A Mind Forever Voyaging

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A Mind Forever Voyaging
Studio Infocom
Publisher Infocom
Senior Developer Steve E. Meretzky
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 1985
platform Amiga , Apple II , Atari ST , C128 , Mac OS Classic , MS-DOS
Game engine Z-machine
genre Text adventure
Game mode Single player
control keyboard
medium diskette
language English
copy protection Feelies

A Mind Forever Voyaging is a text adventure from Infocom written by Steve E. Meretzky and written in 1985. The game follows the tradition of dystopian novels such as Aldous Huxley's " Brave New World " and George Orwell's " 1984 ".

action

It is the year 2031 in the United States of North America (USNA). The economy is stagnating and the number of unemployed is exploding. Crime rules the streets and schools. The computer technicians Dr. Abraham Perelman and Dr. Aseejh Randu want to create a computer that thinks like a human, i.e. has artificial intelligence . To achieve this goal, they develop a computer that takes in and stores information like a human brain, and they call it PRISM. The scientists give PRISM a human identity called Perry Simm. In order for Perry Simm to act authentically like a person, the scientists let him go through a simulated childhood and adolescence. After 20 years of simulated life, he is confronted with the task for which he was created. At the beginning of the game, Perry Simm doesn't know he's not human until its creator, Dr. Abraham Perelman reveals the background of his existence to him. Dr. Perelman explains to him that he was created to observe the future effects of a new political concept in a simulated future and to tell scientists about his everyday experiences in this simulation. The simulation in the game is divided into different time periods: ten, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years in the future. At first, the new political concept seems to work, but later simulations show that it would have fatal consequences if it were to be adapted. The task now is to stop the plan before PRISM can be switched off by its lobbyists.

Game principle and technology

A Mind Forever Voyaging 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. The character is controlled via commands that the player enters using the keyboard and that are processed by a parser . The commands are in natural language and allow the game character to interact with his environment. The player can move through the game world, find objects, apply them to the environment or other objects and communicate with NPCs . As the story progresses, more locations in the game world will be unlocked.

Production notes

Meretzky was the first game programmer ever to win an award from the American Association of Science Fiction Writers for the game.

The title of the game and the name PRISM refer to the section from William Wordsworth's autobiographical poem The Prelude , in which he describes the view of the statue of Isaac Newton when he was a student at the University of Cambridge :

And from my pillow, looking forth by light
Of moon or favoring stars, I could behold
The antechapel where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.

reception

The specialist magazine SPAG stated that A Mind Forever Voyaging was more an "experience" than a game up to the third game segment in the sense that there were hardly any puzzles in the first game segments. For puzzle-oriented players, the game is boring at times, and the scenario in detail is implausible because the future prognoses are too detailed and the data collection by sending an AI into a simulation is implausible. Overall, A Mind Forever Voyaging belongs to the top three serious games from Infocom.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Review of the SPAG magazine. Retrieved July 1, 2015 .