This is the first time I used a pen & paper to map a game, and, for whatever reason, elementary-school me made as nice a version as I could.
(Disclaimer: maybe it was fifth grade.)
The game is Castle Adventure by Kevin Bales, a classic adventure game of the DOS Freeware era. There's barely any story-- you are trapped in a castle, you collect treasures, and you find your way out. The graphics consist entirely of glorious ASCII characters.
It's an exploration game. I played it a lot, got killed a lot, and eventually figured out how to win.
It was one of the included games on my family's first computer, an Epson PC that we got in 1986 or '87.
A few years later, in middle school, I was surprised to see that the game was included on the machines in our computer lab. This guide got passed around, and still somehow came back to me intact.
(posted Apr 23, 2025)