Galaxy Trek Adventure #1

As is typical for programs on the 8-bit home computers of yore, many corners have to be cut to get an IF game of non-minuscule size to fit within the resource constraints imposed by the hardware. For this game in particular, one of those is that there are no synonyms provided, so one must repeatedly play guess-the-verb and guess-the-noun. Any players should consider this as part of the "cover charge" for playing old IF games that ran on computers with 8K of memory. However, using a singularly inappropriate word for an essential object or action can take this limitation from an expected frustration to a fatal flaw, and unfortunately that's the case here: an object referred to only as an "hypodermic antidote" is named "needle", despite that word not appearing in the game's text anywhere and ST:TOS showing that one of the advances of 23rd century medicine over the present's is the ability to do hypodermic injections without needles.

There are no puzzles in this game in the normal sense. Instead there are insta-kill obstacles whose location the player learns by dying; they are entirely unclued and are handled either by simple avoidance or by preparing in the manner made obvious in the game-over scene (at least if one is familiar with a certain ST:TOS episode). The author seems to have intended efficient navigation to be a challenge, but a map removes all difficulty there, and map-making is straightforward and a standard practice at the time (probably even more so than today). This makes finding the correct terms for objects and actions the most challenging part of the game (even without counting the problematic needle in the sickbay), and that's not an enjoyable source of difficulty.

This is a pretty simple room based text adventure with some parsing quirks. There are puzzles, not always obvious. I gave it 4 stars because once I started in I really wanted to finish it - good mix of immediate gratification and persistent solving / trial + error. I totally cheated with a run through found on Google, not emabarassed, really enjoyed it.