Journey to the Center of the Earth is a treasure hunt text adventure game written by Greg Hassett for the TRS-80.
An astounding piece of trivia concerning this game is that Greg was 12 years old and in high school when he wrote the program. Greg would go on to write eight additional text adventures and was the only competitor to Scott Adams in this particular arena at the time.
Journey to the Center of the Earth is loosely based on the Jules Verne book of the same name with particular emphasis on the word loosely. Once you step outside of your ship in the beginning of the game any similarities to Verne’s work ends. The game looks and feels more like a Colossal Cave or Adventureland clone.
There are treasures to collect and you deposit them in your ship. The more treasures you collect and safely deposit the higher your score in the game. A few of the locations feel half-finished; the beginning of an interesting idea that only serves to add color. In this treasure hunt you also have the “maze” trope which has been a staple of the other text adventures that we have played from this era. There are really only three or four puzzles to solve in this game. The hardest puzzle is dealing with the nine-headed hydra.
It did not take me very long to explore all of the areas of the game and eventually solve it. I maybe spent no more than 45 minutes to an hour with the game and the game was much easier than that of Adventureland by Scott Adams.
I am inclined to believe that there were players who enjoyed and appreciated the easier difficulty level. I would have liked to have seen the game locations and descriptions fleshed out a bit more and I would have appreciated the addition of more puzzles. The game just felt a bit incomplete to me or rushed and needed a bit more polish. I had to remind myself also that the game was written by a 12 year old in high school. The game mechanics were flawless and I find that detail to be extremely impressive.
My next game is going to be another text adventure from Greg Hassett entitled the House of 7 Gables.