Mystery House Maunual

The Public Domain Exchange
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Santa Clara, CA 95050
(408) 496-0624

From a great moment in history: Mystery House, the first graphic adventure, was created in 1980 by Sierra On-Line founders Ken and Roberta Williams, and released into the public domain in 1987 to celebrate Sierra's 7th anniversary.

We encourage you to copy this game, for yourself or to share. If you have enjoyed it you may send a $5 donation to Ken and Roberta's favorite Charity,

Sierra Historic Sites Association,
P.O. Box 451.
Oakhurst CA 93644

Note: because it is now free, Sierra's gift to you, we can no longer take calls on this game. If you need help. We suggest you contact your local Apple users group to talk with others who may have played it.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR HI-RES ADVENTURE

Adventure is one of the most facinating and challenging games available for your Apple computer. Winning is quite a challenge in a game where it may take hours to move and weeks to solve a puzzle. Hi-res Adventure #1 ('Mystery House') takes place in an old house with many rooms. As you enter the house, seven other persons will be in the living room. Eventually they are dispersed throughout the house and you start finding them - dead! You must find the killer before he (she?) ends up killing you.

You progress through the house by providing two word commands which usually contain a verb and then a noun but aren't always in that order. Examples are 'WATER ON' and 'OPEN DOOR'. If a set of words doesn't seem to be working try different terminology.

If you should find a staircase you may try 'UP STAIRS' or 'GO STAIRS'. Some of the actions you can take are GET, DROP, GO, LOOK, READ, CLIMB, MOVE, HIT, KILL, etc.

You may go in the directions NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST, UP and DOWN. Type NORTH or N to go north. The other directions may also be abbreviated as well. When your way is blocked and you can't use directions to move you may have to refer to the actual object in your way. In these cases you could type 'GO DOOR', 'GO HOLE', 'GO GATE' etc.

In general the top of the screen is NORTH. The bottom is SOUTH. The left side is WEST And the right side is EAST. Because of the difficulty of drawing doorways to the south or the bottom of the screen. There are one or two rooms where the doorways do not match up to the normal directions.

If you want a closer look at something say LOOK (OBJECT). To return to the main view say LOOK ROOM.

SAVE GAME and RESTORE GAME may also be used.

A note of caution: carrying more than one note may be confusing as the computer will arbitrarily decide which one to read or drop.

Should you wish to review past commands you may press return without typing to flip/flop between graphics and text.

If your copy should ever fail to load (or get munched by a hungry disk drive) send it with five dollars to:

On-Line Systems
36575 Mudge Ranch Road
Corrsegold CA 93614

At the start of the game there will be seven other people in the house with you. Their names, occupations, and haircolor are as follows:

Tom	Sam	Sally	Dr. Green	Joe	Bill	Daisy
Blond	Brunette	Redhead	Brunette	Brunette	Blond	Blond
Plumber	Mechanic	Seamstress	Surgeon	Gravedigger	Butcher	Cook

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