It's is based off hazy childhood memories of several different Apple ][ games; mostly Apventure to Atlantis and Voyage of the Valkyrie. It also pays slight homage to Crown of Arthain.

These games were made before the idea that you should maybe give the player an understanding of how the game world works through play, rather than just putting all that stuff in the manual and hoping they figure it out. Lots of other Apple games did this (and probably fuelled my antipathy towards RPGs and fantasy settings), but those ones stick out in my mind because very occasionally, something interesting would happen, and I would have no idea why or how to make it happen again.

Voyage of the Valkyries had a title screen that, 9 times out of 10, I just could not advance past. I would press every key, I would hit both joystick buttons, and those fucking ring-tailed pterodactyl things would just fly around the title screen and nothing would change. But a handful of times, I would boot it up, hit a key, and the actual GAME would start! The screen would fill with incomprehensible stats, and then you went into a first person viewpoint with black and white mountains, and if you went towards the mountains you died, and if you actually saw a pterodactyl guy, it would kill you before you figured out what key made you shoot at it or talk to it or whatever it was you were supposed to do.

Apventure to Atlantis was an adventure game/RPG with a handful of predefined verbs, most of which were completely alien to me and had no obvious purpose. Like, seriously, you had GO, LOOK, TAKE, READ, USE, CONDITION, WIZARDS, and SUMMON. You started out in a room with a handful of things on the table, two of which made sense (a book and a note) and one of which didn't (an orb). I swear to Christ I found some use for the orb somewhere, but I have no idea what I did, where I did it, or what happened when I did. A YouTube commenter on that video claims that you could capture an ornithopter; I'm pretty sure, out of dozens of times playing the game, I saw one once. Maybe it even took me somewhere else, I don't remember; I do remember being completely blown away and then being unable to save my game or recreate what I had done ever again.

And Crown of Arthain really solidified my idea of what Apple ][ games were like; a handful of vaguely connected "modes" with completely unrelated control schemes that you jarringly switch between. You wander around a hex grid until you encounter an enemy, then a horrible noise plays and you're greeted with a full-screen battle sequence with the stiffest possible animation for which the keys to fight are "S" and "H". Seriously, without a manual, you just stand there helplessly, banging on keys, as a troll hits you over and over with an axe. If you do manage to find a key that does something, you've hit dozens of others by the time you see the result, and so chances are slim that you actually know which one you pressed.

I wanted to work in an homage to Galactic Trader as well; another game of confusing verbs, no explanation, and a lot of rules I wasn't privy to. I even drew up some art; just didn't have time to incorporate it.

So, making this game, I wanted to create a sense of "I have no idea even what keys to press" combined with a sense of "there is a lot going on beneath the surface here that I have no way of even approaching understanding". Dunno how well it worked, but that's what I was going for. And yes, there is an endgame, and I'd love to know if anyone manages to reach it.