Adventuring in the Public Domain

by Lynn Alford

Published in the “Whole Earth Software Catalog” Spring 1984

Special thanks to Lynn Alford for granting permission to use this review. You can view her other reviews at http://www.pibweb.com/games2.html.

Adventuring In the public domain . . .

EAMON

Donald Brown; Apple II family;
$10.00/disk; copy-protected? NO;
Public Domain Software Copying Co.,
33 Gold Street #13,
New York, NY 10038;
212/732-2565

LYNN J. ALFORD: EAMON, a public domain fantasy, is an excellent role-playing system. Like many fantasy games, you give your name (or your favorite alias; mine is Lady Lynn) and the game will give you values for your charisma, hardiness. and agility. Then you’re on your own.

There is no winning and losing in EAMON (except for losing your life). Sometimes you have to accomplish some specific task to leave the adventure. but that is rare. EAMON has lots of treasure, loads of monsters, and even an occasional damsel in distress. Don’t attack every monster you meet until you’ve tried making friends—you might need a friend to help you survive the adventure. EAMON itself is more friendly than many other games of its ilk, because ii you give it a command it doesn’t know, it will tell you the commands it does know—wonderful to someone who once spent fifteen minutes trying to tell another game to put a raft in the river.

The EAMON system has a master disk, a dungeon-designer disk, and more than twenty games. each with its own story, some quite different from the others. I’ve completed some in a few hours; others take as much as twenty hours. Maybe the toughness varies according to how mean the author felt that day. The dungeon-designer disk contains a complete set of instructions: for the beginning adventurer and a program that allows you to examine other dungeons and create new dungeons of your own.

I found EAMON in the library of the Carolina Apple club, copied it, and now make copies, for friends. By doing this, I am following the instructions on the opening screen, which urges users to distribute this public domain program as freely as they wish.■