Curses is an interactive fiction

Interactive fiction

Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...

 computer game created by Graham Nelson

Graham Nelson

Graham A. Nelson is a British mathematician and poet and the creator of the Inform design system for creating interactive fiction games. He has also authored several IF games, including the acclaimed Curses and Jigsaw , using the experience of writing Curses in particular to expand the range of...

 in 1993. It was originally developed on an Acorn Archimedes

Acorn Archimedes

The Acorn Archimedes was Acorn Computers Ltd's first general purpose home computer to be based on their own ARM architecture.Using a RISC design with a 32-bit CPU, at its launch in June 1987, the Archimedes was stated as running at 4 MIPS, with a claim of 18 MIPS during tests.The name is commonly...

 using Acorn C/C++

Acorn C/C++

Acorn C/C++ in computing is a set of C/C++ programming tools for use under the operating system. The tools use the Norcroft compiler suite and were authored by Codemist and Acorn Computers...

, before Nelson moved to his Inform

Inform

Over the following decade, version 6 became reasonably stable and a popular language for writing interactive fiction. In 2006, Nelson released Inform 7 , a completely new language based on principles of natural language and a new set of tools based around a book-publishing metaphor.- Z-Machine and...

 programming language, which was simultaneously released. It was the first non-test game developed in the language. It is distributed without charge

Freeware

Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...

 as a Z-Code

Z-machine

The Z-machine is a virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games. Infocom compiled game code to files containing Z-machine instructions , and could therefore port all its text adventures to a new platform simply by writing a...

 executable. The game has been described as "acclaimed." The Inform source code is not publicly available. Appearing in the beginning of the non-commercial era of interactive fiction, it is considered one of the milestones of the genre. The player takes the part of an English aristocrat called Meldrew. In the course of searching the attic for an old tourist map of Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, he steps into a surreal adventure to uncover a centuries-old curse

Curse

A curse is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to some other entity—one or more persons, a place, or an object...

 that has been placed on the family. The goal of the game is to find the missing map, and thus annul the curse.

Innovations

Curses contains some innovations that contribute to its appeal.

• Managing the player's inventory by automatically placing items in a container to make room for an object needed in hand (such as placing an item in the rucksack when reading an entry in a book), eliminating the tedium of having to manually drop one item before picking up another.

• Commands places and objects, displaying all the locations visited and all the objects seen during the game.

See also

• Jigsaw (computer game)
  Jigsaw (computer game)
  Jigsaw is an interactive fiction game, written by Graham Nelson in 1995. It begins at the turn of the 3rd millennium, with the player discovering a time machine enabling him or her to travel throughout the 20th Century, visiting many of its most historic moments...
  
  , another Graham Nelson game that serves as a loose sequel to Curses
• Turtle (robot)
  Turtle (robot)
  Turtles are a class of educational robots designed originally in the late 1940s and used in computer science and mechanical engineering training. These devices are traditionally built low to the ground with a roughly hemispheric shell and a power train capable of a very small turning radius...
  
  (a voice-operated form of the robot appears in one of the game's more difficult puzzles)

External links

• Baf's Guide to Interactive Fiction entry has some coverage and provides links to the original release (version 7) and the most recent release (version 16).