Devil Island

Devil's Island is a text adventure game published by Gilsoft International as part of their Gold Collection. You are a prisoner on the infamous French penal colony of Devil's Island, a tropical prison surrounded by dense jungle, unfriendly natives, and heavily armed guards. Your goal is to escape from your cell, evade the prison guards, survive the lethal jungle, and reach the mainland to gain your freedom. The game uses a text parser where you type commands to interact with your surroundings. The opening location is a grim prison cell with a barred window to the north and a rusting cell door to the east. The game was written using The Quill Adventure Writing System .

ZX Spectrum

Released in 1983 by Gilsoft International for the 48K Spectrum, written by Colin Smith . Crash magazine reviewed the game in issue #5, offering three tester perspectives. One described it as "exceedingly well-plotted, with well-planted red herrings to keep you running around in circles," praising the smooth "Mission Impossible" escape sequence . Another noted the game "proves you don't need pictures to liven up adventures—the text is alive enough to flash up pictures in your mind's eye anyway," calling it a "classic escape game" that remains engrossing despite lacking wandering characters or artificial intelligence . A third tester highlighted Colin Smith's "nasty sense of humour," citing that eating a tasty pie makes you too fat to squeeze through a vital gap . Critics noted the cassette inlay lacked instructions, leaving players to deduce the plot from the intro screen alone. The game is suitable even for beginners, though hurdles include waste chutes, iron bars, and searchlights .