Silicon Dreams trilogy
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| Silicon Dreams | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Level 9 Computing |
| Publisher(s) | Firebird - United States Rainbird - Europe |
| Designer(s) | Snowball Nick Austin, Mike Austin and Pete Austin with additional help from Ian Buxton. Return to Eden Nick Austin and Chris Queen with art by Tim Noyce The Worm in Paradise Nick Austin, Mike Austin and Pete Austin with art by James Horsler |
| Engine | 32K virtual machine (custom) |
| Release date(s) | 1986 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure game |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Platform(s) | Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari, Commodore 64, MS-DOS and ZX Spectrum |
| Media | Compact Cassette or Floppy disk |
| System requirements | No special requirements |
| Input | Computer keyboard |
The Silicon Dreams trilogy by Level 9 Computing consists of three text adventure games: Snowball (1983), Return to Eden (1984) and The Worm in Paradise (1985). They appeared together in a single bundle in 1986. The games used Level 9's A-code interpreted language and appeared on a number of platforms.
Contents |
[edit] Snowball
[edit] Story
After a hundred-years voyage, the starship Snowball 9 (sometimes referred as "Snowball IX" during the game) arrives at the Eridani A system. Its final destination is Eden, an Earth-like planet. While the Snowball 9 have been sailing through the stars, an army of robots spawned from the probe that charted Eden, have been busy. They've built a place to live for the colonist, the city of Enoch.
The ship consists of ten giant disks, each carrying two hundred thousand colonist in stasis, and the engine unit in front, which act as a tower. The ship's series receive its name from the ten-ton shell of ammonia ice built around the passenger disks; this shell has served as fuel for the fusion engines during the trip.
One of the crewmembers goes insane: she murders her colleagues, damages the ship's equipment and sets the Snowball 9 on a collision course with a star. This is when Kim Kimberly, the main character, enters the picture. She (read the trivia below) is a British-born expert in counter-espionage, who boarded the ship undercover as a colonist.
Kim's mission is not easy. She awakes on the last passenger disk, and must cross the entire ship to reach the control room. With her wits as her only weapon, Kim must deal with the ship's defenses while she looks for the necessary equipment to complete the mission and avoid disaster.
[edit] About the Game
Snowball was noteworthy for including over seven thousand locations, more than the average adventure game of its day, when most games were played on home microcomputers with small memory capacities. To achieve this effect, all rooms in the passenger disks are identical.
While 6,800 of those locations formed a color-coded maze and have minimal description, some locations received a more colorful treatment: "You are on a significant cylindrical ledge above steps to a toroidal walkway. Transpex tubes lead away through a maze of wires and machinery" and "The south wall is a wavery and obscure confusion of flickery vids".
[edit] Trivia
[edit] "More Than a Thousand Words..."
The original version was text-only. Level 9 added pictures to the game when they re-released it as part of the trilogy bundle. On some platforms, the sequels were also text-only, and the three games remained that way when Level 9 released them as a trilogy bundle for such platforms.
[edit] Kim's Gender
Level 9 deliberately chose the unisex name of Kim Kimberley for the main character, so that the player could imagine it as male or female. However, artwork of early editions clearly shows Kim as a woman.
The fact that in Return to Eden the surviving crewmembers confuse Kim with the female hijacker, confirms that the character is a woman.
[edit] The Missing Paragraph
As with any game ported many times, there are slight variations among the different versions of Snowball but the story remains the same, except for a paragraph. In most versions, when Kim Kimberley activates certain mechanism found on the starting location, the consequence of this action is, "The lid above rises and a light comes on.. [sic]" Some versions include the full description, reproduced here textually:
The lid above rises, a light comes on and a low voice murmurs beside your head, "Good Morning, Kim Kimberley. Please lie still while your metabolism stabilises: you have been hibernating for a long while." Treakly musak plays for a few minutes and then the voice returns, "Welcome to the interstellar colony spaceship, Snowball 9. As you'll have realised, you've been awakened while I am still in flight because we have a problem: my central control room has been occupied by a hijacker who is not - and please excuse my criticism of the human being - entirely sane. She seems obsessed with the idea of crashing into the sun. I've told her it's impossible but she just laughs. I'm sure you'll be more than a match for her, though, provided you avoid the Night.." The voice cuts off in mid-sentence.
[edit] Return to Eden
[edit] Story
With the Snowball 9 in orbit around Eden, the surviving crewmembers put Kim on trial for the crisis that almost cost them their lives. The only evidence against her is the "mempak" from the control room, which shows her as the hijacker rather than the savior. Despite the fact that it's an unreliable, damaged recording, they sentence her to death.
About to be throw into space, Kim boards a "stratoglider" and an hour later, becomes the first human to set foot on Eden. She's far from being safe: the Snowball 9 crew use the ship's engines as cannons and try to burn her down. They have no idea what they have brought to themselves.
The ship's equipment is still damaged, and the crew has no idea the robots have been trying to establish communication with them. The robots take Kim's failed execution as an attack against Eden and as proof that the Snowball 9, which arrived months ahead of schedule, is not the human ship they were expecting but an hostile alien craft they must destroy.
Kim's new mission is twofold: she must clear her name and contact the robots before time runs out for the people of the Snowball 9. It won't be easy, as the area surrounding Enoch is a battlefield between the robots and Eden's fauna. Once again, Kim must rely on her wits to achieve the impossible.
[edit] Trivia
The first cover for the game had a robot fighting a monster plant in Enoch. The robot resembled a comic book character, so to avoid legal troubles, Level 9 commissioned Godfrey Dowson to do a new cover. Dowson's illustration depicted another robot in the jungle looking towards Enoch. Level 9 wasn't satisfied with the result and asked Dowson to do it again. They liked the third cover so much, they hired Dowson to do artwork for the re-release of their old games as well as for their future titles.
[edit] The Worm in Paradise
[edit] Story
A hundred years after the arrival of colonists aboard the Snowball 9, a citizen of Eden finds himself involved in a conspiracy that could bring down the "benevolent bureaucracy" of the third Kim. Are the rumors of an alien menace true? What secrets hide the bright megapolis of Enoch? The player has seven days to find out.
The Worm in Paradise carries a large dose of social commentary, relative to other games of the same genre and era.
[edit] Trivia
[edit] The Orc Connection
Knight Orc, another Level 9 game, takes place in a Reveline simulation. This kind of simulation first appeared in The Worm in Paradise. At the end of the game, the characters from Knight Orc escape from the simulation.
[edit] Believe It or Not...
The game drew inspiration from the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
