After graduating from
Rice University in 1974 with degrees in Electrical Engineering and Mathematical Science, Robert (Bob) Clardy was hired by
Boeing as an electrical engineer at the
Johnson Space Center, then moved to Seattle in 1977 with his wife Ann. Bob Clardy first was exposed to personal home computers at that time, following the releases of the
Apple II and Tandy
TRS-80, both in 1977. He purchased an upgraded (16 Kb) Apple II in 1978 and began modifying the code for
Dragon Maze, an
Integer BASIC program written by Gary J. Shannon Shannon's
Dragon Maze randomly generated a maze which the player would then have to navigate and escape while being chased by a dragon. according to them, Ann's father named the company. In
Dungeon Campaign, the player explores four randomly generated maze levels with a party of fifteen adventurers, gathering as much gold as possible while avoiding traps and the guardian of each level. Gregg Williams reviewed it in 1980 for
Byte, calling it one of his favorite games for Apple II.
Wilderness Campaign, which added resource management to an adventure set in the "Kingdom of Draconia", is credited with inspiring the gameplay of the 1981 electronic board game
Dark Tower. Synergistic also published several business applications, including a word processor, graphics utility (
Higher Graphics, 1979), and a simple database program called
The Modifiable Database.
Modifiable Database grew from an outside commission which Clardy had taken to write a simple database program. ==Software==