Kat Clay

#Pratchat92 – Sand of the Scrounge Wizard

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Writer and game designer Kat Clay joins Liz and Ben to point and click on Rincewind once more, as we discuss the 1996 graphic adventure game Discworld II: Missing, Presumed…!? from Perfect Entertainment.

When the wizard Windle Poons dies, no-one comes to collect his soul – and this isn’t the first time Death has been derelict in his duty. Something must be done, and the Archchancellor knows just the man for the job: so-called wizard and veteran videogame protagonist, Rincewind! Can he – that is to say, you – navigate an ever more fiendish chain of elaborate tasks to summon Death, and persuade him to go back to work? Or will the Disc be doomed to immortality?

The first Discworld point-and-click graphic adventure, released in 1995, was a hit. So of course Perfect Entertainment – the merged form of Teeny Weeny Games and Perfect 10 Productions – returned just one year later with a sequel. While not quite as well known as the original, Discworld II: Missing, Presumed…!? (or Discworld II: Mortality Bytes in the US) once again features Eric Idle as Rincewind, a cast of thousands (voiced by three), and a plot constructed from bits of Discworld novels (mostly Reaper Man and Mort). It also features an original song written and performed by Idle, a brand new visual style, and more fourth wall breaks than you can shake a Suffrajester at. The team, headed by Angela Sutherland and Gregg Barnett, would go on to produce one more Discworld game: Discworld Noir, a brand new story with an original protagonist. But like its stablemates, Discworld 2 is currently out of publication.

Have you played Discworld 2? Did you find it easier than the first one? Was it written with an awareness that women play videogames? Do you prefer the cel-animation look of this game, or the cartoony pixels of the first one? Does it feel more like the Discworld, or a spin-off from Monty Python? And for subscribers especially, would you like to watch Ben stream these games and play along? Join our online conversation by using your fingers with the social media platform, and then clicking on the hashtag #Pratchat92.

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Guest Kat Clay (she/her) is a writer of fiction and tabletop roleplaying games from Melbourne, Australia. Her writing is mostly horror, and has included short stories, game reviews, novellas and hopefully an upcoming full-length novel. Kat won a Silver ENNIE award for her Call of Cthulhu adventure, The Well of All Fear, and her recent modern-day Cthulhu adventure, Resort, won Best Scenario at the 2025 Australian Industry Roleplaying Awards. You can find out more about Kat, and read some of her work, at katclay.com. You can also find her on social media, including Bluesky as @katclay.com, and buy her adventures via DriveThruRPG – where they’re all bestsellers!

You can find episode notes and errata on our web site.

Next month we’re getting schooled in legends and lore via Pratchett’s collaboration with Jacqueline Simpson, The Folklore of Discworld! We’ll be looking at the third edition, which references all the novels up to Raising Steam. Send us your questions via email (chat@pratchatpodcast.com), or send us a magpie via social media using the hashtag #Pratchat93.

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

#Pratchat92 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 92, “Sand of the Scrounge Wizard”, discussing the 1996 computer game Discworld II: Missing, Presumed…!?, with guest Kat Clay.

Iconographic Evidence

Listener Michael recommended this review of Discworld 2 by YouTuber MitchManix.

