ST Pawn

I favor and judge by original releases, but it would seem amiss to play Magnetic Scrolls' inaugural title and skip the main feature that they're best known for; high color, 16-bit graphics, which were first featured as an addition to the Atari ST port of The Pawn.

So I'm going to replay this version, and take the opportunity to explore one of the less-obvious aspects of the game. Its cast of characters are, when given the right prompts, much chattier than in any contemporary text adventures, including Infocom's. No, this isn't enough to salvage the game, and it's not even all that useful for solving it, but it gives The Pawn a layer of personality that you might not even know was there. 

The images scroll up and down like window blinds, affording you as much screen real estate for text as you want. 

Kronos is the first person I meet, but he has no graphic, and leaves before I have time to question him on anything but my wristband. But now I'm on two errands. Time to complete the first!

 

There's no graphic for the toolshed, but I complete the optional PLANT PLANT IN POT WITH TROWEL action early.

Kronos' first quest is completed here for a few points. The guards won't chat.

I head west to visit the guru.

 

After covering my wristband, he sends me on a quest for "the essential nourishment." I go north.

Crossing paths with the doomed adventurer, who seems a bit thick.

He does look downcast.

The snowman has little to say. Normally this is where I'd murder the adventurer for some points, but he doesn't show up yet, so I leave and bring some snow to the guru, who has much to say on various subjects, but not all of them.

Wristband: "The only person able to remove that wristband is the most evil person in all Kerovnia."

Kronos: "Kronos is a very evil man who is running out of time and needs others to save his soul." 

Devil: "If an evil person is the only one who has what you want, you must trade with him." 

Snowman: "A poor, pathetic man. I feel pity for him."

Adventurer: "A brave man undertaking a noble quest to rescue his beloved princess from the clutches of Kronos the magician."

Princess: "The Princess is a beautiful maiden who spent much of her time in the palace gardens before being kidnapped."

King: "He is the present ruler of Kerovnia."

Gringo: "I do not partake in the petty politics of this country, and I have only contempt for those who do."

John: "He is a notorious salesman who travels the plains to the west of the King's palace."

Color: "It is strange that the sensation of light can provoke such deep feelings as to cause wars or jubilation. That is an interesting concept, my child, and will require lengthy meditation."

 

I get my pouch in the woods, and as I return to melt the snowman with the red, I run into the adventurer on the narrow track and kill him too.

Only now there's a surprise. Out of the blue, the words "The princess follows you" are printed. Did he actually rescue her? I question her.

Kronos: "Do you know, he kept me there for ages so that he could get my father's kingdom - he isn't fit to be called a member of the human race."

Snowman: "I heard Kronos tell him something when I was brought here and he seemed reluctant to obey, but for some reason he had to."

Adventurer: "He's my hero."

King: "A girl always loves her daddy and I'm no exception."

Gringo: "You're getting very boring. Can we get out of here because I'm sure Kronos will realize that I've escaped soon." 

 

I take her home, and return to the tower to melt the snowman for points. The princess' door is still locked, so I'm not sure how she got out.

 

Next part is the cavern region.

 

We're here to retrieve the blue key, but the niche under the pedestal is empty! Did the adventurer beat us to it? I never saw that happen in QL Pawn, but I guess we're not scoring 100% this time around.

 

Next, I visit the tree house, and the dwarven realm beneath.

 

There's a few important objects down here. First, there's the loose change in the couch here, and of course the hard hat. There's the rope in the mine's lift, and the lumps of lead in the rockface.

And there's this, but I can't vote in this timeline.

With my coin, I visit Honest John to buy some beverages, and chat.

Kronos: "He seems like quite a reasonable bloke to me - he's never done me any harm." 

Adventurer: "Oh yes, I saw him ride past earlier on. I'm not sure where he was going but he looked very determined."

Princess: "I've heard that she's been kidnapped by Kronos, but that's only gossip - it seems to me to be a bit out of character for him to do something like that."

