Chimaera

Chris Newall (1984, 2002)

Chimaera (1984, 2002)
Chris Newall
Ported by Arthur O'Dwyer

Chimaera, written by Chris Newall, is one of the first procedurally generated adventure games. While the numbers of items, treasures, and dangers are fixed, the map is generated anew for each game based on a random seed, ensuring that there is always more to map.

Newall wrote the game originally in Fortran, circa January 1984. The Fortran version "languished in the archives" until 2002, when Newall rewrote it in C and re-released it as "Chimaera version 1.001".

This Z-machine version of Chimaera has been compiled from Newall's C source code, with a very small number of bugfixes contributed by Arthur O'Dwyer.

Play online now

This version of Chimaera was created using vbccz, a C compiler for the Z-machine. To play a work like this one, you need an interpreter program: many are available, among them Zoom for Mac OS X and for Unix; Windows Frotz or Windows Glulxe for Windows. Or you can use the Parchment interpreter, without downloading anything, by following the 'Play online now' link. You'll need to have Javascript enabled on your web browser.