Trinity

This was my first Infocom game. Perhaps inevitably, I'm seeing it through the lens of later puzzle games, which are often larger and have a more complex parser, rather than seeing it as the original players did - and in particular I found myself comparing it to Jigsaw, which I gather was intended as a kind of homage to Trinity.

You are an American tourist in London's Kensington Gardens, doing a bit of sightseeing when a nuclear bomb goes off. However, it takes you into a surreal otherworld where not everything is as it seems. From here, you can enter various real-world locations, linked by the development of the atomic bomb, where small puzzles must be solved before progressing to the testing of the first atom bomb. I liked the fact that we get to meet one character at two different points in their life, bringing extra meaning to the story, and knowing that we managed to (Spoiler - click to show)save one person from the Nagasaki bomb.

Much of what makes the game interesting is the interplay of the surreal and symbolic with the terrible reality of nuclear war. Kensington Gardens is described accurately, but populated by characters from Mary Poppins (nannies with perambulators, a woman selling breadcrumbs to feed the birds with): personally, I would have opened the game in a more contemporary, 1980s setting. The main game area is an intriguing and explorable fantasy world: I found myself wanting a bit more meaningful symbolism here, but a rewarding Let's Play on intfiction.org pointed out the significance of the locations of the different doors, and their relationship to the zodiac symbols. The 'chapters' are deeply sinister, featuring well-described military bases, armed guards and nuclear explosions (the most poignant moment in the game was if you (Spoiler - click to show)don’t solve the Nagasaki puzzle in time, and die saving the girl's life); yet some of the solutions to the puzzles break this realism(Spoiler - click to show) (the flying origami bird, and the surprising willingness of animals to respond to verbal requests). I would have liked these chapters to have been somewhat longer and more complex, with more in-chapter puzzles to solve, but perhaps their brevity is due to technical constraints on space.

The endgame is more difficult: I was more heavily reliant on the Invisiclues and walkthrough there. The research that went into this section is impressive, and several puzzles need to be completed against the clock. Aside from the (Spoiler - click to show)magic boots and the comic presence of the roadrunner, the tone here is technical, urgent and sombre, and the consequences of failure are immediate and devastating.

As I have said, I suspect that I am unfairly comparing the game to Jigsaw and other more complex later games in the same genre. But that shouldn't be allowed to detract from the significance of Trinity: a game for the enjoyment of adventure, puzzle-solving, and an eerie atmosphere, but also for a reflection on the seriousness of nuclear war.