Below The Root (video Game) - History

History

The game was based on a series of books by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. Explaining how the game came about, she wrote:

"Like so many of my books, the trilogy's deepest root goes back to my early childhood when I played a game that involved crossing a grove of oak trees by climbing from tree to tree, because something incredibly dangerous lived "below the root." Years later when I was writing The Changeling I recalled the game, and in the course of embellishing it for that story, became intrigued with the idea of returning to the world of Green-sky for a longer stay. The return trip took three years and produced three more books. Initially published in 1978, 1979, and 1980, the trilogy was later reincarnated as a computer game (published by Spinnaker Software of Cambridge, MA).

The computer game transpired when I was contacted by a young computer programmer named Dale Disharoon. After Dale introduced me to the world of computer games, I wrote and charted, Dale programmed, and a young artist named Bill Groetzinger made marvelous graphics for a game that takes off from where the third book of the trilogy ends."

The original world of Green-sky first appeared in Snyder's novel The Changeling, where it was a fantasy world conceived by two schoolgirls. As such, it featured princes and princesses, wicked queens and familiar fairytale situations. However, many of the details appeared in the later novels. Green-sky as the girls imagined it is a low-gravity planet whose residents live in "softly rocking" houses built in the branches of enormous trees and "glide like blowing leaves" between the branches; "nothing was ever killed under the green sky" and the people live on a wide variety of fruits and nuts; they have brightly colored monkeys and songbirds for pets. Their skin is pale green, and their hair is darker green, often blossoming naturally into flowers. Below the ground live creatures of unspeakable evil, which must not be allowed to penetrate into the upper world.