<!--
	Title: (PC ARCADE: Greek And Egyptian Adventures) Infidel
	Author: Phil Wiswell
	Source: PC Magazine, v3(5)
	Date: March 20, 1984
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

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***Infidel***<br>
Infocom, Inc.<br>
55 Wheeler St.<br>
Cambridge, MA 02138<br>
(617) 492-1031<br>
**List Price:** $49.95<br>
**Requires:** 48K RAM, one disk drive.

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A six-page, handwritten diary and an unfinished four-page letter on stationery
from the Hotel Americain in El Menhir, Egypt, set the stage for *Infidel*, a modern
day archaeological adventure. These preliminary materials explain the predicament
that you will soon Find yourself in.

Once you've booted the game, you'll discover that, as the unsung assistant of a
successful archaeologist, you have gotten a lucky break. A woman whose father
came close to unearthing the last great pyramid has given you his map, some hieroglyphic
drawings, and a partial hieroglyph dictionary. She has financed your expedition
to the Egyptian desert.

Your goal is to locate and enter the lost pyramid, explore the rooms, solve the
puzzles, and acquire enough information to Find the sarcophagus.

As the diary makes clear, things went downhill from the moment you entered
Egypt. First, the navigation box you need to locate the buried pyramid site falls off a
truck and breaks. Your workers don’t really like or respect you, especially when you
try to make them work on a holy day.

Abdul and the boys poison your koumiss (a drink made from fermented mare’s
milk), clean out the camp, and leave you, a worthless infidel, for dead.

The game begins with on-screen text that describes you waking up, groggy and
all alone on the cot in your tent, to the sound of the desert winds. Then, in the
distance you hear a plane. Like manna from heaven, it drops a crate by parachute —
the long awaited replacement navigation box.

Of course, you're going to need much more than the box to stave off death from
hunger, thirst, and heat. Most of what you'll need can be found in the 16 scenes
that map the square encampment. (Be sure to draw your own map to chart your
progress and detail important items.) You will need water, something to carry it in,
some food, and a shovel, of course. Unfortunately, Abdul and the boys have
nearly stripped the camp of useful items; those that remain are hidden or locked
inside your own footlocker, and Abdul has taken the key.

Once you figure out how to find half a dozen items in camp, you’ll probably head
into the desert at random. Don’t. Remember: It’s about 106 degrees in the shade,
and there’s no shade anyway. The map that comes with the game shows a mark
where a cube containing hieroglyphs was found circa 1920. If you have the cube
itself, use the navigation box to get to that mark, then think for a few minutes.

The buried pyramid, if you find it, is huge, with enough chambers, secret passages,
treasures, and pitfalls to keep you hunting for months, Along the way you
will probably find a lot of hieroglyphs, and it is a good idea compile a
"dictionary" of them. You must solve their meanings to
solve the game. You use the keyboard to input your commands and make your
moves, which are limited to eightt compass directions in addition to up, down, in, and
out. The real beauty of *Infidel* is the breadth of its vocabulary (over 600 words)
and its ability to understand full sentence commands with adjectives, rather than
mere two-word noun-verb sentences.

This "interlogic development system" also permits the game to string two separate
commands into a single sentence, which speeds up the game. For instance,
you can enter a command such as: Walk up the Winding Stairway, Then Drop the
Shovel in the Doorway. If your PC does not understand a sentence or a particular
word, it will tell you so and give you a chance to try synonyms. Some of the
words the game understands are given in the manual — which is written in the style
of an adventure magazine — but the majority of useful words are left for you to discover.
*Infidel* requires common sense, logic, intuition, and often trial-and-error.

My best advice is to explore and examine everything you see or suspect you
might see and not to overlook the obvious. It's also a great idea to save your position
in the game to a blank disk just before exploring dangerous options. Then, if you
die, you can reload your saved position and try something else. If you really get
stuck, you can write for playing hints to Infocom's fictitious "sanity insurance"
company, Bilk & Wheedle.

Michael Berlyn, author of the critically acclaimed *Suspended*, wrote *Infidel*. His
prose style is exciting and fast-paced, with occasional bits of humor. And most of
what you read accurately represents ancient Egypt, using research by Patricia
Fogleman, a Harvard graduate student.

On *PC*'s scale of one to six, *Infidel* rates:

<table style="margin: auto;"><tbody>
<tr><td>FUN:</td><td>6</td></tr>
<tr><td>CHALLENGE:</td><td>6</td></tr>
<tr><td>GRAPHICS/SOUND:</td><td>0</td></tr>
<tr><td>(not applicable)</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>TOTAL SCORE:</td><td>12</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
