EUG PD


Insomnia
By BBC PD
BBC B/B+/Master 128

 
Published in EUG #45

Insomnia

Insomnia is a public domain text adventure which runs on both the BBC and now the Electron and in which you have only one objective - sleep.

You start naked in the bedroom of a flat and further locations such as the sewers, the shops, the street and the mental asylum are only accessible by fathoming the way out - which is not obvious, to say the least! Once you have done however, you find Insomnia is an urban haze of locations and characters which are so surreal you sometimes find yourself wondering if the whole thing will turn out to be a dream itself!

Without giving away too much about the game, it is standard adventure fare with locations to explore, objects to discover, characters to help (and who help you in return) and puzzles to solve. Some of the puzzles are genial and, although the game is far from easy, there is a fair amount of help given in the text descriptions to show the adventurer the way. There are no graphics apart from a loading screen.

I liked this adventure and, although written using The Quill (hence limited to a simple VERB NOUN parser), its user-friendliness. It has a smattering of humour, a few variable touches to make each game a little different and about the right balance of hard and easy problems. You will have to sacrifice a game sometimes to find out how to complete a few of them!

It's professional and complete in itself; perfect but for the odd grammatical error and an original idea (assuming you don't count the Jet Set Willys as adventures, of course!). It's not difficult so just be wary of the bottles, make sure to wear your clothes outside and Insomnia will be its own guide. One of the best PD adventures available for the Electron. Did The Ice Man ever write any more?

Dave E

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