<!--
	Title: (Software Gallery) Suspended
	Author: G. Scott Wright
	Source: Run, v1(6)
	Date: June 1984
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

<img class="float-left-half" src="/public/img/articles/run-suspended-review/suspended-screen-shot.jpg" alt="Suspended screen shot">

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## Suspended

### Six Robots Do Your<br>Bidding in a World<br>Of Impending Doom

<img src="/public/img/articles/run-suspended-review/run-a.png" alt="Grade: A">

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<p class="article-dropcap">You've seen the box. Everyone who has been in any store that sells
software has seen the box. It's bigger than the typical software package, with
a white mask and black, staring eyes.</p>

It's hardly an IBM corporate-image-conscious, quietly-efficient spreadsheet
package. It's more like a cybernetic nightmare, or a cross between a Halloween
costume and the death mask of Voltaire.

Anyone can manufacture a startling package and fill it with the same old
stuff. Shoot-the-asteroids, bounce-the-fat-boy-through-the-maze and swords-and-sorcery
adventure games are the usual fare.

But in this case, behind the extraordinary packaging you'll find an extraordinary
game—Suspended, from Infocom, Inc. (55 Wheeler St., Cambridge,
MA 02183. $49.95). The Commodore 64 version of Suspended is now being
distributed by Commodore Business Machines (1200 Wilson Drive, West
Chester, PA 19380).

The object of the game is to solve problems that the program presents in
the format of an adventure. It has no moving displays and requires no joysticks.
It is based upon your own typed-in commands and requests.

Yes, it's an adventure game, and it's a good one. Some of the game's particularly
strong points are the writing (including humor that does not grow stale on the
second reading), a colorful fold-out map of the playing area and the ability
to store up to eight partial games for future playing.

Some of the game's weaknesses are the size of the instruction booklet (so
large that it is rather difficult to use as an easy reference, which you will need
to do often during your first few playings) and the size of the map board (few
people have two feet of free space next to their computers).

Suspended, like many adventure games, starts with a premise that is used
to justify what happens during the game. It sets the stage and gets you
started. It gives the whole thing some point and purpose.

Suspended's story is based on the idea that you are in charge of a
maintenance complex that contains all the life-support systems for some
unpleasant planet. Unfortunately, you are asked to accept the notion that you
are suspended in a cryogenic state—unable to move, but able to think and
communicate with robots (something like a Popsicle with brains and a micro
phone). This condition results in your having to use six robots to do everything
that needs doing around the complex.

<blockquote style="border-top: 4px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid; padding: 0.5em; font-size: 1.25em; font-style: italic;">This adventure game integrates the computer,
the adventure and you. It's a masterpiece!</blockquote>

It's simple. Just type in the robot's name, tell it what to do, and it will do it.
It will go wherever you send it, tell you what it "sees" there, and do what it can
to fix anything that's wrong. And there is always something wrong. That's the
whole point of the game—you must respond to various emergencies in order
to keep the systems from breaking down completely and killing all the
planet's inhabitants.

Now that seems to be a reasonable premise for a science fiction game.
And, if this were nothing more than a standard science fiction game, I would
have no complaint. But Suspended is something more than standard, and it is
too bad that the writers decided to clutter the plot of the adventure with
cryogenics.

The designers of Suspended have made a major move forward in adventure
games. They have found a way to put you directly into the game. In no
other adventure game that I have seen is there quite so powerful a sense of being
there. In Suspended, you are the character in the story. You are the moving
force behind the unfolding plot. The game's designers accomplished this by
using the computer keyboard and robots.

Now, all computer adventure games use the keyboard. You use the keyboard
to tell the computer where you want the main character to go. You type in
instructions telling him what to do. The computer tells you when he does the
right thing or the wrong thing, and he either wins or dies. The program calls
the main character "you."

But there is one problem. "You" don't function according to keyboard
commands. "You" don't go north or south because someone typed in the
words "north" or "south." "You" don't swing a sword at a dragon by sitting
down at a keyboard and typing in the words "Swing the sword at the
dragon."

The problem with virtually all adventure games is the intrusion of the keyboard,
which produces words on your screen. Many adventure games now use
graphics in an attempt to make things more realistic. Unfortunately, the
graphics don't look very realistic. We'll just have to wait a few more years for
realistic screen displays. But, even then, we may still be typing in "Swing the
sword at the dragon," which somehow doesn't quite capture the intensity of a
St. George slaying dragons and rescuing fair maidens.

Suspended, in one brilliant stroke, overcame that keyboard intrusion. The
designers overcame it by making the keyboard essential to the unfolding of
the game's plot. In a very realistic way, you are completely dependent upon the
compuler for all information and communication with the "outside world."

Forget the player-frozen-on-a-stick for a moment. Picture yourself in a
situation where you are responsible for maintaining and repairing all survival
systems on a particular planet. You are inside an air bubble of some kind, and
you must use robots to move around in airless places and work on unseen machines.
You are sitting in front of a computer, typing in questions to the robots
about what they have found, and reading their reports as they are sent
back to you and spelled out on your monitor. They tell you where they are at
any given moment, what condition they are in and what their surroundings are
like. On the basis of these reports, you tell them what to do next.

That's the scenario of Suspended, and that's what makes it very close to
a work of software genius. It uses the keyboard and the monitor as no other
adventure game does—it uses them exactly as they would be used in reality
under the same conditions. You are not talking to some godlike character—you're
talking to your robots.

The effect is something very special. You type in a question and wait for
your robot to send back the answer. You ask what it sees, and, if its eyes are
working, it tells you. You then tell it to go somewhere, and, when it gets there,
it sends you a message—often interrupting your conversation with another
robot—telling you it's there, and waiting to be told what to do.

You are completely dependent upon the robots to function as your sensory
system, and they are dependent upon you for instructions.

It is real enough that you will often find yourself talking to the robots out
loud, muttering something like, "Come on, Waldo. Move it, baby," while
knowing that good old Waldo is moving as fast as he can to wherever you
have sent him. You wait for his report, and begin to picture him in some hallway
working his way slowly towards a large steel door into the Beta FC area
where there is a breakdown... and Iris breaks in and reports that she is now in
the Central Chamber, but can't see.

And so it goes. It's a game that will take you through many long and difficult
sessions as you strive to become master of six robots in a world of impending
disaster.

I strongly suggest that, when you play Suspended (and I do recommend that
you play it), forget the cryogenics and play as though you were perfectly
healthy, sitting in front of a computer keyboard, working like a madman trying
to solve the mechanical problems of the underground maintenance complex
before the whole thing goes to pieces. The only tools you have to work with
are your robots, your computer and your brains.

Played that way, Suspended is an adventure game that integrates the computer
system, the adventure and you in a way not found in any other game. It is
a masterpiece.

<p style="text-align: right; font-weight: bold;">
G. Scott Wright<br>
Albany, NY
</p>
