Smakeloos (translating as “Tasteless”) was to be a new game by John Vanderaart – following the theme of Endless, Hopeless and Radeloos.
It was to be another graphic text adventure game where you were a lost backpacker in Texas – according to Dutch Magazine “Dossier Commodore” from early 1987. You basically want to go for a drink at a small farm, but then all hell breaks loose. A Farm-girl with a butcher knife, a crazy ranger with a chainsaw etc comes after you. You flee to a gas-station to call your mother – where you are covered in gasoline and torched.
The aim of the game was to try and stay alive basically – a horror adventure.
The title would feature graphics by Ralph Egas, who got the job after contacting John by finding his telephone number tucked away in one of his games.
Ralph confirmed that sadly John never finished the game (for reasons currently unknown), and had created many pictures for the title. The game had different locations which came with 3 images each. Ralph gives more detail about what he did in the Creator Speaks section.
Sadly Ralph no longer has any of his work, so this could well be a title which has been lost forever. But you never know what might show up some day!
Contributions: Paul Koller, Ralph Egas
Supporting content
Creator speaks
Ralph Egas recalls work on Smakeloos:
“I remember John was working on both games and I also remember he never completed them. I indeed spent some time creating pixel art for Smakeloos. A couple of interesting items on that:
1) I couldn’t afford a color monitor at the time (I was like 13 or something and all my savings had gone already in the C64 itself), so I actually created those picture on my olde black & white crt screen. John liked the pictures regardless. The secret to the color thing was that I could actually picture the c64 colors (only 16 of them after all) in my head while brightness and PAL artefacts were enough for me to recognise them.
2) Each location in the game had exactly 3 images:
- The “you enter the location”-picture. You get confronted with scene and a particular “˜problem’, e.g. a farmer’s wife with an axe that doesn’t look particularly amused, the wife that is.
- The “œyou lose the game in that location”-picture. Mostly death related, e.g. the farmer’s wife’s axe in your skull.
- The “œyou survive the location’s problem”-picture. You get to live for a bit longer, e.g. the farmer’s wife’s axe in the farmer’s wife’s skull, not looking particularly amused.
3) So, the whole game consisted of a number of locations with 3 states you’d traverse in a linear fashion. Actually that concept I believe would still be viable today.”
