Adventure Games section

Updated: 04.11.2023

A collection of adventure games for the QL. Some of these are quite old, so may not work too well on modern hardware or emulators, but give them a try nonetheless! Hint: if a game does not work on an emulator or modern QL compatible, try restarting in a QL compatibility mode such as 512x256 4 or 8 colour screen with the screen at the original QL address of decimal 131072 (hex 20000) and system variables at decimal 163840 (hex 28000), this ought to give the best possible chance of success.

If you're into adventure games on QL, try looking at the QL Adventurers Forum and QL Leisure Review magazines on the mags page.

A collection of adventure games - Includes early versions of some of the above plus Aftermath of the Asimovian Disaster v1.01, Haunted House, Haunted Castle, plus Werewolves And Wanderers. (262K) [14/03/11]

adv.zip - one of the simplest text adventures I've ever seen, this one provides a minimal skeleton which anyone can amend and add to without needing much programming knowledge - ideal for anyone dipping their toes into the waters of SuperBASIC programming. (N. Cheesman) (2K) [26/06/16]

Advent.zip - Jeu D'Aventure v9.24 An English translation by Mike Edwards, of a French text adventure game. The game comprises of 145 different locations, and about 90 objects. QSAVEd SuperBASIC program. (Christian Gavin) (33K) N.B. this version does not work on SBASIC. N.B. This is the original version, see below for a more recently updated version.
Advent2.zip - a more recent version of Advent.zip, improved by Derek Stewart. This version needs Toolkit 2. Derek has fixed a couple of little errors and added a help and quit option. Both the updated version and original version (with two little corrections) are in this zip file, while the original Advent.zip will remain above for posterity. (54K)

Adventure 93 - a two-disk collection of Alan Pemberton adventures for the QL from 1993, including Adventure Playtime, From The Tower Of Valagon,  Starplod, Ye Classical-Type Adventure, and The Voyage Of The Beano. [20/02/12]
Download disk 1 (201K)
Download disk 2 (133K)

Adventure Shell - a conversion and enhancement of the late Tim Hartnell's Adventure Shell program. Written in QL BASIC, this lets you create your own adventure games from a skeleton BASIC program by simply editing DATA statements and a few procedures to change room descriptions, object names, monsters and so on. Well documented, it makes it easy to create new adventure games, and being written in a well structured and documented BASIC program it's easy to edit to your own requirements. Why not send in some examples of games created using this package to include here? (David Denham) (27K) [14/03/17]
QL Forum Adventure - amusing little text adventure created with Adventure Shell, all centred on the QL Forum. Raid the QL Forum dungeons to steal Rob Heaton and vanpeebles's beloved QL interfaces, try to find the XorA's password book to open the exit door and beware of assorted monsters such as The Dilwyn and his pet fire-breathing red dragon, Swenson and RWAP - collect weapons like a patio chair to fight with. Full of in-jokes about QL Forum. A nice example game written in BASIC showing what can be achieved with Adventure Shell. (18K) (David Denham) [28/03/17]

Adventure Utilities - for use with Gilsoft's Quill and DP's ACT (78K) [12/12/02]

ADVgen.zip - a previously unreleased Adventure Creator from the author of QL Playwright, QL Conquest and QL Scriptwriter. No full instructions, but some source BASIC included if anyone would like to produce documentation for it. (97K) (Andy Pritchard) [28/11/17]

Asalto y Castiga - An adventure game in Spanish ported from Spectrum to QL. The Spanish title means "Assault and Punishment" in English. (37K) (Marcos Cruz) [10/07/11]

Blindo - A labyrinth type of game from 1987, author is Soenke Mueller-Lund. German and English doc files.  Find the key to progress from level to level. (22K) [12/10/15]

Classic Adventures - Two classical adventure games from Abersoft. The Adventure and Mordon's Quest. The first is based on the famous adventure game by Crowther and Woods, the first of its kind, while the second is a loosely- related but original sequel. John Jones-Steele of Abersoft has kindly given permission in 2018 for these to be released as freeware. I've added a copy of a magazine review below and a couple of screen shots here that you can click on for larger screen dumps. (57K) (Abersoft) [05/04/18]
QL World magazine published a short review of this package, read it here as a PDF file (290K), or here as a Word file (131K).
Instructions - download as PDF (976K), Word (3.5MB) or original scanned JPEG file part 1 (803K) and scanned JPEG file part 2 (829K).

