Spy Quest 1 - Mission: SPECTRUM
A downloadable game for Windows
About this game
Mission SPECTRUM is my tribute to the older text parser adventure games as made in the 1980s by Sierra. Not written in actual Sierra AGI, but with the same kind of blocky low-res style of artwork in all the 16 glorious EGA colours.
You play as Agent N of the HCA (Highly Clandestine Agency) and are on a mission to infiltrate Spectrum Enterprises' corporate HQ to find out what nefarious scheme they are about to unleash on an unsuspecting world. Or have they perhaps already done so?
How to play
In the style of the old text adventure games and early graphic adventures, you type commands for the protagonist to carry out. Just start typing, and hit enter when done. The first command you'll have to type in this game is simply get out of car
Move Agent N around with the cursor keys. Like Sierra did, a single keypress for one of the arrow keys will start the character walking in that direction. You can also walk diagonally with the home, end, page up and page down keys (which will make a lot more sense if you see their positions on the numeric keypad of a full-size keyboard). Pressing the same direction arrow again when the character is already moving in that direction will stop him walking, as will the 5 on the numeric keypad (numlock should be off for that to work). Do not hold down the arrow keys as it will simply stop/start the movement several times a second, leading to jerky animation and movement.
Other useful keys:
- Esc brings up the game menu
- F1 shows a help screen
- F2 toggles sound
- F5 saves the current game
- F7 restores a saved game
- Tab shows the list of items you are currently carrying
- Alt-Z or Ctrl-Q quits the game
Need a hint?
I've tried to make this game as fair as possible and to make sure that clues are provided through careful exploration and reading the description. Still, text parser games can be a little daunting for those who aren't accustomed to them. If you do need a hint, check out the hint page on my website.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Small patch for untypeable passwordsOct 24, 2022
Comments
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Solved Spy Quest today, it was a lot of joy to play your short adventure gem! Everyone who loves classic AGI games should take a look on your game!
Thanks again for your small hint. :)
I got stuck in the end when i had to enter the password. In my password there was a " ` " or " ' " sign. I was unable to enter that as i have to type a space after the character for it to show. Long story short, i couldn't finish the game.
Either way i really liked it and brought me all the way back to police quest 1.
Oh dear. Sorry that that happened. If you don't want to start over and hope for a better password, you can circumvent the input issue by temporary changing your keyboard layout to have no so-called "dead keys". For instance, if your keyboard layout is "US International", change it to "US" (and later change it back, assuming that is the desired behaviour). I'm also uploading a new build right now that will prevent certain characters from being used in a password (and will fix such passwords if they happen to be loaded from a savegame).
I am fairly new to this kind of games, but I thoroughly enjoyed playing it. I got stuck once, I didn’t know how to convince the receptionist, so I checked the hint page (thanks for making it). I had a bit of trouble typing the password for the AdvJam2018, I had to look up the right combination of keys because the distribution of my keyboard is in another language. I had a fun couple of hours with this game, I’m left wishing there was more to play. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it, I know making games is not easy and even short games take a lot of time, so thank you.
I'm glad you enjoyed it, and thank you very much for commenting. The games I have here on itch have all been created under a time limit of 2 weeks per game (in this case, for the 2018 Adventure Jam), which necessitates keeping the games short (or less polished). That you were left wanting more is a great compliment to me. I hope to be able to complete a much larger game in the future.
And good point about the password, I may have gone a bit too complicated for the random password generator. It may be good security practices in real life, but perhaps overkill for a game.