New Island of Secrets review on IFDB

I've posted a review of the 1984 Usborne type-in game/book Island of Secrets on IFDB. This was a game I tried to type in as a kid, then, when I ran it, I found I was unable to leave the first location. Obviously I'd made a typo somewhere critical amongst the nine pages of program listing. I couldn't face re-typing the whole thing, so I (unintentionally) waited thirty-something years before seriously revisiting the game.

Usborne have made the PDF of the Island of Secrets book and many of their other superb computing titles from the same era freely available on their site.

I especially recommend Write Your Own Adventure Programs For Your Microcomputer. That book got my parser adventure game-making ball rolling when I was a teen, resulting in:

• Dungeon of Death (1988-ish)
• Complex (1988-ish)
• The Sword of Evil (1988-ish)
• Dark Arts (1990)
• Demon's Keep (1990)

Then I wrote a few Eamon adventures, then I didn't make any more text adventure games until IFComp 2010.