A sci-fi text-adventure has been in development for 40 years – only now you can play the final version

There was a time before Doom and before the first consoles took over living rooms. Microsoft was tinkering with the very first version of Windows, and if anything, most people had a Commodore 64 at home. Computer games were often still simple and text-based adventure games were very popular – “Ferret” is one of them.

This is what awaits you at Ferret: The adventure game belongs to the interactive fiction genre. This means that you can influence the game narrative through written commands. For the most part, simple entries such as, for example, are sufficient “tell me more” or “take the keys”. When you start the game, your character wakes up in a dark room after years of cryosleep. Your body is heavy and you start looking for an exit. In a post-apocalyptic world, you must explore your new surroundings. There are many secrets to discover and puzzles to solve. You have to find out if you are the only survivors – a classic adventure. If that sounds too old-fashioned, there are now adventure games that are written by an AI while you play them.

Here you can watch the launch trailer of Toem, a picture-based adventure game:

40 years of development time

Ferret is a very extensive game: You can explore a total of 1,785 rooms and interact with thousands of objects. You control the game with over 400 words or phrases. Ferret impresses with humor and a wealth of detail: If you make a wrong decision, the game describes in great detail, for example, how a laser drone vaporizes your skull.

Why was the game in development for so long? The first version of Ferret was developed in 1982 for the Data General Nova, a 16-bit mini-computer. Games like Wing Commander, Doom or Tomb Raider were still a long way off. Because GPUs weren’t really widespread at the time, games were mostly played in arcades.

It is still unknown who exactly was responsible for the development. The only thing that is certain is that the developers at Data Genaral (via computerhistory.org) worked in the UK. The company no longer exists.

A first free PC version of Ferret was released in 2009. The final version of the game was released in August 2022. So there are a proud 40 years between the first and the last version of the game! Ferret should adorn himself with the record for the longest development time of a computer game.

How to get the game? If you want to try Ferret for yourself, you can download it for free. However, the regular version might be objected to by your antivirus software as files are moved to protected directories. Luckily, blogger Jason Dyer (via bluerenga.blog), created a version that doesn’t have these issues – you can find them here on his blog.

Do you like retro and arcade games? Then have a look here: The first commercially successful game is already 50 years old – do you know it?