| The Pawn | |
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| Developer(s) | Magnetic Scrolls |
| Publisher(s) | Rainbird Software |
| Designer(s) | Rob Steggles |
| Platform(s) | Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Amstrad PCW, Apple II, Acorn Archimedes, Atari ST, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, Apple Macintosh, Sinclair QL, Sinclair Spectrum.[1] |
| Release date(s) | 1986 |
| Genre(s) | Interactive fiction |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Rating(s) | N/A |
| Media/distribution | Floppy disk, cassette, microdrive |
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 the opening music available in some game versions. Also the game itself - story and parser - got mostly positive reviews. The story takes place in the fairy land of Kerovnia, from which the player must escape.
The game was written in 68000 assembler, later versions were implemented using a cut-down 68000 virtual machine even on lesser machines like the z80 based Sinclair Spectrum.
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The Commodore Amiga version is notable for using digitized instrument samples in its title music. When the game was released, the 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.
In Dragon #114's "The Role of Computers" column, reviewers Hartley and Pattie Lesser stated that the game's "“painted” scenes will leave you in awe".[2] The game was reviewed in 1988 in Dragon #134 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 4 out of 5 stars for IBM micros and compatibles version with an EGA board, but only 21⁄2 stars for systems without an EGA board.[3]
The game won the award for best adventure game of the year in Crash magazine.[4]
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