King: "The best ruler Kerovnia's ever had - he sold me a trading permit at half price last year."

Gringo: "I wouldn't vote for him if he paid me."

Guru: "He claims to know everything - the answer to life and all that rubbish but I think he's just a social nightmare waiting for the right time to happen." 

Next, I visit the alchemists with my lunch and lead.

They do have a bit to say when pressed, but mostly they just want food.

Kronos: "He seemed a strange fellow to us - we've never met anyone quite like him." 

Gold: "Gold is an extremely precious metal for which we have sacrificed many years of our lives."

Lead: "Lead is a dull, grey metal that we can turn into valuable gold."

 

I give them what they want and they get out of my way.

And I descend to hell.

Hell's porter will talk, but his topics (and coherence) are limited.

Devil: "Auld Nick equivocates with everything, even me - you don't think I do this out of choice you?" 

Whisky: "Drink sir, is a great provoker of three things - nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes: it provides the desire but takes away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him and it mars him; it sets him on and it takes him off; it persuades him and it disheartens him, makes him stand to and not to stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in sleep and giving him the lie, leaves him."

Hell: "Tis a place for the damned, fit for no mortal or any who has ever done good. The rewards are few here and the punishments many." 

 

I can't get Jerry to talk about anything, so I move on.

The devil has quite a lot to say! 

Kronos: "Kronos, yes, I think I would make him the Himmler of Hell." 

Snowman: "Kronos did well with that one - imprisoning him in the body of a snowman - I would have been proud of myself if I had thought of that."

Adventurer: "His philosophy makes a mockery of a fine physique - I could do great things for him."

Princess: "I would like her to meet me some day, but I fear she will not have the pleasure."

King: "A foolish man who thinks that people will bow to his good-nature and let him be their master."

Gringo: "He's in an election in Kerovnia if my memory serves me correctly. I never vote in elections, they just aren't important - it's the philosophies and the souls that count." 

John: "Is one of my proudest creations - though he has strayed from his teaching somewhat."

Guru: "He is a neutral observer in this game of life. His advice could be well heeded by both sides." 

Asking him about inanimate objects just causes him to think I'm asking about the wristband and cast me out, so I don't get the opportunity to inquire on any others.

 

I kill Kronos and bring his soul to the devil, effectively ending the game. Turns out, though, I can still visit the programmers and unlock debug mode, despite missing 50 points.

 

Then while wandering, it occurred to me, I forgot to talk to the horse! 

Adventurer: "He's my rider, punk."

Princess: "I'm very sorry, I would love to talk some more but I must get back to my family. Goodbye. She then runs off towards the palace."

Gringo: "I'm definitely going to vote for him."

And well, that's all I've got. The graphics are rather nice, if not always consistent in style, and make effective use of only 16 colors (128 for the title screen) - it's too bad there aren't more of them, but what can you expect out of a 720KB floppy? And the character dialog is a fun little piece of worldbuilding that serves absolutely no purpose to the game's critical path, offering you almost no clues or means of solving any of the puzzles, and belongs in a better game than this.

The Pawn: Won!

At last, my quest.

Old Gooseberry has surprisingly little to say about Kronos when asked directly - he just mutters "I'd make him the Himmler of hell" which raises some questions on the whereabouts of the actual Himmler, but when asked about my wristband, sends me on an errand to collect his soul. He doesn't mention that he gave Kronos his powers to begin with, and for that matter, why does he need me? Kronos isn't immortal, and his soul is already payable upon his death. Impatient much?

Well, I need to find a use for this potion. Despite what the devil said, I can simply drink it - no need to open it (technically he didn't lie), but the result is death. Right now my only unsolved problem is a dragon, but I try throwing the potion (it just shatters), offering the potion (he accepts but refuses to drink it), even the old standby KILL DRAGON (he just eats you).

It's another stupid and unsolvable puzzle. The key detail here are some "hazy shadows" in the room, and looking at them reveals they are halflings (and then you get eaten right after), but I'll let the solution speak for itself.

