#infocom

This week, I dug out some Infocom games, because text adventures are great and I feel like the world needs to constantly be reminded of the fact. First up, a classic: Planetfall (1983). The player takes the role of an Ensign Seventh Class in the Star Patrol, on duty aboard the starship Feinstein.

As you may recall, Infocom games usually come with “feelies,” a collection of props that set the mood for the game or otherwise enhance play (which basically boils down to reading text on a screen and typing in prose commands to navigate the story). The feelies for Planetfall are mood-setters and seem custom-made to occupy the attention of a kid like me on the car ride home from the computer store at the mall. The booklet includes a recruitment pamphlet for the Star Patrol, along with a jokey questionnaire (HULL is to SPACESHIP as SKIN is to: A. Glove, B. Cat, C. Thermonuclear fusion, D. Titanium, E. Burn, F. Muffin). There are three interstellar postcards in a vintage style, a special assignment task force ID card and a sheaf of note pages containing a handwritten journal (in two inks for added verisimilitude!). Judging from the journal, “You” are at wits end about your duties and contemplating going AWOL when the game starts.

Thankfully, the ship crashes not long after the start of the game. You wind up on an island in the company of a robot named Floyd and the ruins of a vanished alien civilization. In addition to finding a way to get off the planet, you also need to unravel why the aliens disappeared. There are two timers spurring you on (though I don’t think they click on until you make a certain amount of progression). The first is the plague that did for the aliens (the remaining population is in cryosleep, awaiting their robots to synthesize a cure) — it’ll get you, too, if you don’t find an antidote. Even if you do, though, the planet doesn’t have much time left as its orbit has decayed and it is on a collision course with the sun. You need to repair a whole bunch of alien tech to A. Stop the planet from burning up, B. Allow the robots to complete the cure and C. Repair your own ship. I’ve never managed to stop A., in part because some of the puzzles to do so are intentionally unsolvable, and I’m terrible at figuring stuff like that out.

More on Allen Gustav Anderson here. Most of these are sourced from pulpcovers.com

I just wanted to point out that if you look at the first and last image on this list you'll notice that red reflection in the tube is actually a refraction of the Planet Stories logo! Cool!

Also here is a fake paperback I made from that art, based of course on the obscure (reportedly very bad) Infocom sequel to Leather Goddesses of Phobos.

Which I also made a cover for using Allen Anderson's art:

THE text adventure documentary - that's also a choice-based adventure game. You can download the official DVD ISOs here, or watch all the raw interviews here.

It was 1977, and home computers were big, expensive, heavy, and were almost entirely lacking in computing power by today’s standards. Yet, in this primitive environment, the first computer adventure games were born. Zork was the first commercial offering. Based on the very first text adventure game Colossal Cave Adventure, and written in for the PDP-10 mainframe (that’s right, it took a mainframe…