~2 minute readGameline
Starcross
Starcross
By Dave Lebling
You are humanity's newest brand of pioneer, the space prospector. Unlike your counterpart in the Old West, you are equipped with highly sophisticated instruments to help you find that one big strike that will make you rich for life—not gold, but a black hole. Until then, you put up with what little you have: your one-person ship, which needs repairs badly, and a terribly irritable computer that is your only distraction from the long hours and the vast loneliness of space.
Suddenly, the alarm bell on the mass detector starts clanging. Your first puzzle, as your computer prompts you impatiently, is to turn off the alarm. After that, you must find the object that triggered the alarm, give your computer the navigation data necessary to get to it (one of those things you can't yet afford is an interface for your mass detector), and turn on the drives. When you arrive at your destination, you will find not a black hole, but something altogether more intriguing and potentially profitable: an immense alien spaceship, apparently derelict. Now how do you get on board?
So opens Starcross, Infocom's first science-fiction entry into the text adventure market. Written by David Lebling, Starcross evokes more with text than many hi-res adventures do with the most advanced graphics.
Based on the conventions of science fiction rather than fantasy, Starcross's puzzles will appeal to the scientifically minded. You must get into the alien mind and determine the meaning of cryptic machine labels. Fortunately, the labels are done in symbols rather than in an alien language. This makes the puzzles reasonable, but still challenging.
Starcross requires you to be a scientist, an engineer, an astronaut, an explorer, and a diplomat. It expects you to have the judgment to know when to shoot a gun and the wisdom to know when not to. You must instinctively be able to know what actions are productive and what can get you killed. You will experience the farthest reaches not only of space, but of your own imagination as well. For the ultimate mystery is the origin of the giant spaceship; before you understand its purpose, how can you know what to do with it?
What Starcross doesn't do is give you pointless puzzles to solve, like which synonym for ray gun it understands. Of course, it won't know every word you throw at it, but with a vocabulary of more than six hundred words and error messages that indicate precisely which word it doesn't grok, you'll find the program more of a help in playing the game than a hindrance.
With Starcross, Infocom continues its new flamboyant merchandising technique that started with Deadline. Each disk is packaged, appropriately enough, in a reusable flying saucer. You also get a manual and a deluxe, multicolored map of your area of the solar system, which is an integral part of the game.
Starcross was obviously a labor of love for Lebling. It is a sheer pleasure to play.
Apple II, Apple II Plus; 48K. Atari 400 or 800; 32K. TRS-80. Commodore. IBM pc. CP/M 8-inch. Osborne. DEC. NEC. $39.95 from Infocom, 55 Wheeler Street, Cambridge, MA 02139; (617) 492-1031.
This article appeared in
Softline
Nov 1982
These historical, out-of-print articles and literary works have been GNUSTOed onto InvisiClues.org for academic and research purposes.
