Chapter 5: The Infocom Canon
I create fictional worlds. I create experiences.
I am exploring a new medium for telling stories.
My readers should become immersed in the story and forget where they
are. They should forget about the keyboard and the screen, forget
everything but the experience. My goal is to make the computer
invisible.
I want as many people as possible to share these experiences. I want a
broad range of fictional worlds, and a broad range of "reading levels.”
I can categorize our past works and discover where the range needs
filling in. I should also seek to expand the categories to reach every
popular taste.
In each of my works, I share a vision with the reader. Only I know
exactly what the vision is, so only I can make the final decisions about
content and style. But I must seriously consider comments and
suggestions from any source, in the hope that they will make the sharing
better.
I know what an artist means by saying, "I hope I can finish this work
before I ruin it." Each work-in-progress reaches a point of diminishing
returns, where any change is as likely to make it worse as to make it
better. My goal is to nurture each work to that point. And to make my
best estimate of when it will reach that point.
I can't create quality work by myself. I rely on other implementers to
help me both with technical wizardry and with overcoming the limitations
of the medium. I rely on testers to tell me both how to communicate my
vision better and where the rough edges of the work need polishing. I
rely on marketers and salespeople to help me share my vision with more
readers. I rely on others to handle administrative details so I can
concentrate on the vision.
None of my goals is easy. But all are worth hard work. Let no one doubt
my dedication to my art.
-- “The Implementer’s Creed” (Stu Galley, 1985)
The 35 Canonical Infocom Works
1980
Zork I: The Great Underground Empire by David Lebling and Marc Blank
1981
Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz by David Lebling and Marc Blank
1982
Zork III: The Dungeon Master by David Lebling and Marc Blank
Deadline by Marc Blank
Starcross by David Lebling
1983
Suspended by Mike Berlyn
The Witness by Stu Galley
Planetfall by Steve Meretzky
Enchanter by David Lebling and Marc Blank
Infidel by Mike Berlyn
1984
Sorcerer by Steve Meretzky
Seastalker by Stu Galley and Jim Lawrence
Cutthroats by Mike Berlyn
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and Steve Meretzky
Suspect by David Lebling
1985
Wishbringer by Brian Moriarty
A Mind Forever Voyaging by Steve Meretzky
Spellbreaker by David Lebling
1986
Ballyhoo by Jeff O’Neill
Trinity by Brian Moriarty
Leather Goddesses of Phobos by Steve Meretzky
Moonmist by Stu Galley and Jim Lawrence
1987
Hollywood Hijinx by Dave Anderson and Liz Cyr-Jones
Bureaucracy by Douglas Adams and the staff of Infocom
Stationfall by Steve Meretzky
The Lurking Horror by David Lebling
Nord and Bert Couldn’t Make Head or Tail of It by Jeff O’Neilll
Plundered Hearts by Amy Briggs
Beyond Zork by Brian Moriarty
Border Zone by Marc Blank
1988
Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels by Bob Bates
Zork Zero by Steve Meretzky
1989
Shogun by James Clavell and David Lebling
Journey by Marc Blank
Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur by Bob Bates
The games listed above represent Infocom’s entire output of IF, but they are not the only pieces of software released with an Infocom label on their box. The company made one foray into non-narrative based entertainment software with the “computerized board game” Fooblitzky, and toward the end of its lifetime released at its new corporate masters at Activision’s insistence a few “Infocomics,” a line of rather underwhelming computerized comic books. After Infocom had been effectively dismantled by Activision as an independent entity it continued to exist for several years in name only as a label for graphical adventures and RPGs. Finally, there was the most significant of all Infocom’s non-IF products, the relational database Cornerstone whose market failure ultimately brought about the company’s downfall. That sorry story we will reserve for a future chapter.
I will devote this chapter to a discussion of the more intrinsically interesting or significant of the titles listed above. I should emphasize before beginning that the stories I will discuss are not necessary the “best” in the Infocom corpus. The company produced its share of solid adventure games that do not try to push the boundaries of the form but are nevertheless skillfully designed and well worth playing. David Lebling’s hard science fiction puzzlefest Starcross and Dave Anderson’s B-movie send-up Hollywood Hijinx are just two examples. In an historical narrative such as this one, though, concerned as it is with the development of IF as an art-form, a line must be drawn somewhere, and so these games as well as a considerable number of others will not be discussed in depth. Similarly, not all of the games I will describe in detail entirely “work.” To pick two examples, most would agree that Beyond Zork and Border Zone represent failed experiments for Infocom, yet the direction they were attempting to go is important and interesting enough that they are given space here. I can perhaps best express my guiding philosophy by saying that Hollywood Hijinx is a better game than Border Zone, but Border Zone is more important. If you my reader are simply looking for a well-crafted game to play, some of my choices may not be ideal; if, on the other hand, you are interested in surveying the development of IF as an art-form, I believe the games I will describe are the ones that are most worth your time. In the discussions to follow, I will occasionally “spoil” key plot and perhaps even puzzle elements of the games. If you wish to experience them untainted by such, play them first and return to this essay later. You have been warned. Finally, I have left my discussion of Infocom’s final four illustrated works for a later chapter, being as they arise more from its final gasps for life than from the burgeoning creativity of its glory days.
The Early Mysteries: Deadline, The Witness, and Suspect
Infocom’s first non-Zork title was something of a shot across the bows of the adventure game community as a whole. Written by Marc Blank, it was called Deadline, and it marked a clean break with the fantasy settings and exploration-focussed play of most IF of the time in taking its cues from the hard-boiled mystery novels of authors such as Raymond Chandler. Some might argue that this is merely replacing one somewhat cliched genre with another, but it did at least have the virtue of freshness. Infocom would largely rely on genre fiction conventions throughout its run, and for good reason. As Janet Murray noted in a commentary on interactive narrative in general:
In the case of Deadline, the story revolves around a wealthy industrialist who has been found dead, apparently by suicide. The player takes the role of private detective who has been hired by the dead man’s attorney to clear up any lingering suspicions, and given a whopping twelve hours to investigate and make her report. Naturally, the case turns out to be much more complicated than it first appears. Marc Blank:
"I thought it was a great idea because most people, when they read mysteries, are constantly trying to think ahead, what happened. 'Ooh, I would have looked here, I would have done this. I would have been more clever.' So, it seemed to lend itself perfectly" (Greenlee).
