The Lurking Horror
The Lurking Horror is a computer game of the U.S. company Infocom in 1987. It belongs to the genre of text adventures ( interactive fiction ) and is based on literary motifs of the writer HP Lovecraft.
Action
The plot in the style of fantasy and horror story takes place during a snow storm on the campus of the University of fictional George Underwood Edwards Institute of Technology (GUE Tech). The player in the role of a student of the GUE Tech. working on a PC in the computer center at his seminar work. Inexplicably his file is overwritten by a text of the mysterious Department of Alchemy. The player must try to save his seminar work. On his explorations through the cellars of the University happen eerie, supernatural events. He meets many fantastic creatures, encounters hints at an earlier suicide on campus and must solve numerous puzzles.
Gameplay
The adventure is controlled via the keyboard; English words and phrases are entered via a text parser. The package insert of the Adventures contains documentation for new students at the GUE, for example, a campus map and information about the university.
Development and production details
The Lurking Horror has no graphics. On some platforms, there are short sound effects, to increase the voltage. The game was developed on the basis of the Z -machine; the reaction was carried out, inter alia, for the C 64, DOS, Atari 8- bit, Atari ST, Amstrad, Amiga, Mac OS and Apple II developer was Dave Lebling.
Reception
In German game reviews of the 1980s, among other things, the exciting plot and the infocomtypische, excellent text parsers were appreciated. The adventure was evaluated in a review of 88 out of 100 rating points. In retrospect, The Lurking Horror was taken in the 2000s by an American computer magazine in a list of the "Top 10 Scariest Games". The exquisite Adventure ( "a great example of the lost art of the text adventure" ) draw the player into a brilliant, imaginative world, much like reading a captivating novel.
A study on computer game history and theory from 2006 differentiated: on the one hand was " The Lurking Horror" a good playable adventure game, which put the players in front of fair tasks. Was on the other side have been possible ("... it still feels like a bit of a missed opportunity" ). The substantive focus on fantasy and horror elements based on themes by HP Lovecraft would only partially suit the further intention of the game developers, with the fictitious " George Underwood Edwards Institute of Technology, " a kind of image of the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create ( to the game developers had studied Lebling itself).