1893: A World's Fair Mystery

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1893: A World's Fair Mystery
Studio The Illuminated Lantern
Publisher The Illuminated Lantern
Senior Developer Peter Nepstad
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 July 14, 2002
platform platform independent
Game engine TADS 2
genre Text adventure
medium CD-ROM , download
language English

1893: A World's Fair Mystery is a text adventure by the American author Peter Nepstad from 2002. It is a crime thriller that takes place in 1893 on the grounds of the World's Columbian Exposition . The events are fictional, but take place against an accurately reconstructed background.

action

Eight diamonds were stolen from the exhibition pavilion of the fictional Kimberly Diamond Mining Company on the grounds of the World's Fair, including one of the largest diamonds in the world, which Queen Victoria had been given by the company and which she had given to the World's Fair as a loan. The police officer responsible for the security of the exhibition is overburdened and calls an investigator friend to help: the player. A note found on the scene suggests that the diamonds may have been hidden on the exhibition grounds. As the game progresses, the investigation expands to include a kidnapping case, and ultimately even a murder to solve.

Game principle and technology

1893 is a text adventure, which means that the environment and events are displayed as screen text and the visualization is largely up to the player's imagination. In contrast to classic text adventures, which do not have any graphic decoration, 1893 comes up with a picture of the respective environment and a graphic interface for navigation within the game world, which has over 300 rooms. The images and the navigation interface (a compass rose expanded by a few meta commands) are locked at a fixed width on the right edge of the game screen, while the window for the text output has a variable width. The game is accompanied by contemporary music. An important component of the game is the conversation with computer-controlled NPCs , whom you can ask about various case-relevant topics and to whom you can also give orders in some cases. The playing time is about 30 hours.

A major factor in gameplay is time. The game starts on Monday morning at 10:00 am, and one minute passes by per turn. Certain events occur depending on the date and time. Over time, the game character becomes hungry and thirsty, which forces the player to go to restaurants or food stalls on the exhibition grounds; the necessary money is made available to him in the form of a daily flat rate by the Chicago police. In order to simplify navigation in the game world, authentic means of transport such as a train, ferries and gondolas have been implemented, which, like food and drink, cost money. A help system is available within the game, which tries to give the player context-sensitive help on specific problems in solving the puzzle.

1893 is platform-independent, but requires an interpreter for the TADS programming language used to play . This must be installed separately by the player and is available as freeware for all common, but also for historical or exotic operating systems such as AmigaOS or BeOS as well as for mobile devices.

Production notes

Author Peter Nepstad is a management consultant and lives in Chicago. 1893 is his first interactive fiction game; He chose the subject after doing some research on the history of Chicago because the 1893 World's Fair seemed to him to be a decisive event in the history of the city. Research into the game and its development took four years. At first he used his free time for this. After the dissolution of his employer Arthur Andersen in the context of the Enron scandal, Nepstad used his eight months of unemployment to complete the game. The development environment used is TADS, a programming language with a compiler and standard library for developing text adventures. The first published version from July 2002 did not contain any graphical user interface. Only a version from October 2002 contained graphics and background music. The pictures of the game environment and the people involved, over 500 in number, are photographs from the 1893 World's Fair.

From 2003 to 2010 the game was available under a commercial license in a download - and in a real version (on CD-ROM ), which also contained an interpreter. According to the author Nepstad, over 4000 copies have been sold. Since the counter retail showed no interest in the game, the sale occurred primarily on museums and the site of the first only for the distribution of 1893 established Publishers The Illuminated Lantern. The tangible version included a map of the exhibition site, a 27-page exhibition brochure and a replica of an admission ticket as materials to increase immersion .

reception

reviews
publication Rating
Adventure Gamers 4.5 / 5
Just Adventure B +

1893 received mostly positive reviews. The trade magazine Adventure Gamers pointed out that among all accessible media, only adventures made it possible to retrospectively participate in historical events. Editor Evan Dickens praised a fun and well-written narratives and authentic reconstruction of the World's Fair, but criticized the fact that the manner of an open-world game at the beginning completely accessible game world in 1893 nonlinearly do what could overwhelm inexperienced players. All in all, he rated the game as "one of the most fantastic adventure games" he has ever played. The New York Times described 1893 as a "hit" among text adventures, which stood out from the classics of the genre due to the sophistication of its programming and gave it a "small comeback". In 2003, the US magazine Game Chronicles identified 1,893 computer gamers over the age of 30 as a target group , as they would have grown up with classic text adventures. History buffs, teachers and students were named as further target persons. The magazine assessed that the meticulous attention to detail that had flowed into the development of the game world ensured an “overwhelming immersion”. The game brings a "fresh gust of wind" into the computer game landscape. From a technical point of view, the magazine drew parallels to Spellcasting 301 , which offered a comparable interface. The US trade magazine Game Industry News ruled that 1893 brought the elegance of the text adventure genre implied by reduction to the fore, and that because of the level of detail in the open game world, the player ran the risk of forgetting to solve the crime as a game goal. The trade magazine Just Adventure praised the character drawing of the NPCs, the interface and the “solid story” that Nepstad laid over the reconstruction of the exhibition. However, the magazine pointed out negatively that the large and freely accessible play area leads to losing track of where the items needed to solve individual puzzles can be found.

At the XYZZY Awards 2002, one of the three big annual award ceremonies of the interactive fiction scene, was nominated for two prizes in 1893 and won in the category “Best Setting”. In the documentary film Get Lamp about the history of the text adventure genre, 1893 and its development history are portrayed.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c JustAdventure.com: Throwback Thursday - 1893: A World's Fair Mystery. Retrieved December 29, 2017 .
  2. ^ Erik Langskaill: Interview with Peter Nepstad . In: SPAG . No. 32, March 20, 2003.
  3. ↑ IlluminatedLantern.com: About. Retrieved December 29, 2017 .
  4. ↑ a b c NYTimes.com: A Game With a Low Body Count. Retrieved December 29, 2017 .
  5. ↑ a b MobyGames.com: Trivia. Retrieved December 29, 2017 .
  6. ↑ a b AdventureGamers.com: 1893: A World's Fair Mystery. Retrieved December 29, 2017 .
  7. ↑ GameChronicles.com: 1893: A World's Fair Mystery. Retrieved December 29, 2017 .
  8. ↑ GameIndustry.com: 1893: More Than Fair. Retrieved December 29, 2017 .