Custerd's Quest is an adventure video game developed by Craig Davies and published by The Power House for ZX Spectrum released in 1986. You play as Sir Custerd who starts in his castle and eventually goes through many fairy tale-inspired adventures. One of the game's selling points is its comedic focus, as many things are not taken seriously. The game also came with a song by H.E.X. who also provided music for other Spectrum games, which can be listened to here
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This game provides examples of:
- 100% Completion: You can earn up to 255 points. Unfortunately, your score is only shown at the end, so it's hard to know how well you're doing.
- Absurdly Long Stairway: You go through four hours of stairs before reaching floor 100 of Necromancer's tower.
- Anything but That!: The Necromancer says the trope name and several other pleads before the jolly old crystal orb gag.
- Blind Mistake: A blind grandma mistakes you for Little Red Riding Hood when you enter her cottage.
- Censored for Comedy: Type in "Screw/Sex" and the game will censor the whole screen, even though you're not actually screwing anything.
- Falling Chandelier of Doom: You have to throw an axe at the chandelier so that it falls on the Necromancer.
- Fission Mailed: Near the end, you die of starvation. Only to be told that it is a joke and then it is back to the game.
- Hurt Foot Hop: After kicking the panel, you "do a dance around the room with your foot held in your hand uttering curses which would shock your granny."
- Lemony Narrator: The narrator is fairly snarky. "You have entered the LIGHT LOCATION, which is surprisingly, the exact opposite of the DARK LOCATION." Or "You can see some more trees and hundreds of leaves. Gosh. How exciting."
- Money to Throw Away: You have to throw a coin at a crowd of peasants to distract them early on. It starts such a ruckus because it is worth year's wages.
- Never Mess with Granny: This Grandma is much more badass than the "Little Red Riding Hood" one. She killed the Big Bad Wolf, has an axe, and her house in adorned in wolfskins.
- No Fair Cheating: Type in "Cheat" and the game responds with "CHEAT MODE ERROR! PROGRAM CORRUPTED!" and boots you out of the game.
- Pungeon Master: A time beast appears in the end, making several clock puns. The game even warns you before a wave of them.
- Rainbow Speak: Normally text is white, but certain descriptions are in several different colors. At one point the narrator even says about the text "(in purple, for effect)"
- Shout-Out:
- When entering tunnels, the game says "You are crawling around twisty passages, all alike."
- You meet Grandma from "Little Red Riding Hood".
- You go to Nurnia later, meet Alsan the king, get a box of Turkish delight and hear about the Snow Queen. He also laments "Why could I have been in The Wizard of Oz?"
- Later still you drink a strange liquid, shrinking to your surroudings, go down a rabbit hole and meet the White Rabbit.
- Troll Bridge: An ugly troll is at a toll bridge, demanding money. You have to throw mud to get rid of him.
- Updated Re Release: The game was initially released by Alpha-Omega Software. When they re-branded as The Power House, they relaunched their games with new packaging. Craig Davies took advantage of it by compressing the game significantly, allowing him to fit an additional 10 KB of text.
- Wizard Needs Food Badly: The game starts complaining you're hungry, eventually starving near the end. Subverted as when you're supposed to die of starvation, you don't.
