Cutthroats — everyone on this island wants the same wreck Runs here
1984 · Infocom · System 6 · Mini vMac (Mac Plus) · 512×342 black and white
Guide updated September 2026
You are a diver on Hardscrabble Island, it is late, and a shipmate you have not seen for years knocks on your door with a book of shipwrecks and a proposition. From there it is a matter of equipment, money, tides and the fact that at least one person in the room intends to leave with everything.
Cutthroats gives you a real schedule to keep — a boat to hire, a dive to make at a particular time — and characters whose loyalty is a live question. It is one of Infocom's most underrated games and one of its hardest to finish cleanly.
Boots straight into the game, in your room on Hardscrabble Island. Time and money both matter from the first move.
Controls
| Type + Return | Everything. This is a parser game. |
| ASK <person> ABOUT <thing> | Your partners will lie to you |
| LOOK / INVENTORY | Describe the room; list what you carry |
| SAVE / RESTORE | Save inside the emulated Mac. Often. |
Activision owns Infocom's catalogue and still exists. Cutthroats has not been sold since Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces went out of print in the late 1990s and is part of no current product.
Archives
- Internet Archive — the Macintosh floppy this copy was made from.
How it works & what to expect
| Machine | Macintosh Plus, 512×342, black and white |
|---|---|
| System | The floppy's own — this disk carries the System it shipped with |
| Emulator | Mini vMac, compiled to WebAssembly |
| Release | 23 |
| Saves | SAVE writes inside the emulated Mac, in your browser |
The book of shipwrecks is not on the disk. Cutthroats shipped with "A History of the Hardscrabble Island Wrecks" and a tide table, and the game refers you to both for information it does not print on screen — depths, dates, what is supposed to be aboard.
It is playable without them but genuinely harder, more so than for most Infocom feelies. Scans are easy to find and worth having open.
Why it is remembered
The clock is a schedule, not a countdown. Things happen at particular times — the boat leaves, the tide turns, someone comes looking for you — and the game is about being in the right place rather than about hurrying.
Your partners are not your friends. Betrayal is built into the plot and which form it takes depends on how you have played. Very little in 1984 modelled characters with their own agendas this directly.
Two wrecks, two games. Which wreck you end up diving changes a substantial part of the middle, so a second playthrough is genuinely different rather than faster.
Getting started
Read everything in your room first, then go and find out what the others want. The opening is the only quiet part of the game.
Money is finite and the equipment is not optional. Work out what the dive needs before you start buying.
Keep several saves and note the in-game time on each. Missing a scheduled event is the usual failure, and it is much easier to step back to the right hour than to replay from the start.
Questions people ask
Is the shipwreck book included?
No. "A History of the Hardscrabble Island Wrecks" and the tide table were printed inserts, and the game refers to them for information not shown on screen.
Can I finish it without them?
Yes, but it is harder than for most Infocom games. Scans circulate and are worth having to hand.
Is there a time limit?
There is a schedule rather than a countdown. Events happen at set times and you need to be there.
Will my partners betray me?
Yes, in one form or another. Handling it is the game.
Can I save?
Yes. Type SAVE. Saves live inside the emulated Macintosh in your browser.
Who wrote it?
Michael Berlyn, who also wrote Infidel and Suspended.
Put Cutthroats on your own site
Free, no permission needed and no account. Paste this where you want the machine to appear; it brings its own emulator and asks nothing of your page.
<iframe src="https://macemu.com/embed/cutthroats/"
width="512" height="342"
style="border:0;max-width:100%"
allowfullscreen
title="Cutthroats"></iframe>Sized to this title's real screen. How embedding works.
