The Pawn

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The Pawn
Developer(s)	Magnetic Scrolls
Publisher(s)	Rainbird Software
Designer(s)	Rob Steggles
Release date(s)	1986
Genre(s)	Interactive fiction
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	N/A
Platform(s)	Acorn Archimedes, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Amstrad PCW, Apple II, Apple Macintosh, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, Sinclair QL, ZX Spectrum
Media	Floppy disk, audio tape

The Pawn is an interactive fiction game by Magnetic Scrolls which was first published by Rainbird in 1986. It is remembered for its excellent graphics (on some versions) and its opening music which wasn't available in the 8-bit versions of the game. Also the game itself - story and parser - got mostly positive reviews. The story takes place in the fairy land of Kerovnia, from which you need to escape.

[edit] Amiga version's title music

The Commodore Amiga version is notable for using digitized instrument samples in its title music. When the game was released, Amiga was the only home computer which had hardware support for digitized samples. However, there was probably no other Amiga game released in 1986 that utilized the capabilities of Amiga's Paula sound chip like The Pawn did. This means that The Pawn was a pioneer release in the field of digitized computer game music. The peaceful title music was composed by John Molloy and it features guitar and flute sounds among others.