Greedy Gulch

Greedy Gulch is a text adventure game written by Mike Farley for the ZX81. It was published by Phipps Associates in 1982. Graphics are minimal, being limited to simple maps. The code appears to be entirely in BASIC, and leaves little unused space in the 16 KB RAM on this machine.

I remember playing this in the 1980s on my ZX81, but never completed it. I seem to remember not being able to cut some long poles into short ones, but it was a very long time ago.

Greedy Gulch on ZARC

 

During the COVID-19 plague lockdown, I wrote a passable ZX81 emulator on a custom Z80 system that I call ZARC. The display appears on a terminal emulator (minicom). If you are familiar with the ZX81, the display will look a bit odd. Yes, there are much easier ways of running ZX81 games but I wanted to do it this way! I recently got around to actually playing the game again. There are certainly some tricky parts. It is very easy to get lost in the desert, for example. There is a map to show you how to find the mine from the town, but unfortunately reversing the directions does not return to you the town. I did eventually work out a route by leaving items at locations in the desert so I could tell them apart. Without this, you can't tell where you are as the descriptions are identical!

It seems that the poles can only be cut in one specific location, which is possibly what had me stumped before. Without cut poles, the mine roof collapses and that is the end of the game. It turns out that I was very close to completing the game, though I had no way of knowing that at the time.

Completed - not much of a fanfare!

You can save progress by entering the STOP keyword in place of the input string (delete the quotation marks first). Then SAVE "<filename>" to save the entire programme with your current progress. After loading it (LOAD "<filename>"), enter CONT to continue. Do not RUN as this will clear the variables, which are required for the programme to operate.

Maps

You may wish to ignore this part if you want to explore on your own. These maps are quite rough, but do give the general idea. Some paths are reversible, and others not. Beware.

Main Map

It is easy to become lost in the desert. Zeek's map shows the way, repeated for convenience here. Don't forget to fill the water bottle before you leave.

Zeek's Map

The return journey is trickier, and took some time to work out. The initial direction of the arrows shows you the direction in which you should move.

Return Map