FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 25, 1993 CONTACT: Dave Malmberg 510-659-0533 Softworks announces -- THE SIXTH ANNUAL CONTEST WINNERS MISSION SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA -- Softworks today announced the winners in its sixth annual (1992) contest for the best computer text adventure game developed using the Adventure Game Toolkit (AGT) system. The Adventure Game Toolkit is a computer program which allows MS-DOS, Macintosh, Amiga and Atari ST computer users to create their own "interactive fiction" or text adventure games. Games developed on one of these computers may be played on any of the other computers. It didn't seem possible! We got more and better entries in our 1992 contest than ever before. Our faithful judges played and replayed these wonderful games. They tirelessly rated and re-rated the innovative and the classic. As we tallied the results, it became apparent that we could not possibly declare one winner. And so, for the second year running, we have two winners...and a new category! From high atop a pile of entries, walk-throughs, and judges' ballots, we hereby declare the WINNER in the INDIVIDUAL CATEGORY ($100) to be CLIFF DIVER: INVESTIGATOR FOR HIRE -- PURCHASED SIGHT UNSEEN By Pat Farley and the WINNER in the SPECIAL GROUP EFFORT ($100) to be SHADES OF GRAY -- AN ADVENTURE IN BLACK AND WHITE By Mark Baker, Steve Bauman, Belisana, Mike Laskey, Judith Pintar, the hercules/Assoc. SysOp, and Cindy Yans More about the winning games: CLIFF DIVER: INVESTIGATOR FOR HIRE -- PURCHASED SIGHT UNSEEN -- "Contrary to popular belief, the life of a private investigator is not one of hot cars, flying bullets, and loose women." -- so begins this story about Cliff Diver, P.I. This game is the second of a series of interactive novels featuring Cliff Diver, a private investigator living and working in San Francisco. Cliff is cut from the same cloth as such famous PI's as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. Pat Farley's first Cliff Diver adventure won first place in the 1990 contest. We're delighted to join Diver again. In this adventure you and Cliff search for lost paintings. Pat Farley's game has everything a good adventure should have. The judges agreed that this game shines because Pat writes so well and his game very faithfully recreates the sound and feel of the classic "hard-boiled" detective stories of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. High praise indeed! SHADES OF GRAY -- AN ADVENTURE IN BLACK AND WHITE -- Shades of Gray was conceived, written and coded by seven people: two from England, two from the East Coast and three from the West. They have never met each other, never, in fact, spoken to each other on the phone, nor even corresponded by mail. The entire project was managed through E-Mail, from within a private CompuServe Gamer's Forum. The game begins with you waking from a nightmare into another nightmare -- even more frightening: "You wake painfully, from a fitful sleep, to find yourself surrounded by three shadowy figures....After a horrible dizzying moment, the shapes come into focus -- vampires, they are vampires, and they are nonchalantly discussing your fate....The swarthy one wants to kill you out of hand. The second argues against. 'He has tasted blood. He's one of us now....' What blood have you been drinking? The thought of turning into a vampire frightens you: never to be able to face the light of day again, never to see Hilary laughing in the sun. But who is Hilary? You can't seem to remember anything. Not even who you are." This marvelous, mammoth game is as innovative as Pintar's previous winner, COSMOSERVE, which tied for first place last year. The Judges were unanimous in their praise of SHADES OF GRAY. This game blows us away! OTHER WINNERS The 1992 winners circle also includes 15 great Honorable Mention Games (in alphabetical order by title): ALIENS LAUGHED AT MY CARDIGAN -- by Andre M. Boyle -- This is a takeoff of a "Hitch-hikers' Guide to the Galaxy" with a little Star Trek thrown in. WHAT? NO ALCOHOL FREE MINERAL WATER?! -- also by Andre M. Boyle -- You wake in the data banks of a computer. Your life depends on performing Herculean tasks set by the none-to-benevolent computer. THE CAVES OF DYANTY -- A SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURE -- by Nathan Fritz -- The planet Dyanty had been the home of an incredibly advanced race which mysteriously disappeared long ago. You are one of the archaeologists working to recover the colossal cities of the ancient Dyantians. THE DETECTIVE -- by Kit W. Carson -- You're detective John L. Bloom and an attractive woman has hired you to find her missing husband. Your challenge: to bring a glimmer of brilliance to the world of detecting. JOURNEY INTO XANTH -- by Neil Sorenson (based on Piers Anthony) -- Welcome to Xanth, where everyone has a magical talent. Some talents are useless but your talent is the conjuration of a magic mirror of communication! THE LADY IN GREEN -- By D. F. Stone -- Friday night at a quiet 18th century hotel and return to the family were on the agenda. In your planning you hadn't counted on...the lady in green! MURDER OF JANE KRANZ -- A DETECTIVE ADVENTURE -- by Christian Andersen -- You are a famous detective in London during the madcap 1920's. The Yard summons you to a murder at Victoria Street 221B. OKLIB'S REVENGE -- by Sue Medley -- Sergeant Oklib himself "volunteered" you to find the King's missing staff. You are off on a classic quest vowing that you'll find your way back and show Oklib just what you think of him for