Valley of Peril was written in 1991 by me, Thomas Reed. (Of course, you could have looked at the game's info to see that! Let's get to the good stuff!) The reason you've never seen this game before is that I've only just decided to polish it up and make it freeware.
This game is not a hack-and-slash adventure. It is a game in the spirit of the old text adventures in which puzzle solving was the key to winning the game. You will never have to fight a monster. You will have to figure out how to get past them, but you'll never kill them. It is similar to Shadowgate in that it is a graphical adventure rather than a text adventure. (Text adventures are well on their way out, so there was no other choice.)
As far as the history of the game goes, it was, as I have said, written in 1991. At that point in time, I didn't know a whole lot about Macintosh programming. Moving from room to room made the room window flicker. There was not a save game function. This in particular was a big problem, since you don't stand much of a chance of dying until at least halfway through the game. It's not much fun to play a game for half an hour, then die and have to start over again. Of course, it wouldn't take as long the second time since you already figured out the puzzles in that section, but it's still a pain. Other than these problems, I thought it was a good game. Smaller than I had originally intended, but still a good game. (The original Valley of Peril had over 200 "rooms" and took around 10-12 sheets of paper to map out. I got bored with drawing the room pictures and made it smaller.)
For those of you who really enjoyed this game and would like to see another from me, I'm working on a game more along the lines of the classic Might and Magic or Theldrow-type interface. (I know, these aren't the first games to make use of this interface, but they're the ones I'm most familiar with.) If you're not familiar with these games, this basically means 3-D, where you are looking down a corridor and actually see the walls on either side of you. It will probably take me a while to do, since I really want to do a huge game, and since I'm currently in school and have a part time job and won't have much time to work on it. Of course, depending on how much fan mail I get, I may try to work faster. (If I get a lot, I'll work fast, if I get very little, I'll work fast and get a better game out so people don't think I'm a crappy programmer. If I get a moderate amount, you'll just have to wait!)
One slight support problem: I currently have an e-mail address. However, I just graduated college :-D, and my account will be taken away in a few days. :-( So, you won't be able to get in touch with me through e-mail. I'll be moving soon as well, but here's my new snail mail address if you really need to get in touch with me:
Thomas Reed
West End Terrace
4496 Greenwich Court, Apt. C2
Saint Louis, MO 63108
(For those of you outside the US, you may want to put that on the
envelope as well!)
Hopefully, I'll be able to get a new e-mail address after I move fairly quickly. So, here's what I'll do: after I've got my new address, I'll release a new version of the game. There are a couple of other things I'd like to get done to it in that time, so.... If you're reading this, you may want to consider looking for version 2.0. (It probably won't be out until after July or August (1993), so don't look TOO soon!) Once I put out version 2.0, it will contain my new e-mail address, plus a few changes. I know this is all very strange, but....
