John's Adventure

John's Adventure - the official text adventure game from the design of Shaun McClure's book "How to Design Adventure Games" which gives you an example of puzzles, locations, items to collect and villains to defeat.

Playable on Windows PC, Apple Mac or Linux machines. 

You have returned from the St Narc Dragon Wars fighting with King Shaun of McClure, only to find the evil wizard Merklynn has destroyed your village and taken your friends prisoner - you have to defeat him and rescue them.

The standaerd verb set is used here - NORTH, SOUTH, WEST, EAST, NORTH-WEST, NORTH-EAST, SOUTH-EAST, SOUTH-WEST, USE, DROP, TAKE, EXAMINE, FEED, THROW, KILL among others and each room has an individual clue if you press HELP.  Press ESCAPE to quit out of full screen mode. 

The overall design is heavily based on Shaun's design but I have included elements of my own - for instance, most of the jokes are my own. 

This game was written using the ADVENTURON system - goto https://adventuron.io/ and write your own games

"How to Design Adventure Games" by Shaun McClure is avaliable from Amazon in both Kindle and softback editions

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-Adventure-Games-Shaun-McClure/dp/B0FC6B1J5J

A beta-version of the game was playtested on the YouTube channel Gamehammer Classic Gaming on 4th August 2025. 

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Shaun McClure is a 40 year veteran of the gaming industry, starting his career with the ZX Spectrum, designing graphics for text adventures for companies like Alternative Software, and management games for specialists Cult before going on to do graphics work with The Sales Curve on the Amstrad CPC & ZX Spectrum versions of Narc, St Dragon, Rodland and Double Dragon 3. In addition to this book, he has also written the book series A Guide to ZX Spectrum Games, A Guide to ZX Spectrum Adventure Games, Vox Rox, Cult Stars of the 70's and 80's and has also written a memior about his work - Game Development: The Rock and Roll Years: A Life in Pixels.

The coder zeropolis79 has been coding amateur adventure games since the early 1990's, when computer magazine Amstrad Action bundled the game creation utility Graphic Adventure Creator on their covertape. This is his first published adventure game. He and Shaun McClure have been friends for two years and has contributed material to Mr McClure's Youtube channel,this is their first professional collaboration and hopefully not the last.