Scroll Thief official release

Not a single spell! After two full years of study! Every Enchanter—every mortal with the power to change very nature of the universe with their words—has a spell book! Filled with words of power collected over years, decades, generations…and yours is blank after two entire years of study. It is shameful!

And now something is wrong. You have seen the Enchanters and Sorcerers discussing it in hushed tones. Magic is failing. And there are rumors that GUE Tech will be closed. That would end your dreams of magic forever.

There is only one solution, although it is looking less feasible by the minute. Take your spell book, break into the library, and steal some magic from the Guild of Enchanters.

This is a puzzle-heavy game in the Zork/Enchanter universe, meant as an “unofficial sequel” clearing up some of the mysteries of Spellbreaker.

Scroll Thief now has a full, post-IntroComp release! This is an homage to Adventure, Zork, Enchanter, and some of the other early Infocom works. I tried to emulate them in the puzzle design, though this game tries to stay at “Polite” on the Zarfian cruelty scale as much as possible. (You can make the game unwinnable, but it should be clear you’re making an irreversible choice when you do, and UNDO is always available.) Let me know what you think!

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Thanks for the announcement!

I’ve been posting bugfix updates daily, so please use the download link on the IFDB (which goes to my hosting server) rather than the Archive for now. (At least until the veritable flood of issue reports dies down and I can resubmit to the Archive.)

I think I may’ve said it elsewhere, but you fixing these bugs has been inspiration for me to get going. I’m getting the bug reports and seeing them fixed, and it’s neat to see code differences etc. when I have the time. Also helped me reconsider how I go about testing.

Keep it up–the original release was worthy, and the updated one will be even more so.

Thank you! :smile: Your bug reports were most of the reason why the full release was playable at all. If it had had all of those on top of the ones discovered post-release I expect the general reaction would have been less positive.

Based on the snippets of gameplay I garner from the bug reports - I’ll get to play the game, but it’ll take a while, I’m still on the letter P and taking a huge break from IF to feed a pinball addiction - it looks like Scroll Thief may be this year’s Game. As in, amidst all the other games, suddenly there comes along a Game which stands out from the rest and is the one most likely to be remembered after the year is over. So, seriously, congratulations! Well done! And the speed and efficiency of your bug-ironing, well, what can I say but, have you considered opening a bug laundry-and-ironing? You could earn big! BIG, I TELL YA!

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Thanks! That really means a lot. I’ve been working on this game for almost two years now because I didn’t want my first work to be a failure. It’s certainly taught me the importance of elaborate and extensive testing! I’ve had all the different parts tested repeatedly by different people at all the different stages, and they caught huge droves of problems before release. But there are still somewhere between twenty and forty new bug reports each day now.

About the bug laundry-and-ironing: I’ve considered it, but I don’t think I could do this if I hadn’t written the original code myself. I just wouldn’t be sufficiently familiar with it. Still, filed away for future reference. :wink:

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Wow, you did pick a ridiculously complicated and extensive game for a debut! My decade in the making epic would never have any chance without the experience of the games I have released. We’ll see if that ever sees the light of day!