Grim Oak Manor

A text adventure with pictures. Uncle Nigel is dead and the bank wants Grim Oak Manor. Somewhere in the house is his last will: find it and call the bank. Each place is shown in a picture above the story text, with a vampire, a goldfish and a bat among the things you meet, and the pictures change to show what you have altered. Instead of typing, you build each command from a menu of verbs and nouns; GO lists only the ways out, and the right words and combinations are offered once you have learned them. You can carry five items at a time. A score out of 100 and a rank measure how far you have come.

Controls: Either joystick. Up and down choose a verb in the left column or a noun in the right; right or the left button moves to the nouns; the left button carries out the command and the right button goes back. Long texts wait for a button at MORE.

ColecoVision version credited in the source to Claude (an AI made by Anthropic) for Amy Studio, in Amy, the language by Amy Bienvenu, 2026: a reimagined adaptation of the published rules. From Ahoy! No. 52, April 1988: original Commodore 128 program by Cleveland M. Blakemore. Not printed in the magazine: a free bonus on the April 1988 Ahoy! Disk; documentation and a solution were offered by mail. This is a modern homebrew adaptation, not a commercial Coleco release.