A Space Cadet, Killer Armchairs, and a Smug Creature
Imagine crash-landing on a strange world after your cargo ship is attacked by “a crack squad of homicidal beechwood armchairs.” That is how Jacaranda Jim begins.
Written while Graham Cluley was studying computing at Guildford College of Technology, the game plunges players into the bizarre planet Ibberspleen IV. You control space cadet Jacaranda Jim, rescued from the wreckage by a mysteriously smug creature named Alan the Gribbley, and must somehow make your way back to Earth armed only with your wits and a keyboard.
Born from a Lecturer, Renamed for a Student
In its earliest form, the game revolved around a different character: Derek the Troll, a lampoon of one of Cluley’s lecturers. When another lecturer questioned the wisdom of mocking a colleague, Cluley reworked his creation. Derek became Alan the Gribbley, based instead on a fellow student described as “a failed accountant with vaguely homicidal tendencies.”
The game itself “took about 6 months to write”, finishing in April 1988. Written in Pascal, it was later ported to the PC with help from fellow student Alex Bull.
Sleepless Nights and Shareware Success
Jacaranda Jim didn’t just amuse its creator. Reviewer Sue Medley in the magazine Zero praised that it “is well worth trying and will certainly give you some sleepless nights before you solve it!”
Independently distributed as shareware, the game rewarded paying players with tips and maps, mailed out by Cluley himself. Today, long after its commercial life, Jacaranda Jim lives on in the public domain, freely available for download or in-browser play.
A strange, text-only adventure about killer armchairs became a minor classic—proof that imagination, more than graphics, can lodge a story in players’ minds.