Review of "Castaway"

Review by David Welbourn (originally posted at IFDB)

This is probably one of the easiest of Conrad Button's games, the story of how you were CASTAWAY on a deserted Pacific island and returned with ten treasures. This is a game from the dawn of shareware text adventures, with only a 40-character width DOS screen and the internal speakers to work with. It's gonna be a bit rustic. And calling it a "story" is generous. But Castaway is a good choice if you want to learn how things function in a ButtonWare game. Which I did.

It's an interesting window back to see how far we've come, what we've forgotten about, and what we've doggedly held onto.

It occurred to me how myopic IF treasure hunts can be: those treasures are mine! Who cares who left them there! Backstory of the island's previous inhabitants — who needs it? Not you, when there's *treasure*.

NPCs stayed put and kept their mouths shut. None of this "conversation" nonsense. Even inanimate items were quieter; only some items got descriptions. I could go on, about the two-word parser, etc. but...

... this is not really the place for an in-depth critique of all of Button's games. Consider Castaway as a training ground for progressing to his other games.

Forty rooms. Ten treasures. One parrot. Kickin' it old-school. Introductory level. I had fun. Maybe you will too.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️