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I did a quick Google search and found several game titles with 'Scroll'. Several pre-dating the 1994 release of the first Elder Scrolls.

• Dragon Scroll: Yomigaerishi Maryuu - NES - 1987
• Flying Dragon: The Secret Scroll - NES - 1987
• The Scroll - PC - 1995
• Magic Scrolls: Collection 1 - PC - 1991
• Dungeon Scroll - PC, iPhone, Android - 2004

I suspect Bethesda will have troubles winning this one, but courts can be funny sometimes.

Dink Smallwood - the best adventure game ever. And Free.

I know it's also not huge, but I gotta represent the hometown (Salem, OR) and link to Dink.

Dink Smallwood

Also the same guy who wrote Legend of the Red Dragon, if you guys recall BBSing back in the early 90's. So the key to affordable game design is to make games to the standard of the early 90's and have the cool nickname of "Wiz."

I just want to put in my vote for Dink Smallwood. It's like King's Quest or Legend of Zelda, on drugs.

Last year, after years of collecting dust, the publisher released an update with some nice new features and bug-fixes. And (I just looked) it's now open-sourced.

There's a *huge* collection of mods, add-ons, extra levels, etc available for free and the people making them are just as twisted as the original author. Many of the mods I tried were really, really fun. Some were incredible in what they added to the original game.

This game was the reason I started programming. I wrote a few IGMs for LoRD and LoRD 2. Not very good mind you.

I still enjoy Seths works, including Dink Smallwood and that awesome entry into GameDev.Net's Four Elements competition (4E3 IIRC). The Tarzan Pissing Game as it came to be known is really fun to play, and you can get it off Seths Site. http://www.rtsoft.com/

Cheers, Chris.

A plug for one of my favourite games — Dink Smallwood. Two years after the game was published, it was "On 10-17-1999 released the game as freeware, no ad-ware, no spyware and no strings attached." Now that's an example to follow!

That was one cool and wicked game, and because they included the source of the original game (the map, etc; not the engine, IIRC), I was able to recompile the game so that I started with 500 Strength, 50000 money, etc and have lots of fun ;)

You should check it out, it's the funniest (in a wicked sort of way) RPG I've ever played.

"With text games, you can sit there at the prompt, go make a sandwich, then come back and play more."

Not true. If you were playing L.O.R.D., getting that sandwich could mean you got slaughtered, or missed that opportunity to get laid by a (female) character.

Hmm, games I would recommend?

I have a rather outdated page on my outdated website which lists some games I've grown to like you may care to check out

When did you try BZFlag? They've recently made the big milestone of version 2.0.0 and the game is better than ever.

I've never played Glest. I'm glad you mentioned it. I guess now I put some use to that ever-neglected Windows box in the other room. :)

If you dig RPGs, be sure to check out Dink Smallwood. The game is just absolutely crazy.

I'm actually a developer for the Java-based Rogue-like Tyrant. If you liked Angband and Moria, you'll almost certainly love this unless you're the old-schooler type who just can't take Rogue with graphics. :)

By the way, I love the sig. :)

Also - Dink Smallwood is a fun, quirky RPG which is also now available free of charge.

This one looks quite "original" dungeon scroll. Fight your way through dungeons of evil creatures by arranging letters to create magic words. So original it kind of sounds mad, but surely you need that kind of craziness to push the boundaries and find some new genres. I'm not saying this succeeds in doing that, but at least they are trying (unlike 99% of high street developers).

Seth Able, creator of the BBS game Legend of the Red Dragon, continues to produce wonderfully quirky games. For instance, Funeral Quest is online game that has players via for the wallets of grieving families. Capitalism at its finest. DungeonScroll is word game/RPG. It's like boogle but with spells and hit points.

Keep up the great work, Seth. :-)

Seth Able, creator of the BBS game Legend of the Red Dragon, continues to produce wonderfully quirky games. For instance, Funeral Quest is online game that has players via for the wallets of grieving families. Capitalism at its finest. DungeonScroll is word game/RPG. It's like boogle but with spells and hit points.

Keep up the great work, Seth. :-)

Seth Able, creator of the BBS game Legend of the Red Dragon, continues to produce wonderfully quirky games. For instance, Funeral Quest is online game that has players via for the wallets of grieving families. Capitalism at its finest. DungeonScroll is word game/RPG. It's like boogle but with spells and hit points.

Keep up the great work, Seth. :-)

A lot of the latest games come with the ability to write subgames using their engines.

There are even a few previously released games that are freeware now with such an engine. Dink Smallwood comes to mind.

And for RPGs or interactive fiction a single individual can surely still do their thing. It's even possible to put them on the web.

Not polished? That's crap. To me, polished means no bugs, and an excellent storyline that makes sense. My old games don't crash, and the whole game isn't "go kill the monster and level up." The new ones I've got seem to crash much more often, and I haven't found much BESIDES go kill the monster.

Nearly all of my old games where made by six people or less, but the new ones...

I would also like to note that the best game I've ever played was an independant one.

http://www.rtsoft.com

Looks like he ripped off Rare's logo. :)

The guy at spiderweb games, a shareware company that is apparantly releasing their Exile series on linux, created the fairly successful "Blades of Exile" game that allowed the community to build its own adventures. I'm not sure if it was as successful as he had hoped, however, because I think his later games are unmodifiable,.

There are certainly dozens of professional games that have similar communities--there are hundreds of scenarios available out there for Age of Empires/AOK, and there must be thousands available for Quake/doom/etc.

In fact, there are many games out there that become much greater because they have a community developing the games. The success of these games might have more to do with the people writing their own scenarios and modifications than in the original technical or marketing activity of the original designers. I would think that in many of these cases, the wide-spread availability of novel free scenarios has increased the profits of these companies, rather than diminished them.