Infocom + Playing Suspended

  Blog Post #2

Infocom + Playing Suspended

Marc Blank and Dave Lebling, the geniuses behind Zork, developed Infocom. They were part of MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science program. Zork, as talked about in my previous blog post, was a great success especially because of the fun puzzle-solving and exploration of the game's map. After Zork was completed, the pair knew they wanted to keep working on these interactive fiction games. In the 'about page of the company's website', it is said that "a number of people at LCS decided to form a company, because they wanted to stay and work together after graduation from MIT." Trying to keep up with all of the demand and hype that came from Zork, they brought more writers into the team and thus came the creation of Infocom.

After combing through a list of available Infocom games to play, I settled on 'Suspended'. 

In this game, you basically play as an entire planet's central mentality (which is a pretty vague title but it seems to be of great importance). Basically, you are supposed to be 'asleep' or cryogenically frozen for 500 years while a computer takes care of surface level needs for the planet. However, you are woken up because things have gone terribly wrong on this planet. Food production is at an all time low, weather is consistently bad and unpredictable, and more. Despite being awake, you are physically unable to move so all your actions must be done through six robots that each have different functions. 

There's IRIS who essentially serves as the eyes; a visual robot with limited mobility.

WALDO, the industrial robot who serves to manipulate objects and uses a sonar-feedback mechanism to travel and find information on objects found.

SENSA, a robot with many purposes such as detecting vibrational activity, photon emission, and performing sensory activities.

AUDA, who serves as the ears; capable of processing and interpreting auditory signals and vital for human intervention.

POET, essentially is feeling; equipped with a sensor that activates when he has to touch something

and WHIZ, who serves as a data bank of information for you.

Playing this game, for me, was IMPOSSIBLE without the walkthrough. I tried the commands I was used to and would get nowhere. Also, the manual for this game was a big help in understanding plot context and what we had to do. Even then, I would get far but end up with a terrible game outcome because I did not grab something I was supposed to. I played through this game all weekend and ended up using a walkthrough for the playthroughs below to make them as painless as possible to watch. 

Watch me play the beginning of Suspended here (You might have to Run Flash Player):

Watch me play more Suspended here: