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Hunt the Wumpus

Hunt a monster through a cave of twenty rooms.

▶ Play Hunt the Wumpus free, in your browser, nothing to install

Gregory Yob wrote Hunt the Wumpus in BASIC in 1973, one of the first computer games built around exploring a hidden map.

The cave has 20 rooms, joined like the corners of a dodecahedron. Somewhere the Wumpus sleeps; there are two bottomless pits and two superbats that carry you off. From the next room you can smell the Wumpus, feel the draft of a pit and hear the bats.

You have five crooked arrows. Shoot one through up to five rooms to kill the Wumpus — but miss, and it may wake up and come for you.

Screenshots

The instructions, then the first room
The instructions, then the first room
Moving through the cave and shooting a crooked arrow
Moving through the cave and shooting a crooked arrow

Controls

KeyboardType your answer and press Enter: Y/N, S (shoot) or M (move), room numbers
BackspaceCorrect the line before Enter

The original

Hunt the Wumpus (1973) by Gregory Yob; BASIC (teletype). This port follows the Creative Computing listing (1975), the same rules, levels, graphics and sounds, running natively in the browser. License: Public domain (Licenses & source). Players: 1.

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