The Daedalus Encounter
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The Daedalus Encounter is a computer game from 1995. It is an adventure/puzzle game from the short-lived subgenre of interactive movies. It was distributed by Virgin Interactive, and was released for the IBM PC compatible, Apple Macintosh, and 3DO.
The game follows a trio of space marines who fought in an interstellar war: Casey (the player character), Ari (Tia Carrere) and Zack (Christian Bocher). The game opens, and the story begins, just as Casey has been brought back to life by his partners. After being in a horrible space accident, Casey's body was all but destroyed, and he is now only a brain, grafted to a small flying pod (a "Virtual Control Center"). In this new form, Casey possesses limited ability to interact with his environment, his only way to communicate being through a yes/no interface and by emitting light pulses. Upon awakening, Casey finds out that the war is over and that Ari and Zack have become pirates, stealing salvage from the war to survive. During a salvage mission, the trio crash into and are stranded on a derelict alien spacecraft, which is on a collision course with a star. It is up to Casey to help his partners and explore the mystery of the Daedalus spaceship.
In order to save themselves, the trio must explore the huge alien ship and solve a large number of Myst-like puzzles, such as connecting colored laser-beams with mirrors, playing an advanced form of connect-the-dots with a computer interface, and one combat sequence, battling aliens called Krin. The puzzles are mixed with acting sequences from Carrere and Bocher, whose interaction with the player creates some light-hearted comedy. For example, during one mission, Bocher's Zack exclaims that the dead aliens on a ship near the beginning are "ugly." Carrere's Ari responds, "Why Zack, I always thought you found them quite... attractive." To which Zack says, "Hey, I was drunk that night, okay? And you swore to me it was female."
The game is available for the 3DO, Macintosh, and PC. In the 3DO version, the video is full-screen; in the other two versions, the video is in a window inside of an organic interface. The PC version has quite a few bugs that have never been worked out. While the game wasn't a huge hit on Windows, it is still fondly remembered by some Macintosh gaming fans, as it was a part of the multimedia package that was included with the Macintosh Performa at the time.
It is said that Tia Carrere developed an oversensitivity to the color blue as a result of all the bluescreen filming involved in the game's production. According to Carrere in one interview, she specifically requested that her character be unable to be killed directly by the player.