We’ll add a few choice screenshots here! Watch this space.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title – inspired by a gag made by Kat – is a riff on the title of the first Leisure Suit Larry game, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, from 1987. Inspired by their earlier text-based game Softporn Adventure, Leisure Suit Larry is a series of “adult” graphic adventure games from Sierra Entertainment. The Larry games are very 1980s style sex comedies, mostly starring Larry Laffer – a middle-aged, balding virgin whose big quest is to usually to seduce a woman. (Though to be fair, it does turn into sort of a love story by the end of the original trilogy.) There are ten games in the series, the most recent from 2020, though only the first six were designed by the series’ original creator, Al Lowe. The original has also been remade and re-released several times.
  • We mention the animated Discworld adaptations a couple of times, by which we mean the two from Cosgrove Hall. These were Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music, both originally broadcast in 1997 – so after the release of Discworld 2.
  • Discworld 2 was released shortly after the publication of Hogfather, but given when it was written and developed, it’s likely the team had only limited access to notes about any books after Maskerade.
  • Once again, we mention plenty of videogames in this episode, including the following adventure games, listed in order of release:
    • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Infocom 1984) – a text-based adventure game which broadly follows the plot of the Hitchhiker’s story, but with many new and changed details to provide puzzles. The player takes on the role of Arthur Dent. It was co-written by Douglas Adams himself.
    • King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella (Sierra Entertainment 1988) – these games follow the royal family of the fairytale Kingdom of Daventry,
    • King’s Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! (Sierra Entertainment 1990)
    • The Secret of Monkey Island (LucasArts 1990)
    • Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge (LucasArts 1991)
    • Gobliiins (Coktel Vision 1991) – the first in a series of French fantasy adventure games in which the player controls a variable number of goblins; the number of “i”s in the title of the game indicates how many goblins you will control.
    • King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (Sierra Entertainment 1992)
    • Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (LucasArts 1992) – the first Indiana Jones game to feature an original story. While primarily an adventure game, the player can choose one of three modes early on: the Team Path has the player control both Indy and his new partner, Sophia Hapgood; the Wits Path has Indy solve more difficult puzzles alone; and the Fists Path focuses on fighting, which is present but optional in the other two modes.
    • The 7th Guest (Trilobyte 1993) – more an interactive movie than an adventure game, this was one of the first CD-only games. It made extensive use of full-motion video in a horror story set in a haunted mansion.
    • Myst (Cyan 1993) – a hugely influential 3D puzzle game, another of the early CD-only games. It was was one of the best-selling games for about a decade. The player finds a book titled Myst, which magically transports them to a mysterious island of the same name.
    • King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride (Sierra Entertainment 1994)
    • The Dig (LucasArts 1995) – based on a plot by Steven Spielberg about a group of astronauts exploring an alien world, this science fiction adventure game was also notoriously difficult.
    • Toonstruck (Burst Studios 1996) – a hugely expensive game blending full motion video with cel animation, and an all-star cast. Christopher Lloyd plays Drew Blanc, a frustrated animator drawn into the cartoon world of his saccharine children’s show, with his weirder, less child-friendly creation as a sidekick.
    • Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail (7th Level 1996) – though Ben remembers this as not being much of adventure game, that is the way its framed. Though the mini-games were definitely the highlight when he tried playing it back in the day.
    • The Curse of Monkey Island (LucasArts 1997) – this is the third Monkey Island game, which features cel-like animation similar in some ways to Discworld 2.
    • Grim Fandango (LucasArts 1998) – LucasArts’ first 3D animated adventure game.
    • Escape from Monkey Island (LucasArts 2000) – the first Monkey Island game in 3D.
    • Bye Sweet Carole (Little Sewing Machine 2025) – a horror adventure game in cel-animation style, in which the player tries to unravel the mystery of her missing friend Carole in early twentieth century England.
    • The Drifter (Powerhoof 2025) – an Australian game about a drifter who returns to the city for a funeral, only to be caught up in a supernatural mystery.
  • We also mention the following videogames from other genres, though it’s true the line isn’t always clear:
    • Abiotic Factor (Deep Field Games 2025) – a dark comedy horror survival game, set in an underground bunker in outback Australia belonging to Gate, a super-science organisation similar to
    • The Bard’s Tale (Interplay 1985) – a classic roleplaying game that plays with the standard tropes of Dungeons & Dragons style adventure. Followed by a long string of sequels and remakes.
    • The Outer Worlds 2 (Obsidian 2025) – a satirical action roleplaying game on capitalism and consumerism, set in a retro-futuristic alternate history where monopolies were never reigned in, and a star system colonised by humans is thus run by a handful of megacorporations.
    • Disco Elysium (ZA/UM 2019) – an award-winning roleplaying game set in which the player is an amnesiac alcoholic cop investigating a murder in the weird Eastern Europe-inspired dystopia of Revachol.
    • Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive 2025) – a turn-based action roleplaying game in which the player controls the members of Expedition 33. They are the latest to try and reach “the Paintress” – a mysterious figure on a distant island who every year paints a decreasing number which causes everyone that age or older to evaporate. Ben likes to describe it as “sad beautiful French Final Fantasy”.
    • Elden Ring (FromSoftware 2022) – an action roleplaying game set in an open world of warring demigods, inspired in part by Norse mythology, and with a story by George R R Martin. It’s part of a sub-genre of “souls-like” games that stem from FromSoftware’s earlier game Dark Souls. Souls-like games generally have challenging combat that relies on player skill and timing, frequent character death, and other aspects that give them a reputation for being very difficult. Kat wrote a blog about finishing Elden Ring in August 2025: “I was wrong about Elden Ring. Here’s why…”

More notes coming soon!

Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.