Ice World War

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Average Rating:

With the help of Alex Dijktra from the solution archive, I was finally able to complete this classic piece of 8-bit Basic code. This original story is one of the finer examples of Basic adventuring from the early 80s. The story is very compelling. Instead of just defeating aliens, you actually have to figure out how to befriend them, and overcome a war to boot. It's no easy task. There are plenty of puzzles and mysteries in this game but all of them make sense (in the end) and none of them involve completely arbitrary actions like pushing random objects in random rooms to reveal hidden passages, etc. However, there are some red herrings to keep you on your toes. There are also a few possibilities of death, but they make complete sense and can be avoided with some reasonable actions. The descriptions and vocabulary are on the slightly richer side for your typical early 80s game and when put together they manage to provide a very powerful narrative experience that is somehow much greater than the sum of its 16k's worth of limited parts. Kit Domenico is surely one of the greats of the early 8-bit Basic game phenomenon. I especially like the way he cleverly uses some of the standard tropes of Science Fiction to lay the traps of some of his more devilish red herrings. About my only complaint was a lack of a game save feature (not unusual for games of this type). I played the game on the TRS-80 MC-10 from code ported from the TRS-80 Coco. Perhaps the original TRS-80 Model 1 version had such a feature, but I am unable to confirm this. This game is well worth examining by anyone who is interested in early 8-bit Basic interactive fiction.

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