Free Game: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
This has been around for a couple of years, but I became re-acquainted with it yesterday.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Steve Meretzky and Douglas Adams, was one of Infocom's most popular (and most difficult) text adventure games. Naturally, it was based on Douglas Adam's hit book series of the same name. The BBC has created an online version of the game - with illustrations. Your saved games go to a public registry, so you need to name your game carefully to avoid getting it stomped on by other players.

Play The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

For yet more entertainment value, the BBC has an interview with Steve Meretzky about his collaboration with Douglas Adams in the 1980's to produce The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Adams and his agent actually approached Infocom with the idea, as Adams was a fan of Infocom adventure games (particularly Suspended, by Mike Berlyn).

An excerpt from the interview: "At first I was a little shy to speak my mind, given Douglas' fame and brilliance and given that we were adapting his material. As a result, the early parts of the game (which are the parts we designed first) are structurally weakest, in terms of being too linear and relying too heavily on prior familiarity with the Hitchhiker's story. I'm referring to the Earth and Vogon Ship sections of the game. Later, as Douglas became more comfortable working in a non-linear medium, and as I became more comfortable making my opinions known, the game became much stronger. I think that once you arrive at the Heart of Gold, the structure of the game changes for the better, becoming less linear, more original, fairer to the player, and just plain more fun. Douglas always described the structure of the game as "pear shaped" - narrow toward the stem end, then suddenly ballooning wider, and finally coming together at the end. "

Another little tidbit from the interview that I didn't know: The "biscuit story" from So Long and Thanks For All the Fish really happened to Adams!

Interview with Steve Meretzky about his collaboration with Douglas Adams

Curiously enough, the babel fish puzzle is listed as one of the nastiest puzzles in adventure-game history, yet I was never stumped until I got on board the Heart of Gold. However, I do remember that puzzle with great fondness...


(Vaguely) related semi-random stringing together of verbs and nouns with the occasional article, adjective, and adverb:
* Adventure Gaming Alive and Well?
* Indie Interview: Mike Rubin
* Does Textfyre Have a Chance of Reviving the Commercial Text Adventure?
* A Twisty Little Maze of Passages, All Different
.

Labels: Adventure Games, Free Games, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:10 AM (Permalink)