The Arkham Abomination

"THE ARKHAM ABOMINATION"  (aka: "The Vileness Under The Henge")

A free interactive 'Lovecraftian' horror fanfic story using similar places and characters from the Lovecraftian world. I do not claim to own any of the characters or places described in the story or any of the original HP Lovecraft stories. This is a non-commercial fanwritten story and I am not profiting from it in any way.  All rights duly belong and remain with the original copyright holder(s). 

Author: catventure ©2021.

A free, short, offline, downloadable, parser-based text adventure for PC Windows Only. (XP and above; 32/64bit) - English language.

Written using the  "Thinbasic Adventure Builder" (TAB) 

This adventure game is text only and of the traditional sort. It is similar to the old Infocom/Magnetic Scrolls/Level 9 type which were popular in the mid 1980`s. 

There are no graphics, sfx, or animations in this adventure  game. However, there is a background music which can be turned on or off.  Music credit: courtesy of Eric Matyas

This adventure game was submitted to the  ParserComp 2021 game jam

You play Stu Troughton, a retired enquiry agent from Dunwich.  You arrive in Arkham because of your concern for a great friend, Clark Ashton, a journalist from the "Arkham Advertiser". Clark suddenly up and disappeared about a week ago. Passing strange! The local police have been unable to trace him and have reached a dead end with their investigation. Seems there's an ongoing public health crisis here; a strange epidemic that has left dozens of tumour-ridden and mutated patients in hospital and an unusual number of Arkhamites ill with symptoms of nausea, vomiting and bleeding.

Can you find your missing friend, put an end to epidemic caused by dark forces that have infiltrated the surrounding countryside and well... erm... simply survive!?

You score points for overcoming obstacles, solving problems or making progress. A perfect score is 50 points. You may find it helpful to make a map and keep notes.

The game understands the standard adventure commands.

Run the "arkham.exe"  application and the adventure will load.

**Special Note: When starting the program it is possible that some virus checkers may produce a "false-positive" warning. You may need to tell your antivirus software to create an 'exception' for the game app in order to allow it to run**

HOW TO PLAY

You give instructions and communicate with the program by typing in commands at an input prompt in the lower textbox in response to a  prompt such as: "What now?" A  flashing cursor indicates that the game is waiting for you to type a valid command in and then press <RETURN> or <ENTER> to confirm your input . You can type in upper or lower case or a mixture of both.

The locations in the game also list the exit directions you can move to. (unless its dark)  To move about in the game world simply type in a compass direction or its equivalent abbreviation eg:

>go north

>west

>se

You may also be able to travel in or out and up or down too.

To see what objects you own or may be carrying or wearing  check your inventory whenever necessary by typing in eg:

>inventory

Input commands usually consist of a verb and a noun eg:

 >get rope

although longer phrases will sometimes also be accepted and may need to be typed eg:

 >tie the rope to the tree

It's essential to examine (or x) things you see or encounter such as objects, characters or even game scenery to get further information or perhaps a hint or clue eg:

>examine trees

>x fisherman

The parser is fairly sophisticated and will accept multiple commands so you can type things like:

>get rope, tie rope to tree. up then examine the knife and then go down

as a single input and the game will process each command one at a time consecutively if it can do.

Multiple Input commands are separated by "and", "then", "and then", a comma (,) or a full stop (.) as shown above.

The parser also understands "it" and "them" which works on the last noun typed eg:

>get rope, examine it then drop it 

or perhaps:

>get rope

>examine it

The parser understands ALL or EVERYTHING but this only works with the verbs get, drop, wear, remove or examine on portable objects eg:

>get all

>examine everything

The parser understands ALL EXCEPT or ALL BUT but this only works with the verbs get, drop,  wear, remove or examine on portable objects eg:

>get all except the rope and knife

>drop all but the box

You may be able to get objects from or put objects in a container type of object eg:

>put rope in rucksack

>get knife out box

You may be able to see into a container object if it is open and its contents are viewable  eg:

>look inside the rucksack

>look into box

>look in rucksack

You can examine/search objects you find, scenery items in a location or NPC's (Non Player Characters) you may meet eg:

>examine the  jar

>exam boat

>x farmer

>look at the tree

You might need to converse with a Character in the game eg:

>talk farmer

>talk to guardian

>ask farmer about <thing/person>

You might want to give or offer something you possess to a particular character eg:

>give the knife to the professor

There are other useful verbs which the game recognizes, but it is left to the player to discover these by himself/herself.

look/l/r                                 - redescribes current location, exits, objects visible etc.

examine/x/look at            - inspect, examine a thing or person

search <thing>                  - same as examine

get/take/pick up <obj>   - pick up an object

drop/put down <obj>    - place an object down in the current room

wear <object>                   - wear something if it is a wearable item

remove <object>              - remove an already 'worn' item

i/inv/inventory

inven/list                             - list objects being carried and worn

exits                                      - show visible exits available (unless it's dark)

again/g                                 - repeat previous command

quit/q/stop                         - asks if you are sure you want to quit

restart                                  - start adventure from beginning

replay                                   - restart adventure without intro

help                                      - help commands summary

info                                       - system command summary

wait or z                             - let a turn pass

undo                                    - go back one move

load/restore                     - file requester to load a previously saved game position

save /store                         - file requester to save current game position

quicksave/qsave/qs        - save without file requester (temporary)

quickload/qload/ql         - load in a previous qsave'd file position

score                                    - show points scored so far out of 50

sound off                            - halt music playing

sound on                             - resume playing music

transcript on                     - create a text file to log the game

transcript off                    - stop logging game to text file

I have tried to make the game user friendly and respond to various player commands and also to be helpful should the player type in wrong, incorrect or nonsensical input. It is not really a big game and there aren't too many puzzles to solve in it but you may have to *think* a little to finish the quest successfully. I sincerely hope you have fun playing it and I am happy to receive comments, feedback, bug reports etc.

Credits:

Thanks for permission to base this adventure on a scenario by Jo Kreil at:  http://cthulhureborn.com

Thanks to all who played or playtested the game.