EXUBER& is an adventure game for the Apple //e Enhanced series of computers, originally released in 1987.

What is implemented

The game itself isn't finished. It's more like a game engine, instead of a real game. There are a few things you can do but mostly it's just a tech demo. I ran out of time trying to implement the art and story, though I do have it all written down (along with prelim sketches).

At the moment all basic functions are present and working. You can move between rooms, talk to people, interact with objects, and examine them. But that's it.

There is no game over or win screen.

How to Play

The theme of the story is remaining current in life. That's my interpretation of the Your Life is Currency. You must strive to remain yourself, and demonstrate that you can improve your life and remain in touch with the world around you for 30 days.

Every time you sleep on the bed, you lose one quarter of the moon symbol (around 8 days).

Depending on your actions, you will lose (or gain) quarter of your mental state (in the top right corner). If you lose all four, it is game over. You win by lasting out all four quarters of the moon with at least one portion of your sanity/self intact.

The game's themes to were to be loss, depression, finding yourself, and the tenaciousness of life itself. None of that is currently in the game, though. :smirk:

To actually play, use the four arrow keys to select actions: EXAMINE, WALK, INTERACT, and TALK.

When you engage a command, you will then see a yellow arrow. Move it around with the arrow keys. Press SPACE to select, or ESCAPE to abort.

When INTERACTing, you will have to select two items: Think about it as using one item on another. If you want to interact with an item (versus using an item on something else), select yourself (you're the dog-looking thing in the first inventory slot).

You can only hold five inventory items at once.

Download & Run

See below to find the disk images. The image is under: apple2_tools/projects/ludumdare44/exuberld44-d1.po

So far, EXUBER& is just one floppy disk (5.25 inch). And it is a ProDOS self-booting disk. You can run the game from another disk, but only if Applesoft has not been loaded!

Now I suspect you don't own an Apple II of any kind, let alone the //e Enhanced with an 80-column expander card. But never fear, it works just fine in the AppleWin emulator! (For Linux, there's LinApple!)

To use in the emulator, unzip the disk image and then click on the first drive icon on the right bar in AplleWin. Select the image, open it, then press the Reboot icon (looks like a moving Apple II logo). Ta-da!

You can also use a Javascript //e emulator, such as Apple //jse. Just load the disk image into drive #1, and off you go!

Yes, this game does run on real hardware!

Known Bugs

• ~~If you talk to the bed, the game crashes.~~
• ~~Sometimes you can skip over text messages by accident, so press the spacebar lightly.~~
• ~~When you are outside the apartment, the street is not rendering properly (sky is green instead of blue).~~
• ~~The selector tries to play the select and error sounds together if you attempt to move past begin/end of a line.~~
• ~~NTSC color mapping was made to match more the real hardware.~~