The Institute
| The Institute | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Screenplay |
| Publisher | Screenplay |
| Senior Developer | Jyym Pearson, Robyn Pearson |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
1983 |
| platform | Apple II , Atari 8-Bit , Commodore 64 , TRS-80 |
| genre | Text adventure |
| Game mode | Single player |
| control | keyboard |
| medium | diskette |
| language | English |
The Institute is a computer game by the US company Screenplay (formerly: MedSystems) from 1983. It belongs to the genre of text adventures with graphics . A previous version without graphics was also published in 1981 under the title The Institute .
action
The action takes place in a facility called The Institute , which is similar to a psychiatric hospital . The player in the role of the patient John tries to escape from psychiatry. A mysterious doctor wants to stop him. The player receives hints for his escape in several hallucinatory dreams, where he meets bizarre dream characters and has to solve various puzzles.
Game principle and technology
The Institute 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. The character is controlled via commands that the player enters using the keyboard and that are processed by a parser . The commands are in natural language and allow the game character to interact with his environment. The player can move through the game world, find objects, apply them to the environment or other objects and communicate with NPCs . As the story progresses, more locations in the game world will be unlocked. The parser can only process two-word English commands in the Verb-Object format (e.g. “open door” or “examine fence”). The game instructions contain some hidden solution hints.
Production notes
The Institute has hand-drawn graphics that illustrate the text descriptions. The implementation took place for the TRS-80 , C 64 , Atari-8-Bit and Apple II . The adventure game was written and produced by Jyym and Robyn Pearson. Programmers were Norm Sailer and Pearson, the graphics came from Rick Incrocci. In addition to The Institute, Screenplay published another adventure game with a similar plot ( Asylum , 1985).
reception
The game's over 60 hand-drawn, comic-like graphics were featured in Antic Magazine . The puzzles are sometimes very difficult, the solutions sometimes illogical. Overall, The Institute is a challenging adventure ("a real challenge in adventure gaming").
Web links
- The Institute at MobyGames (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Antic 11/1984, p. 76: The Institute. Retrieved October 13, 2016 .