this way because I spent a good amount of time creating a map on my own. Now getting back to the dragon; I just had to share this bit of comic relief with you however I must warn you that it contains a SPOILER.
I laughed out loud at that one. Classic. You’re on your own with the other puzzles in the game.
I ended up spending more time with Treasure Hunt than I expected to. It first presents itself as a simple affair but it is layered in complexities. It is more a puzzle box than text adventure. The map is diabolical as well as the random events which serve to hinder your progress. The waning lamp also adds a time constraint to the game. There MAY be a way to extend the life of the lamp but that is up to YOU to figure out dear reader. While I expected Treasure Hunt to merely be a box to check for 1978 I found it to be a very unique experience; different from anything that has come before it. I wanted to thank Lance Miklus, the author, for this little piece of gaming history and work of art.