Colossal Cave - originally produced in the 1970s, this was the historic first "interactive fiction" game where you type in what to do next in simple English in a computer presented scenario. Originally written by William Crowther in 1975, enhanced in 1976 by Don Woods and ported to many computer systems since, it has now been ported to the QL by Tobias Fröschle. Play the role of someone exploring the Colossal Cave system in Kentucky, but beware, although there are rumours of gold and treasure, magic is afoot - you are in a twisty maze of passageways (all alike!)... See the README_TXT file after downloading and unpacking the zip file for instructions - basically, point DATA_USE and PROG_USE to the directory containing the program files and execute the ADVENT_EXE program. (51K) (Tobias Fröschle) [16/02/14]

Colossal Cave ADV770 - an even larger implementation of Colossal Cave for QL. This one is a massive 1.2MB in size meaning it can only be run on a 2MB+ RAM system, i.e. QL with Gold Card or above, or emulator set to 2MB or more RAM. Works on QDOS and SMSQ/E. Ported to QL by Graeme Gregory, using C68. For further details on the origin of this particular implementation, see the website http://mipmip.org/adv770/ (661K) [21/07/17]

Cyclops - A SuperBASIC game where you have to find the Cyclops eye (4K) [12/12/02]

Digitaya - Text adventure game where you must find the mysterious Digitaya (7K) [12/12/02]

DIY Adventure - construct your own text adventures with this package (11K) [12/12/02]

Dreamlands - A traditional fantasy text adventure from Jean-Yves Rouffiac (67K) [12/12/02]

dcholoom.zip - Dungeons of Choloom. An adventure game, written in German. (Thorsten Herbert) (13K) [06/06/14]

Dunric's 8K Adventure - a text adventure game where the goal is to explore the castle south of town and retrieve a sceptre which is missing from the throne room. Original by Paul Panks, converted to QL SuperBASIC by Dilwyn Jones. (11K) [23/04/23]

Farce - A classical comical text adventure game (12K) [12/12/02]

Hack.zip - Hack v1.2 Hack is a Dungeons and Dragons like game where you (the adventurer) descend into the depths of the dungeon in search of the Amulet of Yendor (reputed to be hidden on the twentieth level). You are accompanied by a little dog that can help you in many ways and can be trained to do all sorts of things. On the way you will find useful (or useless) items, (quite possibly with magic properties) and assorted monsters. Unlike most adventure games, which give you a verbal description of your location, hack gives you a visual image of the dungeon level you are on. (Wilfried Soker) (125K)

Haunted House - A classical text adventure game. (19K) [12/12/02]

Here We Go - A text adventure written in ACT (Adventure Creation Tool). Gives you the quest of trying to get to the cup final at Wembley. A formerly commercial game from Impact Entertainments, now released as freeware. (33K) (A. Cserbakoi and P. Jones) [13/02/14]

Infocom Routines For Qdos - To play (and cheat!) with Infocom v1-v5 games (Luke Roberts) (346K) [13/12/10]

Three disks of PD games for use with the Infocom Zip interpreter. Ported by Luke Roberts.
infocom1.zip (470K) Disk 1 - Curses, Jigsaw, Robots and Weather.
infocom2.zip (390K) Disk 2 - Christminster, Mindelec, Theatre, Tk1 (Time Killer 1) and Tube.
infocom3.zip (384K) Disk 3 - Inhumane, Library, Magic, Mist, Windhall 1.

infocom292.zip (15.9MB) - A massive collection of 292 games for use with the Infocom package above. See the INDEX_TXT file within the zip for a list of games, or read it as a PDF here (205K).

Plenty more games for Infocom Zip are available at http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXzcode.html. Please remember that the Infocom utility for QDOS can only handle v1 to v5 (usually with .z1 - .z5 extensions).

Inform Compiler - Lets you create Infocom-style text adventure games (Luke Roberts) (334K) [13/12/10]

Phill Sproston Games. A set of games written in SuperBasic. Originally published by Quantum Soft in the 1980s, they have now been released as freeware by the author. (Phillip Sproston) (38K) [02/06/09]

P.I.Cole-The Case Of The Missing Doxie - In this game you play the part of detective Cole and you have to find a missing woman. The story gets more complex as you play. Collect information and find the answers to "What really happened?", "Who done it?" and "Why?" before the final confrontation in the game, which reveals them all. Needs Toolkit 2. There are various versions for different platforms. (Andrei Tenu) [14/02/2020]
PICole.zip (312K) - generic version, create a directory on your storage path device and unzip the archive into it, then run the game, passing the full path as a parameter in an EX command.
PICole_IMG.zip (402K) - FLP disk image version.
PICole_WIN.zip (602K) - WIN (QXL.WIN) image version.
PICOLE_MDV.ZIP (186K) - MDV image, only for use with vDrive systems.
PIColeSource.ZIP (17K) - Source code files for the game.
PIColeManual_PDF.zip (154K) - Manual for the game, zipped PDF file.

P.I.Cole2-The Invisible Case - The second in Andrei Tenu's P. I. Cole series of adventures. You are the detective Cole and you have to find and retrieve a stolen item, in order to receive the reward paid by the insurance. The story then gets more complex, and much darker, as you play. There are 3 possible endings – a happy ending and 2, let’s say, not so happy. So save often! You might need it! In addition, try not to end up in hospital! Three versions of the game for different systems - generic zip file, qxl.win-style image and a floppy disc image, follow the instructions in the manual to install your chosen version. (Andrei Tenu) [21/02/21]
PICole2.zip (289K) - generic version.
PiCole2_win.zip (242K) - a qxl.win image of the game.
PICole2_img.zip (235K) - a floppy disc image version.
PICole2Manual_and_Walkthrough.zip (1.3MB) - manual and walkthrough files. Both PDFs.
PIcole2Source.zip (1.8MB) - game source files.

