Betrayal of the Obsidian Baboon

Development

The game's author, Mike Parniak, shares some exclusive reflections on the design and implementation of the game:

...the BBS era was considerably more fun as far as game design goes, because you could easily focus on making an interesting game and story (assuming you were planning to bother with that stuff) without worrying much about attractive media and figuring out how to manage multiplayer support. Text-based games don't really cut the mustard anymore which is a shame.

Lets see if I can remember anything remotely interesting about that game...

• The combat AI had to be split into two units because (and who knew this was possible?) it surpassed the maximum number of conditional statements allowed in a single unit for Turbo Pascal 7.0.
• Most of the game's scaling was done by throwing random mathematic operators at an equation until the number "1" put into it gave "10" and the number 100 put into it gave something around 2 billion, which was the maximum size of an integer.
• There are a bunch of undocumented races that require strange actions to acquire. I'd have to hit up Jared Hopf for most of them... but I do remember one or two:

• Zombie -- immune to bleeding and disease -- type I AM A ZOMBIE! at the suicide screen instead of I AM A WEENIE!

• Mutant -- % chance equal to your level of being turned into a mutant at Crazy Eddie's whenever you change your race. Mutants have no traits, but prevent future race changes at Eddie's

• I only remember those two because that sneaky Hopf bastard figured out that if he got turned into a mutant he could turn himself into a zombie to bypass the immunity to race changing.

• So of course, the game was changed such that if you put in I AM A ZOMBIE! at the prompt, while you're a mutant, the game says "Close enough!" and deletes your character.

• Jared Hopf didn't speak to me for several weeks after that.

• The Polkaroo race has all postings turned into "Polkaroo!" but cannot be attacked by male characters (since the male host always played the polkaroo on the show, thus, could never meet Polkaroo). The game uses up your turns if you attempt it and says "The Polkaroo was here? And I missed him again??". Its a canadian inside joke I guess.

Disclaimer

In its documentation, the makers of this game want to establish right off the bat beyond any shadow of a doubt how offensive its contents are and head off at the pass any potential complaints they may get from irate parents. I quote:

[Disclaimer]

In this game there is violence, sex, violent sex, drugs, drugs having violent sex with other drugs, and cats having violent drug induced sex with other cats. If this is a problem, then we know we've done our job right. Do you know where your children are?

* Any resemblance to persons either alive or not-so-alive-anymore is purely irrelevant.

* No animals were mistreated in the making of this game, except in one part, and I think it enjoyed it.

* This game was filmed and recorded in my basement, where things like this happen on a daily basis.. except when I remember to take my pills.

* The flashing red used in this game may cause epileptic siezures as well as caughing, vomiting, shortness of pants, nose picking, and blood in urine, feces, and semen. If these symptoms persist for more than a week, then you're a moron and should be in the hospital instead of playing this game.

* Keep this game out of the reach of young children.. it has small parts that are easy to swallow and may cause choking.

* Pregnant women should not play this game too often as it will result in... well... ever see the opening scene of the movie The Fly ][?

* Hooplah!

* The Author of this game will not be held responsible for mental trauma/injury or physical injury caused by this game, nor will he be held responsible for people misunderstanding messages, not getting the jokes, getting thrown in jail, losing their gold and equipment, or not washing the area between their crotches and their legs...

* Any negative response to this product will be summerily ignored.