Escape from Cnossus

Escape from Cnossus is a roguelike for the ZX Spectrum, made with Boriel's ZXBasic compiler. It's a minimalist coffeebreak game; I can finish it in about 40 minutes if I counted correctly.

You can play the game online courtesy of the JSSpeccy emulator. DOS edition via the Warajevo emulator. Code and assets available on GitHub.

It's relatively slow on older machines.

Tips

This is a survival game! Some monsters, generally the mundane creatures, drop useful items when killed, but most give you no benefit. It's best to avoid them unless fighting is the only way to reach the stairs. Even then, remember that monsters fear light: light a torch or what have you and they'll either become confused and attack less, or even run away entirely. Good luck!

Reviews

From Indie Retro News, 2015.

Desktop port

As of autumn 2017, you can buy a desktop port with redone graphics and other improvements.