The Bird Sanctuary

The Guild of Thieves - Memories

After the success of The Pawn, it was a pretty safe bet that Magnetic Scrolls were going to write another adventure. This pseudo-sequel was much larger, more challenging and had much improved bitmap graphics over its predecessor.

Rob Steggles was again tasked with creating the basic premise of the new adventure. The only instructions he was given was that it should be fantasy-based like its predecessor - a genre that Robert wasn't too keen on second time around. Trudging off to the local pub with a friend, Rob created the basic story and structure of the game in one afternoon. Apart fom the addition of the Kerovnian Bank, the game design remained pretty much unaltered from his original scribbles through to the finished game.

Magnetic Scrolls were very protective of The Guild of Thieves whilst it was being developed, to the point where they were extremely reluctant to allow development versions to go outside of their own London HQ. Magnetic Scrolls had their own in-house game testers, but so did Rainbird. In the end, Rainbird's testers had to go to Magnetic Scrolls' offices to play-test the game as the deadlines became tight.

The box artwork hints at an element of the game that was removed during development. At one point a flying Pterodactyl was included, but when it was removed from the game design, the already finalised artwork wasn't amended.

Some versions of the game included a credit that stated Music stolen by John Cage. This was a double-edged joke. Firstly, unlike most other Magnetic Scrolls adventures on the Amiga, there was no title music for the Guild! Secondly, John Cage was apparently an experimental musician who infamously produced a track which consisted of nothing more than four and half minutes of silence!

Rainbird held a party at The Cheshire Cheese, a pub just off Fleet Street and within walking distance of St. Paul's Cathedral in central London, to celebrate the launch of Guild. The press were invited along, and were given a special black SWAG bag to mark the occaision. This contained (amongst other things) a bottle of vintage Kerovnian wine.

The Guild of Thieves was published in 1987, almost a year before I started working at Telecomsoft. However, I must confess at this stage that Guild rapidly became one of my favourite text entry adventures ever, and I still have fond memories of it despite the enfuriating Bank of Kerovnia puzzle! The tongue-in-cheek sense of humour that is found throughout the game was also highly amusing.

Guild was extremely popular and it won the British Micro Computing Game of the Year award in 1987. Many fans of Magnetic Scrolls rate Guild highly, but they also believe it to be the hardest of all the Magnetic Scrolls adventures.

Thanks to Paul Coppins and the Interactive Fiction Legends for some of the above memories and annecdotes.

Michael and Douglas

The What Burglar magazine included in the box was written by Michael Bywater, a journalist/satirist who counted the late, great Douglas Adams as a friend and Anita Sinclair (founder of Magnetic Scrolls) as a girlfriend. Buried within the personal adverts found in What Burglar was an advert that read:

BABY ELEPHANT SKIN JACKET, soft, supple, surplus to ideological requirements. Also for sale: New York appartement, Islington flat, Porsche, Saab, computers, synthesizers etc. Owner retiring to Madagascar. Apply D. Adams, Box 57848

The story behind the advert relates to a jacket that Michael Bywater had borrowed off Douglas Adams. It was incredibly soft, and when Michael asked about it, Douglas admitted it was made from baby elephant skin. He felt so bad about it that he let Michael keep the jacket!

Infocom's adventure game Bureaucracy (written by Douglas Adams and rescued by Michel Bywater!) was published the same year as Guild. Early on in this game, the player opens their mailbox and discovers a leaflet:

The leaflet is an irritatingly enthusiastic mail-shot for some computer game. Now available for your Boysenberry! it says, pointing out that (a) the game comes in a blue box; (b) if you had a Daktari S/M you could have truly amazing graphics; and (c) if you had a Coromont Honcho you could have utterly incredible sound. Since the boysenberry had neither graphics or sound, you wonder what on earth the marketing manager was thinking of.

The blue box, graphics and sound mentioned in the above text are a bit of a give away aren't they? As he was dating Anita Sinclair at the time, Michael Bywater slipped in many homages to Magnetic Scrolls in the game text.

More What Burglar

A second issue of the What Burglar magazine was available directly from Magnetic Scrolls, and this second issue included references to the then unpublished fourth and fifth Magentic Scrolls titles (Corruption and Fish! respectively).