Dunnet - The Ancient Game Hidden on Millions of Modern Computers
22 02 08 - 11:04
Laying, perhaps untouched, on computers all around the world is a small game called Dunnet. It's hard to say exactly how many computers it's on, but... if you:
- Have bought an Apple computer in the past 8 years
- Have downloaded or run Linux, BSD or most Unix variants
- Or use a variation of the emacs text editor
Then you already have it. You just need to play it. Apple's operation system, OSX, is descended from a long line of operating systems called Unix. The lineage as long and, to some, interesting - but that's another discussion. Part of most Unix installs ... including all moder Apple computers, is an application called emacs. Like pervasive strands of some ancient d.n.a., emacs is an absolute dinosaur. An elegant application for more civilized times, perhaps. A text editor where you can't control font size, color or type. Think of Windows notepad and start stripping features. It's one step above an electronic type writer. But despite its age, it does still have some power. A scripting language called LISP. Since 1983, emacs has come with a game written in LISP. A game that old nerds will find warm and comforting. A text adventure. Perhaps the pinnacle for a game connoisseur is the text adventure. Far from welcoming, merciless to the casual gamer, text adventures require exploration of not only the virtual world, but of the interface itself. It's an elegant dance, trying to understand how to communicate with the text parser. "Use Shovel" might not make sense to the game... but "Dig" does.
There's something unmistakably unique about Dunnet. I play a lot of video games. A lot. But I've never seen anything so... so... avant garde? Meta? I'm not sure, but Dunnet completely destroys the 4th wall of gaming, the same way that Uplink did. There's several gameplay conventions that I've never seen, even in the most modern of games. It's very fun and obscenely hard.
Wanna play? All you have to do is... fire up a terminal and enter the following:
emacs -batch -l dunnet
And you're off! I'm far from finished myself, but it keeps drawing me back in. If your a true, true gamer. You owe it to yourself to play this treasure that you may already own.
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