External Links

Time Quest @ Spectrum Computing
Page with downloads and the option to play online (using JSSpeccy).

Have you played this game?

You can rate this game, record that you've played it, or put it on your wish list after you log in.

Playlists and Wishlists

RSS Feeds

New member reviews
Updates to external links
All updates to this page

Time Quest

by B. J. Curtis

1985

(based on 1 rating)
1 review

About the Story

It is the year 2997 A.D. As you know world peace has been maintained for over half a millennium due to the foresight of our ancestors. Over 500 years ago the nations of Earth decided to remove all weapons of destruction by hiding them in the corridors of time.

It has now become known to us that one man threatens the stability of the world by locating these weapons. Already he has perfected a vehicle capable of travelling within the time corridor and it is feared that he has begun his search. This man is ESMUND MADDISON.

A Time Pursuit Vehicle has been developed at our research establishment but as yet has not been fully tested. Your mission is to use the T.P.V. to locate and stop Maddison. Failure will mean the end of civilisation as we know it and your death!


Game Details

Tags

- View the most common tags (What's a tag?)

(Log in to add your own tags)
Tags you added are shown below with checkmarks. To remove one of your tags, simply un-check it.

Enter new tags here (use commas to separate tags):

Member Reviews

Average Rating:
Number of Reviews: 1
Write a review


6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Time travel for the sake of pacifism, March 22, 2021
by Victor Gijsbers (The Netherlands)

Time Quest is in many ways an old-school parser game. We explore a relatively large but sparsely described world; solve some puzzles; avoid deaths; and don't worry too much about the story. The parser itself is relatively limited too, something that is especially evident from the lack of helpful error messages. (There's no real distinction between an action that was understood but didn't work, and an action that wasn't understood.)

But there are some ways in which Time Quest is more friendly than one might expect. There is, as far as I know, only one way to make the game unwinnable, and this is relatively clear. (Spoiler - click to show)It's when you get caught by the Gestapo and do not have the rope. The game world is very open, allowing you to explore more or less everything. There is only a small number of items, and the puzzles are generally very simple. And while the existence of different temporal eras to visit opens up the possibility of all kinds of complicated dependencies between them, in fact your progress in one era is (Spoiler - click to show)completely independent of what you do in other eras.

The story is rather limited: you have to search through time for the bad guy who has collected nuclear warheads in an attempt to dominate the pacifistic future from which you both hail. And that's what you do, with only one thing that could be described as a plot twist. It is especially weird that (Spoiler - click to show)the other temporal eras simply have nothing to do with your quest. This does feel like a bit of a lost opportunity.

However, despite the primitive story, Time Quest's handling of its theme of violence and pacifism is actually rather subtle. (Spoiler - click to show)First of all, every era that you visit is emblematic of a certain fictional genre that revels in violence: the fantasy quest with its trolls and dragons; the gladiatorial fight; the World War II story. And in all of them, we are able to engage in violence ourselves using the laser gun we are given at the start. But -- and this is quite wonderful -- it is never necessary to use the gun. The entire game can be played and won without ever picking it up. In this game, despite all the invitations we get, violence is never the answer. Which is a great fit for its story, and an interesting thematic message. (I wonder whether this theme of pacifism is present in more of B. J. Curtis's games.)

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 




This is version 3 of this page, edited by Victor Gijsbers on 21 March 2021 at 10:13pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page