Silicon Dreams trilogy
Encyclopedia
Silicon Dreams is a trilogy of interactive fiction
games developed by Level 9 Computing
during the 1980s. The first game was Snowball, released in 1983, followed a year later by Return to Eden, and then by The Worm in Paradise in 1985. The following year they appeared together in a bundle as the first, second and last of the Silicon
Dreams. Early advertisements gave it the title of Silicon Dream, but it was later pluralised.
As most Level 9 games, the trilogy used an interpreted language
called A-code and appeared on all major home computer platforms of the time, on either diskette
or cassette
. Level 9 self-published each game separately, but the bundle was published by Telecomsoft
, which sold it in the United States under the Firebird label and in Europe under the Rainbird label.
The trilogy is set in a not too-distant future when humans have started colonising space. For the first two instalments the player takes the role of Kim Kimberly, an undercover agent, whose goal in Snowball is to save the colonist's spacecraft from crashing into a star, and in Return to Eden to stop the defence system at the destination planet of Eden from destroying the craft. In The Worm in Paradise, the player, taking on the role of an unnamed citizen of Eden, must travel around the city of Enoch, learn its secrets, earn money and save the planet.
for entering commands at the "What now?" prompt. The parser can interpret
more than a thousand words to control movement or actions. It looks at the command, picking out two or three words it knows, ignoring the order, and tries to guess what is meant. For movement, the usual commands for moving 'NORTH', 'SOUTH', 'EAST' and 'WEST' are available (and their abbreviated forms of 'N', 'S', 'E' and 'W') as well as 'UP' and 'DOWN' ('U' and 'D' respectively) and a number of other directions and 'modes' of movement (like 'JUMP'). For actions, it understands how to pick up objects, opening doors, lighting lamps, as well as dropping objects and wielding them. Additionally, there are commands to invoke 'SAVE' and 'RESTORE' of game positions to cassette tape or floppy disk (for some systems also to RAM), ask for 'HELP', turn off pictures and turn them on again with 'WORDS' and 'PICTURES' respectively, an 'OOPS' command to undo
previous commands.
Silicon Dreams can be played as three separate games, but to obtain a maximum score the games must be completed in order, carrying the score from one adventure to the next. Points are not scored for collecting treasures, but rather for doing specific tasks towards the aim of the individual game. In Snowball the goal is to get to the main control room and prevent the starship from crashing into a star. In Return to Eden the goal is to get into the city of Enoch and stop the robots from destroying Snowball 9. And in Worm in Paradise the goal is to find as much information about the city as possible, obtain money, and then become a member of the governing party of Eden, saving the planet in the process.
The first step was to launch probes into outer space. The probes reported any Earth-sized planet they encountered during their centuries-long voyage. Each probe was followed by a survey ship ten years later. The ship's mission was to map the planet and if it was habitable, it would signal Earth and then, while waiting for the colonists to arrive, terraform
the planet.
This is the second step in the phase. The survey ship mined materials from asteroids and used them to build a robot factory in space — a process that could take decades. The resulting robots built more space factories that in turn produced better robots. They also built large satellite dishes to collect data sent from Earth containing the latest technological advances. Then the actual terraforming took place. The robots landed on the planet and built cities while also launching more probes and survey ships further into space.
Once Earth received news of a habitable planet, the third and final step took place. Ten giant passenger discs, each carrying two hundred thousand colonists in stasis
, were towed into space. Next came the engine unit, which was linked to the front of the discs, and then the colony ship was completed and ready to go.
During the 2190s fifty colony ships were launched from the EEC's Ceres base, among them the Snowball 9, which carried the first colonists for planet Eden on the Eridani A
system. For the next three years, the accelerator chains beyond Pluto fired ten-ton blocks of ammonia
ice at the traveling ship. The Snowball 9 caught the ice blocks with hooks and piled it around the passenger discs, forming a hollow shell that would cover most of the ship and would serve as a shield until it was needed to fuel the fusion
engines on the later part of the trip. This ice shell gave the Snowball series its name.
