Bird's Paradise
| Bird's Paradise | |
|---|---|
| Eamon adventure | |
| Author | Paul Balyoz |
| Released | 1980s |
Bird's Paradise is a lost Eamon adventure created by Paul Balyoz probably in the early 1980s. Thomas Ferguson found a post mentioning the adventure and followed up with the author to learn more about it, then shared the details in an October 2012 post to the EAG blog.
History
Balyoz's original comments appear in an April 2009 post entitled "My Memory" in his blog Life, Love, Paulio: Paulio's Thoughts and Life Learnings in which he describes the feelings of finding a list of Eamon adventure online. The experience reminds him of time spent as a child playing games with his friends on his Apple II — "and the greatest adventure game at the time was the Eamon series."
When I stumbled over this web site listing the Eamon adventures, their list had about 300 titles on it — way more than I remember. Reading those names, it hit me — the name of the Eamon adventure I created! Birds Paradise I called it. I searched the list, but my adventure wasn't there. I google-searched for "eamon birds paradise", but no luck — no results. Even though I gave out copies of my Eamon adventure to a couple of my friends, evidently it didn't make it far enough to be listed on these sites. And I got rid of all my old Apple II diskettes a long time ago.
But then I realized - I hadn't thought about Eamon adventures or anything related to them for at least the past 15 years. So how did I instantly remember the phrase "Bird's Paradise"? How could I have, without "refreshing" that memory every few years or so? My brain's exposure to that phrase was many-daily-occurrences when I was young, then a 15-20 year span of never thinking about it once. That breaks the "exponential pattern" that psychologists have been talking about recently.
Bayloz writes that seeing the adventure list was a beautiful experience that prompted the return of happy recollections from his youth, and concludes that "joy is a powerful factor in memory."
Premise
In correspondence with Ferguson, Balyoz provided a summary of the adventure and its plot:
As I recall, playing Bird's Paradise went sort of like this: You started in your apartment up high in an apartment building, and in one room there was a bird cage with a bird, like a Parrot. He was... [a] "friend", so he would follow you around throughout the game and not attack you (unless you attacked him first). Exploring your house you realize there is an open window, so you go out the window and onto the ledge. Walking along the ledge you can go in the open window of the apartment next to you, and there's a different bird in there — I think it was a Toucan. The Toucan is your friend too, and follows you around. Now you have two friends.
At the end of the level you confronted the enemy — an Evil Bird King and four ravens, I think, who immediately start attacking! It's a giant epic melee, you and your four friends attacking the evil birds alongside you... [S]ince you have friends who are attacking the enemy, the enemies would not just focus on you — everyone gets one "swing" per turn, and so you'd be swung-at about 1/5th of the time (because you have 4 other pals). The odds were in your favor, but you could still die, just due to random occurrence of being attacked more than normal; or being too novice of a character.
Balyoz noted that a friend found a way around the concluding battle: repeatedly fleeing to another room in order to thin the opponents — something he originally considered cheating but later realized was "just an advanced strategy".
Status
Balyoz states that he distributed copies to friends but that the adventure seemingly never reached any broader distribution, so since he no longer has his original materials the adventure is considered lost.
External links
- Life, Love, Paulio: "My Memory" (original post)
- Paulio10: Everything to Everyone (current blog)
- EAG Online Blog: "Glimpse into Bird's Paradise, a Lost Eamon..."