Alchemisery: A Day in Plague

Alchemisery: A Day in Plague is an interactive fiction (IF) experience that thrusts you into the fevered mind of an alchemist on the brink of disaster. Awakened from a nightmare that foretells a deadly plague, you have just one day to concoct an antidote before the disease consumes you—and the entire town.

In this text-only adventure, your wits and resourcefulness will be tested as you scour the town for ingredients, help desperate townsfolk, and navigate the fine line between savior and pariah. Will your potions bring salvation, or will your efforts unravel into tragedy?

--

content warning: non-graphic descriptions of disease and death

--

While this game can be played in your browser, the  z3 file can also be downloaded and played on any Z-Machine interpreter, even on retro hardware, as it is built using PunyInform. Note that I have not tested this myself -- so far I have ran it on my Intel Mac using Frotz. 

If you are able to run it on different hardware or a different interpreter, please leave a comment below so I can expand this list! Similarly, leave a comment if you run into difficulties getting the game to run, or if you encounter bugs during gameplay.

--

Update: At least one player has been able to run the game on a Z-interpreter on Palm OS 5, on the Palm TX, using Frobnitz! (see screenshots for a few images of this in action) 

--

This is now Release 6 and should be relatively stable in terms of the solutions and story paths, as well as having several quality-of-life updates. I expect to continue iterating but the game as envisioned is _mostly_ there.

As mentioned, please comment if you find anything that you think _should_ work but doesn't!

--

Note  that Release 1 was developed over the course of a month (during which I was sick for 1-2 weeks with COVID) and I hope to further polish the game, adding more ways to solve the various puzzles, adding more flavor, and most of all making it less painful to wrestle with the parser (sorry). 

This is also my first Inform game -- highly recommended if you want to write interactive fiction or text adventure games.