Guilded Youth

Using a heavily constrained set (TAKE, GO TO, and SHOW TO) of the standard text adventure buffet of options, this is the story of a teenaged boy in '80s suburban southern Ontario who escapes his humdrum existence by logging on to a garish green-and-black monochrome Bulletin Board System (THE GUILD BBS, depicted with clever illustrations thanks to Vorple) with his C-64 and interacting with his peers in medieval fantasy personas (when not chatting, which is all they really do) -- which, ultimately, in some way reflect upon their real-life character.

The player's alter-ego is that of a thief, and he recruits members of the BBS to join his "party" for off-line adventuring exploring a decrepit and abandoned mansion on the edge of town, the Oakville Manor, in search of such cruddy loot as a disaffected teenaged booster might imagine -- water-damaged porn, a blunt letter-opener, perhaps one piece of silverware. A demolition notice indicates that the building has three days left in this world, so this is the player's last opportunity to infiltrate and explore this relic from another time whose shadow he grew up in.

But the player is not the only one with designs on the Manor's final few days, and he may find himself standing on the sidelines of someone else's role-playing game.

Version 2 of the game appends an endgame to the story, allowing the player to share a final treasure with one of his BBS cohorts, setting a trajectory for how this episode changed his life decades down the line.