#theredobelisk — Public Fediverse posts

I have scheduled a post on #TheRedObelisk, mentioned before. It was featured on #Loadstar, the Commodore 64 disk magazine that sometimes bought programs I had written! It was on issue 58.

Loadstar collections are still sold, as part of LOADSTAR COMPLEAT, for $15 at http://www.ramblehouse.com/loadstarcompleat.htm, so that's a place you can play it. It's also not too hard to find on the Internet Archive. If you get it and run into some of my old software, please don't think harshly of me: I was in my teens when I wrote most of it. I was a weird kid.

There is this super obscure #Commodore64 game I think of from time to time, #TheRedObelisk, published by #KeypunchSoftware, who would take most any user-written game and slap it on a disk for a pittance.

There is something really oddly interesting about it. It'll probably get a Set Side B writeup before long. Here's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tP9jOi676Y

You take your spaceship out and collect gems floating out in space, then you take them in to your weird laboratory and subject them to various energies: sonics, lasers, electricity, to modify their properties.

This affects its value, which you can sell at any time to earn more energy. But your real goal is to get its properties into a narrow range that it turns into a RED OBELISK. I remember doing this long ago, the game certainly makes it obvious when it's happened!

I remember finding out that the game's actually written in BASIC (which there is no shame to), but the graphics, and especially sound, are surprisingly atmospheric.