Eureka! is a
text adventure set in
European history. It consists of five parts, each of which has to be loaded and played separately. The first four parts can be played in any order, but the fifth part can only be played after all the other parts have been completed. The parts are: •
Prehistoric Europe: Set in a valley somewhere in the
Jurassic period. You have to escape from the valley and avoid hungry
dinosaurs. •
Ancient Rome: Set in
ancient Rome somewhere around the 1st or 2nd century BC. You have to escape from
slavery and win a horse race at the
Circus Maximus. •
Arthurian Britain: Set in
medieval Britain during
King Arthur's time. You have to foil the evil
Mordred's plans. •
Wartime Germany: Set in
Germany during
World War II. You have to escape a
prisoner of war camp back to your own country. •
Modern Caribbean: Set in the
Caribbean in the 1980s. You finally confront your nemesis in his island-based stronghold and have to stop him from conquering the world. At the start of
Modern Caribbean, the game asks questions from each of the first four parts. You have to answer every question correctly to start the fifth part of the game. The plots in
Eureka! are somewhat
clichéd and the
parser is very simplistic, usually limited to one verb and one object per command. Some rooms in the game have pictures representing them and sometime small animations. Unusually for text adventures,
Eureka! maintains
RPG-style
hit points for your character. These hit points are lowered when your character is injured or raised when he gets something to eat. If the hit points reach 0, your character dies. Another feature of the game was the rooms that had a time limit, which meant the player had to act quickly to complete a task or to quickly exit the area. The main text adventure was also accompanied by "
arcade game" versions of the five parts. These were very simple affairs, where your character ran around a
Pac-Man-style
maze avoiding enemies. Apart from the maze layout and the graphics, all five parts were pretty much identical. Earning a high enough score would reward the player extra hit points in the adventure games, when loaded right after the arcade game. At the start of
Arthurian Britain the wind blows a theme from
Franz Liszt's
Les Préludes. == Prize challenge ==