Gerbil Riot of ’67
Owing more than a little to Robert Arnstein’s TRS-80 escape-from-the-asylum
text adventure classic Bedlam, this whimsical romp casts the player as an
inmate with second ideas about remaining inside the institution walls. It’s
not such a strange place, halls and stairways, but to make up for it the
nuthouse is packed with a host of peculiar one-personality-trait characters
(some of them the staff!), each of whom neatly play one-off roles in simple,
if occasionally arbitrary puzzles.
While there are no gerbils to be found on the grounds (their riot is firmly in
the background; your part in it is why you were incarcerated), you will
conduct a meaningful exchange with a squirrel demanding an object-combination
puzzle the likes of which wouldn’t become standard until the days of the
graphical adventure game.