Foreign PC gaming




Polishedit

During the 1980s, the cheap and talented workforce of the Polish People's Republic began producing video games with Warsaw company Karen, founded by enterprising emigrant Lucjan Wencel, developing many hits that were released in the United States. The 1991 strategy game "Solidarność" by Przemysław Rokita, where players led a trade union to political victory, was the symbolic beginning of a new trend where interactive works applied video game conventions to local Polish culture and history, and through a distorting mirror portrayed the Eastern Bloc, local villages, and the mentality of citizens. Developers in this age struggled with minimal profits, working after hours, harsh working conditions, older computers, and an ignorance of foreign languages and sentiments. The country saw its own text based games – e.g. Mózgprocesor (1989), arcade games – e.g. Robbo (1989), football manager – Polish League (1995), Doom-clone – Cytadela (1995), and The Settlers-clone – Polanie (1995), however the adventure game genre was the "most significant species in the 90s", a genre which was finally cracked with Tajemnica Statuetki.

Tajemnica Statuetki was the first commercially released Polish adventure game, one of the first Polish and Polish-language video games ever, and Chmielarz's first game that he had developed from start to finish – the first officially sold program that he wrote. It is sometimes erroneously considered the first Polish computer game, a distinction held by Witold Podgórski's 1961 mainframe game Marienbad, inspired by a Chinese puzzle called "Nim", and released on the Odra 1003. (Meanwhile, Polygamia writes that 1986's text-based Puszka Pandory is the first game written by a Pole, sold in Poland, and reviewed in Polish press). Despite this, Onet wrote in 2013 about a common misconception that the game marks the point where the history of digital entertainment in Poland begins.

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