Steampunk

You are a beachcomber living by the shore. Today, you wake to find an empty fish bowl in your home, and don't remember how it got there. You try to piece your memory back together, but soon learn what the old maps meant: Here there be monsters.

The game FISH BOWL is about a beach comber who awakes one day to find a peculiar fish bowl in his shack near the beach, unable to remember where it has come from and why it is there; this makes the fish bowl a central object and the player is likely to get the idea that there is something to be done about it.

In the beginning was the Word, and it was hungry.

Enter a steampunk adventure set in a London that might have been. The year is 1885. Bedlam Hospital still stands in Moorsfield, a decaying shell used to house the poor and the hopeless. Steam-driven mechanical wonders roam the streets. Gear-wheeled analytical engines spin out reams of thought onto punched paper tapes.

And in the darkness - in the alleys and the side shops - hide secrets.

You are a mouse sized house hippo. It is christmas eve and everyone went to bed already. That is, everyone except you. You are determined to see Santa Claus this year. Can you stay awake long enough to be handed your presents personally?

The phone rings...

Oh no - how long have you been asleep? Sure, it was a tough night, but ... This is bad. This is very bad.

You've screwed up on the job before, but never like this. You've overslept in a major way, and you're in for a world of trouble if you don't act fast.

9:05 was written over the course of four days in room 315 of the Victoria Hotel in Melbourne, Australia. It's a fairly standard text adventure, the one exception being that the verb USE has been implemented. Enjoy!