External Links


level9.zip *
SNA/{V2,V3}/EDEN.​SNA or Z80/​EDEN.​Z80 or Z80/​EDEN128.​Z80
Sinclair ZX Spectrum Application
zx.zip *
Contains Silicon Dreams 2 - Return to Eden.z80
Sinclair ZX Spectrum Application
Play online (BBC Micro version)
playable online in BBC Micro emulator at The Complete BBC Games Archive
Play this game in your Web browser.
beebgames.zip *
Contains ReturnToEden.zip
BBC Micro version
Defaults - All Systems Application
atari8gm.zip *
This game requires an interpreter program - refer to the game's documentation for details.
Manual *
Contains RETEDEN.HTM
'Eden Song' novella *
Contains SILICOND.HTM
Novella accompanying the Silicon Dreams trilogy, by Peter McBride.
ReturnToEden.clues
Original Level 9 clue sheet
* Compressed with ZIP. Free Unzip tools are available for most systems at www.info-zip.org.

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Return to Eden

by Nick Austin, Chris Queen, and Tim Noyce

Episode 2 of Silicon Dreams
Science Fiction
1984

(based on 6 ratings)
1 review

About the Story

You play Kim Kimberley, and have just saved the interstar transport, Snowball 9, from disaster. Unfortunately the control room vidcams show a different story. Kim seems to enter, hurl a bomb and the room is engulfed in flames. The evidence is damning.

Forced to flee, you just reach a stratoglider life-boat before the waldroids close in. And one hour later you will become the first human to land on planet Eden.

Snowball 9 is in orbit, crewed by people who believe you to be a murderer. The only civilisation on Eden is a robot city far to the east. And the planet is reportedly populated by furiously hostile beings of every kind: only ceaseless vigilance and hi-tech weaponry prevent them overrunning the city.

Now you know enough to start. Good luck!


Game Details

Editorial Reviews

SynTax
Silicon Dreams
"The only one of the three games I am looking forward to going back to with any enthusiasm is Return to Eden. There seems a lot more to get to grips with in it and the plot has shades of a Harry Harrison book, Deathworld, which I read and enjoyed many years ago."
See the full review

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Eden is a virtually puzzle-free mapfest, April 23, 2020
by Henck (Mozambique)

I've finished Return to Eden (with help of a walkthrough). It turns out that this game has a sprawling map, with room descriptions unfortunately consisting of a single line ("You're in a long tube"), more if you're lucky - but all that's likely due to lack of memory on microcomputers of the time (1984). Scenery can generally not be examined, though carried objects can. It's well known that Level 9 advertised the first installment of Silicon Dreams as having "over 6,000 rooms" which turned out to mean 4,800 rooms that are exactly the same, but in Return to Eden they've pulled all the stops to create a gigantic map, with well over 200 rooms.

For those who have read the accompanying novella, Eden Song, describes mostly the city you'll encounter in the sequel, Worm in paradise, but Return to Eden expends some effort in letting you roam the city under construction, and under robot management. As such, there are no characters you can speak to, only robots - and any conversations are once-off one-liners. Robot city has a few locations where the Austins put some humor in the game, where they could afford to spend a few bytes. There are a few funny references comparing the future that Return to Eden describes to the year 1984.

One thing of note is that this game hardly contains any puzzles (beyond mapping it all out). Most puzzles are solves automatically if you're carrying the right item. Thus, picking up everything you come across is enough to solve the game. It's too bad there's an inventory limit, which requires you to go everywhere with a different selection of objects just to see what works.

This game is from a time where mazes were still considered an essential component of an adventure game, and this game offers two (or even eight or so, if you count all the sections where exits are one way or loop back), both of which be solved in the most straightforward way. They're not very big, thankfully.

The game's ending is a bit of an anticlimax: you're rewarded with two lines of text that essentially say, "you won", and not much more. Showball did a better job of building to a climax.

(It may be useful to someone trying to play this that in my playthrough, a certain casino was broken. I needed to use CheatEngine to give myself extra money, although the walkthrough and Level 9 Cluesheet insisted that this wasn't necessary; for me this made the game unwinnable.)

Here is a map to Return to Eden.

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This is version 6 of this page, edited by JTN on 22 February 2024 at 3:39am. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page