Ludography
Player reviews
100% positive1 review
Runs on
Windows
Price
US$2.98

Where to get it

Pimania cover

1982 · Automata UK · Adventure

Pimania

In what is possibly the most baffling text adventure ever devised, navigate a surreal landscape with the aid of the Pi-Man in an attempt to discover the (real world) location of a golden sundial. Originally published in 1982.

Released
1982
Platforms
BBC Microcomputer SystemDragon 32/64Sinclair ZX81WindowsZX Spectrum
Genres
Adventure
Developers
Automata UK
Publishers
—
Modes
Single-player
Perspective
Side viewText
Themes
Fantasy
Country
United Kingdom
Languages
English

About

Pimania is a text-and-graphics adventure game written by Mel Croucher and released by Automata UK in 1982 for the BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum, Dragon 32, and ZX81. It was the first real-life video game treasure hunt to be released. It was inspired by the 1979 Kit Williams book Masquerade. Automata gave a prize of a golden sundial worth £6,000 (equivalent to £21,400 in 2025) for the first person to solve the various cryptic clues to its location that were hidden within Pimania.

Players say

Media

Pimania screenshot 1

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The player negotiates a surreal landscape with the aid of the mysterious Pi-Man, Automata's mascot. The B-side of the game cassette features a bizarre Pimania song played on a VL-Tone and vocals. The Pi-Man also starred in his own long-running, surreal, comic-strip, soap opera in the company's adverts on the back page of Popular Computing Weekly magazine and appeared in several subsequent games by the company of different types, such as Piromania and Piballed.

The sundial was eventually won in 1985 by Sue Cooper and Lizi Newman, who correctly worked out that it could only be found on 22 July (because π is sometimes rounded to 22/7) at the Litlington White Horse on Hindover Hill near Litlington, East Sussex.

Legacy

The BASIC source code listing of the game is available online.

In 2010 Feeding Tube Records, a small label in the United States, released "Pimania: The Music of Mel Croucher & Automata U.K., Ltd.", a deluxe vinyl LP album of the musical B-Sides to the Pimania games, as well as tracks from other Automata releases. The album came with extensive liner notes by Croucher and Caroline Bren, as well as a large poster featuring selections from the original Automata print campaigns and was issued in a one time edition of 500 copies.

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
BBC Microcomputer System1 October 1982Europe
Dragon 32/641 October 1982Europe
ZX Spectrum1 October 1982Europe
Sinclair ZX811 October 1982Europe
Windows28 June 2022Worldwide

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Collections1 collection

Platform libraries

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.