After receiving the last ice block, the crew put the ship in autopilot and went to hibernate with the passengers, leaving the ship's maintenance to robots. Except for a brief period of activity to start deceleration , the crew slept for most of the trip, waking up one year before reaching Eden. The plan was to continue deceleration while consuming the last of the ice shell, and then put the ship in orbit around the planet, delivering the passengers down by gliders that would be retrieved by hooks to be reused.
. She started out doing standard security work with the occasional surveillance of subversive members of society, but ended working as a counter-espionage
agent. Still in her twenties, Kim accepted to travel undercover on the Snowball 9 to be there as the last resort for the worst-case scenario.
, continue their everyday operations oblivious to the danger but the ship's computer, capable of thinking, wakes up Kim Kimberley before the deranged crewmember destroys it. She exits her modified stasis chamber with the goal of finding a way to reach the control room and avert disaster.
, Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Nascom
, but was later followed by versions for the Commodore 64
, Camputers Lynx
, Oric-1, Atari 8-bit
as well as for the Memotech MTX, Amstrad CPC
, Enterprise and MSX
. It is noteworthy for including over seven thousand locations. To achieve this sixty-eight hundred locations on the passenger disks form a colour-coded maze with minimal descriptions.
Another peculiar aspect of the game was the confusion behind the main character's gender. In an interview for Sinclair User
, Chris Bourne asked, "Is the androgynous
Kim a man or woman?" Pete Austin pointed out that "there's a credit at the end for the design of 'Ms Kimberley's costume,' " but also admitted that Kim Kimberley was "a deliberately unisex
name." The debate came to an end with the release of Return to Eden, where it was made clear that Kim was not a man, because the surviving crewmembers confuse her with the woman who tried to destroy the ship.
The first thing the player must do is find a shelter for Kim, because a few moves into the game the Snowball 9 crew use the ship's engine to try to burn her down. The native robots take this as proof that the Snowball 9 is not the ship they were expecting but a hostile alien craft they must destroy. The objective is to contact the robots before time runs out for the Snowball 9 and everyone aboard it.
location graphics into as little as forty byte
s. This size made it possible to add graphics to every location of the game for all formats with more than 32 K
RAM. The user could choose not to display them and play the game in text-only mode. It was released for the same platforms as its predecessor.
The game's first cover depicted a robot fighting a monster plant in Enoch. The robot resembled a comic book character, so to avoid legal troubles, Level 9 commissioned Godfrey Dowson to do a new cover. Dowson's illustration depicted another robot in the jungle looking towards Enoch. Level 9 was not satisfied with the result and asked Dowson to do it again. They liked the third cover so much, they hired Dowson to do artwork for the re-release of their old games as well as for their future titles.
Pete Austin commented on the game: "It's an alien theme park
gone wild. The Eden universe is more like Larry Niven
's future space." and "...is intended as a comment on superpower
intervention
in the Third World
."
s keeps the population afraid from going outside.
The main character, a nameless citizen of Enoch, starts the game in a beautiful garden where everything seems fine. He picks an apple from a tree, a worm pops out, and the player follows it outside the garden, through the desert, and then he wakes up. It was only a simulation, one of the many forms of entertainment available under the reign of the third Kim. This "Garden of Eden as a prison" allegory sets the mood for the entire game. The objective is to explore the city, and while doing so the player must gather clues to unmask the government conspiracy behind the flying saucers.
so a player need never wait while a picture is drawn." This was the first game using version 3 of the A-Code system. It was released for four fewer platforms, leaving out the Lynx, Memotech MTX, Nascom and Oric-1 compared to the two previous releases.
Another departure is that the player has only seven days, within the game's clock, to complete the game. Quests are also time-based and require that the player arrive at certain locations at specific hours to achieve the desired goal. And while gameplay remains the same, the backdrop is no longer an action adventure, but a political thriller
that resembles the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four
. Similar to what happened when Snowball was released, there was certain confusion about the main character's identity and the time when the story took place. The Level 9 Fact Sheet says: "...a couple of years later, Kim Kimberley has become a legend on Eden." Another article stated: "Worm in Paradise is set 100 years later. You are now Kim Kimberley III..." Furthermore, Pete Austin said, "Worm is set on Eden, about 50 years in the future" and "The player is not Kim - she becomes mayor and runs the place." Notice that these sources called the game by its original name, Worm in Paradise.
