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Bane of the Builders
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About the game
The Builders were spacefaring while humanity was still hiding in caves, and then they vanished, leaving ruins and artifacts scattered across the galaxy. The Professor, the leading expert on them, has spent years hopping from one lifeless world to the next, and on this planet he finally found what he was looking for: an energy source, deep under a mountain. He went in alone.
That was almost a day ago, and radio contact died the moment he entered the tunnel. You are the officer who flew him down from orbit, and the one person on board who got to know him on the long voyage. So it is your turn to go in: out of the shuttle, across the bottom of a crater that is far too perfect to be natural, and into the dark.
Bogdan Baliuc wrote Bane of the Builders for the 2001 Interactive Fiction Competition. It is a classic exploration and puzzle adventure with a score out of 100, alien machinery to work out and a sidearm you can set to stun or to something worse.
Playing it here
Click Play now. The game first asks whether you want to restore a saved game
(answer no) and then asks for your character's name; type one, or just
press Enter to keep the default. After that, type a command after the >
prompt and press Enter. The game is in English and understands short
sentences that start with a verb, such as open bin or examine crater.
Commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
north, south, east, west (or n, s, e, w) |
walk |
look (l) |
describe where you are again |
examine (x) something |
look closer |
open, take, look in something |
everyday actions |
inventory (i) |
list what you are carrying |
help |
a hint for the place you are in |
license / warranty |
the terms the game is distributed under |
save / restore |
keep your progress in this browser and load it back |
A few things worth knowing
Search the shuttle before you leave. The storage bin is there for a reason.
Examine your equipment. Descriptions tell you how things work and what state they are in.
Use HELP when you are stuck. It gives a nudge tied to your current location instead of spoiling the whole game.
Save often. This is a game from 2001, and some mistakes can be fatal.
Credits and licence
Bane of the Builders was written by Bogdan Baliuc. The version served here is Release 6 (serial 010925), the IFComp 2001 story file from the IF Archive, without changes. The game is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or any later version. The licence text and the Inform source code of this release are linked from this page.