Suspended in time

Tony Bridge gets hung up on Infocom's latest

Tony Bridge

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HERE BEGINS a transcript of interaction with Suspended. Suspended is a trademark of Infocom, Inc. Copyright © 1983 Infocom, Inc. All rights reserved.

This adventure, from Infocom, comes in a large box, with a white mask like face (obviously of a body held in deep-frozen suspension) staring out at the beholder -- removing this from the box reveals the screaming, terror-filled truth beneath.

Classics

Unless you've been locked in the Goblin's Dungeon for a couple of years, you will know that Infocom produces the classic Zork series of adventures, I, II and III, and that it is held in universally high regard all over the world. The scene-setting in these adventures is evocative and witty, many descriptions spreading over two screenfulls of text. These can be turned off if required with the BRIEF command -- this shortens the descriptions to a short sentence; or another command, SUPERBRIEF, tells the program to give just the name of the location when entered the second and subsequent times. The parser, that part of the program that interprets the player's input, is capable of recognising long compound sentences. The parser will even intelligently complete any unfinished command for you, based on the likeliest input expected from the player in the current situation.

Suspended, by science-fiction writer Michael Burlyn, is a unique addition to Infocom's range. Released last year, it comes in unique packaging -- and the adventure itself is unique. The game comes on disk and runs on a range of micros, including Apples, Ataris and the Commodore 64.

Blissfully unaware that your life is about to change, you receive a communication from Ignatz Feroukin, Vice President of Memoes at the Lottery Commission HQ at Contra Central. You are the winner of the semi-millenial Lottery, and as such have the honour of serving as Contra's Central mentality for -- the next 500 years? Of course, you aren't immortal, so you must be placed in a state of limited cryogenic suspension (deep freeze!). In this sleep-like mode, your mind will monitor the Filtering Computers that maintain the delicate balance of the planet's surface-side environmental systems.

The previous winner, one Gregory Franklin, woke up some 33 years too early, lost his sanity and decided to create an emergency. Under his influence, the weather (totally controlled now) and the Transit System became pschycotic, their only aim to kill off the population. It is your job to take matters in hand and restore all systems to normality with minimum casualties.

Don't worry, you're not alone: six robots have been assigned to help you. Each is capable of different tasks, and their names should give you an indication of their capabilities. There are:
Iris : her ability to describe her immediate surroundings and objects approaches what a human might see in most circumstances
Waldo : an industrious robot, built for manipulating objects
Sensa : can detect vibrational activity, photon emissions and ionic discharges, as well as automatically performing the analysis of diffraction indexes (it says here!)
Audo : is capable of processing and interpreting auditory signals
Poet : was originally designed as a diagnostic robot. Having been somewhat altered over time by the Filtering Computers, he now makes the best of what he perceives by touching objects, and his output is sometimes bewildering, being couched in obscure couplets
Whiz : is an interfacing device between you and Central Library Core, which is a huge data bank.
All the robots have between one and five "grasping extensions" with which they can pick up objects.

There is, somewhere, a seventh robot -- seven feet tall, with multiple grasping extensions, verbal circuits and heavy-duty shielding against acid damage. This nice little number was irreparably damaged by good old Gregory Franklin. I haven't come across this one yet, but I have an awful feeling that it won't be a pleasant meeting...

Calm

Your task is to use these robots to restore order and calm to Contra, and the human population on the surface.

Many adventures are conducted by means of a "puppet" -- that is, the player instructs the computer (the puppet) what to do. For example: "I see a four-leafed clover, what do I do?". Any commands from the player are to this puppet -- if death results at any time, it is the puppet-computer that succumbs. Just about all the remaining programs are of the "third person" variety. Thus: "You are standing on a chocolate marshmallow. What do you do now?".

To repeat myself, Suspended is unique, in this regard as in so many others (almost the only thing this program has in common with other adventures is the English language) -- the player has not one, but six puppets at his command. Each robot, as we've seen, has a particular speciality, and thus, each will give you a different interpretation of the immediate surroundings it finds.

