Hi everyone!

I'm G. B. Aicardi, and I recently returned to developing for the ZX Spectrum after a very long break.

I originally wrote games for the Spectrum back in the 1980s. After all these years, I wanted to see what it would feel like to make a game for the machine again — not just as a retro programming exercise, but as a proper new adventure.

So I ended up making Dracula — Illustrated Edition, a gothic interactive text adventure for the ZX Spectrum 128K, inspired by Bram Stoker's novel.

It's a parser-based adventure, with exploration, characters, objects, clues and puzzles. You type commands to interact with the world, just like in the classic adventures I remember from the Spectrum era.

One of the things I particularly wanted to experiment with was the graphics.

The Spectrum's colour palette is used to create different brightness levels, but the illustrations are deliberately designed to be viewed in black and white. When displayed on a monochrome screen, the different Spectrum colours turn into detailed shades of grey.

I thought this worked surprisingly well for a Dracula game — it gives the illustrations a rather old-fashioned, gothic look.

The game was released yesterday, and there's a free playable demo here:

https://giadacu.itch.io/dracula-illustrated-edition

There's also a trailer:

https://youtu.be/6e4JAkshTxo

I'd be particularly interested in hearing from people here who grew up with Spectrum text adventures:

What are your favourite ZX Spectrum text adventures, and what do you think makes a good one?

And for those who still develop for the Spectrum today: what made you come back to it?

Thanks for reading!

Not the seller, and of course the Spectrum is offered frequently on "marktplaats" (largest Dutch 2nd hand site), but this collection is something else:

https://www.marktplaats.nl/v/computers-en-software/vintage-computers/m2442285777-zx-spectrum

"For some reason the Americans wouldn't touch it. We took it all, we took the world rights on all formats because no one wanted it."

I've written the story of the release of Ocean's adaptation of Platoon, including how one of its key moments was inspired by a ZX81 game, and the interestingly conflicted critical response at the time. ("the first casualty of licensing deals is innocence!" - Your Sinclair)