''Wander'' is a

text adventure Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text Command (computing), commands to control Player character, characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narrati ...

written by

Peter Langston Peter Langston (born 1946) is a computer programmer who wrote and distributed for free several games for Unix systems in the 1970s, including one of the earliest text adventure video games ''Wander (adventure game), Wander'', the original version o ...

in 1974. It is one of the earliest text adventure video games in existence, predating ''

Colossal Cave Adventure ''Colossal Cave Adventure'' (also known as ''Adventure'' or ''ADVENT'') is a text-based adventure game, released in 1976 by developer Will Crowther for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. It was expanded upon in 1977 by Don Woods. In the game, the ...

''. The game was originally coded in

BASIC Basic or BASIC may refer to: Science and technology * BASIC, a computer programming language * Basic (chemistry), having the properties of a base * Basic access authentication, in HTTP Entertainment * Basic (film), ''Basic'' (film), a 2003 film ...

on a

mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...

with multiple databases to create the worlds that formed the game. It was distributed in Langston's PSL Games collection for

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

. For a long time, the original files had been kept in an archived email by one of Langston's friends. The files now exist on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

Gameplay

''Wander'' is both a text

adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story, driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based m ...

and a tool for creating

interactive fiction Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text Command (computing), commands to control Player character, characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narrati ...

; it describes itself as "a tool for writing non-deterministic fantasy stories". The game comes with one such story, named "a3", along with instructions for authors to write their own stories that the game can parse. The game is entirely text based, with the player entering commands such as "north" or "kick machine" in order to progress. The player also has an inventory, which stores objects that they have collected in a game for use.

Plot

In the story included with the game, the player takes the role as a First Under-secretary to the Ambassador for an organisation called Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne (CDT). Sent by Mr. Magnan to the mysterious country Aldebaran III, the player's mission to prevent up uprising against Terran nationals in a limited time.

Development

''Wander'' was created in 1973 or 1974 by

. It was initially created by Langston in HP

Evergreen State College The Evergreen State College is a public liberal arts college in Olympia, Washington. Founded in 1967, it offers a non-traditional undergraduate curriculum in which students have the option to design their own study towards a degree or follow a ...

where Langston was teaching computer science and audio engineering. He likely developed ''Wander'' on an

HP2000 The HP 2100 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers that were produced by Hewlett-Packard (HP) from the mid-1960s to early 1990s. Tens of thousands of machines in the series were sold over its 25-year lifetime, making HP the fourth-largest minicomput ...

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers . By 21st century-standards however, a mini is ...

like his 1972 game ''

Empire An empire is a political unit made up of several territories, military outpost (military), outposts, and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a hegemony, dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the ...

''. Langston rewrote the game in C in 1974 while at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

and released it to other users of the mainframe system. He maintained the game through the rest of the decade, with a release in 1980 as part of his PSL Games Collection package of games for

. The game was thought lost since, as the mainframe computers it ran on were discontinued and no backup copies were known, but in 2015 an interactive fiction enthusiast named "ant", upon seeing the game on a list of lost mainframe games, contacted Langston, who found a copy of the 1980 version in a friend's email archives. The 1980 source code has since been uploaded to

, with adjustments made by Langston and others to make it run on non-unix systems.

References

External links

*{{Internet Archive game, id=wander_201504, title=Wander
Source code
1974 video games 1970s interactive fiction Mainframe games Video games developed in the United States Single-player video games