Scott Adams' Ghost Town Redux was a game-writing event where participants could write an interactive fiction adaptation of Scott Adams' classic game Ghost Town.

One game was submitted:

• Ghost Town: The Lost Treasure, by Jens Buriel

Apparently there was an email mix-up; the author says he submitted this to me before the deadline, although I didn't receive it until afterwards, when he re-sent it.

Download the game below!

Also, at least two people said they made progress on games for the event, and might keep working on them. I hope they eventually release their work (though I recommend they get Scott Adams' permission; see "copyright comments" below). If these or any other Ghost Town adaptations are released in the future, I'll gladly link to them from this page, and update IF Wiki accordingly too.

Scott Adams is an important name in the history of computer games, having written (what are presumed to be) the first adventure games for home computers (as opposed to large mainframe computers). Then, having done this, he became the first to prove the marketability of such games; his company Adventure International was successful throughout the early eighties. Although today his games appear dated, they still have a certain appeal, with clever puzzles and a minimalistic charm.

In March 2007, on the newsgroup rec.games.int-fiction, I jokingly suggested that there should be competition where people could write a remake of a Scott Adams game. To my surprise, quite a few people liked the idea, so I wrote to Scott Adams, asking his permission for the event to happen.

Scott Adams gave his kind permission. However, he said he didn't want to give blanket permission for people to adapt just any of his games, but preferred to restrict such permission to just one game: Ghost Town. He chose this game because, as he says, "it was one of my favorites and I think the contestants could have fun with that one."

Hence, Scott Adams' Ghost Town Redux. With Scott Adams' kind permission, I set up this event so anyone could write a freeware remake of the game Ghost Town and release it.

Very special thanks to Scott Adams for giving his permission for this event.

Thanks also to Adam Thornton, who helped me contact Scott Adams when a spam-blocker seemed about to thwart my efforts, and also gave information that persuaded me to do this.

These were the rules:

1. Participants should write a freeware adaptation of Scott Adams' Ghost Town (either the whole game or any part of it).
2. There are basically no restrictions for what you can do in your adaptation, as long as you follow the other rules here. As Scott Adams said, participants can "do it as they like for the contest."
3. Participants' games must be freeware.
4. Participants should send me their game by July 30, 2007, to the email address at the bottom of this page. I will release all the games as one compilation shortly afterwards.
5. There will be no voting on the games, and no prizes, but everyone will be encouraged to play the games and write reviews of them.

If you want to play Ghost Town, check out the following links:

Download Ghost Town at Baf's Guide
Download Scott Adams' games from his web site
ScottFree interpreters for various platforms (helpful for running the games in their original .dat format)

Note: If you find yourself puzzling over a lot of .dat files, then the one to open is adv09.dat, since Ghost Town is Game 9 in the Scott Adams Classic Adventures collection.

Caution: if you play the game with an interpreter that adheres to the original game's parsing, then you will not be able to save your game simply by typing "save"; you must type "save game."

A final note: If you try to follow the walkthrough for the game, but get stuck in the dark mine, then follow the suggestions of Daphne Brinkerhoff and Joe Hagen in this rec.arts.int-fiction thread.

What should people do if they intended to participate, but missed the deadline? Scott Adams has not granted permission for people to release Ghost Town remakes forever in the future, but only during this event. At least, that's my reading of what he told me. Therefore, if you missed the deadline but still want to release a Ghost Town remake after July 30, I recommend that you write to Scott Adams and ask for permission -- at least, if your adaptation is one that might otherwise be seen to violate copyright.

This is not necessarily a big deal, as Scott Adams seems friendly and open to such requests. You can find his email address at the contact page of his web site. The only hard part is getting through his spam blocker. If he doesn't reply to you, then either resend your email or else write to me and I can relay your message to him.

To contact me for any reason, please write to:

________gregboettcher_dot_com
greg_at