The Chzo Mythos GNU/Linux Binaries

What is the Chzo Mythos?

Although he is probably more well known for his satirically negative game review series Zero Punctuation, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw has had another identity for the past few decades; that of a talented freeware game creator and designer. His works include the amateurish yet still enjoyable Arthur Yahtzee Trilogy, his first publicly released games from which his nickname is based. He would then go on to envision the Rob Blanc Trilogy, the wickedly funny game series which first made his name a household one, well, that is if you were a part of the amateur adventure scene at least. His next project, The Trials of Odysseus Kent, took a step into the lurid which would eventually lead to his most celebrated works and the subject of this website: The Chzo Mythos.

Originally styled after horror slasher films, the games later took on the character of an H.P Lovecraft novel. The first and most celebrated game of the series, 5 Days a Stranger, depicted the events that would later become known as the "Defoe Manor Incident", as seen through the eyes of the eccentric cat burger known only as Trilby. From this modest beginning the series spans hundreds of years and entangles many different characters, from ancient Celtic druids, to freed African slaves, to land use authority investigators, and even starship counsellors. Each game in the series has its own unique setting, and each game offers a different view to of the universe and plot of the games. It is important for them to be played in order for the plot to make any sense however.

What does this have to do with GNU/Linux?

Although all four games, five if you include Trilby: The Art of Theft which serves merely as additional back-story for the Trilby character in the form of a stealth platformer, could be run native on GNU/Linux using the sadly closed source AGS Linux Interpreter, this was often a pain to set up and caused these great gaming gems to be inaccessible to the common user. I myself took up the role of packaging native GNU/Linux binaries of each of the games which were easy to use and enjoyable for anybody on any distribution. After the AGS source code was released I also updated the builds to use a more modern engine built from the AGS GitHub, something which fixed several bugs and improved the user experience even more. Keep in mind these are the Special Editions, so they will include extra features not included in the original freeware releases. It should also be noted that, in the run up to 6 Days, Yahztee also wrote three text adventure games that detail some of the mythos' back-story, entitled Countdown; these were written in the old Z-code language created by Infocom and should be able to run using a GNU/Linux interpreter.

Unfortunately some of his older titles, which are my own personal favourites, are not applicable to be packaged, since the AGS interpreter can not run Rob Blanc or Odysseus Kent since they were constructed with an older DOS-oriented version of Adventure Game Studio. However, I have now also packaged up binaries for both Adventures in A Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment and the 1213 series. Arthur Yahtzee was built using Visual Basic 3 and can be ran through WINE, provided that Vbrun300.dll is placed in "~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system/" for runtime. I also know Rob Blanc and Odysseus Kent run great through Dosbox, making playing those comparatively easy on all modern systems. His Age of Evil total conversion for Duke Nukem 3D meanwhile should run either through Dosbox or most source ports.

Also recommended is the epic horror trilogy by Frictional Games available as The Penumbra Collection.

What exactly are all the games?

5 Days A Stranger

A cat burglar breaks into a supposedly deserted country mansion, only to find himself imprisoned along with four strangers by a mysterious force. A nice nasty horror game with some murders and gore.

7 Days A Skeptic

The sequel to 5 Days A Stranger. Four hundred years into the future, the scoutship Mephistopheles and its crew of six discovers something it should have left alone.

Trilby

Trilby's Notes

Master thief turned paranormal investigator Trilby follows the trail of John DeFoe's soul idol to a small hotel in Wales, where he discovers the dark history of the cursed wood.

6 Days A Sacrifice

Council inspector Theodore Dacabe is sent to investigate the headquarters of a fad religion and finds himself embroiled in the machinations of destiny.

Trilby: The Art of Theft

The eccentric British cat burglar Trilby is at large in an American city, robbing the rich to give to himself, but will his arrogance cause him to bite off more than he can chew?

Download Trilby art as SVG, Welder art as SVG.

You can find more information about these and other great games here:
http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/games.htm

Download

Package Build 3:

Download: Click Here!
Released: January 19, 2015.
Tested On: Arch i386.

Package Build 2:

Download: Click Here!
Released: August 26, 2010.
Tested On: Fedora 13.

Package Build 1:

Download: Click Here!
Released: August 15, 2010.
Tested On: Fedora 12-13, Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit, Arch x86_64, openSUSE 11.2-11.3.

Credits and Thanks

Hamish Paul Wilson for creating the binaries.
Ben Croshaw for making the games.
Mark Lovegrove for making the music for the games.
Chris Jones for creating and releasing AGS.
Maxim Bardin for helping publicize my work.
Malcolm Wilson for creating/converting the website images.
Graham Lawrence Wilson for creating the website.
Shawn Walker for the original AGS Linux Runtime.
Tom Vandepoele for continuing his legacy.
Bernhard Rosenkraenzer for the current Linux work.
Alexander van Kaam for openSUSE information.
Ryan C. Gordon and icculus.org for hosting.
And of course everyone else who has given me feedback or is simply just playing the games.

External links:

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Website last updated 3/06/2024

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
This excludes the plot descriptions, sketches and screenshots which contain work owned by Ben Croshaw.