Although a much smaller, tighter game than Zork, Deadline
is in many ways vastly more ambitious. As a mystery, it
revolves not around mechanical puzzles and inanimate objects, but
character interaction. The story it is attempting to tell,
while hardly War and Peace, would not be out of
place in a pulp paperback. Even that level of storytelling
represents a major step from what anyone had attempted in IF
before. It was in fact the desire to pack more story into
this game that caused Infocom to begin its long-standing tradition of
including feelies and atmospheric documentation in its game
boxes. Of particular note here is the way the game and its
documentation work together to give the player a definite role to
play. Granted, that role – the hard-bitten gumshoe
– may be clichéd, but we nevertheless see here a
major leap toward true interactive storytelling when we compare the
protagonist of Deadline with the faceless, generic
“adventurer” of Zork and
similar games. All of Infocom’s subsequent games
would follow Deadline’s lead to a greater
or lesser extent is this respect.
In
contrast to the sprawling caves and wilderness of Zork,
Deadline all takes place within the confines of a
single house and its grounds. Within can be found six
individuals, all of them possessing, in classic mystery fashion, motive
and possibly means and opportunity to murder the old man. In
a remarkable feat of programming for such an early game, these
characters move about the mansion of their own accord throughout the
day, engaging in suspicious and not-so-suspicious actions and
displaying quite a remarkable degree of verisimilitude. By
being in the right place at the right time and by taking the right
actions, the player can cause them to change their plans and perhaps
even incriminate themselves. The player must not only deduce
the identity of the killer – I trust my reader will not be
surprised to learn that Marshall Robner’s death was not
a suicide – but collect sufficient incriminating evidence to
satisfy the police and hopefully force a confession, all while avoiding
death at the hands of a murderer who may decide to eliminate this nosy
P.I. once and for all, should she get too close to the truth.
Another enemy is the clock, which clicks down at the rate of one minute
per turn. Should time expire without the killer being found,
justice will not be served and the player will have effectively lost
the game.
Following the release of Deadline, Infocom repeated its formula twice more, with Stu Galley’s The Witness and David Lebling’s Suspect. Most critics today agree that the first game is the best, although all three are regarded more as noble failures than unqualified successes.
Most of the flaws that lead to that consensus arise from the games’ most interesting feature, their independent cast of characters. Because these characters move about the geography and act of their own accord, the player is forced to magically be at the right place at the right time over and over to have a chance of solving the mystery. The games give the player very little clue about when and where that is, meaning that she will likely have to restart many times before bringing the games to a successful conclusion. Some might not be bothered terribly by this, choosing to the see the games as a sort of IF Groundhog Day to be lived over and over until the player gets it right. Modern IF theory, however, generally emphasizes that a successful completion of a game should not depend on knowledge gained from previous, unsuccessful attempts. These three games were the worst violators of this rule in the entire Infocom canon, although hardly the worst in the IF world of the eighties, where attention to good game design was all too often sadly lacking.
The character interaction itself is another problem. Although the authors did their best, Infocom was operating under such stringent hardware restriction that it was difficult to implement more than a smattering of dialogue. Thus the player is likely to spend much of her time trying to find some way to communicate, only to receive a stream of rather nonsensical replies. No amount of clever writing for the responses that are implemented can quite make up for this.
In both of these problems, but particularly the second, Infocom was already struggling with issues that still plague creators of IF today. It is perhaps little surprise that Infocom itself seems to have eventually grown frustrated with the limitations of its possible implementations. After Suspect’s release in 1984, the company did not release any more games that were quite this dependent on character interaction. Its later mysteries Ballyhoo and Moonmist had some of the elements of their predecessors, but relied less on independently acting characters and dialogue in favor of more traditional adventure game puzzles. Even most modern IF mysteries, such as Kent Tessman’s Guilty Bastards and Irene Callaci’s Dangerous Curves, have generally trended toward the model of these later works. If Infocom’s reach had somewhat exceeded its grasp, however, the results are nevertheless fascinating as the first serious attempt at believable character interaction in IF.
Suspended: A Cryogenic Nightmare
In 1982, Infocom hired published science fiction author Mike Berlyn as a designer, quite a coup for a company with the stated goal of dragging IF toward some sort of literary respectability. Ironically, Berlyn’s first game for the company turned out to be the least “literary” that Infocom would ever release. The player takes the part of a disembodied brain in control of an underground complex that houses devices that regulate the weather of a planet. The complex has been damaged, and the player must repair it with the aid of six robotic drones, any one of which she can mentally inhabit at any time. The complication arises from the fact each of the six robots has its own specialized ability. One can see; one can manipulate objects; one can detect vibrations; one can hear; and one can interface with computers. The most unique is Poet, who, according to the game’s documentation, “makes the best of what he perceives, turning his input into occasionally bewildering output.” To save the complex, the player must direct the robots to where and when they will do the most good. This is easier said than done, however, particularly as each robot takes time to move from place to place. Careful planning, and not a small amount of that old bugaboo learning by death, is thus required to deal with the quick series of disasters that strike the complex over the course of the game. Infocom even provided in Suspended’s box a map of the complex and a set of counters representing the six robots to help the player to keep track of things.
It is probably fair to ask whether Suspended is really IF at all, as Graeme Cree discussed in his review for SPAG:
It might be best not to think of Suspended as a work of Interactive Fiction at all. It is a pseudo-simulation game, written before software technology was developed enough to develop real simulation games. It is a game for frustrated would-be air traffic controllers who enjoy coordinating multiple activities from a central location, much more than it is a work of fiction. It is a game for people who like to play WITH games, not merely play them (Cree).
