Thanks to contributor Chris Hester, who flagged up an old piece that he wrote possibly for his magazine Adventure Coder. The Wooden Box was a text adventure game due for release in 1986 by Anthony Collins, and was to be the sequel to Nythyhel.
No version seems to exist for any system, suggesting it may have been scrapped by the author.
Contributor Strident got in touch (see comments) to say that:
“Tony had reworked the C64/Amstrad/Spectrum adventure Nythyhel into a two-part ZX Spectrum PAWed adventure called Methyhel (later also a one-part 128K game). The games are very similar, but things like the names of the main characters, and their investigation agency, were tweaked. Tony planned to continue the Methyhel series with additional adventures, each focussing on a case of a different team member, before returning in the final game to take on Methyhel (Nythyhel) once again.
It’s possible that Tony might of used some of his ideas for the original Wooden Box sequel in one of these games, but when I was working with him on the second adventure in the series we had a different plot in mind. I still have correspondence and some draft ideas from this project; it’s possibly something I’ll look at producing in the future.”
So it seems there may not be anything to find for this title after all sadly.
Contributions: Chris Hester, Strident
Tony reworked the C64/Amstrad/Spectrum adventure Nythyhel into a two-part ZX Spectrum PAWed adventure called Methyhel (later also a one-part 128K game). The games are very similar, but things like the names of the main characters, and their investigation agency, were tweaked. Tony planned to continue the Methyhel series with additional adventures, each focussing on a case of a different team member, before returning in the final game to take on Methyhel (Nythyhel) once again.
It’s possible that Tony might of used some of his ideas for the original Wooden Box sequel in one of these games, but when I was working with him on the second adventure in the series we had a different plot in mind. I still have correspondence and some draft ideas from this project; it’s possibly something I’ll look at producing in the future.