, in an four-game publishing deal signed by level 9 in April 1986. This deal gave Level 9 (which was often referred to as "British Infocom
") an opportunity to spruce up their previous titles and add support for the 16-bit
market as well as a possible entry into the potential lucrative US market. Subsequently, the trilogy was released for a total of twelve platforms, leaving out the BBC Micro and Enterprise compared to The Worm in Paradise, but adding support for the Apple II
, Amiga
, Amstrad PCW
, Atari ST
, IBM PC DOS
and Macintosh
. All the games were updated to version 3 of the A-Code system with updated text and new graphics for inclusion in the release of the Silicon Dreams trilogy in 1986 with expanded, text-only versions for some releases.
The "Rainbird" release came in a 215 x 153 x 27 mm cardboard
box while the "Firebird" release came in a 227 x 163 x 30 mm black, plastic box. Both featured a 150 x 210 mm, 68-page book
let with loading instructions, a guide to playing the game and Peter McBride's novella
Eden Song which served as an introduction to The Worm in Paradise. The novella was also used as a copy protection
device, from which, upon restore of a saved game, the player had to enter a word from a page and line reference.
Although there was an adventure game released for the Sinclair QL
called Return to Eden, this was written by Oliver Neef and Rich Mellor and was written before the Level 9 game of the same name. Level 9 never released a version of the trilogy for the Sinclair QL
.
1984 Readers Awards, Return to Eden received a 90% score in Sinclair Programs, and The Worm in Paradise was rated a Your Sinclair Megagame and a Sinclair User Classic.
When the trilogy was released it received unanimously, good reviews from the ZX Spectrum press. Sinclair User gave it a Sinclair User Classic, calling it an "...unqualified success for Level 9 and Rainbird." Your Sinclair
awarded a Your Sinclair Mega Game, and ZX Computing a Monster Hit. The Commodore 64 magazine Zzap!64
gave it a 90% score which awarded it with a Zzap!64 Sizzler. However, some reviews found the graphics "...truly abysmal. Blotchy, often unrecognizable...simple in design..." while others called it "...smidgens better than those added to Jewel of Darkness, possibly even two smidgens, and are far from being the disappointment."
The ZX Spectrum version was placed fourth in September and third in October 1987 of the Your Sinclair adventure charts.
Interactive fiction
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...
games developed by Level 9 Computing
Level 9 Computing
Level 9 was a British computer text adventure game company which produced some of the most advanced games of the 1980s. Founded in 1981 by Mike Austin, Nicholas Austin and Pete Austin, the company produced about 20 games for BBC Micro, Nascom, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Oric, Atari, Lynx 48k, RML...
during the 1980s. The first game was Snowball, released in 1983, followed a year later by Return to Eden, and then by The Worm in Paradise in 1985. The following year they appeared together in a bundle as the first, second and last of the Silicon
Silicon
Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, it is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon, the nonmetal directly above it in the periodic table, but more reactive than germanium, the metalloid directly below it in the table...
Dreams. Early advertisements gave it the title of Silicon Dream, but it was later pluralised.
As most Level 9 games, the trilogy used an interpreted language
Interpreted language
Interpreted language is a programming language in which programs are 'indirectly' executed by an interpreter program. This can be contrasted with a compiled language which is converted into machine code and then 'directly' executed by the host CPU...
called A-code and appeared on all major home computer platforms of the time, on either diskette
Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
or cassette
Compact Cassette
The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. It was designed originally for dictation, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel...
. Level 9 self-published each game separately, but the bundle was published by Telecomsoft
Telecomsoft
Telecomsoft was the computer software division of British telecommunications company British Telecom . It was the owner of the well-known Firebird and Rainbird labels, under which it sold video games at a variety of price-points....
, which sold it in the United States under the Firebird label and in Europe under the Rainbird label.