Whatever its (lack of) narrative qualities, however, Suspended carries a unique fascination as a simulation of a remarkably complex system, which Cree touches upon in the excerpt above. It marks the farthest point to which the company would stretch its basic IF model, a fact that is somewhat surprising considering that it was released quite early in the company’s run. The game is well-worth playing about with today, although those who envision finishing it should be warned that it is frighteningly difficult.
Suspended’s model of an omniscient player hopping in and out of and directly manipulating machines actually pops up fairly frequently in IF. Paul O’Brian’s LASH, for instance, sees the player controlling an automated drone sifting through the rubble of a contaminated war zone. A more explicit homage, right down to its excruciating difficulty, is Dan Shiovitz’s fascinating Bad Machine.
Floyd and Planetfall
Planetfall stands out in Infocom’s catalog for several reasons. It marks the debut of prolific implementer Steve Meretzky, and it is one of most complete attempts at really telling a coherent story in the company’s early catalog. Most of all, though, Planetfall is remembered for the player’s little robotic playmate Floyd.
Meretzky had attended MIT as an architecture major at the same time as the core team that would eventually form Infocom. After spending a year or so working for a construction company, Meretzky decided that computer games were more to his taste, and secured a position with his old college mates’ new company, where he was soon allowed to design his own game. The result is, at least on the surface, a silly science fiction spoof. The plot of the game involves the player, a Stellar Patrol Ensign Seventh Class whose primary duties entail scrubbing down ships’ deck and other more noxious places, escaping from her exploding starship to land on an uncharted and seemingly uninhabited world. There she discovers an abandoned research complex, and begins piecing together a mystery.
At this stage some of the silliness subsides and a genuinely interesting plot begins to develop. Much of the gameplay is fairly typical of IF then and now: the player must repair machinery, open up access to new areas, get computer systems back online, etc. However, as she goes about these tasks she gradually discovers how the planet came to be abandoned through various items and printed materials she finds lying around, many of which exist not as an element to be used in solving the game’s puzzles but for background flavor only. The story she pieces together is compelling and tragic, involving a fatal disease that is sweeping the planet and a desperate attempt by the planet’s inhabitants to stop its progress. This method of telling a complex story by letting the player discover it after the fact, rather than participating directly, might be considered a cop-out by some, but it works surprisingly well when done properly, as it is here. It is in fact used quite frequently in IF and other forms of interactive narrative today, as it allows the designer to tell a coherent, complete story without worrying about the player mucking it up, as it were.
The complex is also littered with tools and other objects which often have no bearing at all on solving the game, but lend the game’s setting a resonance that is rare in IF of this vintage. Some players actually find these “red herrings,” which would come to be a trademark of Meretzky’s work, deeply annoying, having become used to the typical adventure game rule of every object having a purpose. I think most would agree, though, that the very lack of neat symmetry in the game lends it a messy, real-world believability. At times, Planetfall really does feel like interactive literature, rather than a game-like text adventure.
The elements I have already described would by themselves make Planetfall an important work, but the game also had a secret weapon in the form of Floyd. Floyd is a little maintenance droid – think an even more happy-go-lucky R2D2 with the ability to speak – who the player can discover and activate quite soon after arriving at the complex. He then accompanies the player through the bulk of the story as the faithful sidekick, occasionally piping up with a request to play “hider and seeker” or “hucka-bucka-beanstalk.” Floyd is consistently amusing and absolutely lovable. He even breaks down the game’s fourth wall at one point. If the player elects to SAVE her game in Floyd’s presence, he will say, “Oh, boy! Are we gonna try something dangerous now?” Meretzky’s achievement with Floyd is amazing not least because there is so little to it really. Floyd actually does very little other than trail the player about and pop off with the occasional canned phrase. Trying to hold a conversation with him his pointless, as he is almost entirely non-interactive, and in only a couple of places is he even useful for solving puzzles. Yet, virtually everyone who plays Planetfall falls in love with him and remembers him forever, which makes a scene near the end of the game, when he willingly sacrifices his “life” for the player, perhaps the most poignant in the Infocom canon. Meretzky even manages to work in a plug for Infocom’s earlier Starcross without seeming crass:
>look through window
You can see a large laboratory, dimly illuminated. A blue glow comes from a crack in the northern wall of the lab. Shadowy, ominous shapes move about within the room. On the floor, just inside the door, you can see a magnetic-striped card.
Floyd stands on his tiptoes and peers in the window. "Looks dangerous in there," says Floyd. "I don't think you should go inside." He peers in again. "We'll need card there to fix computer. Hmmm... I know! Floyd will get card. Robots are tough. Nothing can hurt robots. You open the door, then Floyd will rush in. Then you close door. When Floyd knocks, open door again. Okay? Go!" Floyd's voice trembles slightly as he waits for you to open the door.
>open door
The door opens and Floyd, pausing only for the briefest moment, plunges into the Bio Lab. Immediately, he is set upon by hideous, mutated monsters! More are heading straight toward the open door! Floyd shrieks and yells to you to close the door.
>close door
The door closes.
From within the lab you hear ferocious growlings, the sounds of a skirmish, and then a high-pitched metallic scream!
>z
Time passes...
You hear, slightly muffled by the door, three fast knocks, followed by the distinctive sound of tearing metal.
>open door
The door opens.
Floyd stumbles out of the Bio Lab, clutching the mini-booth card. The mutations rush toward the open doorway!
>close door
The door closes.
And not a moment too soon! You hear a pounding from the door as the monsters within vent their frustration at losing their prey.
Floyd staggers to the ground, dropping the mini card. He is badly torn apart, with loose wires and broken circuits everywhere. Oil flows from his lubrication system. He obviously has only moments to live.
