Greebles — a small puzzle game with custom levels and a high-score table Runs here
1997 · Peter N Lewis / Stairways Shareware · Mac OS 8 · SheepShaver (Power Macintosh 9500) · 800×600 at 8-bit colour
Guide updated September 2026
Greebles opens on a menu of about eight options — Play, Play Custom Game, Host Network Game, Join Network Game, Setup, Instructions, Demo, Register — with a high-score table beside it. That menu tells you most of what the game is: a small puzzle game made by somebody who also built the level editor, the network play and the score keeping, because that is what Mac shareware authors did.
Peter N Lewis is better known for Anarchie and Interarchy, the Macintosh FTP clients that a great many people used for a great many years. Greebles is what he made when he was not doing that.
Boots Mac OS 8.6 and opens Greebles on its menu. Instructions is worth reading before Play.
Controls
| Mouse | Menu selection and play |
| Instructions | The rules, which are not obvious from the board |
| Play Custom Game | Load a level somebody else made |
| Cmd-Q | Quit to the Finder |
Shareware, distributed freely through Stairways. The copy here is unregistered and unmodified, with the registration notice intact. Peter N Lewis is reachable and has a long record of releasing his back catalogue.
Archives
- Internet Archive — the Tucows Macintosh archive copy this was built from.
How it works & what to expect
| Machine | Power Macintosh 9500, 800×600 in colour |
|---|---|
| System | Mac OS 8.6, shared with every other title of this era |
| Emulator | SheepShaver, compiled to WebAssembly |
| Saves | High scores persist inside the emulated Mac |
The network options are on the menu and will not do anything useful here — the emulated Macintosh has no route to anybody else's. Play, Play Custom Game and the demo are the live parts.
Greebles does not carry its own operating system; Mac OS 8.6 comes from the shared image, so it starts much faster if you have already opened another Mac OS 8 title on this site.
Why it is remembered
Stairways was a real institution. Peter N Lewis's shareware company shipped Anarchie, Interarchy, NetPresenz and a handful of games out of Perth, and for a decade it was one of the names everyone on the Macintosh internet knew.
It has everything a 1997 shareware game had. Custom levels, network play, a demo mode, a score table and a register button — the complete feature set that individual authors were somehow all shipping, unpaid, at the same time.
The demo mode is a period detail. Leaving the game to attract-mode itself on a shop Macintosh was a real distribution strategy, and it is a feature almost nothing includes any more.
Getting started
Read Instructions from the menu first. The board does not explain itself and the rules are short.
Watch the Demo for a round. It plays the game properly and is a faster explanation than the text.
Ignore the network options. There is nothing on the other end of them inside an emulator.
Questions people ask
Is it free?
It is shareware — freely distributed and fully playable, with the registration notice left where the author put it.
Does network play work?
No. The menu options are there but the emulated Macintosh has no route to another player.
Where are the rules?
Instructions, on the main menu. There is also a Demo mode that plays the game for you.
Why does it take a while to start?
It boots Mac OS 8.6 first. That image is shared with the other Mac OS 8 titles here.
Who is Peter N Lewis?
A Macintosh developer best known for Anarchie and Interarchy, the FTP clients, published through his company Stairways.
Can I make my own levels?
Play Custom Game will load them, and the original release shipped with the means to create them.
