Monday, 11 February 2013

127 Hours

By Steve McCrea

Genre:  Text amputation

Just imagine.  While out for a little potter you fall and get your arm trapped under a heavy boulder in an isolated canyon.  There is no chance of pulling your arm free intact….what to do?  Obviously you cut your arm off (unless you’re a big girl), but how to decide the optimal amount of time to wait until doing so?


Some of you may spot similarities between this game and the story of Aron Ralston.  A climber who had a similar experience while out ‘canyoneering’ in Utah.  Now, I would have done more research on the hinterland of this topic, but couldn’t be bothered, because as we all know all extreme sports are a pointless waste of time.

I assumed this was created using a designer but the code is done from scratch in BASIC.  This means it can have as many quirks as the author wants, including some amusing curse detection – very pleasing to see good old fashioned British swearing catered for!  It’s just a shame “Balderdash” is not there.



So the question still remains?  How long would you wait until you did the deed?  Well, I can give you a bloody big clue: 126 hours is not enough, but 128 is too many.

As usual with text adventures though, it’s worth exploring it without looking at the code first, just to see what you might have tried.  It didn't recognise everything I thought of.

An amusing entry, and crap.  Thank you Steve!

Tipshack: don’t go east.  But if you must wait 127 hours then cut your arm off.

HACK PACK: Stop faffing and grasp the nettle!  Add at the start of line 210 LET a$=”cut off arm”: LET h=127

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