~3 minute readGames Galore for 8-Bit
Lurking Horror, Stationfall
In Infocom's first horror-fiction adventure, it's all to easy to be pulled into the game play -- which can keep you up at night, looking nervously over your shoulder. In Lurking Horror you're a student at the George Underwood Edwards Institute of Technology -- sort of a cross between MIT and Miskatonic University (for you H.P. Lovecraft readers).
In the beginning, you're at the computer center the night before a major paper is due. Trapped inside the buildings by a raging blizzard, you settle down to finish your paper with an overzealous computer hacker as your only (human) companion. Slowly but inexorably you'll head toward confrontation with nightmarish forces that could cost you both your life and your soul.
Your searches will take you from the tallest buildings down into the bowels of long abandoned tunnels and hidden rooms which lie festering under the campus. Without revealing too much, suffice it to say that you'll encounter a malevolent maintenance man, have a terminal religious experience, practice your culinary skills and discourse with a doctor of demonology -- until all hell breaks loose.
You can play several different story branches, rather than having to go directly from start to finish. Thus, if a puzzle stumps you, you can go off on a different tangent and continue -- often finding something to help with the original puzzle. Though there's far more searching and puzzle-solving than conversing with other characters, it's often more helpful to show them something than to speak and provoke a reaction.
The first half of the adventure is fairly easy, but the puzzles become more complex and interesting toward the end. The story itself is tight and well-crafted. It's easy -- too easy -- to visualize the scenes while cautiously prowling through moldering sub-basements. Overall, I enjoyed the game and would recommend it, particularly for someone new to text adventures.
Stationfall, Infocom's first text adventure sequel, continues the saga begun in Planetfall, a fast-moving cross between Larry Niven and National Lampoon that gave us very memorable Floyd the Droid -- the endearing Gomer Pyle of robots. In Stationfall, we return to the future time of the Third Galactic Union. Our hero has found fleeting fame, a promotion to Lieutenant First Class in the Stellar Patrol, and the numbing realization of facing nothing more than shuffling paperwork for the rest of his career -- a case in point being an assignment to pick up a multi-ton load of forms at a local space station printing press.
Strange things happen as soon as you dock at the space station. The place is a virtual ghost town. What has happened here? What about the alien space craft, its dead pilot and mysterious cargo that you find? As you continue probing, you recognize signs of an unknown malevolent force that has overtaken the space station.
Fortunately, at your side is Floyd the Droid, rebuilt from circuit board heaven and ready to boogie. Between bouts of finder-seeker and paddleball, your little buddy is along to help solve the mystery and (maybe) save your bacon again. You will also encounter Plato (the only surviving space station robot), an ostrich, an abandoned Arcturan balloon creature and an automated welder that seems to disagree with your continued existence.
Stationfall has plenty of puzzles to solve and rooms to explore. The puzzles are good: hard enough to make you think, but logical, at least in hindsight.
This sequel is, if anything, better than the original story. The plot line is crisp and full of humor -- to go along with the straight science fiction. The mood, pacing and characters, right down to the scatology, are a faithful re-creation of the original.
(The ST versions of these text adventures were reviewed in Antic, February 1988 -- ANTIC ED)
This article appeared in
Antic
Mar 1988
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