L'astronave condannata

“L'astronave condannata” (The Doomed Spaceship) is the work of one of the pioneers of interactive fiction in Italy. Originally released for ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, later for MS-DOS, it is a short adventure that sees you tasked with solving a vital mission under a strict time limit with a solid in-game justification.

The game is nothing spectacular, but it is refreshing to see none of the things that make early IF games so annoying. There are no walking dead states, except if you are left with too much to do when the time limit is about to expire (fair enough). There is no parser guessing, since all the verbs are simple and all objects are marked. The riddles are always logical. There is no save/undo function but the game is very short, so the few “learning by dying” occurrences are tolerable.

Considering the age of the game and the small developer scene in Italy at that time, it is hard to wish for more. I would have liked a little more atmospherical worldbuilding like the author did in “Avventura nel castello”, but on the other hand the extremely terse and functional descriptions could be easier to digest for kids and Italian learners.

This was the first adventure game I ever managed to solve, so it will always have a place in my memories. If you like ancient adventure games, it's worth going through it.