A Game by Geoff Draper

Download Thirsty Nellan for Windows and Linux

Download Thirsty Nellan in Python (written by Cat Gray)

Download Thirsty Nellan for Android via Google Play

Download Thirsty Nellan for Kindle Fire via Amazon Appstore

THIRSTY NELLAN traces its roots to a public domain text-adventure game called Nellan is Thirsty, by Dr. Furman H. Smith. It first appeared in the July/August 1980 issue of Recreational Computing magazine as sample code for aspiring programmers. Although originally written for the TRS-80 computer, the game was ported shortly thereafter to the Commodore 64, where it was widely distributed.

I discovered the game in the late 1980's, and I thought it was pretty neat. In the early 2000's, I felt a sting of sadness as I realized that future generations would likely never see this game — first, because the C-64 is a dead platform, and secondly because modern gamers rarely have the patience for text adventures anyway.

So gradually the idea came to me to completely re-write the game as a graphical adventure for modern computers, with color and sound and a point-n-click interface. And that's what I did. I wrote the bulk of the program in my spare time over a period of two years (2001–2002) as a graduate student at Brigham Young University. The basic storyline is largely the same as the original 8-bit text adventure, but everything else is new. (If you download the Windows/Linux version of the game, it includes a copy of the original C-64 version of the game in the "Bonus Material" folder. You'll also need to download a Commodore emulator to play it.)

In 2012, I wrote a fresh port of the game for Android phones/tablets. Although the look and feel of the game is the same as the PC version, the underlying architecture is significantly different (and hopefully improved).

If you enjoy Thirsty Nellan, you may also wish to try out some of my other games.


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