Gnome Ranger
| Gnome Ranger | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Level 9 |
| Publisher | Level 9, Rainbird |
| Senior Developer | Pete Austin |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
September 1987 |
| platform | Amstrad PCW , Apple II , Atari 8-bit , Atari ST , Commodore 64 , Commodore Amiga , MS-DOS , MSX , Schneider CPC , ZX Spectrum |
| Game engine | KAOS |
| genre | Text adventure |
| Game mode | Single player |
| control | keyboard |
| medium | Cassette , floppy disk |
| language | English |
| copy protection | Manual query |
Gnome Ranger is a text adventure with graphics developed by the British computer game manufacturer Level 9 . It was released for various home computers from September 1987 .
action
The dwarf Ingrid Bottomlow has fallen out with her family, who accuses her unzwergisches behavior - she did a degree in economics. The angry family banishes her from her home village of Gnettlefield and uses a teleportation spell to transport her to the middle of an unknown forest. Leaving it alive is the aim of the game. There are three sub-goals to be achieved: An evil witch must be defeated and then a fertility potion must be made, and finally minor problems of a large number of living beings populating the game world must be solved.
Gameplay
Gnome Ranger is a text adventure, which means that surroundings and events are displayed as text on the screen and the actions of the player are also entered as text using the keyboard. A special feature of the textual representation is the prefixing of the letter G in front of words that begin with N, which is a reference to the game title that contains this letter combination. “North” becomes “gnorth”, “nothing” becomes “gnothing” etc. This is a joke by the designers that has no effect on the game. In almost all versions, hand-drawn still images illustrating the scenery are displayed; only the cassette, 8-bit Atari and Apple II versions have to do without any graphic background due to the limited memory. Also for reasons of storage space, the game is divided into three parts that can only be started sequentially, the content of which can be subsumed under the main themes of animals , plants and minerals . The game's parser is quite advanced compared to other text adventures of the time, as well as previous Level 9 games. The navigation is simplified by commands like “follow” or “find”, and NPCs can be given multi-level commands. NPCs can also move around freely and do scripted activities.
Development history
The game was developed with the help of Level 9's own programming language KAOS ( Knight Orc Adventure System , the scrolling of the letters was ignored), which enabled a large scope of play through efficient text compression and, through platform independence, enabled fast and inexpensive porting to other systems and a further development of the one before 1987 used, also in-house A-code system. KAOS was developed by Level 9 for the Knight Orc game, published directly before Gnome Ranger , and focused on interacting with and by NPCs. Company founder Pete Austin had previously argued in interviews that the future of adventure games would lie in increased interaction with NPCs. As an insert, the game contained a short story by Peter McBride called The Gnettlefield Journal , which provided the background story of the game and was used as copy protection, as words from the story had to be typed in at random when the program started. Gnome Ranger is the first humorous level 9 game and the first to sign up for the one with the time to BT Group owned company Rainbird was looking for a distribution partner.
reception
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The game has largely received praise in contemporary reviews. The plot, the puzzles, the NPCs and the atmosphere were particularly emphasized. The content-related proximity to the predecessor Knight Orc , the poorly digitized graphics and the fact that the parser does not meet the expectations of the player in some situations were criticized .
- ACE Magazine: 915/1000
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c ACE Magazine # 03, December 1987, available online
- ↑ Company history on IF-Legends.org
- ↑ Uwe Winkelkötter: Ingrid in need . In: Current software market . December 1987.
- ↑ a b Anatol Locker: Gnome Ranger . In: Power Play . January 1987, p. 85.
- ↑ a b Gnome Ranger . In: Your Sinclair . No. 26, February 1988, p. 84.