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A Submerged Classic, January 17, 2011Subsunk is a challenging game, but is innovative in its approach, a game released by Firebird in 1985 and available for Spectrum, C64 and Amstrad CPC; I was playing the Spectrum version.
The design of rooms really gives you the claustrophobic feel of a submarine. Today's game designers could learn a lot from this game, especially it's design of puzzles. They are only slightly fiendish, enough to give your brain cells a good work out. Their logical nature coupled with a smidgeon of difficulty makes them very satisfying.
If the vocabulary seems hard to guess at first, actually there are clues dotted around, so that despite the appearance of difficulty you can finish it without resorting to cheating. This is definitely an aspect that all formats of adventure game could do with learning from. Hints are cryptic, but provide all the information necessary if you are heading off track but without the ridiculous level of hints given in some games created, for example with Inform.
It is amazing to think that a game made around 1985 actually seems exprimental and modern in its approach, even if graphics and parser are limited by the constraints of the machine it was produced for. Comedic approach is slightly reminiscent of LucasArts' Monkey Island which would appear with the new generation of games years later, and this is tempered with the seriousness of desiring to desperately escape the confines of the sub. A real classic.