Excalibur: Sword of Kings

Arthur has been imprisoned in Camelot Castle by the evil sorceress Crania. You must gain access to Camelot, fine and rescue him

Excalibur: Sword of Kings is an authorised remake of the ZX Spectrum game - made using the Adventuron text adventure authoring system.

Excalibur is an old-school text adventure, with easy difficulty.

This game incorporates an interactive tutorial into the first half of the (very short) game.

 Hopefully this game will be a good starting point for introducing friends to the charms of traditional text adventure games.

How To Play

Excalibur requires that the player types commands either by a hardware keyboard, or if on mobile platforms, software keyboards. 

All commands should be ONE WORD or TWO WORDS.

To navigate, type one of the following commands (directions can also be clicked with mouse or touched on a touchscreen):

• NORTH or N
• SOUTH or S
• EAST or E
• WEST or W
• UP or U
• DOWN or D

If the player wants to take a ladder, type:

• GET LADDER or TAKE LADDER

If the player wants to drop the ladder, type:

• DROP LADDER

If the player wants to examine the ladder, type:

• EXAMINE LADDER or X LADDER.

If the player wants to redescribe the current location:

• LOOK

If the player wants to see what they are holding:

• INVENTORY or I

If the player wants to save or load the game:

• SAVE
• LOAD

If the player wants to do something, they should type the command in verb noun format - such as :

• DRINK MILK
• THROW SPOON
• DUNK BISCUIT

The requires the player to figure out the correct commands to resolve obstacles they face in the game.

Are there any enhancements?

• Interactive Tutorial Mode
• Some minor grammar fixes.
• Minor graphic adjustments.
• Minor tweaking of responses.
• New Font.
• Direction links are clickable / touchable.
• Sound Effects.
• Faster game flow.
• Autosave functionality.
• Mobile Support.
• Basic Scanline Emulation.
• Screen Reading Support.

Other than these, this is a straight remake.  No additional puzzles have been added.  

Is this a port or a remake?

It's a remake. 

What is the purpose of the remake?

1. To act as a means for young players, unfamiliar with text adventures,  to become familiar with the concept and the tropes.
2. To act as another example of a type of game that can be authored with the Adventuron authoring system.
3. To fly the flag for illustrated text adventures.
4. As an experiment to see if the "feel" of 8 bit adventures was fully achievable without emulation.
5. To as a tribute to the game I bought and loved as a child.

Credits

• Original Authors (1987) - Ian Smith & Shaun McClure.
• Adventuron Version / Tutorial Mode (2019) - Chris Ainsley

Future Enhancements

A future release will support voice input. 

Release Notes

• 1.0.0 - Released 2019/04/22 - First release
• 1.0.1 - Released 2019/04/23 - Removed overt spoiler for first puzzle, and added HINT in place.
• 1.0.2 - Released 2019/04/24 - Fixed background colour on ending screen.

Excalibur, Sword of Kings - (C) Adventuron Software Limited, All Rights Reserved.