"Don't trust your fellow divers. Just get the sunken treasure!"
Author: Michael Berlyn and Jerry Wolper
Released: 1984
Difficulty: Medium
Genre: Tales of Adventure
Approximately 68 rooms with 4 different dives.
Back-story:
Hardscrabble Island was once a thriving seaport, but unfortunately the local fishing industry dwindled in the 1920s. The remaining population on Hardscrabble Island is made up of rough folk who struggle to make ends meets and maintain their own sanity, much like your own character. Hardscrabble is hardly the cool place to be. Your story begins one night when an old shipmate who goes by the handle of “Hevlin” barges in with a map indicating the locations of two previously undiscovered shipwrecks.
Hevlin seems quite paranoid as he begins to explain the map before he decides to abruptly leave, asking your player to guard the map with your life. Of course as the old sailor runs out he is murdered basically as he steps from the doorway. This leaves the player thinking that the map is obviously going to lead to fortune and fame.
The Mission:
The players character works as a professional scuba diver who salvages sunken treasure from one of four shipwrecks (São Vera, H.M.S. Intrangisent, The Fianna and S.S. Leviathan). The shipwrecks are chosen at random every time the game is started so a different adventure may come along any time the game is replayed; however, only two of the wreck stories come with a specific treasure
to be searched for, (I’ll leave that mystery for the player to discover).
If you are successful you'll become greatly respected amongst the old guys of the island and rich beyond your wildest dreams. Along the way your character will come across several different characters who offer their help. Some are trustworthy.... others aren’t; if you are unable to pick difference between the two types, your mistake will result in an "untimely accident".
Making good contact with the correct characters is the only one way for your character to advance onto the actual shipwrecks. After a successful communication has taken place the player must first discover the location of the treasure then retrieve it from that wreck to complete the game.
Game play:
Game play is similar to the likes of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego of this era, so a bit of reading is a necessity; I found the game to be rather interesting as I have a bit of a soft spot for these older style adventure computer games.
