Mystery House
The first graphical adventure game, set in a haunted mansion.
Back in 1980, On-Line Systems launched Mystery House, a game that blended text with simple visuals for the first time. Roberta Williams handled the design, writing, and art, while Ken Williams programmed it for the Apple II. As the company’s debut title—and one of the earliest horror games—it marked a major step toward the studio later known as Sierra On-Line.
Quick Facts
- Developer
- On-Line Systems
- Designer
- Roberta Williams
- Programmer
- Ken Williams
- Series
- Hi-Res Adventures
- Engine
- ADL
- Genre
- Adventure
- Modes
- Single-player
Facts from the source article.
Plot
The game begins near an abandoned Victorian mansion. The player is locked inside and must explore rooms to find a hidden cache of jewels. Seven other people are present: Tom, Sam, Sally, Dr. Green, Joe, Bill, and Daisy. Dead bodies soon appear, revealing a murderer among them. The player must identify the killer or become the next victim.
Development and release
Ken Williams initially planned to create enterprise software for the Apple II. After playing Colossal Cave Adventure, he and his wife Roberta sought similar games but found few. Roberta conceived the plot for Mystery House, inspired by Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None and the board game Clue. Though she knew some programming, she needed Ken to code the game. Ken borrowed his brother's Apple II and suggested adding graphical scenes. The couple bought a VersaWriter, which converts traced line drawings into digital images. Roberta drew seventy scenes, but the images were too large for a 5¼-inch floppy disk. Ken devised a method to store the drawings as coordinates and redraw them via program instructions, and also improved the VersaWriter scanning software. The resulting game combined text with a location depiction above the text. The code was completed in a few days, finishing on May 5, 1980. The Williamses placed an advertisement in Micro magazine under the name On-Line Systems and mass-produced Ziploc bags containing a floppy disk and instruction sheet for sale.
Reception and legacy
Roberta Williams considered the game a hobby project, but it sold more than 10,000 copies through mail-order. Including a 1982 rerelease through the SierraVenture line, 80,000 units were sold worldwide, making it one of the best-selling computer games of its time. Mark Marlow reviewed Mystery House for Computer Gaming World, noting its difficulty and Victorian setting. In 1996, Computer Gaming World ranked it fourth on its list of the most innovative computer games. GamePro in 2007 named it the 51st most important game of all time for introducing a visual component to adventure games. Although dungeon crawl role-playing games like pedit5 (1975) had used graphics earlier, applying graphics to a story-based adventure game was unprecedented. The success of Mystery House led the Williamses to create the Hi-Res Adventures series, labeling it Hi-Res Adventure #1. Following the success of Wizard and the Princess, they moved into full-time game development, and On-Line Systems was incorporated in 1980 as Sierra On-Line. The game entered the public domain in 1987 as part of Sierra's seventh anniversary. In Japan, MicroCabin released an unrelated Mystery House in 1982, inspired by the original. The Japanese versions sold 50,000 units total across multiple platforms.
More in Sierra Entertainment Games of the 1980s
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