Bones

The Game of The Haunted Mansion

What is it?: A very early RPG, 1981, ported to DOS 1987–91, using some ASCII graphics but mainly menus.
What computer or emulator will it run on?: Any PC at all. On none-English DOS versions after 6.0 the ASCII graphics may not display correctly.
Similar Games: Zyll, Kroz, Rogue.

Overall, Bones doesn't take itself too seriously, and it is by no means a revolutionary game, but it does accomplish what it sets out to do: immerse the player in a fun and challenging fantasy world. If you want an epic RPG, this freeware gem is not for you. But if you are interested in what fun Roguelikes you might be missing, Bones is definitely worth a look.—Home of the Underdogs

Bones is one of these really old RPGs, like Rogue or Akalabeth or the first Wizardry games. Its history is fairly complex:

This program was concieved on the DECSYSTEM 10 at Eastern Montana College in Billings, Montana using a primative form of Extended Basic in 1981 with much modification by Arron Barnhart (I think I spelled his name right).
Revived many years (1987) later using Desmet C language and ASM88.
Converted to MS QUICK C 1.0 and MASM 5.0. in August 1988.
Desmet compiled versions are numbered 1.00 to 1.99 Microsoft compiled versions are number 2.00 and up.
1989 Converted to QUICK C Version 2.0 and removed Assembly Libraries.
1990 Version 3.0 in a large model.
1991 Dug back out after a long rest and installed mapper and many underlying code changes.

In Bones you explore a haunted mansion, finding jewels, gold, RAM chips (important for the automap), explosives, Uzi clips, battling skeletons, occasionally getting trapped in a room. All this is done with the help of menus. The only thing that is remotely graphic is the automap, seen in the screenshot above.

Bones has been called a roguelike game, but that is incorrect. One thing that all roguelike games have in common is that they are map-based, or, more exactly, tile-based, even though the tiles are usually characters. Bones isn't. You can only go from room to room, and you do it in typical text adventure fashion by choosing a direction. Besides, it is fairly improbable that Bruce N. Baker even knew about Rogue, which is from the same year.

Bones is not a roguelike game, it is something similar, yet independent. In any case it is worth checking out.

Download Bones (94kB)