<!--
	Title: Suspended
	Author: Brian Moriarty
	Source: Analog Computing, #12
	Date: July-August 1983
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

**SUSPENDED by Michael Berlyn<br>
INFOCOM, Incorporated<br>
55 Wheeler Street<br>
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138<br>
32K Disk $49.95**

The home computer market is obsessed with graphics.
Flip through any computer magazine and you'll find pages
and pages of game advertisements, each promising high-res
action graphics in at least four more colors than the hardware
is capable of displaying. Game programmers spend countless
hours squeezing the last pixel out of their playfields and
any dealer will tell you that a flashy title screen is worth
more than a good game concept.

In this world where even the best computer games come
and go in the space of a single month, the prose adventures
of Infocom stand apart. Their unadorned text boasts only
two colors (foreground and background); there are no illustrations,
no sound effects to jazz up the action. Yet the Interlogic
series is comfortably lodged in the top-25 list of every
major software distributor.

What is Infocom's secret? Why does a 4-year-old
text game like **Zork** continue to flourish
when even the venerable Scott Adams Adventure
Series (now "enhanced" with flickering
graphics) fails to hold the interest of computer
enthusiasts?

The answer, I think, has less to do with Infocom's
famous packaging than with the fundamental
quality of their products. When I play
an Interlogic adventure, I don't get the feeling
that the thing was coded according to a formula,
shrink-wrapped and shoved out the door
in a couple of weeks. There's a sense of completeness
and pride in engineering, as if the programmer
had a genuine emotional investment
in the game. **Suspended**, the latest offering in
the Interlogic Science Fiction Series, conveys
this sense of personal authorship more than any
other computer adventure I have played.

## An intriguing scenario

**Suspended** was created by Michael Berlyn,
a programmer best known as the author of the
best-selling Apple adventures **Oo-Topos** and
**Cyborg**. Just as this issue went to press, I
received the new ATARI conversion of **Cyborg**
from Berlyn's former company, Sentient
Software. Look for a report on ATARI **Cyborg**
in a later issue, and let's hope we'll see
**Oo-Topos** in the near future.

**Suspended** is similar to **Cyborg** in that it
puts the player in control of an imaginary cybernetic
system. Your frozen brain is hooked
into a network of "filtering computers" which
are directly responsible for the care and feeding
of an entire planet. This delicately-balanced
network is maintained by a team of six robots
which respond to your commands. The filtering
computers allow you to address the robots
individually, or in any combination.

Each robot is endowed with special hardware
capabilities and a unique personality. Your job
is to coordinate the action of the robots so that
the planet you are babysitting remains comfortable
and happy. The penalty for failure? Chaos,
massive casualties and disconnection!

Like the other adventures in Infocom's Interlogic
series, **Suspended** incorporates a sophisticated
parser that understands complex English
sentences, with a vocabulary of over 600
words. Phrases like "Put the rough object into
the access panel then close the access panel" are
perfectly legal; multiple commands may be
entered on a single line by ending each phrase
with a period. The program also accepts a number
of useful abbreviations, and will support
the saving and loading of up to five separate
game positions. You can choose between five
levels of play difficulty (including an inconceivably
tough "IMPOSSIBLE" game), or custom-design
your own game configurations. These
features should keep your copy of Suspended
far away from the shelf where your "solved"
adventures are gathering dust.

<img class="float-right-half" src="/public/img/articles/analog-suspended-review/suspended-packaging.jpg" alt="Suspended packaging">

**Suspended** comes with an attractive full-color
game board and a vinyl token for each
robot. These allow you to keep track of where
the robots are located in the planet's underground
maintenance complex. The superb
owner's manual provides an amusing historical
background and detailed information about the
robots' abilities and limitations. And let's not
overlook that incredible packaging -- an eerie
molded mask with eyes that follow you around
the room, saying "I really am worth fifty
dollars!"

## Clever characterizations

Berlyn's most impressive achievement in
**Suspended** is his characterization of the six
robots. Each responds to your commands with
a rhetorical style that is fancifully suited to its
function.

"Iris," the only robot equipped with visual
receptors, is a wise-mouthed old woman who
replies to your commands with "Okay, good
looking," and interrupts the game with complaints
when she needs a repair job. "Waldo"
(an all-purpose worker with multiple grasping
extensions) is an affable fellow with a distinctly
blue-collar outlook. "Whiz" is the bookworm
of the team; he communicates in a clipped,
matter-of-fact manner and is only happy when
plugged into an information pedestal. "Poet"
reminds me of an ex-60s burnout. His replies
are embellished with hip slang, horrible rhymes
and obscure literary quotes.

A few hours with these electronic personalities
will make them your friends. This is the
kind of compliment you would normally extend
to a good book or movie, not to a computer
game. But the scenario and implementation
of **Suspended** are so professionally
crafted, that the product actually manages to
transcend the typical text adventure (often
nothing more than a puzzle that understands
English), offering a level of involvement which
can only be compared to the experience of a
fine novel. That this feat is accomplished without
elaborate graphics proves Infocom's contention
that the mind is more imaginative than
the eye.

**Suspended** is not without its petty annoyances. Since the
room and object descriptions are stored on a disk as text
files, you have to be patient while the slow 810 disk drive
beeps and clacks, searching for just the right sentences.
Typing commands can get pretty tiresome after several hours
of play, especially if you make your living by typing all day
like I do. But these inconveniences are caused by the hardware,
not the software; future home computers with megabytes
of RAM and voice recognition will make such limitations
a thing of the past. Until then, let's enjoy the pioneering
efforts of authors like Michael Berlyn and companies like
Infocom, whose products are among the finest examples ofa
new and entertaining means of self-expression which can
now be regarded as "literature" without apology.
