Cult Video Game Essentials: Granny’s Garden
Granny’s Garden is an educational adventure game for the BBC Micro in 1983. It served as a first introduction to computers for many schoolchildren in the United Kingdom during the 1980s and 1990s.
According to the 4Mation webpage about the original version, it was the reason many teachers decided that computers had a real place in education. The software is still available today in its original and updated formats.
Created by Mike Matson for 4Mation, the game takes place in the Kingdom of the Mountains. The aim is to find the six missing children of the King and Queen (Esther, Tom, Clare, Anna, Jessica, and Daniel), while avoiding the evil witch, by way of a few logic puzzles (and some that are less logical). The game was loved by many of the children who played it, as evidenced by the nostalgic comments on YouTube clips of the game!
The game was ported to other systems including the Commodore Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum. Later versions with updated graphics and sound were produced for 16- and 32-bit platforms such as Microsoft Windows, Linux via Wine andMac OS. There is now a port with the original graphics for Windows and also for iPhones and iPads