You drop to your knees and cradle Floyd's head in your lap. Floyd looks up at his friend with half-open eyes. "Floyd did it ... got card. Floyd a good friend, huh?" Quietly, you sing Floyd's favorite song, the Ballad of the Starcrossed Miner:
O, they ruled the solar system
Near ten thousand years before
In their single starcrossed scout ships
Mining ast'roids, spinning lore.
Then one true courageous miner
Spied a spaceship from the stars
Boarded he that alien liner
Out beyond the orb of Mars.
Yes, that ship was filled with danger
Mighty monsters barred his way
Yet he solved the alien myst'ries
Mining quite a lode that day.
O, they ruled the solar system
Near ten thousand years before
'Til one brave advent'rous spirit
Brought that mighty ship to shore.
As you finish the last verse, Floyd smiles with contentment, and then his eyes close as his head rolls to one side. You sit in silence for a moment, in memory of a brave friend who gave his life so that you might live.
Janet Murray writes of the effect Floyd’s sacrifice has on the player:
At this point the game changes from a challenging puzzle to an evocative theatrical experience. The escape from the planet continues, but without Floyd’s company the player feels lonely and bereaved. (..) The death of Floyd is a minor milestone on the road from puzzle gaming to an expressive narrative art. It demonstrates that the potential for compelling computer stories does not depend on high-tech animation or expensively produced video footage but on the shaping of such dramatic moments (Murray 53).
Meretzky was unfortunately unable to stick to his dramatic guns. At the end of the game the player not only revives the inhabitants of the planet, who were as it turns out only in suspended animation awaiting the cure for the disease which the player has just obligingly provided, but is also greeted by a resurrected Floyd, repaired by the planet’s engineers. This scene leaves a bad taste in my mouth, turning as it does Floyd’s death scene into a sort of “gotcha!” moment and robbing it of the very real weight it carried before. Nevertheless, the fact that the game can invoke such discussion at all is remarkable. In a contemporaneous advertisement, another young computer game publisher called Electronic Arts asked, “Can a computer make you cry?” For many thousands of players, Planetfall provided a resoundingly positive answer.
Planetfall is flawed in many ways when viewed through contemporary eyes. Pointless annoyances abound. The player can only carry a very limited number of objects, which means she must constantly trek back and forth across the complex toting what she needs to where it will be of use. She must eat and sleep at regular intervals, which involves more tedious trekking to and from the complex’s mess hall and sleeping quarters. Perhaps worst of all, the player is gradually being consumed by the disease that is still present in the planet’s atmosphere, meaning that her game is likely to end prematurely with her death from disease, forcing a lot of re-playing of already completed stages. Infocom would largely abandon traditional text adventures annoyances like these over the year or so following Planetfall’s release, but here they are still all too present. Nevertheless, Planetfall is well worth playing today. Even its annoyances seem somehow less egregious for being wrapped up in such an otherwise charming package, and little Floyd remains probably the best-remembered IF character ever.
Planetfall became one of Infocom’s most popular titles, and Meretzky eventually brought Floyd back for a sequel, Stationfall. While a perfectly well-crafted game, it lacked the fresh charm of its predecessor. Activision did considerable work on a third, graphical game in the mid-nineties, to be called Planetfall: The Search for Floyd. The project was cancelled, perhaps fortunately, before its completion, and only a trailer remains as evidence that it ever existed. The science fiction comedy genre that Planetfall pioneered, on the other hand, remains alive and well in IF. See Harry Hol’s Dutch Dapper IV: The Final Voyage for an enjoyable recent example.
The Enchanter Trilogy: Enchanter, Sorcerer, and Spellbreaker
In light of Infocom’s extraordinary recent run of creativity, one might question the motivation behind David Lebling and Marc Blank’s decision to return to Zorkian fantasy in 1983 with Enchanter. Even if the huge sales of the Zork trilogy were an impetus, though, Lebling and Blank nevertheless did themselves proud with the result. Enchanter is set in the same world as Zork, but it shows off its authors’ improved design and writing skills to fine effect. For one, the game features an actual plot:
It must be the warlock Krill. The odd disappearances, the mysterious dissolution of regions sacred to the Circle, the lessening of the Powers – these could only be his handiwork. The Circle gathers and its leader, the esteemed Belboz, reveals to them an ancient document which portends evil days much like our own.
“Krill’s evil must be unmade,” he begins, “but to send a powerful Enchanter is ill-omened. It would be ruinous to reveal oversoon our full powers.” A ripple of concern spreads over the face of each Enchanter. Belboz pauses, and collects his resolve. “Have hope! This has been written by a hand far wiser than mine!”
He recites a short spell and you appear. Belboz approaches, transfixing you with his gaze, and hands you the document. The other Enchanters await his decree. “These words, written ages ago, can have only one meaning. You, a novice Enchanter with but a few simple spells in your Book, must seek out Krill, explore the Castle he has overthrown, and learn his secrets. Only then may his vast evil be lessened or, with good fortune, destroyed.”
The
Circle rises and
intones a richly woven spell, whose many textures imbue the small,
darkened
chamber with warmth and hope. There is a surge of power; you are Sent.
As the introductory text above indicates, the player must infiltrate and explore the evil warlord Krill’s castle, gathering the materials he will use to eventually destroy him. While nothing here really rises above typical genre fantasy, it is consistently well-written. In spite of some lingering “old-school” annoyances such as the need to eat and sleep and an overall time limit, the game as a whole reads and plays very well even today. The player even befriends a turtle at one point who is almost the equal of Floyd in loyalty and lovability.
The most interesting thing about Enchanter, though, which gives it a markedly different feel from Zork, is the introduction of magic spells. Rather than the sword-wielding, treasure-looting simpleton of Zork, the player here is a magician, albeit a young, inexperienced magician. As such, he starts the game with a spell book containing a few beginning spells:
My Spell Book
The blorb spell (safely protect a small object as though in a strong box).
The nitfol spell (converse with the beasts in their own tongue).
The frotz spell (cause something to give off light).
