Moonmist
| Moonmist | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Infocom |
| Publisher | Infocom |
| Senior Developer | Stuart Galley, Jim Lawrence |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
1986 |
| platform | Amiga , Apple II , Atari-8-Bit , Atari ST , C 64 , DOS , Mac OS , Schneider CPC , TI-99 / 4A |
| Game engine | Z-machine |
| genre | Text adventure |
| Game mode | Single player |
| control | keyboard |
| medium | diskette |
| language | English |
| copy protection | Enclosure referencing |
Moonmist is a computer game by the US company Infocom from 1986. It belongs to the genre of text adventures .
action
The plot in the style of a Gothic novel with elements of a detective story takes place in the fictional English castle Tresyllian Castle . The player takes on the role of a young American detective. Tamara Lynd , the fiancée of the castle owner Lord Jack Tresyllian and a good friend of the player, asks for help in uncovering a castle ghost. The aim of the game is to expose the ghost and find a hidden treasure. The player has to ask several castle guests and solve numerous puzzles.
Game principle and technology
Moonmist 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. Moonmist is controlled by written commands that are entered via the keyboard and evaluated by a parser . The game contains a time limit, after which it can no longer be solved. At the beginning the player is asked for his favorite color; depending on his answer, there are separate game courses with different game solutions.
Production notes
The adventure has no graphics and no sound. It was developed on the basis of the Z-machine ; the implementation took place for the C 64 , DOS , Atari-8-Bit , Atari ST , Amiga , Amstrad , TI-99 / 4A , Mac OS and Apple II . Developers were Stu Galley and Jim Lawrence .
The package insert from Moonmist includes the book The Legendary Ghosts of Cornwall and the brochure A Visitor's Guide to Tresyllian Castle with overview maps and a brief outline of the castle's history. These documents are referenced in the course of the game, which means that they represent copy protection .
reception
In two German game reviews from the 1980s, Moonmist was described as a "stylish horror thriller" with an excellent parser and a well-thought-out storyline. The adventure was rated once with 11 out of 12 rating points and once with 84 out of 100 points. An American reviewer emphasized the differences between Moonmist and previous Infocom adventures ("For Infocom veterans, Moonmist demonstrates how text adventures have changed since the heyday of Zork .") The plot is more complex and the player is drawn more into the story. The time limit for a realistic gaming experience is also useful.
An investigation into computer game history and theory characterized Moonmist as a mystery adventure. Similar to Ballyhoo , however, there would be more differences than similarities to the early mystery adventures from Infocom such as Suspect , Deadline and The Witness .
Web links
- Moonmist at MobyGames (English)
- Moonmist on Manuel Schulz's website The Interactive Fiction Collector's Guide
- Moonmist in the Interactive Fiction Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ See Bernd Zimmermann: Something for connoisseurs . In: Current Software Market 3/1987.
- ↑ See Heinrich Lenhardt : Moonmist . In: Happy Computer with special games part 1/1987.
- ↑ Neil Randall: Moonmist . In: Compute !, Issue 86, 7/1986, p. 34.
- ↑ See Nick Montfort: Twisty Little Passages. An Approach to Interactive Fiction , MIT Press 2005, p. 140.