The Caverns

A glint beyond one tunnel. Footsteps beyond another. Explore twelve connected rooms, recover three lost treasures and find your way back to the entrance.

N/S/E/W move and Space waits. A cold draught warns of the pit; footsteps mark the creature’s current room; a glint marks uncollected treasure. Entering the pit or the creature’s room ends the expedition. If the creature arrives where you are standing, you get one action to escape.

The cave runs in Sinclair BASIC on a stock 48K ZX Spectrum. It is silent and has no real-time deadline. S starts, R restarts the same expedition and Q quits. The map, treasures and starting patrol are fixed, so what you learn remains useful when you try again. There is no full-map display.

Build a world that changes

Eleven lessons use nine runnable programs. Start with a room name and description, add a table of connections, then follow those links with the keyboard. Treasure flags and a pit turn neighbouring rooms into useful clues.

Give the creature an independent patrol and examine the order of a turn. A worked encounter shows why a warning must leave time to act. Then make returning to the entrance the objective, add the opening instructions and save a self-starting tape. The last lesson stops the screen flashing on every turn by redrawing only what a turn changes.

The lessons explain the BASIC they use, including arrays, DATA and keyboard input. Meet BASIC offers a slower introduction to entering and saving programs; completing another game or assembly course is not required.