Night of the Living Dead (1988) text adventure game for the Tandy Color Computers

A text adventure game for the Tandy Color Computer 1,2,3 with 64K of RAM
Created by Curtis Fennell (Savage Software) and Bob Schuette (Adventure Novel Software)

Good news: Your 1970 Mercury Montego is parked along a desolate farm road. Cute hitchhiker Sheena, a fanatic Frank Zappa fan, sits in the passenger seat.

Bad news: There's a graveyard to the east and an emergency radio broadcast is babbling something about the dead coming to life. And you are out of gas.

So starts Night of the Living Dead text adventure game for the Tandy Color Computers. As the name implies this survival game is based (loosely) on George Romero's seminal zombie film. In the game we follow the player as they leave their stranded car with Sheena in tow to make their way through a cemetery, and the surrounding countryside. The goal is to survive as ghouls search incessantly for warm flesh; your flesh. The screen displays your location, the time and a brief description of the area or the response to your inputted text. Text is entered via a text parser which breaks down the input into action. Want to move North? Type in 'north' or 'n' and you'll change location. Want to pick up a key lying on the ground? Type in 'get key" and it will be added to your inventory. So on and so forth. This text parser is a bit more advanced than most from the era. It can handle a 'hello sheena' to 'les, tell me about black sabbath'. The dictionary used by the parser also appears to take into account synonyms. Push / shove for example.

Survival is the goal in the zombie infested world but you'll be dying far more frequently than making it to safety. The descriptions of your demise are bloody and brutal. The game creators stated that they toned down the gore in an interview in Rainbow magazine. I'd like to see those original death scenes. Luckily for the player one can save any progress made so you aren't starting back at the beginning after yet another death ad infinitum.

While I'm no expert on text adventures I have played enough of them to see how polished, well laid out Night of the Living Dead is. The save feature was uncommon as was the advanced text parser at the time. Another aspect that I didn't see often was the chance to win a prize. $500 for the first registered user to complete the game. The competition and the game's title really stood out amongst all the other adverts in magazines such as Rainbow. Enough that I purchased the game.

No graphics. No sound. Just text. Often frustrating as I worked out a puzzle. But it works and it was a blast playing the game. When I finally did succeed and survive the Night of the Living Dead my victory was oh so sweet.