For anyone who’s been fiddling around with computers since the days before VGA, “Hunt the Wumpus” probably brings back fond memories. Developed in 1973, this text game has you move around a system of caves searching for the foul-smelling Wumpus, a vile creature which you must dispatch with your trusty bow and arrow. Some consider it to be one of the very first survival horror games ever developed, a predecessor to the Resident Evil franchise as well as the video game version of Hannah Montana: The Movie.
If the concept of “Hunt the Wumpus” sounds interesting to you, but you just can’t get over the whole text adventure thing, you may be in luck. [Benjamin Faure] has developed a semi-graphical version of the classic horror title which might better appeal to your 21st century tastes. Running on an Arduino Mega 2560 with graphics displayed on a 8 x 8 LED matrix, it’s not exactly DOOM; but at least you won’t have to type everything out.
For his handheld version of “Hunt the Wumpus”, [Benjamin] 3D printed a nice enclosure and adorned it with labels and instructions that look like tiny scrolls, a neat touch for a game that’s so old contemporary players would have called Zork a “next gen” game. While playing you can see where you’ve been and where you are currently thanks to illuminated dots on the MAX7219 display, and there are LEDs to warn you of your proximity to bottomless pits and the Wumpus itself. There’s even a piezo speaker that will chirp when a bat is nearby, which is important as they have a tendency to ruin your day by carrying you away to a random location in the cave.
Most of the game looks like an advanced version of Snake, but [Benjamin] did go through the trouble of adding some rudimentary animations and sound effects that play during specific parts of the game. When you shoot your arrow or get carried away by a bat, you’ll see a “cutscene” of sorts on the LED display. It’s a fairly simple effect, but helps break up the otherwise fairly spartan graphics and might just be enough to keep a youngins’ attention.
If you subtract a dimension, this project is reminiscent of the 1D dungeon crawler we covered last year. But if even one dimension is too many, you could always run the text version of “Hunt the Wumpus“ on your trusty Arduino.
Source:ARDUINO HUNTS (AND SEES) THE WUMPUS