The best way to understand this is to send all six to the same location and see the reaction of each one, which is where this article began. Your commands to the robots are channelled through the FCs, who open a link which remains until you order a new one to be opened. Two or more robots can be communicated with simultaneously. Each command takes one cycle, during which the unlucky human population is reduced -- this is your score (you start with some 30 million and lose them by the thousand on each move. Who said adventuring was easy, or even humane.)

Thus, you can conduct your search through a multitude of locations at the same time, receiving varying information. As one move consigns thousands to the Great Red Yonder, a robot may be directed to a remote location, from where it will report once arrived, while you get on with more pressing matters.

Commands

Many of the commands (the Filtering Computers recognise some 600+ words) are of the traditional variety -- QUIT, SCORE, EXAMINE, LOOK, LISTEN and so on -- but many others you will not have come across before. DRAG commands a robot to pull another, out of action, robot away to another location, where it may well be able to give vital information or even be repaired. BOTH allows two robots to process the same command.

Commands may be of the simple verb-noun type (TAKE SPANNER) or of a more complex construction, such as TAKE THE SPANNER AND TURN THE BOLT. THEN TAKE THE PLUG AND EXAMINE HOLE.

In case you think that this might be like the command structure in some other adventures, don't forget what I hinted at in the introduction -- merely typing the robot's name and causes the program to work out, from the prevailing situation, what the player actually requires to be done (admittedly, with the occasional odd result).

With any other adventure, map-making is an essential first step -- when I load up a new game, the first run-through is merely reconnaisance, while I map out all the locations, along with all the objects, puzzles and so on. Suspended is again different in this respect. It must be the only adventure which supplies the player with a complete map! After all, with six "personae" all wandering around giving sensory reports, you would soon get hopelessly lost -- the map comes complete with six rubber counters representing the robots, and these can be moved around the map as you move the robots around the adventure.

Each robot, as we've seen, has a different function, all useful in their own way, and obvious from the names -- Whiz, however, could be the most unusual and interesting. He actually plugs into the Central Library Core, where all knowledge is kept. Thus, the data in the Historical Peripheral may be accessed, to give historical information about some object found elsewhere in the complex, and the Technical Peripheral will give technical information. The Index Peripheral will give you an idea of whether the Library actually knows anything at all about the object. If you don't have the faintest idea what is going on (a likely and understandable state in this adventure), the Advisory Peripheral is attuned to provide Hierarchical Information for Newly Terraformed Systems.

So what are you doing here? As we've seen before, the six robots are to help you (prostrate in your cryogenic tube) in processing information about the Complex, and also to repair the malfunctioning Filtering Computers. They are connected by umbilical cables, which must be replaced in order to keep the three computers balanced. Your half dozen metal friends can use their grappling extensions, under your control, to achieve this. But be warned -- Franklin the Frosted Fruitcake has left a booby-trap for you; an innocent-looking cable which, if connected to an FC, may cause total mayhem!

While continually monitoring your robots, you must also keep an eye on the systems controlled by the FCs -- the Weather System, the Food Production and the Transport Systems. You will be woken up from time to time to cope with a particularly nasty problem that only a human can deal with.

Completing

Documentation is up to Infocom's usual high standard, with background information, a couple of memoes, and a list of the more important commands, along with several abbreviations that will save your weary fingers (for example, ARR = All Robots Report). Although hints on strategy are given, they won't be of much use -- the usual unconscious clues that blurb-writers give away when talking about word combinations (TAKE SPADE -- aha, there's a spade in this adventure!) are present here, but most of the examples are pretty odd: TAKE THE ROUGH DEVICE AND THE BUMPY CHIP?

If you ever suceed in completing this adventure (let me know!), you needn't throw it away -- beyond the standard game is the advanced, harder, and expert games. Beyond these is the configure mode, in which certain parameters can be set to the player's own design. For example, in which turn should the Earthquake start? Beyond all these is the Impossible game. Complete this one, and Infocom will give you an expenses-paid trip to Contra, where you will take over the running of Contra for the next 10,000 years. Beat that one, Automata!

So, Infocom has done it again! Each new release from this company is a major event for Adventure-dom, and Suspended must be rated a success even by Infocom's terrifyingly high standards.

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