The gnusto spell (write a magic spell into a spell book).
As the game continues, the player will have the opportunity to acquire a considerable number of additional spells, ranging from the obviously useful (“The rezrov spell – open a locked or enchanted object”) to the simply bizarre (“The filfre spell – cause gratuitous fireworks to appear”). Solving many of the game’s puzzles, and ultimately bringing down Krill, is dependent on the use of this magic. Using a spell to solve a problem in an especially clever way is very satisfying. Further, one of the most charming aspects of the game comes when the player tries, accidentally or on purpose, to use magic in the “wrong” way. Lebling and Blank have anticipated and written in many amusing responses for these attempts, which makes Enchanter (and, later, its two sequels) among the most enjoyable of Infocom’s games to simply play about in in an “I wonder what would happen if…” sort of way. The addition of unpredictable magic gives the whole proceeding a lighter air than Zork, more Piers Anthony -- without the creepy fixation on adolescent sexuality -- than Tolkien.
Lebling and Blank even find room for a bit of self-referential humor. The player at one point encounters what seems to be the adventurer from Zork, who putters about engaging in typical adventure behavior, from trying out strange actions just for the sake of it (“The adventurer tries to eat his sword. I don’t think it would agree with him.”) to picking up every object not nailed down in his vicinity. At another point, the player briefly peeks behind the curtain at implementers Lebling and Blank themselves. All the while, the game as a whole somehow remains serious, never slipping into the realm of pure camp or parody.
The second game of the trilogy, Sorcerer, was a bit disappointing compared to its predecessor. It was cobbled together by Steve Meretzky partially from original material and partially from the last remaining unused parts of the original mainframe Zork. To this was grafted a plot involving the disappearance of the head of the player’s Circle of Enchanters, Belboz. The spellcasting remains, and continues to charm, but Meretzky’s gonzo style of humor does not always strike the right note for the setting, and the game as a whole has, as one might imagine from its origins, a rather patchwork feel. It is remembered today mostly for two of the most original and satisfying puzzles in Infocom’s oeuvre: a new take on the maze which manages to make the hoary old adventure game stalwart actually fun to solve again, and a time travel puzzle in which the player must do what needs to be done without being spotted or otherwise violating the bounds of causality, lest the resulting paradox cause him to “cease to exist.”
The final game of the trilogy, Lebling’s Spellbreaker, was much more satisfying, if also much more difficult. Spellbreaker was allegedly written for a certain cadre of Infocom fans who continually wrote the company to say that their games were not hard enough. “You want hard? I’ll give you hard!” was apparently Lebling’s response, and Spellbreaker was the result. One hopelessly under-clued puzzle aside, the game stands even today as a model of how to do hard IF without crossing the line, continually violated by so many other companies in the eighties, into unfairness. Spellbreaker is hair-pullingly difficult, but – except, regrettably, in one place –it never abuses the player’s faith, which makes it immensely satisfying to finally solve. The time-travel puzzle from Sorcerer even returns in another form. The magic spells from the earlier two games also return, and again much fun is to be had through random experimentation with their effects. However, the game’s humor, while definitely present, is much more understated than that of Sorcerer or even Enchanter. There is a chilly, atmospheric austerity here that actually reminds me most of Zork III.
By the time of Spellbreaker, the player’s character, having defeated evil and saved the realm from disaster twice before, has become an extremely powerful and respected wizard. Magic, however, is failing through the land, and the player is left to seek out the cause and presumably stop it. Things do not turn out quite that simply, however, as the game’s ending subverts the fantasy genre and with it the player’s own expectations in a deviously clever way to make a point about the primacy, at least in Lebling’s eyes, of science and reason over magic and superstition:
You find yourself back in Belwit Square, all the guildmasters and even Belboz crowding around you. "A new age begins today," says Belboz after hearing your story. "The age of magic is ended, as it must, for as magic can confer absolute power, so it can also produce absolute evil. We may defeat this evil when it appears, but if wizardry builds it anew, we can never ultimately win. The new world will be strange, but in time it will serve us better."
Your score is 600 of a possible 600, in 1057 moves. This puts you in the class of Scientist.
The player’s class immediately before scoring those final points and solving the game was, by contrast, Archimage.
The system of magic pioneered in these games has proven to be enduringly popular in IF, and with good reason. It is, for reasons somewhat hard to put into words, just plain fun. For all of IF’s occasional literary pretensions, sometimes that is more than reason enough. Graham Nelson’s Balances and John Schiff’s Threnody make particularly entertaining use of the Enchanter model of spellcasting, and the names of the spells from the original Infocom trilogy have been adopted by the modern IF community as names for many of its interpreters and utilities. Finally, for an even more devious variation on Sorcerer’s classic time travel puzzle, see half sick of shadow’s fascinating 2004 IF Comp entry All Things Devours.
The First Interactive Tragedy: Infidel
At first glance, Mike Beryln’s second game for Infocom, Infidel, is as traditional as Suspended is outré. The player is tasked with exploring a newly discovered buried Egyptian pyramid and collecting the treasure that lies within. To do so, he must contend with a variety of traps and other obstacles, but not a single living creature. This is in fact the only Infocom game in which the player is absolutely alone from start to finish. Its puzzles are generally well-crafted and satisfying, but not terribly original even for its time, and the game’s reputation has certainly not been improved by the endless stream of mediocre adventure games that followed it in mining ancient Egypt for source material. While its successor’s failings are not Infidel’s fault, there would still be little to prompt a discussion here were it not for the back-story detailed in the game’s documentation, which comes back to the fore at the end of the game in the most unique, and controversial, ending in Infocom’s catalog. What at first appears to be a traditional text adventure morphs in that last scene into a morality tale and a tragedy.
