It is thanks to Fabrizio Bartoloni and BloodyCactus for bringing this game to our attention, and which may have been floating around for quite some time under our noses.
The Mermaid and the Crown was a graphical text adventure produced by the Australian company Mountain Valley Software that was ran by Brian J Betts during the early-mid 1980s. This was the only rare release where someone else designed the game, and Brian programmed it. The game was designed by Lesley McDowell.
A large number of games were released, though it seems this particular title may not have quite made it out – or at least hasn’t yet been added to the Gamebase64 archive.
Thanks to the CASA Solution archive, a link was made to a site which links to all the adventures, as well as scans of the inlays. Present was an entry for The Mermaid and the Crown, complete with an inlay scan. So did a limited number manage to sneak out?
If you click onto the publisher name near the top, then you will see a list of other Mountain Valley Software titles that were definitely not released, and were unfinished. Thankfully they were all archived thanks to Jacob from CASA Solution archive and other members of the forum.
We hope to learn more soon about this title, but for now – here it is. And you can also see a Twitch video run through of the game courtesy of BloodyCactus.
Contributions: Fabrizio Bartoloni, BloodyCactus, CASA Solution archive
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