Essex (computer game)
| Essex | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Synapse software |
| Publisher | Brøderbund |
| Senior Developer | Bill Darrah |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
1985 |
| platform | Apple II , Atari 8-Bit , Atari ST , C64 , MS-DOS |
| Game engine | BTZ ("Better Than Zork ") |
| genre | Text adventure |
| Game mode | Single player |
| control | keyboard |
| medium | diskette |
| language | English |
Essex is a text adventure from the US developer Synapse Software , which was published in 1985 by publisher Brøderbund for Apple II , Atari 8-Bit , Atari ST , Commodore 64 and DOS .
action
The earth is at war with the Vollkhonen race. Professor Klein discovered a way to defeat the Vollchonen by closing an interdimensional wormhole, but crashed his spaceship on a planet. The (space) cruise ship Essex under Captain Dee is the only ship that could be there in time to save Klein. The player's job is to deliver the order for the rescue mission to Dee. Later in the game the player must, among other things other passengers exposed as spies and on a planet, which the Essex , raw materials used for the propulsion of happened Essex organize.
Game principle and technology
Essex is a text adventure, which means that surroundings and events are displayed as screen text and the actions of the player are also entered as text via the keyboard and processed by a parser . The lower fifth of the screen is used to enter commands and the parser's reactions to them, the upper 80% are reserved for the representation of the environment and what is happening. A distinctive feature of Essex compared to the majority of contemporary text adventures is the dynamic game environment. About a dozen NPCs representing fellow travelers or Essex servants go about their own business, which makes interaction with them variable. The game environment itself, at least the spaceship Essex , changes depending on the progress of the story.
Production notes
The game was marketed as an “electronic novel” in order to distinguish itself from the often technically simple text adventures of the early 1980s and to create a proximity to the high-quality products of the Infocom company . Like its predecessor Mindwheel and the Brimstone, which was released at the same time, Essex uses the BTZ ("Better Than Zork ") engine , which was developed by the programmers Cathryn Mataga (then William Mataga) and Steve Hales . In contrast to Mindwheel , however, it was not a full-time writer who wrote the script for Essex , but Synapse programmer Bill Darrah. The game box contained a printed short story in book form, which was referenced in the game and thus represented copy protection.
Author Bill Darrah, who also programmed Brimstone in the same year , wrote the Atari ST version of Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders in 1988 .
reception
| ||||||
The ASM primarily criticized the long loading times of the C64 version, which were due to the fact that all text had to be reloaded from diskette and, according to the ASM reviewer Ulrich Mühl, stifled all motivation of the player. The Atari ST user magazine positively highlighted the highly developed parser and the lifelike NPCs, but criticized the low-quality package inserts ("rip-off") and a boring presentation of the game, and gave Essex a high level of difficulty. The blog “The Digital Antiquarian” by interactive fiction writer Jimmy Maher points out that Essex is clearly indicated that a programmer wrote the script; Darrah regularly confuses "elegant with stilted" language and can also not decide whether Essex should be a Star Trek parody or homage.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Article in the Digital Antiquarian. Retrieved June 8, 2015 .
- ↑ ASM 8 + 9 1987, p. 71, available online
- ↑ Atari ST User, August 1986, p. 15, available online