Serra Pelada
Jo ao Dente-de-Ouro (“John Goldtooth”) was a miner in Serra Pelada (“Naked
mountain range”), a Brazilian region that had a gold rush from 1980 until
1991. He chanced upon an enormous 154 pounds gold nugget that received the
nickname “Foreign Debt” by the rejoicing locals. Four days after that
discovery, Joao and the gold mysteriously disappeared while the festivities
took place.
Serra Pelada is a text adventure from Brazil. The second adventure from
Renato Degiovani, it was developed with the same set of tools used to create
Amazonia. It also shares the first game’s limited parser (it recognizes
pronouns, but can’t chain commands), but this time the accentuation of
Portuguese words is optional. The player has 8 days to find the gold nugget
(in-game time passes faster than in reality). Once the correct equipment is
acquired, gold can be mined and sold, and the money received can be used to
buy some necessary objects and bribe other characters. As a navigation aid, a
segmented map of the place can be displayed with the MAPA command. The main
danger comes in the form of common thieves and the hazardous dilapidated
topography of the region (the prospecting was performed in open air, there
wasn’t any mines).
Serra Pelada