Proteus - an unreleased German adventure game, where you are the hacker, Proteus is the big system and then there's a top secret program. The task: find and destroy the secret program, but beware... (Martin Berndt) (14K) [09/05/14]

QL Pawn - a formerly commercial game, QL Pawn is a highly interactive game where you are placed as the star of a narrative story, in which the characters all have independent ideas about how to behave.  You wake up on a strange island wearing a silver wristband. As you explore the island, you meet a variety of characters, the majority of whom ask you to complete a small task for them (description from QL Wiki). The downloads are as I received them - a single QL floppy disk image, and a zip file containing images of the 3 microdrive cartridges and a brief instruction file called INSTRUCTIONS.txt.
QL Pawn Disk.img (720K) - QL floppy disk image
QL Pawn Microdrive Version.zip (122K) - zip contains microdrive version images (3 cartridges) and instruction text file.

qlzeitfalle.zip - QL-Zeitfalle (Time Event) is quite a large German graphical adventure from Oliver Neef (author of Grey Wolf, Return To Eden, Final Conflict etc) (43K) [22/10/15]

Quest - A graphic adventure - can you solve it? (17K) [14/03/11]

Rescue Of Horan - A German graphical adventure, originally by Solar Software. Written in SuperBASIC with a rather long loading time. Runs from 128K. (55K) [23/01/16]

Rogue - Jerome Grimbert port of Unix 'Dungeon of Doom' type game (75K) [12/12/02]

ScottZX.zip - The ScottAdams adventure set and the ScottFree interpreter ported to QDOS. Run the interpreter by entering DATA_USE dddn_ : EX dddn_ScottZX (where dddn_ is the drive name and number where the program is stored) then type the game number at the prompt - 00 to 13 work normally but uncertainty over the mapping  means it's up to the reader to rename them to advXX_dat, says the author. (Graeme Gregory) (127K) [16/05/19]

Squadies V1.63 - Military text adventure (N.B.strong language, adults only) (28K) [12/12/02]
Squaddies.zip - Squaddies text adventure - different version of above game, not quite sure which is the most current version. (33K)

Starplod - an icon-driven illustrated adventure game from Alan Pemberton, set in space. Very colourful. Ideally suited to those people who might like an adventure but are put off by having to type in the commands, as it can be controlled by a joystick in the QL's CTL1 connector, or using cursor keys and space bar.  Also available as part of the Adventure-93 set of games above. (63K) [03/04/14]
Starplod Manual as a PDF file (2.5M)
Starplod_Reviews_x3.pdf - Also available - 3 scanned reviews of the game in one document  (541K)

The Blag 2 - This is a text adventure based upon the police work required to solve a crime - a robbery at Barrows Bank. Written by an ex-policeman, the adventure includes lots of police procedures including a notebook feature to allow you to make notes as you interview suspects and investigate the crime scene for example, a police dog and a police car to help you get about.Can you solve the crime? Manual_txt file added 21/02/15. WARNING: Looking at the code in an editor, it seems to contain some strong language. (A W Woolcock) (47K) [21/02/15]

Treasure Hunt - a classical text adventure game (25K) [12/12/02]

Two Loc - short, simple and humorous adventure game written by a twelve year old (2K) [12/12/02]

Voyage Of The Beano - a large graphical adventure (Alan Pemberton) (155K) [12/12/02]
Beano Hints.pdf - Tobias Fröschle's "cheat sheet" hints for Voyage Of The Beano. [18/08/16]

wander101.zip - Graeme Gregory has ported a version of Wander, one of the earliest adventure game softwares. Wander is a tool for writing non-deterministic fantasy "stories". The product is a story whose unfolding is affected by decisions made by the "reader".  The author is Peter Langston (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Langston), who when asked if this is really from 1974 says: "As I remember I came up with the idea for Wander and wrote an early version in HP Basic while I was still teaching at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. Then I rewrote Wander in C on Harvard’s Unix V5 system shortly after our band moved to Boston in 1974. I got around to putting a copyright notice on it in 1978." Here https://ahopeful.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/wander-1974-a-lost-mainframe-game-is-found/ is some more information on Wander. Version 1.01 fixes a stack overflow bug and should no longer crash with signal extension (78K) [06/01/18]
Sources available here: https://github.com/SinclairQL/wander/releases/tag/wander-1.01

Wreck Dive - features a diver exploring a shipwreck in search of treasure. 6 decks and 140 rooms to explore. v2.03 (Nick Ward) (34K) [19/02/14]

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