 

Past the chamber, Kronos awaits.

You have one move before he casts you out, but the devil's potion and aerosoul can work here.

To leave and not get eaten, you must wear his hat and cloak, and also take his magic wand. The dragon signposts this in a manner that's somehow both obvious ("Wait a minute, you aren't Kronos," he remarks before eating you, should you egress without these accoutrements), and at the same time misleading ("He was taller and greyer around the temples," he continues, and repeats without variance if you wear the wrong hat - there are two in the room to pick from - or miss the wand).

At this point I realized that I softlocked myself by leaving my rope in hell. You'd think that if you secured a rope to an anchor point, climbed down, and left the rope where it was, you'd still find one end of it tied to the anchor point on your return, but Magnetic Scrolls logic doesn't work that way. The rope only exists in one room at a time - climb down and now the rope is at the bottom of the precipice instead of the top - and since I neglected to take it with me (how?), it's still there, with no way to retrieve it. You have to descend, then "UNTIE ROPE" (again, how?) in order to leave the area with it. Simply let go of it, and the rope will be left at the bottom, irretrievable.

And on your return trip, you'd better not untie the rope because Satan won't give you a free teleport out this time.

 

So I restarted and replayed up to this point. There's a few things you really don't need to do; the horse is pointless, though murdering the adventurer is worth some points. The ice tower is also pointless, but murdering the snowman outside (done by performing "MELT SNOWMAN WITH RED" before mixing the colors despite there being absolutely no indication that the RED gives off heat) also gives some points.

Very definitely leave.

We're not quite done - now that the wristband is off, we can leave the game world by the southern boundary, but there's nothing outside the confines of the computer's memory map, and no way back (except a restore).

One more thing we have to do to score that last lousy point. That potted plant we got near the beginning of the game? PLANT PLANT IN POT WITH TROWEL. The game never gave any indication that the plant in the pot needed planting with a trowel, but it does, and it's worth five points.

And with that, we can enter Magnetic Scrolls' debug room.

 

And now we've unlocked debug mode, which is actually quite cool! With it, you can go anywhere freely, nothing will kill you, and every room will list most of the objects you can interact with. It's not that helpful now that the game is solved, but there's actually quite a few of these objects in the game world that aren't part of the solution but have programmed interactions anyway.

 

If only some of the effort that went into fleshing out the game world went into making the critical path solvable instead!

GAB rating: Bad.

There's more to The Pawn than meets the eye, and I plan on touching on some of its hidden depths in one last post, but this adventure is deeply flawed.

It was never going to get a fantastic rating. The Pawn wants to be Zork, which always stood high above its peers with its awesome parser, concisely detailed writing, and design that serves worldbuilding just as much as gameplay, but falls short of that goal in every regard. Kerovnia is sprawling but directionless and noncohesive, offering a flat, open overworld and a bunch of gated-off regions branching off it like so many VERB-NOUN adventures that it mocks, and the descriptive prose, though hardly terse, never excites or evokes the sensation of being there in the way that Infocom did with a quarter of the memory available. Puzzles are generally of the USE KEY IN DOOR variety, and bring frustration whenever they try to get more clever than that. The plot never reaches any kind of conclusion, even though it suggests some ongoings beyond your basic treasure hunt, and even involves you in them (a little).

It's also a bit mean spirited, encouraging or even requiring you to perform atrocities to advance the plot and/or score points. I suppose there's a subversiveness in that you're better off not rescuing the princess and voting for Baconburger instead, but I'd have appreciated some reason why this makes sense for your non-Kerovnian citizen character to do, and not just because it's worth more points.

