Download The Pawn - DOS game

A text adventure with just enough graphics to remind you what year it is, The Pawn (1986, DOS) wraps you in a fantasy world where the puzzles are clever and the parser occasionally judges you. Its humor is dry, its writing sharp, and its scenarios delightfully odd, ranging from political satire to classic quest tropes turned inside out. You’ll wander through absurd lands, meet characters who seem vaguely annoyed to be in the game, and wrestle with riddles that make you question your vocabulary. Despite its age, it’s still a masterclass in interactive storytelling—proof that imagination often beats pixels.

The Pawn abandonware downloads

Download The Pawn

Walkthrough

DOS Games made for DOS require an emulator to run on Windows. Use DOSBox or a frontend like D-Fend Reloaded and read this guide to play DOS games on your Windows PC.

The Pawn review

CVG Magazine (1986): "If The Pawn is to be the first of a series, and the series is produced with no alterations to text or parser for the more popular micros, then it will not be long before the standard of software demanded by adventure players will rocket. No longer will it be viable to knock out a quick cheap-and-nasty on The Quill. People will be more willing to pay about £20 for something to which they will thrill rather than waste a fiver on a sparse screen offering little for the imagination to bite on. The Pawn is so good that to compare it in the same category as many of the adventures currently on the market is to do it a gross injustice. Good luck to Magnetic Scrolls and Rainbird in their bid to raise standards. They deserve it."

Retro gamer collector's corner:

The package included: a novella "A tale of Kerovnia" by G. Sinclair (including a map), The Pawn poster, various manuals: a guide, gameplay, bug sheet.

Search on eBay

More information on The Pawn

Status: abandonware
Abandonware DOS views: 12291

Awards won by The Pawn:

1986 - Adventure Game of the Year, Golden Joystick Awards.
1986 - Game of the year, Mobygames Game of the Year (Commodore 64).

Related sites

Comments

YOU 05/07/2016 06:30
It seems like an Android port of DOSBox would meet your request. A quick search just turned up quite a few folk who have written their own ports of DOSBox for Android. It looks like DOSBox Turbo is one of the more popular ones, but I've never actually used any of them.
ME 24/06/2015 00:00
Why is there no android interpreter for these games? Legal issues? Lack of interest? Have a lot of these games and played them on the PC, but you can't carry a desktop PC around like a tablet!

Write a comment
Have you ever played The Pawn? Did you like it? Did you hate it? Write something about it: share your experience, give us hints on how to properly run this game or simply say how much you loved it.

The Pawn