Castle of Riddles Revisited Guide

By John Chapman

In 1982 'Castle of Riddles', an adventure game for the BBC model B computer, was published. This retro game was text only but challenging.
The new version of this game has been greatly expanded with more puzzles, graphics and sound but still retains the appeal of the original version and is even more challenging.
You're probably going to get stuck so here are all the answers including fifty ways to die,

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Chapman
• Release date: Feb 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005554897

John Chapman

We started the 'A Vested Interest' series in 2007 and it took over a year before I came up with an ending we were happy with. At 170,000 words A Vested Interest was too long though for a printed book. We cut it heavily but still ended with a 140,000 word book. There was no alternative, we had to split it into a two book series. Doing that, we thought, would allow us to put back some of the content we had cut and expand the second book (Dark Secrets) a little.Well that was the plan. We ended up splitting the second book and making a trilogy by adding 'No Secrets'. The original ending didn't quite fit now so we moved it into a fourth book - Stones, Stars and Solutions.And so it goes on. We are now writing book 10 and 11 of the series. Shelia has written a spin-off 'Blood of the Rainbow' trilogy. Altogether it's 2 million words so far! In terms of time, we've only covered a few months. There is an end in sight but not for another 5,000 years. Maybe I'll get to use my original ending then?About the AuthorsJohn and Shelia Chapman are a husband and wife team who met on Internet and crossed the Atlantic to be together. John, an English ex-science and computer teacher contributed the technology and 'nasty' bits while Shelia drew on her medical experience in the USA and produced the romance. The humour? That came from real life.

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About this guide

Back in 1982 a wonderful personal computer made by Acorn was supported by the BBC. It was distributed to schools throughout the UK as the BBC Model B and was popularly known as ‘the Beeb’.  It didn’t take long for the gaming community to make use of it and an adventure game called Castle of Riddles, written by Peter Killworth appeared.

By today’s standard, Castle of Riddles was primitive. It was text only – no room for graphics or sound – but it was FUN and a challenge. 18 years later the version covered by this book is an update. You can access the game FREE and play it on your web browser. Find it at http://jaydax.co.uk/corr and at other locations. I hope you still find it a challenge and if you get stuck – here are all the answers.

In the game, use the side menu. If it’s not visible you can make it appear using the ‘>’ at the top left of your screen. It will tell you:

You can zoom in on most of the images in this guide. Try double clicking or pinch expand.

Also, on the side bar you can find buttons for:

a full inventory,

Saves – you can save 10 locations. These are stored in your browser and will be cleared if you delete cookies.

A restart button.

The score shown on the sidebar allows you to see if you are making progress. If it decreases, then step back a move. You’ll find it increases for each new location you visit, each object you find, and each successful action you make.

This guide provides different levels of help. The further you go through it the more powerful the help.

Want some quick hints?

If you are stuck then the Problems, Hints and Answers section may be all you need.

If you want an outline of the game giving guidance but no details on solving problems, then there’s a general route section.

If you simply wish to be aware of the pitfalls, then the section ‘Fifty ways to die’ may give you some warning.

Prefer a map? There are maps of the forest, the castle entrance, the west corridor, north corridor, east corridor, the castle dungeon, the giant’s palace.

Finally, there are walkthroughs of each section.

John Chapman

‘Tell me more’ section

Did you read the ‘Tell me more’ page? If you did then you might have noticed that your score went up by five points. If you didn’t read it then this is what you would have learnt. I’ve italicised the bits that help you.

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The original 'Castle of Riddles' was a text only adventure game written for the BBC microcomputer in 1982 by Peter Killworth. Played on a 32 Kb computer and written in BBC Basic, it had no room for graphics and limited space for text. The text was cleverly compressed making it unreadable to most people so you couldn’t cheat by looking at the code written in BBC Basic.

This version has been updated to include graphics and sound, extended to add more text, has more things to collect and uses a pointer or touch to input some text. You can access the game free at http://jaydax.co.uk/corr/ and elsewhere.

The original game tested only the first four letters of each word entered and the case you typed in didn’t matter. This version allows that too except for the safe password which is case sensitive. That's very helpful on a small screen device.

You'll probably die often so I advise you to save your position regularly. In the original game it was impossible to complete without being killed at least once. In this version you can complete the game without being killed. A word of warning, the game saves your position using cookies so progress will be lost if you delete them.

If you are killed, use the back icon to go back a step and try something else or reload a saved position.

General advice

It's dangerous to move in the dark, however, many of us work well in the dark and learn from our mistakes. [a subtle hint to tell you sometimes you have to turn the light off] Your light source, if you have one, like a real one, will eventually lose power.

Tunnels and passages bend so heading north into one may not mean you enter