The Darkness Rises (Level 9 novellae)

The Darkness Rises was the first of a series of novellae written as part of a collaboration with the Austin brothers of Level 9 Computing. In 1985, Level 9 was the leading UK adventure game house. That year, BT set up their Rainbird division to publish computer games and signed up Level 9.

I was brought on board to write novellae to accompany the games. These served two purposes: to set the scene for the game, and to try to reduce piracy. In those early days of home computers, copying games was ridiculously easy - any teenager with a twin cassette deck could do it. Level 9 adventure games were complex and took many, many hours to complete. To allow players to take a break, there was a facility to save your place in the game, but when you tried to save it would ask for the word on page x, line y, word number z of the novella. As fewer teenagers had access to photocopying than to tape-copying, the hope was that it would cut down on piracy. It may have done, for a while, but in the end the pirates won. For every copy of a game they sold, dozens - or even hundreds - more were being passed around between friends and sold in pubs. The Austin brothers took their exceptional skills and creativity into paying jobs elsewhere in the computing world, and I went back to non-fiction.

Writing novellae for Level 9 was great fun. I hope you enjoy them.