The trilogy is set in a not too-distant future when humans have started colonising space. For the first two instalments the player takes the role of Kim Kimberly, an undercover agent, whose goal in Snowball is to save the colonist's spacecraft from crashing into a star, and in Return to Eden to stop the defence system at the destination planet of Eden from destroying the craft. In The Worm in Paradise, the player, taking on the role of an unnamed citizen of Eden, must travel around the city of Enoch, learn its secrets, earn money and save the planet.
Gameplay
The games use a text parserText parser
In an adventure game, a text parser takes typed input from the player and simplifies it to something the game can understand. Usually, words with the same meaning are turned into the same word and certain filler words are dropped .The parser makes it easier for the game's author to react on input...
for entering commands at the "What now?" prompt. The parser can interpret
Interpreter (computing)
In computer science, an interpreter normally means a computer program that executes, i.e. performs, instructions written in a programming language...
more than a thousand words to control movement or actions. It looks at the command, picking out two or three words it knows, ignoring the order, and tries to guess what is meant. For movement, the usual commands for moving 'NORTH', 'SOUTH', 'EAST' and 'WEST' are available (and their abbreviated forms of 'N', 'S', 'E' and 'W') as well as 'UP' and 'DOWN' ('U' and 'D' respectively) and a number of other directions and 'modes' of movement (like 'JUMP'). For actions, it understands how to pick up objects, opening doors, lighting lamps, as well as dropping objects and wielding them. Additionally, there are commands to invoke 'SAVE' and 'RESTORE' of game positions to cassette tape or floppy disk (for some systems also to RAM), ask for 'HELP', turn off pictures and turn them on again with 'WORDS' and 'PICTURES' respectively, an 'OOPS' command to undo
Undo
Undo is a command in many computer programs. It erases the last change done to the document reverting it to an older state. In some more advanced programs such as graphic processing, undo will negate the last command done to the file being edited....
previous commands.
Silicon Dreams can be played as three separate games, but to obtain a maximum score the games must be completed in order, carrying the score from one adventure to the next. Points are not scored for collecting treasures, but rather for doing specific tasks towards the aim of the individual game. In Snowball the goal is to get to the main control room and prevent the starship from crashing into a star. In Return to Eden the goal is to get into the city of Enoch and stop the robots from destroying Snowball 9. And in Worm in Paradise the goal is to find as much information about the city as possible, obtain money, and then become a member of the governing party of Eden, saving the planet in the process.
Setting
The trilogy is set in the future, when the human race is literally reaching for the stars. The entire Solar System has been linked together through accelerator chains, and the "Big 5" nations of Earth have set in motion a plan to colonise the galaxy. This is known as the Terran Expansionary Phase. It lasted ninety years from 2120 to 2210.The first step was to launch probes into outer space. The probes reported any Earth-sized planet they encountered during their centuries-long voyage. Each probe was followed by a survey ship ten years later. The ship's mission was to map the planet and if it was habitable, it would signal Earth and then, while waiting for the colonists to arrive, terraform
Terraforming
Terraforming of a planet, moon, or other body is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying its atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology to be similar to those of Earth, in order to make it habitable by terrestrial organisms.The term is sometimes used more generally as a...
the planet.
This is the second step in the phase. The survey ship mined materials from asteroids and used them to build a robot factory in space — a process that could take decades. The resulting robots built more space factories that in turn produced better robots. They also built large satellite dishes to collect data sent from Earth containing the latest technological advances. Then the actual terraforming took place. The robots landed on the planet and built cities while also launching more probes and survey ships further into space.
Once Earth received news of a habitable planet, the third and final step took place. Ten giant passenger discs, each carrying two hundred thousand colonists in stasis
Stasis (fiction)
Stasis , or hypersleep, is a science fiction concept akin to suspended animation. Whereas suspended animation usually refers to a greatly reduced state of life processes, stasis implies a complete cessation of these processes, which can be easily restarted or restart spontaneously when stasis is...
, were towed into space. Next came the engine unit, which was linked to the front of the discs, and then the colony ship was completed and ready to go.
