The Pawn - Header

Trapped - Destiny of Good...or Evil?

Set in the mythical world of Kerovnia, this amusing and complex tale is subtle enough to appeal to the beginner and hardened adventurer alike. A revolutionary text-handling system allows input of complicated sentences and complete interaction with characters (including some very intelligent animals!).

The Pawn represents all its characters and objects as if they existed in a real world, storing complex information about their attributes and properties linked to their particular position or context in the game.

Your objectives are manyfold: The simpliest is to escape from Kerovnia, but you will find others as you wander about the land and communicate with the characters you meet.

The Pawn combines a rich text adventure, with stunning colour graphics, and a language parser that will set the standards for years to come.

The Pawn is now officially available again in the 2017 Remastered edition from Strand Games.

Game facts
Released:
1985
Distributor:
Rainbird (Europe) / Firebird (US)
Story:
Rob Steggles
Graphics:
Geoff Quilley
Programming:
Ken Gordon, Hugh Steers, Anita Sinclair
Goodies:
A tale of Kerovnia: Georgina Sinclair
Platforms:
Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Amstrad PCW, Apple2, Archimedes, Atari ST, Atari XL/XE, Commodore 128/ 64, IBM PC, Macintosh, Sinclair QL, Spectrum 128K, Spectrum +3
Game box contents:
Novella "A tale Kerovnia" by G. Sinclair, The Pawn Guide, The Pawn Gameplay, Poster, Addendum, Bug sheet, Disk
Game boxes:
Two different Rainbird/Firebird packages of identical size ( 15.2 cm x 21.4 cm - 6" x 8.5" )
Known game versions
1.0
Sinclair QL
2.0
Atari ST
2.1
Atari ST
2.2
Amiga
2.3
Amstrad CPC, Amstrad PCW, Apple 2, Archimedes, Atari XL, C64, Macintosh, IBM PC, Spectrum 128k
2.4
Spectrum +3
Game box contents

Atari ST

Macintosh

Spectrum 128k

Amstrad CPC

Archimedes

Apple 2

Atari XL

Amiga

Amiga

Amstrad PCW

IBM PC

C64

Spectrum +3
Trivia
  • The Pawn was voted "Best Adventure Game" in the 1986 Golden Joystick Award
  • After you got rid of the wristband you can go to the room south of the Small Cave. There you'll get a listing from programmers. With "debug the listing" you become immortal.
  • You can also use the blue key to free the princess...
  • Anita Sinclair used Kronos as her MUD alias.
  • The first Magnetic Scrolls release ever was QL-Pawn for the Sinclair QL released in 1985.
  • There exist two different versions of "A Tale of Kerovnia". The second version states "Version II" on the cover page, however it has only minor differences to the original version. Mostly these are spelling corrections, some extended hints and an additional Rainbird logo on the first page. The page wrapping is slightly different.
Downloads - Walkthroughs, Solutions, and more...

Official Magnetic Scrolls Solution Book (original scans donated by John P. King, PDF by Christian Kruse)

Solution

Walkthrough

Map

Unprotect PC version

Password list

Ami Cheat's Page Solve

A Tale of Kerovnia - plain text

Alternative map (unknown author)

The original music score of The Pawn in DeliTracker custom format. To play use e.g. Deliplayer or UADE

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