3 Days In Carpathia was originally thought to be a sequel to the popular Valkyrie 17 game by George Stone and The Ram Jam Corp.
A text adventure, which was written using “The Biro” and featuring character set screens, livened up with moving sprites (including a dodo which fixated on you as its mother when it hatched), the game was shaping up well. All words in the adventure were in Carpathian, until you found a dictionary in the game.
Promising indeed, though it is unknown why it was never finished or released – even how far exactly it got. Its unlikely that it was finished, due to sources revealed below.
Hugh Riley, popular for his work on Last Ninja 2, worked on this game a few years earlier. Thanks to Hugh and Jazzcat for his interview, we are now able to see some of the remains of the game. Although not much, you can see some of the graphics in action which Hugh managed to salvage from some of his disks back in 2001.
It’s believed that more exists, though in the years since – Hugh hasn’t found anything more to show.
Thanks to contributor Strident, we learn that the development was pretty troubled throughout. Within the October 1986 adventure column in Your Sinclair magazine (pg69), it was confirmed that the game was not a sequel Valkyrie 17. A true sequel would be released at a later date. This was also later confirmed by Tony Barber in Classic Adventurer magazine.
Hopefully some day we’ll learn more from those at Ram Jam about the game and exactly what happened. For now, check out Hugh’s graphics and remnants of the game for yourself.
Contributions: Jazzcat, Hugh Riley, Strident, Mark Hardisty
Supporting content
Available downloads
- Preview_3days.zip (zip)
Gallery
Update history
- 15/10/2022 – Further tidy ups
- 12/11/2020 – Tidy up of the write up
- 17/11/2020 – Fix of the game not being sequel to Valkyrie 17.
Definitely a text adventure with a turbulent development history… its place as a sequel to Valkyrie 17 seemed in flux too…
According to page 69 of the October 1986 adventure column in Your Sinclair, Ramjam had decided that Three Days in Carpathia was no longer the sequel to Valkyrie 17, and would be a completely different adventure, with a true sequel Valkyrie 18/Valkyrie II released later.
Thanks Strident, have updated and added a contribution credit :)
No, problem. I’m just cross-referencing all our CASA information with yours on here… I think it’s been a while since we synced the information. :)