External Links
- Invisiclues Hints
Hints for "Suspended", adapted (with permission) from Infocom's original Invisiclues hint books. - Salvaged Copy
The source files and a precompiled ZMachine storyfile of this adventure were recovered from a salvaged "Infocom hard drive", and made publicly available on GitHub in an effort to preserve them.
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About the Story
They said you would sleep for half a millennium - not an unreasonable length of time, considering you'd be in limited cryogenic suspension. Your body would rest at the planet's nerve center, an underground complex 20 miles beneath the surface. Your brain, they told you, would be wired to a network of computers; your mind would continue to operate at a minimal level, overseeing maintenance of surface-side equilibrium. And you would not awake, so they promised, until your 500 years had elapsed - barring, of course, the most dire emergency.
Then, and only then, you would be awakened to save your planet by strategically manipulating six robots, each of whom perceives the world differently. But such a catastrophe, you have been assured, could not possibly occur.
Good morning.
Difficulty: Expert
Page Update History
3 Off-Site Reviews
Gaming Enthusiast
The game is extremely difficult, but beating it brings unparalleled satisfaction.
-- Toddziak
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SPAG
It might be best not to think of Suspended as a work of Interactive Fiction at all. It is a pseudo-simulation game, written before software technology was developed enough to develop real simulation games. It is a game for frustrated would-be air traffic controllers who enjoy coordinating multiple activities from a central location, much more than it is a work of fiction. It is a game for people who like to play WITH games, not merely play them.
-- Graeme Cree
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50 Years of Text Games, by Aaron A. Reed
The manual explains that you’ll interact with a crew of repair robots in the underground complex via a series of Filtering Computers (FCs), which will interpret your commands and translate the robots’ reports back to you. The Filtering Computers are a diegetic explanation for the game’s parser. The textual interface, and the disconnect between player and character, are part of the story.
[...]
Reactions to the game at the time were largely positive, but also buoyed by an electric sense that Infocom was in the process of radically evolving what a computer game could be.
[...]
The game’s longer-term legacy would be more complex. Its alienating premise and interface turned off players expecting the more traditional storytelling that was becoming the core of Infocom’s brand. It was also challenging, uncompromising, and required an obsessive attention to detail: “a game for frustrated would-be air traffic controllers,” one reviewer called it.
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Game Details
