Today I received The Ghosts of Blackwood Manor for the C64, a text adventure from the author of two other games in my collection: Hibernated 1: This Place is Death and The Curse of Rabenstein, Stefan Vogt. (Actually it’s 2.5 games, since Hibernated 1 also includes an add-on named Eight Feet Under.) I’ve played those two games with much pleasure and I’m looking forward to playing TGoBM.

Ghosts was a reward from the Fusion Retro Books Kickstarter campaign from over a year ago. The game is published in association with Psytronik Software. It comes in the same sized box as Lykia from the same publisher and is slightly bigger than the box of Unhallowed from Bitmap Soft. I would say that the quality of the box is much better than that game and also slightly better than the boxes of the original Hibernated 1 and Rabenstein from PolyPlay. It’s on par with the excellent box of Heroes & Cowards from ProtoVision.

Where it falls flat though, is the overal packaging. While the box looks excellent it only contains the disk for the game in a decorated sleeve. There’s no manual and no extra goodies like the above mentioned games all do have. It’s understandable given the modest price of the game, but it is a bit of a letdown. And since it’s only the disk, there’s absolutely no reason for a box. I would have rather had that it came in a flat case like Evil Dungeon.