Play SwordQuest - Waterworld Online

Game Overview

SwordQuest: WaterWorld is the third in Atari’s weirdly ambitious contest-turned-game series, and it plays just as mysteriously as the others. You wander through rooms grabbing random objects—keys, chalices, whatever—and occasionally get thrown into these little action sequences where you dodge obstacles or fight enemies. If you manage to collect the right combo of items, the game flashes cryptic numbers at you, like "8-4."

Here’s the twist: those numbers correspond to pages and panels in the included comic book. You’d flip to page 8, scan panel 4 for a hidden word, and if you pieced them all together, you could mail your findings to Atari for a shot at their grand prize (which, spoiler, nobody ever actually won). It’s equal parts adventure game and scavenger hunt, with a side of ’80s corporate gimmickry. The action bits are clunky, but there’s something oddly compelling about decoding the whole thing.