Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN APRIL 2025?

On 02/05/2025 15:58, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Well, I can't speak specifically to the Speccy. It wasn't my device of
choice and I've very little familiarity with its software. But a lot
of the ports to PC and Apple (where I did have familiarity) did suffer
from the problem. There were, of course, exceptions but even in games
like "Zork" you could sense this underlying philosophy; make things as
hard as possible for the player to extend the duration of the game.

I tend to agree. With their limitations there was only so much content you could put in so if you knew exactly what to do you could play-through a game in a few hours or so. As you say to increase the actual game time the easiest option is just make it hard to know exactly what you had to do.
I remember some of the early text adventures and you could easily spend half-an-hour working out just how to get past a problem. Then there was Manic Miner with it with its massive single screen level count of twenty. I spent many hours playing that but I never got past probably level fourteen or fifteen.