Earthly Delights is a 1983

1983 in video gaming

-Events:* A major shakeout of the video game industry begins. By 1986, total video games sales will decrease from US$3.2 billion to US$0.1 billion.* MCA Universal files suit against Nintendo, claiming that the latter company's video arcade hit Donkey Kong violated Universal's copyright on King Kong...

 Apple II text adventure game created by Roger Webster and Daniel Leviton and published by Datamost

Datamost

Datamost was a software design company founded by David Gordon and based in Chatsworth, California. Datamost operated in the early 1980s producing games and other software mainly for the Apple II, Commodore 64 and Atari platforms, with some for the IBM PC...

.

Premise

In Earthly Delights, the story begins with the death of your favorite uncle, whom you've not seen for many years, and the unusual inheritance you receive from him — a portrait of a beautiful woman entitled Earthly Delight. Your uncle writes that pleasures and rewards will be yours if you keep the picture, and exhorts you not to sell it. When a stranger approaches you offering an enormous sum for the work, your suspicions are aroused and the adventure of Earthly Delights begins.

Game play

This game is an interactive text-only adventure in much the same style as the earlier and better-known Zork

Zork

Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language...

 and Eamon

Eamon (computer game)

Eamon, sometimes known by the longer title The Wonderful World of Eamon, is a computer adventure game created by Donald Brown and released for the Apple II in 1980. The game is a text adventure similar to other early titles like Adventure or Zork , though with many role-playing elements not...

 series, in which the player is presented with a description of his surroundings, and is then prompted to enter commands to move about, get objects and interact with other characters. Though allowing for some freedom and innovation of action, the game is scripted to unfold a story in a particular way as you solve various mysteries and puzzles.
The game's interface shows the player's location in the fictional world in the upper left corner and the number of "moves" that have been made in the upper right. One enters commands at the question mark prompt.

Earthly Delight

The introduction to the game describes the painting as "Parrish's Earthly Delight", alluding to American painter Maxfield Parrish

Maxfield Parrish

Maxfield Parrish was an American painter and illustrator active in the first half of the twentieth century. He is known for his distinctive saturated hues and idealized neo-classical imagery.-Life:...

. This allusion is supported by the painting's depiction on the cover, which mimics the mountainous landscape of Parrish's Canyon and female subject in flowing dress common in his works. Though Parrish never created a piece named Earthly Delight, Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch painted a triptych

Triptych

A triptych , from tri-= "three" + ptysso= "to fold") is a work of art which is divided into three sections, or three carved panels which are hinged together and can be folded shut or displayed open. It is therefore a type of polyptych, the term for all multi-panel works...

 named The Garden of Earthly Delights

The Garden of Earthly Delights

The Garden of Earthly Delights is a triptych painted by the early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch , housed in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1939. Dating from between 1490 and 1510, when Bosch was about 40 or 50 years old, it is his best-known and most ambitious work...

in the early 16th century.