SUNSTONE: A Tale of the Briar King

You wake in a glade with empty hands. Nobody sent you; the cave mouth is ahead of you, and it has been waiting.

There was a sun over this country once, and it was kept in pieces: eight of them, set under eight roofs, so no one hand could ever hold the whole of the light. Then the briar came. What is under those roofs now belongs to the Briar King, and what is left of the sun is under them with it.

Bring back the stones and the light will hold. For a while, which is what light has always done.

THE ADVENTURE

• A whole country in screens: woods that close, barrows gone dark, a burned vale, a lake shore, and every screen holding still until you walk off its edge.
  
• NINE TOMBS, and eight pieces of the sun under them. One roof is on no map, and that is not an oversight.
  
• A sword, a bag of bombs, a bow, keys, lamps, and the drawer that holds them, sliding down over the world when you press START.
  
• Secrets in the walls: bomb them, burn them, push them, wake them. The grass cuts, and sometimes the grass pays.
  
• Bosses under every roof, and the thorn court gets meaner the deeper the country goes.

THE SECOND QUEST

Finish the tale and the country deals again: the secrets you knew have moved, and some of the hints you trusted are now lies. The booklet will not help you. That is the point of the booklet.

THE SET

It ships the way a 1988 cartridge should: a battery save with a CONTINUE row, a pause, a mute, a tint knob with five settings and painted glass on the front of the tube, built under one rule: a game you can play on a grey television is a game you can play. The full instruction booklet is included, and it reads like 1988 meant it.

NOTHING IS LOADED FROM ANYWHERE

No image file, no sound file, no font file. Every sprite is ASCII in a source file and every note is arithmetic. 256×240, and a sound chip doing its best.

ALSO FROM QUORUM

• Veil of Time: a hand-painted JRPG beneath the city of Castra. Parry in real time or command the party turn by turn. Every line voiced.
  
• Bush League Baseball: 8-bit baseball with real rules and terrible players. 106 players, 83 things wrong with them. Two players, one keyboard.