During the 2190s fifty colony ships were launched from the EEC's Ceres base, among them the Snowball 9, which carried the first colonists for planet Eden on the Eridani A
40 Eridani
40 Eridani is a triple star system less than 16.5 light years away from Earth. It is in the constellation Eridanus. The primary star of the system, 40 Eridani A, is easily visible to the naked eye...
system. For the next three years, the accelerator chains beyond Pluto fired ten-ton blocks of ammonia
Ammonia
Ammonia is a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula . It is a colourless gas with a characteristic pungent odour. Ammonia contributes significantly to the nutritional needs of terrestrial organisms by serving as a precursor to food and fertilizers. Ammonia, either directly or...
ice at the traveling ship. The Snowball 9 caught the ice blocks with hooks and piled it around the passenger discs, forming a hollow shell that would cover most of the ship and would serve as a shield until it was needed to fuel the fusion
Nuclear fusion
Nuclear fusion is the process by which two or more atomic nuclei join together, or "fuse", to form a single heavier nucleus. This is usually accompanied by the release or absorption of large quantities of energy...
engines on the later part of the trip. This ice shell gave the Snowball series its name.
After receiving the last ice block, the crew put the ship in autopilot and went to hibernate with the passengers, leaving the ship's maintenance to robots. Except for a brief period of activity to start deceleration , the crew slept for most of the trip, waking up one year before reaching Eden. The plan was to continue deceleration while consuming the last of the ice shell, and then put the ship in orbit around the planet, delivering the passengers down by gliders that would be retrieved by hooks to be reused.
Kim Kimberly
The protagonist in the two first instalments, Kim Kimberley, is a tall, athletic, intelligent woman with brown eyes and fair hair. She was born and raised at Hampstead Crèche, which was closed when she was thirteen due to violations of the Android Protection Acts. She finished her education at the Milton Keynes School of Life in Malta, then returned to England for National ServiceNational service
National service is a common name for mandatory government service programmes . The term became common British usage during and for some years following the Second World War. Many young people spent one or more years in such programmes...
. She started out doing standard security work with the occasional surveillance of subversive members of society, but ended working as a counter-espionage
Counter-intelligence
Counterintelligence or counter-intelligence refers to efforts made by intelligence organizations to prevent hostile or enemy intelligence organizations from successfully gathering and collecting intelligence against them. National intelligence programs, and, by extension, the overall defenses of...
agent. Still in her twenties, Kim accepted to travel undercover on the Snowball 9 to be there as the last resort for the worst-case scenario.
Snowball
Plot
As the Snowball 9 approached Eden, something goes wrong. A crewmember murders her shipmates, destroys the communication system and set the ship on a collision course with the sun. The robots, being little more than automataAutomaton
An automaton is a self-operating machine. The word is sometimes used to describe a robot, more specifically an autonomous robot. An alternative spelling, now obsolete, is automation.-Etymology:...
, continue their everyday operations oblivious to the danger but the ship's computer, capable of thinking, wakes up Kim Kimberley before the deranged crewmember destroys it. She exits her modified stasis chamber with the goal of finding a way to reach the control room and avert disaster.
Development
Snowball was originally released in 1983 as the company's fourth adventure game using the A-Code system. Nick, Mike, and Pete Austin headed development. Though Level 9's previous games featured a fantasy theme, the Austin brothers chose a science fiction theme. The original release used version 1 of this system and was initially released only for the BBC MicroBBC Micro
The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, was a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers for the BBC Computer Literacy Project, operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation...
, Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Nascom
Nascom
The Nascom 1 and 2 were single-board computer kits issued in 1977 and 1979, respectively, based on the Zilog Z80 and including a keyboard and video interface, a serial port that could be used to store data on a tape cassette using the Kansas City standard, and two 8-bit parallel ports...
, but was later followed by versions for the Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
, Camputers Lynx
Camputers Lynx
The Lynx was an 8-bit British home computer that was first released in early 1983 as a 48 kB model. The designer of the Lynx was John Shireff and several models were available with 48 kB, 96 kB or 128 kB RAM...
