Infernal Runner
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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The player's character is locked in an infernal house full of deadly traps. He must escape by collecting all the keys and by opening all the chests that are spread throughout the rooms. He must also find food in order to survive. The game features non-linear gameplay (you can go back and forth in the house while you explore it) along with very visual depictions of the many different ways the player can die.

Infernal Runner was a survival horror computer game similar to Lode Runner published by Loriciel in 1985. The game was originally created for the Commodore 64 and later adapted to the Amstrad CPC. It was one of the first works of game designer Eric Chahi.

Style

The game itself is a jump and run game where the player finds himself trapped in a house with lethal traps and various other menaces, and he must escape alive by collecting all keys and opening all trunks, all while avoiding starvation by collecting food. It is unknown what the actual story is.

The game had a surprisingly dark tone for its time, reached by the variety of traps (spikes, monsters, laser beams, fire, electricity, landmines), which all induced extremely detailed and violent death-animations when encountered. The game featured elaborate animations, meticulous detail (especially on the gore, such as the character twitching and wrangling when being impaled on spikes) and a haunting minor-key soundtrack with eerie sound-effects embedded into it. (The game itself had no sound, just music.) The Amstrad version's music was more playful than brooding.

Lode Runner Online: Mad Monks' Revenge, as a later released fellow port of Lode Runner, borrowed many features from the game, such as items and hazards.

Credits

The C64 version is credited to Yves Korta and Michel Koell. The Amstrad version was created by Eric Chahi with music written by Michel Winogradof.

Trivia
The C64 version's music was eventually ripped into Sex Games, a cartoony porn game