But the real problems stem from a combination of two factors. There's technical issues - Magnetic Scrolls' parser occupies a deadly space where it's more sophisticated than its VERB-NOUN contemporaries but janky enough that it often struggles to understand the sort of complex verbiage that you're expected to feed it, making guess-the-verb exponentially more complicated. And there's quality control issues - for all of the nonessential objects that they gave descriptors and interactivity to, descriptions of essential objects are missing crucial details, sensible interactions often give nonsense replies, the game often gives flat-out incorrect information, and that's when it doesn't have bugs! Far too often, I simply had no idea if my attempts to solve a puzzle were wrong because I wasn't thinking about a valid action or because I had typed it in wrong or because the stars weren't aligned right when I did. Infocom was successful not just because of their technical sophistication, but because they made the effort to ensure that their games gave responses to things that players would try. And as we've seen here, one without the other makes for a frustrating experience.

There's also an annoying quirk of the QL in that its keyboard lacks debouncing, makking it  easy to accidentally type llikee thiss. But I don't fault Magnetic Scrolls for that, even though this didn't do anything to make the experience more pleasant.

The Pawn isn't the worst adventure game I've covered, but there was little joy in exploring it, and none in solving it.

 

My Trizbort map:

The Pawn: Two underworlds

This fourth wall-breaking joke seems archaic in 1985.

 

To explore the dark regions without my light-emitting horse, I need to MIX RED, GREEN, AND BLUE, which combines my pouch of colors into a new one, WHITE.

There's a small series of rooms beneath the tree house, suggesting a dwarven realm:

•  To the west, a north-south junction:
• Southward leads to a small house where I find a hard hat hanging on a wall hook, and a 1-ferg coin underneath a sofa cushion. A carrot and a teapot are found in the kitchen.
• Northward, a mechanical lift descends into the mines, where I find small lumps of metal in the earth, and can dig them out with my trowel.
• To the east is a white municipal building.
• The office of Gringo Baconburger is full of election campaign paraphernalia, and an empty floor safe hidden underneath a rug.
• An adjacent voting room has two ballot boxes, a big one for Baconburger, and a pathetic little one for the other guy.

Back to the walkthrough - there's a (possibly optional) puzzle to solve. Baconburger's floor safe isn't actually empty. The game, once again, lies if you use the wrong verbiage.

Wow. Just wow.

 

A vote for Baconburger is worth 30 points, and a vote against him worth 10. Also, it's impossible to cast a vote and rescue the princess, because you need the blue key to do either and it vanishes once used. Rescuing her is worth absolutely nothing!

There's one other new area that my portable light source gets me - the caves in the north, where I find an election poster for Baconburger, and a room full of hungry alchemists who will transform lead into gold in exchange for lunch - the guru's rice satisfies them, and they rush out of the lab when I give them my lumps from the mines, leaving me to explore the rooms beyond.

• To the east is the storeroom, where a set of dusty textbooks crumble when touched, and an "aerosoul" can sucks instead of sprays.
• To the west is a precarious rope bridge, leading to a shabbily constructed room with peeling wallpaper and a hook inside a cabinet, and also a treasure chamber guarded by a ferocious dragon. Both of these places are lethal to stay around for too long.

 

I'm pretty much on walkthrough autopilot for the game's next few problems.

• You need to buy Honest John's whiskey and beer. I'm not quite sure how the economics work out; this should cost me three fergs in total, and all I've got is one coin and an IOU for another, but my coin alone covers both.
• The books are readable if you first type CAST SPELL ON TOMES. Either this is a sequence break or a very horrible puzzle, but either way, this isn't strictly necessary. The books tell me that Kronos made a Faustian deal for his powers, and must offer three innocent souls in exchange or forfeit his own.
• In the wallpaper room, you can use the trowel to tear through the paper walls, and then use the hook here as an anchor point for your rope to descend safely.

 

To the gates of hell, apparently.

 

Persistence gets the doors open, but the mad porter immediately kills me when I try to enter, by clubbing me with an empty whiskey bottle. I take that as a posthumous clue that he wants a full one, and on a reload, he accepts mine and lets me in. 

Offering my beer gets me a few points.

 

But before I can make much progress, a pack of hungry demons (in hell's kitchen, of course), decide to cook and eat me after I try to raid their refrigerator.

