Ingrid's Back

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ingrid's Back
Studio Level 9
Publisher Level 9, Rainbird
Senior Developer Pete Austin, Peter McBride
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 1988
platform Amiga , Amstrad CPC , Amstrad PCW , Apple II , Atari 8-bit , Atari ST , C64 , MS-DOS , Spectrum +3
Game engine KAOS
genre Text adventure
control keyboard
medium Cassette, floppy disk
language English
copy protection Manual query

Ingrid's Back is a text adventure with graphics, developed by the British computer game manufacturer Level 9 . It is the successor to the adventure game Gnome Ranger and was released in 1988 for various home computers .

action

After Gnomin Ingrid Bottomlow returned to her home village Little Moaning in the previous game, in the sequel Ingrid's Back she has to save it from the speculator Jasper Quickbuck, who wants to gentrify the village and for this purpose throws the residents out of their houses. To stop Quickbuck, Ingrid u. a. a petition against his plans, for which she has to produce ten signatures, and hires out on his property as a housekeeper to find incriminating material against him.

Gameplay

Ingrid's Back is a text adventure, which means that the environment and events are displayed as screen text and the player's actions are also entered as text via 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 of the predecessor that contained 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, Apple II and 8-bit Atari versions have to do without any graphic background due to the limited memory. Also for reasons of memory space, the game is divided into three parts that can only be started sequentially. In part one Ingrid organizes a petition against Quickbuck, in part two she has to prevent the demolition of her family's house and in part three she works as a housekeeper in Quickbuck's property. Ingrid is accompanied by her dog Flopsy in the first two parts, and by her cousin Daisy in the third part. 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 game Knight Orc and focused on acting by and with NPCs. Company founder Pete Austin had previously argued in interviews that the future of adventure games would lie in increased interaction with NPCs.

As a supplement, the game contained the Second Gnettlefield Journal , which took on the function of a manual, but also contained a diary of the protagonist, which was referenced for copy protection purposes. The diary was written by Peter McBride, who had already designed the Gnome Ranger manual and was also involved in the game design of the successor.

reception

Your Sinclair criticized the poor graphics and sporadic weaknesses of the parser and praised the humor and the lifelike NPCs. ASM praised the parser, atmosphere and graphics. Power Play found the game to be average in every way.

magazine Rating link
ASM 8/10 link
Power play 56/100 link
Your Sinclair 9/10 link

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ACE Magazine # 03, December 1987, available online