In Search of the Most Amazing Thing

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In Search of the Most Amazing Thing (ISOTMAT) is a computer game designed by Tom Snyder Productions and published by Spinnaker Software in 1983. Although marketed as a children's game, ISOTMAT drew acclaim from players of all ages for its original concept and imaginative game world.

The game begins on a mysterious planet, Porquatz, with the androgynous player, Terry Bailey, exploring his/her subterranean home city by elevator. Terry's mysterious uncle, Smoke Bailey, has recently arrived in a strange craft known as the B-Liner, a hybridized all-terrain vehicle and hot-air balloon. Finding Smoke napping in his room, and waking him from his reverie with repeated shouts, Terry is tasked by Smoke to embark in the B-Liner on a quest for a lost artifact known only as "The Most Amazing Thing".

Navigating the world outside the city, known as the Mire, is a considerable challenge. Driving the B-Liner over the tar-like surface is easy, but consumes precious fuel. To conserve fuel, the B-Liner can float above the Mire in unpowered flight, but this requires the player to carefully trim the B-Liner's altitude to take advantage of different wind currents prevailing at different altitudes.

To investigate notable objects in the Mire, the player can perform EVA using a personal jetpack. Encounters range from the benign Popberry trees, which provide fuel for the B-Liner, to the deadly Mire crabs, to the quizzical merchant aliens who provide Terry with vital clues and supplies for the quest. To trade with these aliens, the player must create Musix, a simple line-drawing translated by the game into an atonal melody, which is then evaluated by the aliens according to their inscrutable aesthetics. Due to their intrinsic shyness — and the limited graphical technology available to the game's designers — the aliens communicate with the player entirely in a form of semaphore code, utilizing the only visible part of their anatomy: twin antennae, protruding coyly over the edge of the aliens' "desks".

At the game's conclusion, the player finally discovers the identity of the Most Amazing Thing. Directed to face a mirror, the player realizes that the Most Amazing Thing is, in fact, his or her own self.