, Oric-1, Atari 8-bit
Atari 8-bit family
The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers manufactured from 1979 to 1992. All are based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU and were the first home computers designed with custom coprocessor chips...
as well as for the Memotech MTX, Amstrad CPC
Amstrad CPC
The Amstrad CPC is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, where it successfully established itself primarily in the United Kingdom,...
, Enterprise and MSX
MSX
MSX was the name of a standardized home computer architecture in the 1980s conceived by Kazuhiko Nishi, then Vice-president at Microsoft Japan and Director at ASCII Corporation...
. It is noteworthy for including over seven thousand locations. To achieve this sixty-eight hundred locations on the passenger disks form a colour-coded maze with minimal descriptions.
Another peculiar aspect of the game was the confusion behind the main character's gender. In an interview for Sinclair User
Sinclair User
Sinclair User, often abbreviated SU, was a magazine dedicated to the Sinclair Research range of home computers, most specifically the ZX Spectrum...
, Chris Bourne asked, "Is the androgynous
Androgyny
Androgyny is a term derived from the Greek words ανήρ, stem ανδρ- and γυνή , referring to the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics...
Kim a man or woman?" Pete Austin pointed out that "there's a credit at the end for the design of 'Ms Kimberley's costume,' " but also admitted that Kim Kimberley was "a deliberately unisex
Unisex
Unisex stands for the meaning that either gender or sex will be able to, but can also be another term for gender-blindness.The term was coined in the 1962 and was used fairly informally...
name." The debate came to an end with the release of Return to Eden, where it was made clear that Kim was not a man, because the surviving crewmembers confuse her with the woman who tried to destroy the ship.
Return to Eden
Plot
With the Snowball 9 orbiting Eden, the surviving crewmembers put Kim on trial. The only evidence against her is the "mempak" from the control room, which shows her as the hijacker rather than the saviour. Despite the fact that the recording is damaged and thus is unreliable, they sentence her to death. About to be thrown into space, Kim manages to escape aboard a "stratoglider" and an hour later, lands on Eden. At this point the game starts.The first thing the player must do is find a shelter for Kim, because a few moves into the game the Snowball 9 crew use the ship's engine to try to burn her down. The native robots take this as proof that the Snowball 9 is not the ship they were expecting but a hostile alien craft they must destroy. The objective is to contact the robots before time runs out for the Snowball 9 and everyone aboard it.
Development
Unlike its predecessor, Return to Eden only had around two hundred and fifty locations, but it was Level 9's first game to feature graphics. Other adventure games had included graphics before, but version 2 of the A-Code system, allowed Level 9 to encodeCode
A code is a rule for converting a piece of information into another form or representation , not necessarily of the same type....
location graphics into as little as forty byte
Byte
The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer...
s. This size made it possible to add graphics to every location of the game for all formats with more than 32 K
Kilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
RAM. The user could choose not to display them and play the game in text-only mode. It was released for the same platforms as its predecessor.
The game's first cover depicted a robot fighting a monster plant in Enoch. The robot resembled a comic book character, so to avoid legal troubles, Level 9 commissioned Godfrey Dowson to do a new cover. Dowson's illustration depicted another robot in the jungle looking towards Enoch. Level 9 was not satisfied with the result and asked Dowson to do it again. They liked the third cover so much, they hired Dowson to do artwork for the re-release of their old games as well as for their future titles.
Pete Austin commented on the game: "It's an alien theme park
Amusement park
thumb|Cinderella Castle in [[Magic Kingdom]], [[Disney World]]Amusement and theme parks are terms for a group of entertainment attractions and rides and other events in a location for the enjoyment of large numbers of people...
gone wild. The Eden universe is more like Larry Niven
Larry Niven
Laurence van Cott Niven / ˈlæri ˈnɪvən/ is an American science fiction author. His best-known work is Ringworld , which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics...