 

My Trizbort map so far:

The Pawn: axb8N

Turns out that the "metal key" that the game hinted the existence of was on my person from the start! This opens the toolshed, where I find a hoe, rake, and wheelbarrow. But I can't find any immediate use for these that works - I try using the hoe to lift the loose floorboards inside the tree, to dig in the garden, and I try raking leaves in the forest, but either these are invalid actions or I just haven't found the right words to communicate them.

I turn to a walkthrough. The first thing I missed; if you speak to Kronos about your wristband the first time you meet, he gives you the cursed chest earlier. I can get the adventurer to spawn by wandering the path, and I even score some points for giving it to him, which kills him, but the wristband doesn't come off and Kronos is nowhere to be seen.

Next point in the walkthrough - by searching the palace fountain, we find an IOU for one ferg. Honest John will accept this, but I don't yet know what I can do with any of his wares. But this teaches me to be more thorough in examining objects, even ones that seem to be background scenery, and when I apply this lesson to the toolshed, I also discover a trowel on top of the workbench, and a potted plant under it. But I still don't really see how this helps solve my immediate problems, and though I can remove the plant from its pot, "plant the plant" is an unrecognized command, much as I'd like to see what happens when I try.

Back to the walkthrough - to get any help from the guru, I must remove my shirt and cover up the wristband so that he stops laughing. Why is he the only person who finds it so funny? Who knows. But he requests "essential nourishment." The spring water sold by Honest John doesn't do; too commercial for his tastes. And I can't find a way to fill his bowl with water from the palace fountain or the river underneath the bridge. He also does not accept rations or beer.

So the walkthrough again - the next steps don't complete the guru's quest, but solve a problem I didn't know could be solved yet, in a manner (and verbiage) I would have never guessed.

This opens up a new area, a narrow path up into the mountains, where I find a cave entrance too dark to fully explore, and a snowy plateau region, where a snowman guards the entrance to an ice tower. At one point, the adventurer shows up and begins fighting him.

I discover that if I murder the adventurer, I can ride his horse, and explore the dark cavern on it. Cruelly, I discover during this time that if you simply DROP objects, some of them (like the guru's bowl and the potted plant) will break. At least the game tells you. PUT ALL DOWN will do it safely.

• A pool of ammonia collects in the middle, but I can't find a way to interact with it.
• Northward, a small cave is too tight for the horse to enter, but too dark to enter on foot.
• Southward, a hazily lit corridor opens up to a locked door that neither of my keys will open.
• Eastward, a malformed REM statement states that this this where I fall into a trapdoor, but I can find no trapdoor.
• Further east, a precarious path by lava river forces me to explore on foot. A narrow upward shaft takes me to one of hell's radiators, where I can break down a crumbling wall and release the inflow back down to the lava river, cooling off a a sub-area.
• On the north bank of the lava river, now crossable, an exit sign warns that an irrelevant maze lies past it, and sure enough, not only is this true, but the maze behind is completely unsolvable and inescapable. Instead, pushing a pedestal here reveals a blue key underneath it.

Infuriatingly, there's a bug that causes "PUSH PEDESTAL" to not work, which is solved by restarting the computer and reloading a saved game. But for awhile, I was banging my head on the keyboard with "PUSH PEDESTAL" and "MOVE PEDESTAL" and "LIFT CUBE" and all these permutations until I tried doing a restart/reload (a reload alone does not fix it). It makes me wonder how many other failed actions were bugs, and definitely does not inspire any confidence that this game was playtested by anyone.

Anyway, the blue key's purpose isn't quite clear, but an uncharacteristically logical solution to another problem hit me - snows from the mountain in the guru's bowl satisfy his demand, and he tells me,

"Some light in the forest would help you and the trees. We must live in harmony with nature you know." 

I ride my light-emitting horse into the forest, and the description of the clearing seems different. Inspecting the stump, I now find a pouch containing a glowing red, blue, and green. No, I did not forget a word in that sentence.

