Trust & Betrayal: The Legacy of Siboot
Encyclopedia
Trust & Betrayal: The Legacy of Siboot, often abbreviated simply to Siboot, was a game designed and programmed by Chris Crawford
and published by Mindscape
in 1987.
s (each a different alien species) for the Shepherdship. Each of these characters has a distinct personality. Each morning, the acolytes wake up knowing one of each of the three "auras" the others possess. They must trade knowledge with each other in order to try to gain enough knowledge for the "mind combat" that takes place every night, which is basically a fancy Rock, Paper, Scissors
game that depends on the aura counts for the players involved. The game is won when a player gets eight auras in all three categories. However, in giving away somebody's aura count, the player betrays that person, which angers them and may make them less likely to trade aura counts with the player. Therefore, a player has to know whom to trust and whom to betray, hence the title: Trust & Betrayal.
, a method for constructing sentences out of words while only presenting words that make sense for the given context. It also placed some emphasis on facial expressions as a visual form of feedback. It even had a primitive form of tooltip
s: if the player clicks and holds the mouse button on an icon (the game's abstraction of a word), one can see its meaning. The number of icons is small enough, and the pictures intuitive enough, that they can quickly be committed to memory. It also featured "interstitial stories", interludes that appear through the game that present the user with one of several choices, some of which may affect the game. For instance, to use an actual example from the game, if game designer Chris Crawford appears and lectures the player, and the player responds "Go to hell, Crawford!", then he or she loses some favor among the other characters, making the game harder to win.
port was made but never finished; however, it can be found on the web, although it has some problems (for instance, the random number generator is not initialized properly).
The game received a favorable review in Computer Gaming World
, citing the well-written AIs and noting "The context sensitive icon-based language is a technical achievement and deserves praise."
The game was reviewed in 1989 in Dragon
#150 by Mark D. Veljkov in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 4½ out of 5 stars.
Chris Crawford (game designer)
Christopher Crawford is a computer game designer and writer noted for creating a number of important games in the 1980s, founding The Journal of Computer Game Design, and organizing the Computer Game Developers' Conference.- Biography :...
and published by Mindscape
Mindscape Group
Mindscape is an international software publishing company, previously part of The Learning Company. They are now affiliated with EA . As of 2004, the group has offices in Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. It has an annual turnover of €38 million and employs 150 people. Mindscape...
in 1987.
Gameplay
The player, an alien creature named Vetvel, must compete with six other acolyteAcolyte
In many Christian denominations, an acolyte is anyone who performs ceremonial duties such as lighting altar candles. In other Christian Churches, the term is more specifically used for one who wishes to attain clergyhood.-Etymology:...
s (each a different alien species) for the Shepherdship. Each of these characters has a distinct personality. Each morning, the acolytes wake up knowing one of each of the three "auras" the others possess. They must trade knowledge with each other in order to try to gain enough knowledge for the "mind combat" that takes place every night, which is basically a fancy Rock, Paper, Scissors
Rock, Paper, Scissors
Rock-paper-scissors is a hand game played by two people. The game is also known as roshambo, or another ordering of the three items ....
game that depends on the aura counts for the players involved. The game is won when a player gets eight auras in all three categories. However, in giving away somebody's aura count, the player betrays that person, which angers them and may make them less likely to trade aura counts with the player. Therefore, a player has to know whom to trust and whom to betray, hence the title: Trust & Betrayal.
Development
"Siboot", the name of the first Shepherd, is a reversal of the syllables of "Bootsie", a cat which Crawford had. Bootsie had to be euthanized due to an irreparable injury to his jaw. Crawford suffered much grief while contemplating that he was unable to talk to Bootsie in order to try to comfort him before he had to be put down. One day while pondering this, Crawford had a flash of insight: his next game would be Talk to the Animals, which evolved into the very different Trust & Betrayal.Innovations
The game had several unconventional features. For instance, it featured an inverse parserInverse parser
An inverse parser, as its name suggests, is a parser that works in reverse. Rather than the user typing into the computer, the computer presents a list of words fitting the context, and excludes words that would be unreasonable. This ensures the user knows all of his or her options. The concept and...
, a method for constructing sentences out of words while only presenting words that make sense for the given context. It also placed some emphasis on facial expressions as a visual form of feedback. It even had a primitive form of tooltip
Tooltip
The tooltip or infotip is a common graphical user interface element. It is used in conjunction with a cursor, usually a mouse pointer. The user hovers the cursor over an item, without clicking it, and a tooltip may appear—a small "hover box" with information about the item being hovered...
s: if the player clicks and holds the mouse button on an icon (the game's abstraction of a word), one can see its meaning. The number of icons is small enough, and the pictures intuitive enough, that they can quickly be committed to memory. It also featured "interstitial stories", interludes that appear through the game that present the user with one of several choices, some of which may affect the game. For instance, to use an actual example from the game, if game designer Chris Crawford appears and lectures the player, and the player responds "Go to hell, Crawford!", then he or she loses some favor among the other characters, making the game harder to win.
Reception
Siboot didn't hold up very well in the marketplace and did not recoup its investment. It sold 5,000 units on the Apple Macintosh. A preliminary IBM PCIBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...
port was made but never finished; however, it can be found on the web, although it has some problems (for instance, the random number generator is not initialized properly).
The game received a favorable review in Computer Gaming World
Computer Gaming World
Computer Gaming World was a computer game magazine founded in 1981 by Russell Sipe as a bimonthly publication. Early issues were typically 40-50 pages in length, written in a newsletter style, including submissions by game designers such as Joel Billings , Dan Bunten , and Chris Crawford...
, citing the well-written AIs and noting "The context sensitive icon-based language is a technical achievement and deserves praise."
The game was reviewed in 1989 in Dragon
Dragon (magazine)
Dragon is one of the two official magazines for source material for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game and associated products, the other being Dungeon. TSR, Inc. originally launched the monthly printed magazine in 1976 to succeed the company's earlier publication, The Strategic Review. The...
#150 by Mark D. Veljkov in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 4½ out of 5 stars.
External links
- An article on the game that Chris Crawford wrote in 1987 for the Journal of Computer Game Design