Valley of the Minotaur

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Valley of the Minotaur is a computer game for the Apple II series of home computers. It was published by Softalk magazine in 1983 on a 5.25 inch floppy disk. It is a work of interactive fiction, also known as a "text adventure". It was also a rather large game that included a detailed and exotic terrain, with some references to Greek mythology.

Despite the fact it relies on a simple verb-noun parser, it appears to be inspired by the first of the Zork games, in that the goal was to collect treasures, and to deposit them in a telephone booth (whereas in Zork I: The Great Underground Empire, the goal was to collect treasures to be stored in a trophy case). Additionally, the game featured a giant bat which would pick up the player (without his consent) and carry him to various other locations within the game (a feature nearly identical to the giant bat in the first of the Zork trilogy games), as well as travel by boat (which was also featured in Zork I).

The Valley of the Minotaur featured many aspects which were essentially unique to itself, such as an encounter with a tribe of cannibalistic headhunters. There was a secondary goal, in addition to treasure collection, necesarry in order to solve the game, that is, the slaying of the dreaded Minotaur.

The game appeared to have some bugs, but that is difficult to determine without confirmation from the programmers. What appear to have been bugs may have simply been the off-beat nature of the game itself. The game was not a big seller in its day, and is today very obscure and extremely difficult to find.