#007: Letter: A Letter Guessing Game

Release Date: October 1972

Platform: Mainframe

Genre: Puzzle

Developer(s): Bob Albrecht

Publisher(s): People's Computer Company

Before I start this article, I would like to provide an update on the state of the blog going forward. For now, I'll be aiming to release a new article every Wednesday and Saturday (Australian Eastern Time.) I want to make sure that there's a consistent feed of content, while also making sure that I have time to prepare a backlog of content for times when I'm unable to work on the blog. On to the game!

I said we had a letter guessing game coming up next. Well, here it is, creatively called Letter: A Letter Guessing Game. It is the complimentary game to the equally-creatively-called Number: A Number Guessing Game, which sadly appears missing, as the Number game in 101 BASIC Computer Games is a different game.

Letter was programmed by Bob Albrecht, who also did Trap. I already went into detail on who Bob Albrecht is in the Trap article, so I won't go over it again. He featured Letter in the first People's Computer Company newsletter, launched in October 1972. Albrecht also provided the game's code, which consists of about 20 lines - half of which are actually dedicated to game code, the rest is text. That should be an indicator of how banally simple Letter is. On the flipside, I could see it being meant to introduce people to BASIC programming.

Letter is at the bottom of this page from the PCC newsletter.

This game is another that's extremely simple, so I won't spend much time of it. All you do is guess the letter the computer randomly selects. For each incorrect guess, the computer will tell you if your guess was too low or high in the alphabet. That's it. I'm serious, that's it.

This is the entire game.

My playthrough of Letter last exactly for 52 seconds. Five guesses. I think that's the least amount of time I've spent on a game to date. This fact succinctly sums up Letter as a game - there's almost no game to speak of. It would be decent for very young children in teaching them the alphabet, but that's it.

I won't waste anymore time with this game, let's do the scores.

Time Played: Exactly 52 seconds.

Difficulty: 0/10 (Very Easy)

Gameplay: 1/20

I so wanted to give this a zero, but it ever, ever so slightly resembles a game, so I have to give it one point.

Controls: 5/10

Type a single letter in, how much easier and plainer do you want it?

Visual: 4/10

Letter just looks... bad. It's hard to explain. There's no creativity in the formatting, and it spams exclamation marks when you win. There's also a typo - when the game says "LET'S PLAN AGAIN," it's meant to say "PLAY," not "PLAN."

Functionality: 5/5

Nothing to see here.

Accessibility: 4/5

I guess it's designed for kids, so understanding and playing Letter is not very problematic.

Fun Factor: 0/20

I can give a zero here! I'm struggling to understand why this exists as a game. Why make it, and who is it for? Not me, obviously, because I find it infantile and pointless.

There's not much to say for Letter. It's barely a game. Its overall score reflects this, earning a 19 (27.14%), putting it on par with Digits at the bottom of the E-tier. Letter goes under Digits on the Fun Factor tiebreaker.

I've had enough of this number-letter-guessing nonsense. Time for a real game.