Infidel’s documentation describes its protagonist in more detail than all but a few of the company’s other efforts, and it is not a pretty picture. Through his diary and letters, we learn that he is the junior member of an archaeological partnership, and that he harbors a burning jealously toward his counterpart. When an old woman surfaces with a treasure map left her by her deceased husband giving the location of a previously undiscovered pyramid, he decides to grab the glory and booty for himself by organizing an exhibition and departing before his partner returns from a dig of his own. His efforts at the dig site are frustrated by his lack of planning, specifically his failure to bring a navigation box that will allow him to determine his exact latitude and longitude, and thus determine precisely where to dig. While he waits for his supplier to fly one in, he drives his workers relentlessly, forcing them to dig holes in random places in the hope that they will stumble upon the temple. The workers begin to grumble, first petulantly and then menacingly, but the protagonist ignores them. Finally, he goes too far when he forces them to dig on a holy day. They drug him that evening and depart, leaving him to wake up alone the next morning in their abandoned camp in the middle of the desert. This marks the start of the game proper.
The player soon discovers the following note from his erstwhile
companions:
Fi
aman Allah!
Hereafter you shall pursue your fool dream of the hidden pyramid and its riches alone. May the jackals feed well on your bones. We have left you what you need to get back, though we hope you do not. We put several things you treasure above life itself inside your trunk, locked with your precious padlock, but we could not bear to part with the key. Especially after what you said of our rites. We hope the drug we placed in your drink did you harm. If not, we are at least satisfied you slept especially soundly while we cleaned out the camp.
Luckily, or perhaps not considering how things eventually turn out, the long-awaited plane arrives at this exact moment to drop the navigation box by parachute into the camp. With it, the industrious player can finally locate the pyramid and make his way inside. At this point we are firmly in traditional adventure game territory, right down to scoring points for collecting treasures, and we remain there until the last scene of the game. That scene, though, is not what we have been conditioned to expect:
>open sarcophagus
You lift the cover with great care, and in an instant you see all your dreams come true. The interior of the sarcophagus is lined with gold, inset with jewels, glistening in your torchlight. The riches and their dazzling beauty overwhelm you. You take a deep breath, amazed that all of this is yours. You tremble with excitement, then realize the ground beneath your feet is trembling too.
As a knife cuts through butter, this realization cuts through your mind, makes your hands shake and cold sweat appear on your forehead. The Burial Chamber is collapsing, the walls closing in. You will never get out of this pyramid alive. You earned this treasure. But it cost you your life.
As you sit there, gazing into the glistening wealth of the inner sarcophagus, you can’t help but feel a little empty, a little foolish. If someone were on the other side of the quickly-collapsing wall, they could have dug you out. If only you’d treated the workers better. If only you’d cut Craige in on the find. If only you’d hired a reliable guide.
Well, someday, someone will discover your bones here. And then you will get your fame.
Your score is 400 out of a possible 400, in 442 moves.
This gives you the rank of master adventurer.
Many contemporary players were outraged by this inversion of everything they had come to expect from their adventure games. Mike Berlyn was forced to fend off these critics in a Compuserve online chat shortly after the game’s release:
(1,Scorpia) I did not like the main character I did not like the ending. I felt it was a poor choice to have a characetr like that in an Infocom game, since, after all regardless of the main character in the story *I* am the one who is really playing the game really solving the puzzles. The character is merely a shell, and after going thru the game, I resent getting killed. GA
(1,Rolexian) Other than that, she liked it.
(1,Michael Berlyn) GA for what? What do you want me to do? I can't make you like something you don't like I can't make you appreciate something that you don't think is there. I will tell you this, though You are being very narrow-minded about what you think an Infocom game is. It doesn't HAVE to be the way you said and you don't have to think that in *EVERY* game you play, that YOU're the main character. But there's more
(1,GAIL COMER) Why did you end the game like that?
(1,Michael Berlyn) I mean, I'm a writer. I write all kinds of things. I'll get to ending when it's time to talk about it. Lemme first tackle the other points raised. A question for you: Yes or No, Scorp Have you ever read a book, seen a TV program, seen a movie where the main character wasn't someone you liked, someone you'd rather not be? GA
(1,Scorpia) Certainly.
(1,Michael Berlyn) Okay. Then that's fair. If you look at these games as shells for you to occupy and nothing more, like an RPG then you're missing the experience, or at least part of the potential experience. If you had read the journal and the letter before hand I would have hoped you would have understood just what was going on in the gamewho you were, why you were playing that kind of character. Adventures are so so STERILE!. That's the word. And I want very much to make them an unsterile experience. It's what I work for and it's my goal. Otherwise, why not just read Tom Swifts and Nancy Drews and the Hardy Boys?
Critics of the game do have a point in that the tragedy of Infidel is not truly interactive in any real sense. From the moment he begins the game, the player is railroaded to his ultimate fate in the burial chamber. The note left by the workers does imply that the player has the option of attempting to strike out for civilization rather than remaining fixated on the pyramid and its treasures, but the game does not actually provide for this choice. Presumably the player could collect all of the treasures and completely explore the pyramid, but turn away from opening the sarcophagus, but this still leaves him stranded in the desert with no food and little water, and again the game never really takes this possibility into account. Still, in bringing the weight of moral judgment to the “points for treasures” model of its predecessors, and in bringing to IF the catharsis of tragedy, Infidel broke new ground.
The story of Infocom’s long, sometimes singularly unproductive partnership with British science fiction humorist Douglas Adams is almost as interesting as the games that resulted from it. By early 1984, Adams was well-known in nerd circles as the creator of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a series of BBC radio shows which had spawned a television series and three – soon to be four – best-selling novels. Adams had admired Infocom’s work ever since playing Suspended soon after its release, and Infocom was very interested in bringing in established authors to write games, feeling it would advance its goal of establishing IF as a genuine literary form. With Hitchhiker’s having been already translated to three very different media, the idea of adding one more, an IF computer game, seemed natural enough to all concerned. An ambitious contract was signed which planned for six games, each covering one-half of one of the three currently available Hitchhiker’s novels.
