ZX Spectrum game · play free
The Gullrock Light
Autumn 1897. The keeper is missing and the light is dark. Relight the lamp on Gullrock before the steamer Marigold reaches the reef at midnight.
In short
- The Gullrock Light is an original illustrated text adventure for the ZX Spectrum 48K and 128K.
- You are the relief keeper on a lighthouse island in 1897. The light is out and the keeper is missing.
- You have until midnight, game time, to relight the lamp before the steamer Marigold reaches the reef.
- There are 40 locations, 12 pictures and a score out of 100. It's deliberately tough, in the classic style.
- Type two-word commands like GET LANTERN or GO NORTH; RAMSAVE often.
The story
You're rowed out to Gullrock at six o'clock on an autumn evening in 1897, to relieve the lighthouse keeper, Ezra Tull. Nobody answers. The great lamp is dark, and somewhere out in the night the steamer Marigold is heading for the Gull Reef. She'll pass it at midnight. If the light isn't burning by then, she won't see the rocks.
Something is very wrong on the island, and it isn't only the lamp. You'll need to work out what happened to Ezra, and why there's a light burning on the headland that shouldn't be there.
How to play a text adventure
The top of the screen shows a picture of where you are, with the time and your location on the bar beneath. The rest of the screen is text. Type what you want to do and press Enter. The game understands two-word commands, and the first six letters of each word are enough.
- Moving: N, S, E, W, U and D, or GO NORTH and so on.
- Things: GET, DROP, EXAMINE, OPEN, LIGHT, FILL, PUT OUT.
- Looking: LOOK redescribes the room; INVENTORY (or I) lists what you're carrying. You can carry seven things.
- Help: once you've found Ezra, TALK EZRA gives you a hint.
Classic-tough: how you can die
This is a game in the old tradition, where the island doesn't forgive mistakes. Some rooms are pitch dark, and wandering about in them without a light ends badly. Naked flames and lamp oil don't mix. The tide comes in over the wreck at set times, and the game warns you only five minutes before. And at midnight, if the light isn't lit, the Marigold strikes the reef.
Type RAMSAVE before anything risky. If you die, press R to go straight back to that moment. On a real Spectrum with a tape deck, SAVE and LOAD also work.
Scoring
The game is scored out of 100. Points come for freeing Ezra, dealing with the false light, recovering what the wreckers hid, and each step of preparing and lighting the lamp. A perfect run takes about 95 moves and finishes well before eight o'clock, but most first attempts end in the dark, the sea or the oil store. That's part of the fun.
How The Gullrock Light was made
The adventure is written as a story script, then compiled into compact condition-and-action code in the style of 1980s adventure systems like The Quill. Its text is compressed to fit, and the twelve pictures are drawn to respect the Spectrum's colour cells. The game has its own six-pixel font and keyboard routine, so fast typing isn't lost. A full walkthrough scores 100 out of 100 on the 48K, the 128K and in the arcade's quick-start mode.
On a 128K a slow sea shanty, "The Keeper's Lament", plays over the introduction and stops as soon as you begin. Curious about why adventures were such a big part of Spectrum gaming? Start with our history of the ZX Spectrum, or try the glossary for words like "parser".
Questions and answers
How do I win The Gullrock Light?
Relight the lighthouse lamp properly and stop the false light on the headland before midnight, game time. RAMSAVE often, and once you've found the keeper, TALK EZRA gives a hint.
