| Suspended: A Cryogenic Nightmare | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Infocom |
| Publisher(s) | Infocom |
| Designer(s) | Michael Berlyn |
| Engine | ZIL |
| Platform(s) | Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Commodore Plus/4, MS-DOS, TRS-80, TI-99/4A, Macintosh |
| Release date(s) | Release 5: February 22, 1983
Release 7: April 19, 1983 |
| Genre(s) | Interactive fiction |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | n/a |
| Media/distribution | 3½" or 5¼" disk |
| System requirements
No special requirements |
|
Suspended: A Cryogenic Nightmare is an interactive fiction video game written by Michael Berlyn and published by Infocom in 1983. Like most Infocom titles, it was available on most popular personal computers of the day, such as the Apple II, PC, Atari ST and Commodore 64. It was Infocom's sixth game.
Contents |
The player's character has been embedded within a facility that controls vital systems, such as moving public transportation belts and weather control, for an Earth-settled planet called Contra. During the player's five-hundred-year tenure, the player would normally be kept in stasis while his sleeping mind serves as the Central Mentality for the largely self-maintaining systems. As the game opens, however, he is awakened by severe error messages; something is going wrong. The facility has suffered catastrophic damage from an earthquake, and the Filtering Computers are shutting down or becoming dangerously unstable. The inhabitants of the city assume that the Central Mentality has gone insane and is purposely harming the city, as a previous CM had done. The player's task is to repair the damage and restore the systems to normal states before a crew arrives at the facility to "disconnect" his mind, killing him, to be replaced with a clone.
Suspended takes a novel approach in its game mechanics; rather than being free to move about and interact with the game world directly, the player's character spends the entire game in a state of suspended animation (hence the title) and can only interact by controlling the actions of a number of robot surrogates. Each robot has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and describes the same rooms and objects in completely different terms based upon those specializations. The robots are:
So, for example, Auda will describe a room primarily in terms of the sounds being generated there, Poet will describe it in terms of diagnostics of the equipment there (and phrase it in amusingly metaphorical language), and Iris will provide a visual description. All six of the robots can be given orders in conjunction, and some of the challenges the player faces require that several of the robots work together to solve them.
There is also a seventh robot, an all-purpose multifunction repair robot named Fred, who spends the entirety of the game broken and cannot be repaired. (See red herring.)
The tradition of feelies, or extra items included in the game package, was started with the release of Deadline and continued with Suspended. The game's feelies included:
One unique feature of Suspended was that the player's "score" was given in the number of deaths suffered as a result of the malfunctioning systems, rather than a number of points for collecting objects or accomplishing goals.
The game offered three difficulty settings, which affected the number of turns the player had before "disconnection". As one of the many unique features of this game, the player could also play a customized version, configuring how long the game would last and where some of the robots would initially appear. The game also featured a unique "Impossible" setting, which lived up to its name, since the sun went nova after only a few turns, destroying the entire planet.
Due to the complicated series of actions required to win the game and the lack of initial information, however, even the easiest setting is widely considered very difficult. Infocom gave Suspended a difficulty rating of "Expert". Still, Suspended was a highly regarded game; science fiction writer Douglas Adams, an early fan of Infocom games, was particularly taken with it. [1]
The original package for Suspended featured a life-sized white plastic mask set into the front of the box, which has become the most sought-after Infocom collectible item. This was replaced in later packages by a picture of a face.
The working title for the game was Suspension.
"Fooble", which is one of the possible reset codes, is the name of one of the vials in Sorcerer, which was released the following year.
Suspended was well-received by critics. A review by Computer Gaming World considered each robot to have a unique personality, and praised the use of the library computer as an in-game hint system. The game's parser and time-saving techniques (such as a "follow" command) were similarly praised.[1]
Only your wits can save the world.