Borrowed Time (computer game)
| Borrowed Time | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Interplay |
| Publisher | Activision |
| Senior Developer |
Brian Fargo Michael Cranford |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
1985 |
| platform | Apple II , Atari ST , Commodore 64 , Commodore Amiga , Mac OS , MS-DOS |
| genre | Graphic adventure |
| Game mode | Single player |
| control | keyboard |
| medium | diskette |
| language | English |
Borrowed Time is a computer game by the US developer studio Interplay from 1985. It belongs to the genre of text adventures .
action
The plot in the style of a detective story of the crime genre of the "Black Series" takes place in the USA in the 1930s. The player character is the private detective Sam Harlow. His ex-wife Rita Sweeney has been kidnapped and he tries to free her. He is pursued by gangsters who try to kill him. For Harlow, about 20 people come into question as masterminds of the ongoing attacks on him.
Gameplay
Borrowed Time is a text adventure with an additional graphical user interface. It is controlled via the keyboard; as an alternative, many commands and objects can be selected from a graphic menu using the joystick or mouse. The locomotion is done in the same way; a selection window with cardinal directions is available here. The game is shown as text; In addition, the game has two-dimensional, hand-painted still images, some of which are animated and illustrate the environment and the game. For example, the player has to question suspects and collect pieces of evidence at the different locations in order to achieve the goal of the game. Some game actions have a time limit for problem resolution.
Development and production details
The game was produced by Brian Fargo and Michael Cranford. The title was produced by Interplay for Activision and was part of a $ 100,000 contract that comprised a total of three adventure games. Interplay founder Fargo already had experience in the adventure genre: his first game was the adventure Demon's Forge , which was released for Apple II in 1981. The parser used by Interplay is a development by Fargo and a colleague and had a dictionary with 250 nouns and 200 verbs in one development stage and was able to evaluate input with prepositions and indirect objects. The same engine was used in the previous games Mindshadow and The Tracer Sanction . The texts and a large part of the game design come from Subway Software, a company founded by the game journalist Bill Kunkel especially for Borrowed Time . Fargo outsourced the paperwork as he felt that no one at Interplay could produce high quality prose.
In 1990 Mastertronic published the game again with the help of an Interplay license, this time in the cheap segment and under the title Time To Die .
reception
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The computer magazine Happy Computer especially praised the atmospheric crime story, the successful graphics and the comfortable controls. Reviewer Heinrich Lenhardt judged that Borrowed Time gave the adventure genre new impulses through its technical features. Co-reviewer Boris Schneider-Johne criticized slight inadequacies in the parser.
Web links
- Borrowed Time at MobyGames (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Rusel DeMaria, Johnny L. Wilson: High Score. Second edition, McGraw-Hill / Osborne: Emeryville, California, 2004. Page 209. ISBN 0-07-223172-6
- ↑ Shay Addams: if yr cmptr cn rd ths ... . In: Computer Entertainment . August 1985, p. 24.
- ↑ Filfre.net: Brian Fargo and Interplay. Retrieved February 25, 2017 .
- ↑ Computer Gaming World # 69, March 1990, p. 58: Time To Buy? Retrieved February 25, 2017 . (PDF, 27 mb)
- ^ A b Heinrich Lenhardt: Borrowed Time . In: Happy Computer . , P. 52.