Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

Ostracon with Pharaoh Spearing a Lion and a Royal Hymn on its Back, New Kingdom, Ramesside period, found in the Valley of the Kings in 1920 during the Carnarvon/Carter excavations.

Norrell Data Systems published three games by the end of 1982, and I’ve now played all of them: a port of Adventure with 375 points, and two games by Dian Girard, The Hermit’s Secret and The Phantom’s Revenge. If you want a full historical background (including how they tie into the ultra-obscure Sphere computer) you should read about those games first; I’ll just briefly re-summarize here.

PC World, April 1983.

In particular, Dian Girard (or Crayne, depending on circumstances) is one of our earliest multi-game female authors of text adventures; she wrote an article in PC Magazine, September 1983 which outlined her methods and gave a brief biography:

Dian Crayne is the author of several adventure games published by Norell Data Systems: The Phantom’s Revenge, The Hermit’s Secret, Monster Rally, Valley of the Kings, and Elsinore. She has been a programmer/analyst for 10 years. Her science fiction writings are published under the pseudonym Dian Girard.

That’s five games, although she actually mentions having written six games in the article itself; the game that is unmentioned is the adult game Granny’s Place. In general the Norrell versions have never surfaced, but fortunately the games were republished under the name Temple Software in 1993.

Of the 1983 games (Monster Rally, Valley of the Kings, Elsinore, Granny’s Place), we’ve had Elsinore and Granny’s Place for a while, and Monster Rally was thought lost but got rescued in January 2024 off the website of Charles A. Crayne by way of the Internet Archive. There’s the additional wrinkle that despite the article explicitly stating Dian wrote the games, Charles is given the author credit in the rescued version. CASA right now credits both as authors. JTN analyzes the situation here (with some follow-ups in the thread); I’ll dig more into the situation when I reach Monster Rally.

The game not discussed in the thread at all is Valley of the Kings, because at the time it was considered completely lost, and described as lost as recently as August 2025. I was cross-checking my database recently against the Total DOS Collection and was surprised to find an entry:

Valley of the Kings (1983)(Temple Software, Inc.) [Adventure, Interactive Fiction].zip

I am not fully clear when it got added; with these sort of all-encompassing archives there’s often a delay between when something gets placed vs. when it gets found by people who care about playing it.

Softalk, December 1983.

Just like the other games in the series, this is based off what seems to be a Crowther/Woods style engine and so still is all about gathering all the treasures and putting them in a particular spot.

You are about to take a trip into Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, a fantastic place where the ancient pharoahs were buried with all their treasures. Some of that treasure can be found by you! Of course, you may have some trouble with the fanatical Priests of Set. They don’t like intruders. One word of warning: Don’t go into any dark places without a flashlight. It’s dangerous. There is a tomb robber working around this area too. He isn’t dangerous, but if you find anything valuable, he may take it.

The treasures go to the “storage room that the digging team uses to keep their finds until they can be taken to the museum” so I guess there’s a difference between us and a “tomb robber” this time; we are doing “official research”.

This is the Visitor’s Center, a shady pavilion with maps of the local area, tourist brochures, and a snack shop. A paved road leads west from here, across the Valley of the Kings. To the east, there are the desolate Theban Mountains. Some distance to the south you can see a spectacular pyramid. A dark-skinned tourguide, wearing a bright red fez and a white linen suit, bows and asks, “Where would you like to go?”

The game’s structure here is a little unusual. Trying to wander lands you in a desert which is somewhat maze-y (like Hermit’s Secret)…

NE
You are wandering around in the Valley of the Kings.
N
You are wandering around in the Valley of the Kings.
W
You are wandering around in the Valley of the Kings.
There’s a piece of rare coral here, carved into a fish.

…but as the coral indicates (treasure, 5 points) I’m going to still need to map out all the sections to be sure I have everything. However, there’s still some connectivity implied by some room descriptions; you can head south from the starting room to a pyramid, for instance…

S
You are walking through the burning sands of the desert. There is an immense pyramid to the south of you, and to the north you can see the silhouette of the Visitor’s Center against the sky.
S
You are walking along the outside of an immense pyramid.

…but more importantly and uniquely, you can GO LOCATION while at the tour guide at the start to warp somewhere, as long as the tour guide considers it available. This takes the “shortcut method” of travel used in Crowther/Woods, where you can sometimes type a word to jump somewhere…

You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.
GRATE
You are in a 20-foot depression floored with bare dirt. Set into the dirt is a strong steel grate mounted in concrete. A dry streambed leads into the depression.
The grate is locked.

…and turns it into a puzzle of sorts. There’s no indicator of where a good destination might be, you have to guess. I tried CAVE and got a fascinating response.

GO CAVE

The guide looks startled. “Who told you about the caves? That’s an old legend, that there are some caves under the sands of the desert.” He laughs and adds, “Maybe the sphinx knows!”

This implies GO SPHINX works, and indeed it does.

You are standing between the front paws of an enormous sphinx, carved out of a monolithic sandstone rock. There is a small dark doorway to the north, that leads inside the monument.
N
You are in a tiny room, carved out of the solid sandstone. It is about 12 feet square, and there is an exit on the south. A ancient stone altar, eroded by time, fills most of the space.

Typing GO TOMB turns out to lead the player to the base camp.

You are in a small square chamber that forms the entrance to the tomb of Seti II. The tomb is rather uninteresting and is being used as a field headquarters for the archaeologist. The corridors into the tomb go north and west. The exit is south. Some rather exotic fertility rituals are carved on one wall.

The previously mentioned “storage room” is here, along with a “crowbar”, “flashlight”, and “shovel”.

The markings show “guide landing” spots; GO MOUNTAINS lands you next to a camel, although the camel does not let you pass by to the east.

This is a narrow trail that leads through the hot dusty rocks of the Theban Mountains. The trail ends here, with the only easy access being to the south. There is a narrow rift in the rocks to the east, and nothing but desolate mountains nearby. There is a large camel here, with the usual sneer on its face.
E
The camel spits at you, and rather playfully tries to kick your head off. You’d better just leave him alone for now.

Knowing Dian’s other games I’m going to need to spend a while mapping so I’m not going to try to give the full lay of the land just yet. This kind of feel where I’m able to jump around an interconnected map really does provide a mysterious atmosphere; I’m sure it will be ruined soon enough by me trying to figure out why exit X connects to room Y but for now I’m enjoying myself just wandering a little.

There’s no walkthrough or maps out there; if anyone wants to follow along I have the game here. It needs to be played with DOS.