doing this to you! QUEST FOR THE BLACK PEARL -- by Ralph W. Varble -- In this Indiana-Jones-type-adventure your old Professor begs you to meet him. He knows the location of the fabled black pearl. You must reach it before the volcano erupts. RERUNS AGAIN -- by Neil Sorenson -- In this dizzy adventure you are inside a world made of television reruns (Gilligan's Island, Star Trek, Brady Bunch, etc.) Seek the answer for the age old question: Is there life after syndication? THE TEMPEST: AN ADVENTURE BASED ON SHAKESPEARE'S PLAY -- by David R Grigg -- All the elements for adventure are here: searches, shipwrecks, castaways, villains, and maidens to rescue. You play Ferdinand, prince of Naples, in this adaptation of the Bard. TIMESQUARED -- CHAPTER ONE -- CENTROPLIS -- by Bert Lee -- You are about to graduate from the Chronos Academy, class of 2098. However, before you graduate you have a great adventure! Bert's the author of APPRENTICE -- TESTING OF A MAGICAL NOVICE -- one of the Best of 1991. WHAT PERSONAL COMPUTER? -- by John Minson -- Ah, the joys of computer journalism. Jet-setting around the world, huge amounts of dosh, instantly attractive to members of the opposite sex. At least that's what you thought when you started! WRAITH BLASTER -- by Ken Dibble -- Young, naive, but adventurous, you are bent on making your living as a trader and explorer in the great galaxy. This is a trading game with the object of acquiring wealth. ZIM GREENLEAF'S LABORATORY -- By Melody Grandy -- You are exploring a sorcerer-botanist's laboratory (complete with common and Latin botanical names if you're so inclined.) With nasty creatures that attack you, valuables to find, and the challenge of getting back to your own dimension, this game has something for everyone. WINNING GAMES AVAILABLE All of the winning games are available from Softworks in a special six disk set for only $ 30. The disks are ZIPped -- so they actually contain more than 5 megabytes of goodies when they are unzipped to their playable form. EARLIER CONTESTS Softworks has sponsored five earlier adventure game writing contests. The winner of the first contest was ALICE, written by Douglas Asherman. ALICE put the player in the role of Alice in Wonderland, meeting many of the same characters described in Lewis Carroll's 19th-century book while also adding some humorous 20th-century perspective. The 1988 contest winner was A DUDLEY DILEMMA, by Lane Barrow, a Ph.D candidate at Harvard. In this game, the player assumes the role of a Harvard student in his/her quest for knowledge, adventure and a diploma. Along the way, the player experiences a student sit-in and meets panhandlers, MIT students and other bizarre characters roaming Harvard Square. SON OF STAGEFRIGHT, by Mike McCauley was the 1989 winner. In this game, you play the role of an actor (or actress) trying to get out of an old, abandoned theater. This is an adventure game in three "Acts", where each Act has a different theme and a different challenge. The game is fun(ny), frightening and very clever. CRIME TO THE NINTH POWER by Patrick Farley was the 1990 contest winner. In this game, the player helps Cliff Diver, a San Francisco private investigator escape from the deadly milieu of the Zamboni crime family's secret headquarters. A "hard-boiled" detective adventure in the style of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe! In the 1991 contest, we had a tie for first place: COSMOSERVE - AN ADVENTURE GAME FOR BBS-ENSLAVED by Judith Pintar, and THE MULTI-DIMENSIONAL THIEF by Joel Finch. COSMOSERVE - AN ADVENTURE GAME FOR BBS-ENSLAVED -- as might be guessed from the title -- is an adventure that takes place inside a BBS or Bulletin Board System (complete with sound effects for logging on, switching the computer ON and OFF, etc.) COSMOSERVE is a very, very original, innovative and unusual game! In the game THE MULTI-DIMENSIONAL THIEF, you play the role of a thief faced with the challenge of rooms "borrowed" from other universes and permeated with a number of useful items including the infamous "portable hole." Filled with wonderful puzzles that will remind you of Infocom's finest, THIEF is extremely well-written, clever and very funny. AGT BACKGROUND The Adventure Game Toolkit has been favorably reviewed in a number of personal computer publications including "PC Magazine", "Computer Gaming World", "Big Blue Disk", and "Public-Domain Software & Shareware." According to those reviews, AGT "allows for creating remarkably complex and sophisticated games in a fairly simple way," that "anyone with an ounce of imagination can create adventure games...similar in layout and sophistication to those from Infocom," and "the process is easy...and you'll have hours of fun doing it." AGT was the winner of the Adventure & Strategy Club's Golden Chalice Award for 1992. The Adventure Game Toolkit is distributed as shareware, so that MS-DOS, Macintosh, Amiga and Atari ST computer owners can try out the program before buying it. Copies of the program disks may be obtained from user groups, bulletin boards, and authorized disk vendors for a nominal fee, or directly from Softworks. Included on the program disks are a dozen sample adventure games with complete AGT source code. Registration is only $20, or $40 including a printed copy of the 223-page manual, which can also be purchased separately for $25. Registered users may also purchase the Pascal source code for AGT for only $50. For more information, contact Softworks, 43064 Via Moraga, Mission San Jose, CA 94539. Telephone (510) 659-0533. - 30 - CONTACT: Dave Malmberg 510-659-0533