In this game you hunt the wumpus monster. The wumpus lives in a cave with interconnected rooms. Your goal is to shoot the wumpus before it eats you or you meet with some other untimely demise.
Besides the wumpus, there are pits, super bats and other wumpus hunters in the cave. You lose if you walk into a pit, get shot by another hunter or simply grow too old to play (this happens if you don't move for a while). If you enter a room with bats, they pick you up and carry you to some other part of the cave. They could, of course, drop you into a room with pits or the wumpus.
Normally, the wumpus is asleep. It wakes up whenever an arrow is fired any place in the cave or if someone walks into its room. Once it is awake, it will either move to a new room or stay where it is. If you wind up in the same room with the wumpus, you become dinner.
To move, simply click on the picture of the room into which you want to move.
To kill the wumpus you must shoot it with an arrow. You start with five magic arrows. A magic arrow can go around corners and travel from room to room, up to a maximum of five rooms. If the wumpus or another hunter is in any of the rooms on the arrow's path, they will be hit. To shoot an arrow you enter a list of room numbers, separated by spaces, in the text entry area. These rooms must be connected by tunnels. For example, if you are in room 5 which has tunnels to 3, 7 and 8, and room 7 had tunnels to 11, 13 and 15, then you could shoot an arrow from your room into room 7 and continue on into room 13. To do this you would type 7 13 and then click on Shoot an arrow. If you attempt to shoot an arrow into a room which is not connected to the room the arrow is in, it will bounce off the wall and continue on its way randomly. It could bounce back and hit you!
You can also shoot the other hunters, and they can shoot you. When a player gets shot, his/her remaining arrows are dropped in the cave where you can pick them up.
As you walk about the cave you will get various clues. If you are adjacent to a room with bats you will get the clue "I hear bats". If there is a pit in one of the next rooms you will "feel a draft". Other players can be detected by the light from their lantern. You get these hints when the object is one room away. On the other hand, the wumpus is quite malodorous; you can smell him from two rooms away!
There are several versions of the Wumpus program which are appropriate for different types of Web viewers/clients. The original version has graphics and expects your viewer to support fill-in forms. It is best if you are using NCSA Mosaic for X-Windows or Netscape on a high speed network connection. If you are using a PC or Mac or have a slow connection other versions may be better suited to your situation. More details can be found on the Games page. Regardless of which version you use, you will be hunting the same wumpus in the same caves as the rest of the players.
Have Fun!
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