Lampward
cd ..

Curses

Graham Nelson · 1993

You went into the attic to find a tourist map of Paris. Four hours later you are somewhere else entirely.

Play

SAVE creates a named Lampward checkpoint on this device. Nothing is saved automatically.

  • Z-code
  • Puzzle
  • Parser
  • About 8 hours
  • 253 KB

About

Curses begins in the attic of the Meldrew family home, looking for a map so the holiday can start. The attic contains rather more than it should, and the game opens outward from there into one of the largest and most notorious puzzle collections in interactive fiction.

It matters twice over. It is a sprawling, allusive, genuinely difficult game about a family with a great deal of history; and it was the game Graham Nelson wrote to exercise Inform, the compiler that made most of the interactive fiction of the following thirty years possible. Release 16 is the final version its author produced.

Tags

  • Classic
  • Fantasy
  • Large
  • Puzzles

History

This chronology includes the world around Curses: background that may predate the game, its creation and publication, and later editions, research, and preservation. An early date is historical context, not necessarily a game release.

  1. Publication

    Curses published — by Graham Nelson

    The publication year for the work itself. Earlier entries are historical background, not earlier releases of the game.

  2. Lampward

    Playable release — Release 16

    The exact release Lampward currently serves. It may be a later edition or port of an older work.

Documents & sources

  • reference · Reference

    Curses on IFDB

    Reviews and the game's long release history, from 1993 through Release 16.

    IFDB

  • reference · Reference

    Curses on IFWiki

    The release-by-release history, including the Inform versions each was built with and the status of the lost source.

    IFWiki

Rights to these documents are separate from rights to the game. Lampward links to archives it may not mirror, and says so rather than implying it holds a copy.

Credits & License

Credits
Graham Nelson.
Playing
Curses — Release 16, Z-code 5, serial 951024
IFID ZCODE-16-951024-4DE6
License
The release's own distribution notice permits free, unmodified redistribution where no profit is involved.
Use
The original distribution notice permits free distribution and use provided no profit is involved and the story file is not modified. Lampward hosts the unmodified file noncommercially on that basis.
Source
Notices

Copyright © 1993–1995 Graham Nelson.

Curses may be freely distributed and used provided that no profit is involved and provided that the story file is not modified in any way.

Artwork
No cover art is used; the title card is generated by Lampward.

Rights to the game binary, to cover art, and to any documentary material on this page are separate. A permission covering one does not cover the others.

More bibliographic detail: this title on IFDB