's future space." and "...is intended as a comment on superpower
Superpower
A superpower is a state with a dominant position in the international system which has the ability to influence events and its own interests and project power on a worldwide scale to protect those interests...
intervention
Humanitarian intervention
Humanitarian intervention "refers to a state using military force against another state when the chief publicly declared aim of that military action is ending human-rights violations being perpetrated by the state against which it is directed."...
in the Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
."
The Worm in Paradise
Plot
A hundred years after the arrival of colonists aboard the Snowball 9, planet Eden has become home to half a billion people. In this paradise run by robots there is no crime, no taxes, no unemployment, and no freedom. The population lives in domed "megapolis," and perhaps due to the war that took place during Return to Eden, there is no contact between the cities and the surrounding natural world. The occasional sighting of flying saucerFlying saucer
A flying saucer is a type of unidentified flying object sometimes believed to be of alien origin with a disc or saucer-shaped body, usually described as silver or metallic, occasionally reported as covered with running lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly either...
s keeps the population afraid from going outside.
The main character, a nameless citizen of Enoch, starts the game in a beautiful garden where everything seems fine. He picks an apple from a tree, a worm pops out, and the player follows it outside the garden, through the desert, and then he wakes up. It was only a simulation, one of the many forms of entertainment available under the reign of the third Kim. This "Garden of Eden as a prison" allegory sets the mood for the entire game. The objective is to explore the city, and while doing so the player must gather clues to unmask the government conspiracy behind the flying saucers.
Development
The trilogy's final installment is a departure from the previous games. It "evolved alongside a 12 month enhancement on Level 9's own adventure system. Standard features include a 1,000 word vocabulary, a very highly advanced English input, memory enhancing-text compression, the now familiar and very much appreciated type-ahead, and multi-taskingComputer multitasking
In computing, multitasking is a method where multiple tasks, also known as processes, share common processing resources such as a CPU. In the case of a computer with a single CPU, only one task is said to be running at any point in time, meaning that the CPU is actively executing instructions for...
so a player need never wait while a picture is drawn." This was the first game using version 3 of the A-Code system. It was released for four fewer platforms, leaving out the Lynx, Memotech MTX, Nascom and Oric-1 compared to the two previous releases.
Another departure is that the player has only seven days, within the game's clock, to complete the game. Quests are also time-based and require that the player arrive at certain locations at specific hours to achieve the desired goal. And while gameplay remains the same, the backdrop is no longer an action adventure, but a political thriller
Political thriller
A political thriller is a thriller that is set against the backdrop of a political power struggle. They usually involve various extra-legal plots, designed to give political power to someone, while his opponents try to stop him. They can involve national or international political scenarios....
that resembles the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
. Similar to what happened when Snowball was released, there was certain confusion about the main character's identity and the time when the story took place. The Level 9 Fact Sheet says: "...a couple of years later, Kim Kimberley has become a legend on Eden." Another article stated: "Worm in Paradise is set 100 years later. You are now Kim Kimberley III..." Furthermore, Pete Austin said, "Worm is set on Eden, about 50 years in the future" and "The player is not Kim - she becomes mayor and runs the place." Notice that these sources called the game by its original name, Worm in Paradise.
The trilogy
Silicon Dreams was the second title published by Telecomsoft, the first being Jewels of DarknessJewels of Darkness
Jewels of Darkness is a trilogy of text adventure games by Level 9. The individual games were initially released separately in 1983. They featured some themes inspired by the books of J. R. R...
, in an four-game publishing deal signed by level 9 in April 1986. This deal gave Level 9 (which was often referred to as "British Infocom
Infocom
Infocom was a software company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced one notable business application, a relational database called Cornerstone....
") an opportunity to spruce up their previous titles and add support for the 16-bit
16-bit
-16-bit architecture:The HP BPC, introduced in 1975, was the world's first 16-bit microprocessor. Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816. The Intel 8088 was program-compatible with the Intel 8086, and was 16-bit in that its registers were 16...
market as well as a possible entry into the potential lucrative US market. Subsequently, the trilogy was released for a total of twelve platforms, leaving out the BBC Micro and Enterprise compared to The Worm in Paradise, but adding support for the Apple II
Apple II series
The Apple II series is a set of 8-bit home computers, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977 with the original Apple II...
, Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
, Amstrad PCW
Amstrad PCW
The Amstrad PCW series was a range of personal computers produced by British company Amstrad from 1985 to 1998, and also sold under licence in Europe as the "Joyce" by the German electronics company Schneider in the early years of the series' life. When it was launched, the cost of a PCW system was...
, Atari ST
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...
, IBM PC DOS
DOS
DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...
and Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
. All the games were updated to version 3 of the A-Code system with updated text and new graphics for inclusion in the release of the Silicon Dreams trilogy in 1986 with expanded, text-only versions for some releases.
The "Rainbird" release came in a 215 x 153 x 27 mm cardboard
Paperboard
Paperboard is a thick paper based material. While there is no rigid differentiation between paper and paperboard, paperboard is generally thicker than paper. According to ISO standards, paperboard is a paper with a basis weight above 224 g/m2, but there are exceptions. Paperboard can be single...
box while the "Firebird" release came in a 227 x 163 x 30 mm black, plastic box. Both featured a 150 x 210 mm, 68-page book
Book
A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
let with loading instructions, a guide to playing the game and Peter McBride's novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
Eden Song which served as an introduction to The Worm in Paradise. The novella was also used as a copy protection
Copy protection
Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy obstruction, copy prevention and copy restriction, refer to techniques used for preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media, usually for copyright reasons.- Terminology :Media corporations have always used the term...
device, from which, upon restore of a saved game, the player had to enter a word from a page and line reference.
Although there was an adventure game released for the Sinclair QL
Sinclair QL
The Sinclair QL , was a personal computer launched by Sinclair Research in 1984, as the successor to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum...
called Return to Eden, this was written by Oliver Neef and Rich Mellor and was written before the Level 9 game of the same name. Level 9 never released a version of the trilogy for the Sinclair QL
Sinclair QL
The Sinclair QL , was a personal computer launched by Sinclair Research in 1984, as the successor to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum...
.
Reception
The games were released individually and generally received good initial reviews. Snowball won the Best Text-only Adventure prize at CrashCRASH (magazine)
Crash was a magazine dedicated to the ZX Spectrum home computer. It was published from 1984 to 1991 by Newsfield Publications Ltd until their liquidation, and then until 1992 by Europress.-Development:...
1984 Readers Awards, Return to Eden received a 90% score in Sinclair Programs, and The Worm in Paradise was rated a Your Sinclair Megagame and a Sinclair User Classic.
When the trilogy was released it received unanimously, good reviews from the ZX Spectrum press. Sinclair User gave it a Sinclair User Classic, calling it an "...unqualified success for Level 9 and Rainbird." Your Sinclair
Your Sinclair
Your Sinclair or YS as it was commonly abbreviated, was a British computer magazine for the Sinclair range of computers, mainly the ZX Spectrum.-History:...
awarded a Your Sinclair Mega Game, and ZX Computing a Monster Hit. The Commodore 64 magazine Zzap!64
Zzap!64
Zzap!64 was a computer games magazine covering games on the Commodore International series of computers, especially the Commodore 64 . It was published in the UK by Newsfield Publications Ltd and later by Europress Impact....
gave it a 90% score which awarded it with a Zzap!64 Sizzler. However, some reviews found the graphics "...truly abysmal. Blotchy, often unrecognizable...simple in design..." while others called it "...smidgens better than those added to Jewel of Darkness, possibly even two smidgens, and are far from being the disappointment."
The ZX Spectrum version was placed fourth in September and third in October 1987 of the Your Sinclair adventure charts.
External links
- Nintendo DSNintendo DSThe is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...
port of Silicon Dreams available at Papafuji's DS Adventure Page - The Level 9 Memorial
- Baf's Guide to the Interactive Fiction Archive
- Snowball review at Crash - The Online Edition
- Worm in Paradise review at Crash - The Online Edition
- Silicon Dreams trilogy at The Bird Sanctuary
- Eden Song available at Retro Reading: The Game Novellas Homepage