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About the Story
The prologue to a much longer game, Stargazer features you as a young lad trying to escape the everyday routine of life underground.
[--blurb from The Z-Files Catalogue]
Awards
19th Place - 2nd Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (1996)
Ratings and Reviews
| Average Rating:    Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 2 |
This game is meant to serve as an introduction to a longer game. As such, it ends before the story really gets started. It's very similar to an opening village area in Zelda.
The author has done a good job building up an underground civilization, with a variety of npcs and some simple puzzles.
The activities you do are not compelling, but the game is polished and the setting is well done.
This short game, a prologue to a game which was apparently never released, deals with a young man living in an underground city and who is tired of the monotony of everyday life.
Luckily, he learns of some danger and has to leave the underworld. You then gather items you'll need for this quest and there the game ends...
I found the descriptions to be a little bit lacking in vividness, but the puzzles are easy and well scripted. Worth playing if you have 15-20 minutes to kill.
4 Off-Site Reviews
Baf's Guide
Written as a prologue to a larger game, this piece concerns a boy who lives a life of drudgery in a magical underground city until he takes on a quest to save it from destruction. The whole game is spent kitting him out for the journey; the moment you actually embark, the game ends. Competently put together, but I'd still rather have a complete story.
-- Carl Muckenhoupt
SPAG
The author admits that this is a prologue for a much longer game, and as that it succeeds perfectly, with easy puzzles to set up Ali for his quest, and a limited area to explore at the outset.
-- C.E. Forman
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SynTax
Although very short, the game contains interesting objects and atmospheric locations, immediately drawing you into the fantasy world of Thran and its surrounding areas. From the start of the game, where you wake up in your house (Home Sweet Hovel) to that mysterious passage wending southwards from The Road Less-Travelled, STARGAZER maintains that other-worldly atmosphere so vital to fantasy/adventure games of this type.
-- Bev Truter
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>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction
Stargazer worked quite well as a prologue, but I’m not sure I cared for it much as a stand-alone game. Just about the time I thought the action was about to start, the entire game ended. This made for a rather anticlimactic experience, especially since I worked through the game in well under the two hours allotted. Also, the game’s brevity worked at cross purposes to its genre; confusing references and unfamiliar objects can usually be let slide in fantasy since they are sure to be explained later. Not so in Stargazer.
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Tags
Game Details
Current Version: Release 1
License: Freeware
Development System: Inform 5
Baf's Guide ID: 203
IFID: ZCODE-1-961015-A8D9
TUID: 6zy62tclr5qz52aq
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This is version 6 of this page, edited by Paul O'Brian on 5 May 2022 at 2:03am. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page
