*** UPDATED ALL VERSIONS to v1.09 (20-22/8/26) 

THE SECRET OF BARRON WOOD is a supernatural short story in the form of a text adventure.
Venture into the deep wood and explore its darkest recesses, where a century-old secret awaits your discovery.

The game was designed to have a retro feel, harking back to the heyday of adventuring in the 1980s.
It can be run on a variety of the old 8-bit favourites, as well as more modern computers.

It was intended from the outset to be short and the puzzles straightforward to solve,
so that it can be completed in a single session, just like a short story. 

Type simple commands to interact with the game, such as:

> NORTH  (or just N) to go north

> NE  (to go northeast)

> EXAMINE FLOWERS  (or X FLOWERS to examine flowers)

> LOOK  (or just L, redescribes your location)

> GET ITEM  (allows you to pick up an item  listed in the description)

> OPEN BOX  (some objects are containers)

> GET ITEM FROM BOX

> PUT ITEM INTO BOX

> SAVE  (to save your progress - note down the file name you use)

> LOAD  (or RESTORE, to load it back in)

>RAMSAVE  (saves to RAM, use RAMLOAD to load again)

> SCORE  (displays your current score. This can go up and down, and it's possible to get to the end with a score of less than 100%)

> QUIT  (when you've had enough!)


Game notes:

The game was written using the DAAD adventure writing system and compiled to the various formats using DAAD Ready (version A1)
(https://www.ngpaws.com/daadready/).
Images were initially created by AI (chiefly Google Image FX and then imagetocartoon.com (https://imagetocartoon.com/)).
If you prefer not to play games made with the assistance of AI, then try the 128K Spectrum, Commodore 64
or Amstrad PCW and CPC versions, as they are text only. I was originally only going to make versions for ZX Next and QL,
but since DAAD Ready offers all these options for other retro micros, it would have been rude not to use them.
Hope you find your favourite amongst them.

The locations are inspired by the woods next to the house where I grew up.
However, the story and characters are all completely invented.

The current version is: 1.09


Credits:

Jarda "Crayon" Novotny helped hugely with converting the graphics to the Spectrum Next and Amiga/ST formats.
Major thanks are due to Carlos Sánchez for extensive help with the latest version of DAAD Ready
and also to David Walton and Andrei Tenu for play testing the game.