Adams spent a week in Infocom’s offices in February of 1984, planning out the first game and not incidentally being introduced there to his first Apple Macintosh, a computer he would have an extended love affair with for the remainder of his short life. For the game’s development, Adams was paired with implementer Steve Meretzky:
“I’d finished my previous game Sorcerer in early February just as the Hitchhiker’s game was ready to start,” recalls Meretzky. “So partly is was a matter of timing, and partly is was Marc’s feeling that I’d be a good match for Hitchhiker’s; among the Infocom game authors, I was known for my humor, and my first game Planetfall was considered very Hitchhiker’s-like. I’d never heard/read/seen Hitchhiker’s when I wrote Planetfall, but as folks began play-testing the game, so many of them said, ‘This reminds me of Hitchhiker’s Guide,’ that I borrowed a set of tapes of the radio from a friend and listened to them. I loved them, of course” (Simpson 211-212).
After Adams’ return to England, he and Meretzky continued to collaborate on the game through the then cutting-edge medium of email. As it turned out, Meretzky did as much of the writing as Adams, not least because of Adams’ gift for procrastination, which was already legendary in publishing circles and with which Infocom would eventually have more first-hand experience than it would like. Many of the most memorably warped aspects of the resulting game were, however, Adams’:
“Douglas’ overall take on the game was a fairly direct adaptation of the existing storyline,” remembers Meretzky. “Where he really had a flood of ideas was on some of the more incidental stuff, playing with the medium of interactivity and text adventures. Things like having an inventory object called ‘no tea,’ having the game lie to you, having an object called ‘the thing your aunt gave you which you don’t know what it is’ which keeps coming back to you even if you get rid of it, and so on” (Simpson 212).
Meretzky visited Adams in England in May to put the finishing touches on the game’s design, and the standard exhausting Infocom testing process began shortly thereafter. The game was released just in time for Christmas, 1984, and became a huge commercial success for Infocom. When all was said and done, Hitchhiker’s would stand second in total sales next only to the original Zork.
Like the novel, the game centers around a mild-mannered Englishman named Arthur Dent who discovers over the course of one very long day that not only is his house about to be knocked down to make way for a new freeway bypass, but the Earth itself is about to be destroyed by a group of particularly nasty aliens known as the Vogons for similar reasons. Arthur escapes the Earth’s destruction with the aid of his friend Ford Prefect, who it turns out is a sort of roving correspondent for a unique publication known as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. A string of misadventures follow, punctuated by commentary from the Hitchhiker’s Guide, which the player can use to look up usually hilarious and occasionally even useful anecdotes about all manner of phenomena.
The game’s artistic success was not quite as unqualified as its commercial success. Certainly, though, it has many positives to recommend it. Adams was a deeply funny man, and the game is a veritable laugh riot at times, with the same brand of logical illogical that makes the books so much fun everywhere in evidence. Meretzky even seems to have caught some of Adams’ magic, for his usual sophomoric fraternity-brother style of humor here retreats in favor of Adams’ more subtlety clever approach. The ability to use the Hitchhiker’s Guide itself is perhaps the game’s greatest contribution to IF tradition. Many, many titles since have provided books that the player can use to learn more about the world he inhabits. It provides an ideal, unforced way for an author to communicate to her player information that the player will need, and the increasing prominence of books and even libraries in IF has even led to a whole new category of puzzle: the “research puzzle.” The fact that newer works of IF allow for effectively unlimited amounts of text lets contemporary authors to stretch out in this area in ways that Infocom could never dream of, of course.
However, the sort of charming absurdity that Adams worked to such great effect in his novels is more problematic when cast into a game. Too much of Hitchhiker’s Guide revolves around figuring out Adams’ uniquely skewed version of reality. Intuitive leaps are required that no author should ever require of his player, and at times the game seems to take as much or more delight in killing or just annoying its player than Zork did. While the whole is so funny that it is hard to get angry at it, it is at the same time an undeniable step back for Infocom in terms of pure game design. Yet it is saved by the brilliance of its humor. An example of a seemingly unforgivable design choice that Hitchhiker’s somehow manages to make palatable is the famous scene where the game actually lies to its player:
>listen
(to darkness)
You hear the deep and distant hum of a star drive coming from far above. There is an exit to port.
>port
You can't go that way.
>fore
You can't go that way.
>starboard
You can't go that way.
>port
You can't go that way.
>aft
(We were lying about the exit to port.) You emerge from a small doorway...
Such exasperations are everywhere in the game, along with plenty of under-clued, illogical puzzles and the occasional completely motivationless action required from the player. Still, the game is required playing even today for its sharp writing, great good humor, and general subversion of sacred IF principals. I have to recommend, though, that the non-masochist keep a walkthrough handy, and be unafraid to turn to it.
As mentioned previously, Infocom had planned Hitchhiker’s as just the first of a string of collaborations with Adams. The game in fact comes to no real resolution whatsoever, ending abruptly as the player steps out of his spaceship onto the “legendary lost planet of Magrathea,” a point about two-thirds of the way through the original novel, and telling him in no uncertain terms that he will have to wait for the sequel to find out what happens next. That sequel would never arrive. Certainly Infocom was very eager, considering the commercial success of the first game, and its eagerness only increased as the years passed and the company’s financial situation deteriorated. Several different implementers were assigned to the project at one time or another, but Adams continued to drag his feet, perhaps largely because after turning the same basic story into a radio serial, a television series, four novels, and finally a computer game, he was sick and tired of Arthur Dent and the whole Hitchhiker’s universe. Adams was branching out as a print author, and if he were to continue to collaborate with Infocom he wanted to do the same with his IF work. He came up with the idea of doing a real-world satire of the bureaucratic nightmare that is modern life, basing it partly upon personal experience. Infocom would almost certainly have rather continued with the lucrative Hitchhiker’s franchise, but acquiesced to a very enthusiastic Adams and gave the project the green light. Adams promptly disappointed everyone by losing interest in the project entirely after that initial burst of enthusiasm.
