Forty years ago, things looked like computer games would get out of their kids toys niche and into the accepted mainstream. Established authors lent their names and talents to game development. Of course, this glimmer of hope all crashed and burned when the broad consumer public decided the simplistic skill games featuring a "plumber" who never does any plumbing were the best. Yet, the artefacts of this brief moment in history remain. The one cited with some regularity in highbrow elitist circles is Mindwheel.

Mindwheel comes across to me as an early attempt to progress the genere "text adventures" beyond traditional formats (e.g. treasure hunts, etc.) toward an experiential literary experinece. In execution, however, I felt that that the game falls apart in doing so. My 2 cents...