Flagship Titles
Four titles that defined the Magnetic Scrolls canon — editorial deep-dives into The Pawn, The Guild of Thieves, Corruption, and Wonderland.
The Pawn (1985)
The Pawn was Magnetic Scrolls' first title and its most consequential act — the game that announced to the British market that interactive fiction could be produced to a standard competitive with the best of American software. When the game appeared in 1985, the British text adventure scene was dominated by competent but unspectacular work. The Pawn was something else entirely.
The parser accepted multi-clause natural-language input — "PUT THE SWORD IN THE SCABBARD AND THEN GO NORTH" — with a reliability and breadth of vocabulary not previously seen in British software. Rob Steggles's writing was genuinely witty: the land of Kerovnia had a dry irony that made reading the game's prose a pleasure in its own right, not merely a functional necessity for puzzle-solving.
But it was Geoff Quilley's illustrations that left the deepest impression. His oil-painted style, rendered in full colour on screen, looked unlike anything a computer game had previously produced. Each image functioned as a chapter heading — a visual correlate to the prose that gave the game a book-like texture. Critics struggled to overstate their enthusiasm; the game sold exceptionally well across multiple platforms.
The Pawn established the Rainbird relationship, validated the studio's commercial model, and set a standard that every subsequent Magnetic Scrolls title had to meet. It remains an essential piece of British interactive fiction history.
See also: Catalogue entry · Period reviews · Rob Steggles · Geoff Quilley
The Guild of Thieves (1987)
If The Pawn introduced the world to Magnetic Scrolls, The Guild of Thieves convinced it. Generally regarded as the studio's critical peak, the game asked players to steal every valuable object in a medieval English village as part of the Guild's initiation ritual. The premise was elegant; the execution immaculate.
Tim Findley's design had a consistency that distinguished it from almost everything else in the genre: every object in the game world had its place, every puzzle its solution, and the solutions cohered. Nothing was arbitrary. The player moved through a world that felt genuinely designed as a system — one in which lateral thinking was rewarded precisely because the rules were clear.
Geoff Quilley's illustrations for the game represent the high-water mark of his work for Magnetic Scrolls — richer, more varied, and more confident than those for The Pawn. The village settings allowed him to combine landscapes, interiors, and character studies in a way that showcased the full range of his abilities.
The critical response was unanimous. Zzap!64 awarded a Gold Medal; Your Sinclair called it the finest text adventure available. The Guild of Thieves was the game that cemented Magnetic Scrolls' reputation — and it was the game Ken Gordon chose first when Strand Games began producing modern remasters. Available on iOS and Android from Strand Games.
See also: Catalogue entry · Period reviews · Tim Findley · Longplay video
Corruption (1988)
The most tonally adventurous of the Magnetic Scrolls catalogue and, for many, its most impressive achievement. Corruption abandoned the fantasy and comedy of earlier games to engage with the contemporary London financial world — insider trading, corporate fraud, and moral compromise in the City during the late 1980s. It was a remarkable choice for an adventure game.
The player's character is implicated in a financial crime they may or may not have committed. As they investigate, the circle of betrayal widens; colleagues, employers, and friends all carry secrets. The puzzle structure was replaced by something more like a thriller: information gathered, loyalties tested, a ticking clock. The moral ambiguity was never resolved cheaply.
Rob Steggles and Michael Bywater's writing captured the world of the City with sharp precision — the jargon, the social codes, the casual amorality of the environment. Terry Humphries's illustrations matched: angular, cool, the palette of the Docklands development rather than the warm tones of Quilley's rural England.
Corruption demonstrated that interactive fiction could engage with the same subject matter as literary fiction and contemporary drama. It remains one of the most underappreciated games of the 1980s — a title ahead of its time.
See also: Catalogue entry · Michael Bywater
Wonderland (1990)
Magnetic Scrolls' farewell and its most technically spectacular work. An adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Wonderland was the vehicle in which the Magnetic Windows technology reached its full potential: multiple simultaneous scrollable windows for text, illustrations, status information, and character panels, with animation and music running alongside the parser. No British text adventure had ever looked like it.
The choice of Carroll was apt — a story about the dissolution of logical rules and their replacement by dreamlike, internally consistent alternatives sat naturally alongside the most sophisticated parser engine in British software. Georgina Sinclair's adaptation was faithful to the source while finding room for the kind of puzzle ingenuity that Magnetic Scrolls had made their signature.
Ghislaine Selby's illustrations departed from the naturalism of her predecessors. Where Quilley painted warm, believable worlds and Humphries rendered a recognisable contemporary England, Selby embraced the surreal — compositions that could accommodate the strangeness of Wonderland and the demands of the multi-window interface. Each image filled its panel with a controlled excess of detail appropriate to Carroll's world.
Published by Virgin Games (the Rainbird imprint had been discontinued), Wonderland appeared in 1990 to critical enthusiasm — and then the studio was acquired, restructured, and wound down. It was the last Magnetic Scrolls game. As a final statement it was extraordinary.
See also: Catalogue entry · Georgina Sinclair · Longplay video
Kim Justice documentary covering the full Magnetic Scrolls catalogue, including extended discussion of Wonderland and the Magnetic Windows technology.