Steve Meretzky didn’t work on Bureacucray but was able to see what was happening with it. “Douglas’ procrastination seemed much worse than it was with Hitchhiker’s. That seems odd, because he did the first game only grudgingly, since he had already done Hitchhiker’s for several different media, but Bureaucracy was what he most wanted to do. Perhaps the newness and excitement of working in interactive fiction had worn off; perhaps he had more distractions in his life at that point; perhaps it was that the succession of people who my role in Bureaucracy didn’t stay with the project for more than a portion of its development cycle and therefore never became a well-integrated creative unit with Douglas; perhaps it was that, lacking the immovable Christmas deadline that Hitchhiker’s had, it was easier to let the game just keep slipping and slipping” (Simpson 224).
After literally years of delay, the staff of Infocom as a whole put the various existing bits and pieces together without Adams. The completed game finally reached store shelves in early 1987. Included within was an Easter egg that detailed its convoluted development:
Once upon a time Douglas Adams and Steve Meretzky collaborated on a game called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Everyone wanted a sequel, but Douglas thought it might be fun to do something different first. He called that something Bureaucracy, and wanted Marc Blank to work on it with him. Of course, Marc was busy, and Douglas was busy, and by the time they could both work on it, they were too busy to work on it. So, Jerry Wolper got a free trip to Las Vegas to talk to Douglas about it before it was decided to let it rest for a while instead. Jerry decided to go back to school, so Marc and Douglas spent some time on Nantucket Island looking at llamas, drinking Chateau d’Yquem, and arguing about puzzles. Nothing much happened for a while, except that Marc and Douglas got distracted again. Paul DiLascia decided to give it a try, but changed his mind and kept working on Cornerstone. Marc when to work for Simon and Schuster, and Paul went to work for Interleaf. Jeff O’Neill finished Ballyhoo and, casting about for a new project, decided to take it on, about the time Jerry graduated. Jeff got a trip to London out of it. Douglas was enthusiastic, but busy with a movie. Progress was very slow, and then Douglas was very busy with something named Dirk Gently. Jeff decided it was time to work on something else, and Brian Moriarty took it over. He visited England, and marveled at Douglas’ CD collection, but progress was slow. Eventually he decided it was time to work on something else. Paul made a cameo appearance, but decided to stay at Interleaf instead. So Chris Reeve and Tim Anderson took it over, and mucked around a lot. Finally, back in Las Vegas, Michael Bywater jumped (or was pushed) in and came to Boston for some serious script-doctoring, which made what was there into what is here. In addition, there were significant contributions from Liz Cyr-Jones, Suzanne Frank, Gary Brennan, Tomas Bok, Max Buxton, Jon Palace, Dave Lebling, Stu Galley, Linde Dynneson, and others too numerous to mention. Most of these people are not dead yet, and apologize for the inconvenience.
The remarkable thing about the completed game is just how good it actually is. Hodge-podge it may be, but it filled with some of the sharpest, funniest writing in the Infocom catalog. The fact that the game is set in the real-world of everyday life gives its humor a satirical bite that is lacking in the company’s other efforts. The game does not just go for the easy, obvious targets either. Consider its sly dig at right-wing demagoguery, here personified by a rather anthropomorphic macaw:
>x macaw
The macaw stares blankly past you, wondering why there are no right-wing protest songs.
>show painting to macaw
The macaw is clearly deeply moved by the sight of the painting of Ronald W. Reagan, and starts shrieking a vigorous and relentless R&B number about the joys of political extremism. At the same time it launches into an energetic roach-stomping flamenco dance which miraculously generates enough aerodynamic lift to catapult it (somewhat asymmetrically) into the air, where it rips up Reagan's face (which, to be honest, makes little real difference).
Exhausted but happy, it sinks back to its perch, croons repulsively the first verse of a ballad about pecking the eyes out of oppressors of the American people, and falls into a satisfied coma.
In one of its many clever little touches, the game begins by having the player fill out a form with some general information about herself, such as address, phone number, and even current boyfriend or girlfriend. It then uses this information throughout the game. For instance, the game proper opens with the player in her house on her actual street that she provided the game earlier. Later, she will receive a phone call from her significant other ending the relationship. Another unique little gimmick is the game’s use of a blood pressure meter. Any time something annoying happens to the player, even something as simple as a typo or command whose phrasing the game does not understand, her blood pressure will increase slightly, and will only decrease again gradually after a period of time free from annoyance. Should the player’s blood pressure get too high, she will burst an artery and die.
The game’s plot involves the player attempting to get from her hometown to Paris for a conference being conducted by her new company. Perhaps reflecting the game’s piecemeal origins, it is divided into three sections. The first and best is set in the player’s home town, and satirizes middles class life and all of its accouterments – unhelpful bank tellers, hopelessly muddled mailmen, etc. The second deals with the endless frustrations of airports and airlines. In the third section, the player ends up through a bizarre turn of events stranded in the African jungle, where she has her final showdown with a lonely computer nerd who has, as it turns out, been responsible for her troubles all along. The game’s relentless razzing of this character throughout its length is absolutely hilarious, especially considering that the text adventure demographic Infocom serviced probably consisted of many characters just like him:
The ghastly nerd reappears at your side, peering myopically through his filthy Coke-bottle spectacles. "There you are!" he whines. "I've got something I know you'll want. A Boysenberry XiGT6HP Special! Only 76 bucks!"
The game as a whole is a wonderful example of Infocom’s mature technology and philosophy of game design. All of the old text adventure annoyances are gone by now, and what is left is pure pleasure, from its capable, flexible parser to its deep and thorough implementation of the environments it models. No one else at the time was capable of producing work of this level of sophistication. Against all odds, the game is truly one of the company’s best, and deserves more praise than it generally receives in my opinion. For a huge and disjointed but often amusing second take on Bureaucracy’s theme, try Carol Hovick’s AGT classic Klaustrophobia.
IF for Beginners: Wishbringer