CASA ::

One of the most prolific text adventure authors of all time was Bonaventura Di Bello (or BDB), yet most people from English-speaking countries have never heard of him.

BDB was a machine. He wrote 69 text adventures from May 1986 to December 1987 for the Italian magazines Epic 3000, Explorer, Viking Adventures in Italiano and Load'n'Run. These were written for the Commodore 64, MSX and/or ZX Spectrum, so the actual number of games was 160. These games were all written in Italian and have never been translated to English...until now.

In August 2024, Gianluca Girelli contacted BDB and asked for permission to translate his 37-year-old games to English and bring them up to date for a modern audience. BDB was thrilled to think that people were still interested in his old games and gave him permission to proceed.

Gianluca enlisted the help of Garry Francis and The BDB Project was born. The team has now spent 12 months reverse engineering the games, translating them to English and, ultimately, adapting them to remove the cruelty that was prevalent in the original games.

The first three games were quietly released in June 2025 for ParserComp 2025. These were subsequently updated and released with the formal announcement of The BDB Project in October 2025, along with three new games. The formal announcement can be viewed at intfiction.org. This also provides historical background to the project.

The BDB Project aims to adapt all 69 of BDB's original games with an average of one game per month over the next few years. All games are free. They can be played online or downloaded to play in your favourite Z-code interpreter for modern and retro platforms. Disk images are also provided to play on selected retro emulators or real hardware, initially Atari, BBC and Commodore 8-bit and 16-bit computers.

If you have fond memories of text adventures from the golden age, or you're curious about the Italian scene in the 1980s or you just want a fun challenge, do yourself a favour and play The BDB Project's adaptations of BDB's classic text adventures. The project's home page is at The BDB Project.

Great project! I do know his games, but as my Italian is very limited I only tried to play a few. will definitely give these games a look.

One thing you might be interested in is that I've just added disk images for the Amstrad CPC/PCW and MSX. You're an MSX fan, aren't you? Gianluca has also added disk images for the MEGA65 and a couple for the Amiga. A friend of his did the Amiga images, but some of them don't work. We'll get them sorted out in due course. (I hate dealing with retro stuff. Too many variations and too hard to test them all.)

yes, great. MSX was my first computer which I got way back in 1985.

The BDB Project now has a Discord server. This is the place to go if you'd like to discuss the project, talk to the authors, discuss specific games, request a port for your favourite retro platform, volunteer to help, become a beta tester or find out about new releases. As it's only just started, there's not much there yet, so pop in and say "hello". If you'd like to join, use this invite link: https://discord.gg/QQsgBtGghd

I am afraid I cannot agree with the removal of mazes in these games; modernisation to suit the millennials' propensity for goldfish-like attention spans should be avoided. Preservation is fair; modeish hijacking isn't.

A couple of people have expressed this view, but they're people that I've never heard of, that do not contribute to the community and probably don't even play text adventures, but just like to complain for the sake of it. I know you're not like that and you love cruel games. If you want to play the original games, you can. They're available online for the C64 and ZX Spectrum. These games have lots of sudden death, no undo, guess the verb, unwinnable situations, moon logic, mazes, limited inventory, illogical puzzles and silly story lines. You'll love them.

The object of the project is to translate the games to English, bring them to a modern audience and run them on modern platforms, including browsers, Z-code interpreters and various retro platforms. If we were to do a straight port, there would be no point, as no one would play them. Bonaventura Di Bello himself has been very supportive and he loves what we're doing. He has written an article for an Italian blog which includes interviews with the two authors. He has also joined our new Discord server.

We can't all live in the past. If we want text adventures to continue into the future, we need to bring them to a new generation of players and make the games as accessible as possible, yet still provide a challenge.

Incidentally, Wild West and The Wrath of Anubis have one maze each. Tin Star and Unknown Dimension have two mazes each. Desperados and Caribbean Treasure don't have any.

We will agree to disagree then. And silly story lines? There are plenty of those in modern text adventures too. They are somewhat akin to people who always use cheap adolescent emojis. You love them of course.

And don't patronise me I don't "live in the past " I have played a lot of modern text adventures and enjoyed them immensely. Over snd out.