Agrophobia was a text adventure game written by Mark Healey (who did graphics for Sleepwalker and the Fun School series).
The game was created whilst at school, and Mark sold about 3-4 copies to friends. It was likely his very first game sold to other people.
This is all we currently know about the game – and we’re not sure if Mark coded it from scratch or used something like the Graphic Adventure Creator tool.
It is also likely that the game may never be found and preserved, but this entry is created for posterity. If you were one of those 3-4 who brought the game and still have it, please contact us!
Contributions: Mark Healey
Shaun says that he wasn’t involved with the game, but he does remember Mark writing it over the summer holidays.
Thanks Strident!
Mark Healey also produced the illustrations for the project he worked on with school friend Shaun Allaton; The Forge, a text adventure creation tool fanzine. Sadly, all issues of that fanzine are currently missing too; Shaun himself doesn’t have any.
Hi Strident, did Shaun also work on Agrophobia as well, or was it just the The Forge?
I don’t think so… but I will ask.
It was Shaun that told me about Mark Healy’s link to The Forge fanzine [not to be confused with the similarly titled in-house magazine that Gilsoft were planning to release about their own text adventure systems]. Apparently Mark & Shaun only produced a few issues.
Mark Healy went on to great things, of course, with companies such as Bullfrog; eventually co-founding Media Molecule.