The Gerbil Riot of '67

Owing more than a little to Robert Arnstein's TRS-80 escape-from-the-asylum text adventure classic Bedlam, this whimsical romp casts the player as an inmate with second ideas about remaining inside the institution walls. It's not such a strange place, halls and stairways, but to make up for it the nuthouse is packed with a host of peculiar one-personality-trait characters (some of them the staff!), each of whom neatly play one-off roles in simple, if occasionally arbitrary puzzles.

While there are no gerbils to be found on the grounds (their riot is firmly in the background; your part in it is why you were incarcerated), you will conduct a meaningful exchange with a squirrel demanding an object-combination puzzle the likes of which wouldn't become standard until the days of the graphical adventure game.