Games, v8(12)

~1 minute read

Dec 1984

Computer Capers: Adventure

Infidel

Randi Hacker

The Arab workers have poisoned your kumiss and abandoned you in the desert because you asked them to work on a high holy day. The "navigation box" hasn't arrived from the States yet. And it isn't even noon. What a way to start the day. Yet that's how it does start in Infidel, the first in the new "Adventure" series of games from Infocom.

You play an ambitious, unscrupulous archaeologist. The very fact that you're here in the desert searching for a lost pyramid is the result of having cheated your fine upstanding partner. Now you're alone. Using a map and the navigation box (when it finally arrives), you must find, in the endless, shifting desert dunes, the location of the pyramid. Once you find it and go inside, there are hieroglyphics to decipher, hidden traps to avoid, and treasures to collect —- provided you explore slowly and carefully.

Infidel is purposely simpler to solve than most of Infocom's fine line of witty, all-text games, since it was written as an introduction to the genre for novice adventurers. But it's still a challenge. Sharp thinking is required to solve the puzzles it poses, and the thrill of successfully deducing the meaning of the jewel clusters or correctly reading the hieroglyphics without the aid of a Rosetta Stone is no less exhilarating than the rewards of more taxing adventures. (Aug. 84)

Infocom; AP, AT, C64, IBM, MAC (D), $45.

This article appeared in
Games
Dec 1984

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