Dungeon crawling, text adventure-style
If you like your text adventures full of depth and narrative twists and turns, as in Zork or The Pawn, then Murdac might not be quite what you're looking for. However, if you like your interactive fiction to be largely puzzle-based then this fun little romp will be right up your alley. It's a fantasy-style adventure which finds the player exploring an ancient land in an effort to uncover the secrets of the devious old witch, Duessa. The game is basically a text-only dungeon crawler, only instead of battling monsters with swords, you'll be solving puzzles, while encountering ogres, cannibals and other such classic characters/monsters. This one is played out in traditional fashion, using a text parser system similar to pretty much any other text adventure ever created but as mentioned, there isn't much in the way of plot to get in the way of the puzzle solving and it is pretty much a solid slog through puzzle after puzzle. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though and if you enjoy the likes of Avon, then you should get some enjoyment out of this. The descriptions are well enough written and manage to create a strong, believable atmosphere that engages and enthralls the player for the most part. However, the parser system is rather limited and doesn't seem to understand even some very basic commands which can prove frustrating. The puzzles too are extremely challenging, so newcomers might want to be wary about starting their exploration of the genre here, while careful observation of descriptions is needed if success is to be achieved. Overall though, despite its limitations this is an enjoyable quest that is recommended for veterans of this kind of thing.
