CRL Group‘s 1987 release of Frankenstein is a text adventure based on Mary Shelley‘s infamous novel and takes a more serious approach than most other adaptations of the time.

The game is divided into three parts, each requiring a slightly different approach. The first part is more of a straightforward text adventure. The second part is more conversation-based and requires that you ask NPCs questions (which rarely ends well). The third part is the story told from The Monster’s point of view. In a way it’s the gaming equivalent of the film Rashomon, only far less visually stimulating.

Actually, that’s this game’s most serious fault – the presentation. There are no images in Frankenstein, other than the loading screens, and the wall of text you have to read to play this game is not what I would call “enjoyable”. No visual aids are afforded to the player. It’s just black text on white and no other options.

This text adventure Frankenstein is not really my idea of fun to be honest. Working out what you need to type, and when to type it, are the two main priorities. Experimenting with the parser is what you have to do, but you need to be precise with your typing.

Personally I can’t see why anyone would want to play this on the Spectrum. As far as readability goes, the text in this game is just plain text with no formatting, so it isn’t the easiest to read. And the grammatical formatting is a bit poor in places. Which are not great qualities for a text adventure.

More: Frankenstein on World of Spectrum