Wanderer I: The Cult of Misery title screen: a rider on horseback before a castle

A 1997 Macintosh role-playing game, in your browser

Wanderer I: The Cult of Misery

Quinn Dunki's freeware adventure of murder, revenge and a sinister cult, rebuilt from the original program so it plays today exactly as it did on a Mac in 1997.

Classic is the 1997 game exactly, quirks and all. Enhanced fixes the original's bugs and adds a few things. What's different?

The game needs a keyboard and mouse for now. Touch controls are coming.

The story

You live quietly in Horseshoe, a farming village in the lands of the Emperor. Two years ago your sister Marissa was found outside your house, killed with a poisoned dagger, and no one ever learned who did it. Now the same dream comes night after night: a masked assassin, and you unable to stop them.

This morning you packed what little you own and set out to find the killer. You'll start by asking around Horseshoe, and follow the trail wherever it leads.

What this is

Wanderer I is a top-down role-playing game in the style of the early Ultimas, written by Quinn Dunki and released for the Macintosh as freeware. It needed System 7, a 256-colour screen and a 68020 processor, so for years it could only be played in an emulator.

This site runs it in any modern browser. It isn't an emulator, and it isn't a reimagining: the game engine has been rebuilt rule by rule from the original program, and it loads the game's own 1997 map, character and item files. The art, the world, the people and every line of text are the original's.

Two editions

Both editions use the same engine and the original's untouched 1997 files. Their saved games are kept apart, so playing one never overwrites the other.

Classic

The game as it was in 1997, rule by rule. Every bug and oddity of the original is kept, because they're part of how it played. Its saved games are in the original's format and load in the 1997 program.

Play Classic

Enhanced

The same world and story, with these changes:

Diagonal movement
Move diagonally with 7, 9, 1 and 3 on the keypad (or Home, PgUp, End and PgDn), or by clicking diagonally away from yourself. You can't squeeze between two walls.
A new monster: the giant lizard
The original has a complete giant lizard in its files but never lets it appear. In Enhanced it roams the wild with the others, a little weaker than an orc.
Armour works for everyone
A bug made the people you fight wear the item before their own armour in the game's list, so a shield could count for nothing. Their armour now protects them as it should.
One death per kill
A blow that wrecked both head and torso killed its victim twice: two VICTORY! messages and their gold twice over. Now it's once.
Monsters behave
Monsters vanished from the edge of your view when they shouldn't have, and others that should have gone stayed. Now only the ones you leave behind go. A monster chasing you that walks into a wall now tries another direction instead of giving up.
Walls are walls
Walking into a wall no longer counts as a step, so it can't bring on a random encounter.
No invisible footprints
People left a hidden mark everywhere they walked out of your sight, which could stop arrows and keep monsters from appearing. They don't any more.
The butcher knife is for sale
The Wild Boar lists a butcher knife that the original never let you buy. Now you can.
A gentler death
When you die, you wake at your last save (or start a new character if you never saved), not at the title screen.
Play Enhanced
Inside a house in Horseshoe, beside the bed
Home, in Horseshoe
A goblin attacks the player in a forest
A goblin in the woods
Next to a horse in a stable
Horses can be ridden

How to play

Move
Arrow keys, or 8 4 6 2 on the numeric keypad. In Enhanced, 7 9 1 3 move diagonally
Look at something
Click it
Open a door, talk, mount a horse
Double-click
Talk
Type name, job or words people mention; goodbye to leave
Attack
Alt-click (Option-click on a Mac)
Take, drop, wear
Drag items between the map and your body or pack
Use an item
Ctrl-drag it onto the map (Command-drag on a Mac)
Rest
Any other key. Nothing happens until you act
Sleep
Double-click yourself
Save
File menu, or Ctrl-S. Saves stay in this browser; File ▸ Export makes a backup

How it's made

The original's source code isn't available, so everything was recovered from the program itself: the compressed archive and the game's data formats were decoded, its 68000 machine code was disassembled, and each routine was translated and checked, down to its quirks and bugs.

To prove it, the 1997 game runs alongside in the Basilisk II Mac emulator. Scripts play the same moves in both and read the original's random-number generator straight out of the emulator's memory after every turn. In the scenarios checked so far, the two agree on every dice roll, every monster's move and every point of damage, and a game saved in one loads in the other.

Status

Playable now

  • The whole world, from Horseshoe to the Emperor's citadel
  • Day and night, weather, line of sight
  • Conversation, shops and inns
  • Items, magic, combat and monsters
  • Horses
  • Saving and loading, in the original's own file format
  • Sound, and the preferences window
  • The in-game help, and the original's fades and cursors
  • The story from start to finish

Still to come

  • Touch controls for phones and tablets
  • More for the Enhanced edition: several save slots, autosave