Bulbo and the Lizard King

Bulbo And The Lizard King is a fantasy text adventure from Zenobi Software, it features Bulbo Biggun who also appears in Zenobi's Hobbit parody An Everyday Tale of a Seeker of Gold.

There's not a great deal of backstory to this game. The player takes the role of the hero Bulbo Biggun who's visited at home by The Grand Alf. Alf gives Bulbo a crystal dagger and says 'Use this to defeat the old tyrant Stratos' and that's it. What makes this game unusual is that Bulbo then pops down to the marketplace to recruit one or more companions, a giant, an elf, an archer, a wizard, a dwarf, a thief and a swordsman are waiting.

On the B side of the cassette is something called 'Heroes and Villains' which is an illustrated guide to some of the characters in the game. It's also available on the +3 disc version as a menu option.

This game was developed using Professional Adventure Writer. It supports the standard shortcuts such as N/S/E/W for North/South/East/West as well as X for EXAMINE, I for Inventory and so on. P for PARTY tells the player who is accompanying them at any point in the game. The game will also accept more complex commands, the examples given are 'TAKE HOLD OF THE DONKEY' and 'LOWER THE DONKEY DOWN THE WELL'.