Hunt the Wumpus

"Your village has suffered too long from the nocturnal attacks of that horrible beast, the Wumpus. At your coming-of-age ceremony, you vow to do what no other hunter in the village has had the courage to try. Donning an old suit of armour and taking only a torch and a crossbow with a single arrow, you enter the cavernous lair of the Wumpus. The path is unknown, twisting through narrow corridors and forgotten chambers. Ancient pits, built by a dead people for their lost subterranean gods, ooze slime as they wait to claim another explorer. Monstrous bats inhabit the caves, carrying the unaware through the darkness and releasing them again at whim. Most terrible of all is the Wumpus, who slumbers even now in the darkness. Woe to any who come upon the beast in the shadows!

But you have chosen to face these dangers, great as they are. You will free your village or fall in the attempt. Because you alone have chosen to Hunt The Wumpus!"

The original computer game, Hunt the Wumpus, featured a mysterious monster known only to the player as 'The Wumpus' who the player would attempt to kill before they were eaten. The original BASIC version was a text-based game, while it was later ported to other systems with a variety of programming languages and graphical versions. I even managed to find a version on the Android market!

The best version I've managed to find is by Dream Codex Retrogames. This version is the most visually appealing and easy to get the hang of, so this is the one I'll be looking into.

The game's Title Screen.

Contained within the game, are a number of chambers/rooms. These vary in content and type, which are listed on the webpage below the game:

The game's style is comparable to that of the in-built Windows game: Minesweeper. The strategy in figuring out which room the Wumpus is in is very similar in the way that you must look at which rooms surround others to work out which room you're about to step (or shoot) into.

One of an infinite amount of  Wumpus dungeon layouts.

You could also place this game in the 'roguelike' genre, where each game is completely randomized, has a permanent death feature and are typically dungeon crawls. I think, when reinventing Hunt the Wumpus, this is one of the key features I want to keep.