Stuck again, because I don't know what to do with these colors, the walkthrough claims they act as portable light sources (if this is true, I haven't figured out how to use this property yet), but the next action it directs me to take is in the treehouse in the rank forest. Remember those loose floorboards that the game said were too heavy to lift? The game lied. It's not too heavy - the door was in the way! Close the door and you can lift it.

Just in case you thought I was kidding

 

Also, this is another action affected by the invalidation bug. If you successfully lift the floorboard and then reload a game (as I did, to take the above screenshot), then it won't work any more until you restart the computer.

The passage below is, of course, dark, and I'll need to figure out how to use my pouch of primary colors to see. 

My Trizbort map so far:

Game 461: The Pawn

 

Before Data Driven Gamer, I had virtually no knowledge of any IF titles outside the Infocom canon and Sierra's proto-adventures. Even now, it's still pretty limited. From my own perspective, Infocom remains the main contributor to the genre in 1985, but their relevance is quickly waning despite significant advances in world size, mechanical depth, and vocabulary. In the UK, where Infocom lacks a publisher and the disk drives needed to play their games are uncommon, audiences are served by Adventure International's exports, and a cottage industry of BASIC adventures in the same style (and limitations) thrives but sees no fame abroad.

The UK's biggest and most iconic homegrown IF studios are Level 9 and Magnetic Scrolls, whose games are released overseas through British Telecom. The latter is known for lusciously illustrated scenes on cutting-edge 16-bit platforms, and the former known for squeezing impossibly large game worlds into the confining limits of 32KB micros. I have yet to play a single game by either studio.

The Pawn was Magnetic Scrolls' first release, and the earliest by Telecom to make whale status, but their trademark illustrations aren't here yet; the initial release was on Sinclair's ill-fated 16-bit Spectrum successor "Quantum Leap" and was text-only. Presumably there is a reason why this was the target platform, but it's not a well explored one, and this is likely the only time I will ever emulate one. A consequence is that the only emulator I could find and get working with the QL's "microdrive" cartridge format is QemuLator, which lacks many modern emulation niceties, including native resolution screenshotting. Which I guess doesn't matter that much for a text-only game.

The original booklet, titled "QL-Pawn," explains that this adventure is set in the fantasy world of Kerovnia during a time of social upheaval driven mainly by whiskey and beer shortages. I'm not really sure how seriously we're supposed to take that backstory, but the dwarves are banished, King Erik is unpopular, and we're here for some unexplained reason and purpose. It also outlines the capability's of Magnetic Scrolls' parser, and demonstrates no particular feat that we haven't seen from Infocom, but complex, compound sentences parse, adjectives are recognized, and there is even some structure for interpersonal conversation.

 

Well, no points for originality in this intro.

Unsurprisingly, the wristband can't be removed, and has no remarkable qualities when examined. So, as always, I begin by Trizborting.

This initial area is wide open with most "rooms" having exits in all eight directions, though a few non-orthogonal passages exist, and rooms are not all uniquely named.

• To the east of the path, Honest John the traveling salesman, offers rations, water, whiskey, and armor for sale, but I have no money right now.
• Southward, a magician "Kronos" asks me to deliver a sealed message to King Erik.
• Further east, a bridge leads to the palace gardens, where a toolshed is seen in the corner, and a conspicuous mat reveals a key when lifted. This key does not open the toolshed, unfortunately, and the parser none-too-subtly reveals the existence of a metal key when I try ("wooden key or metal key?" it tasks, when I tell it to unlock the door with my key).
• The place guards permit me an audience with the king, but he promptly throws me out after reading Kronos' message.
• A series of notice boards posted on the southern edge of the map inform me that this is the edge of the adventure, and crossing any further in possession of artifacts is impossible. This proves to be correct.
• The western side of the map is the "Rank Forest" and gives me the most mapping trouble of any area, consisting of multiple confusingly laid-out rooms, though unique room descriptions help.
• A tree stump lies in a clearing in the middle, but there is no obvious significance.
• A sole tree in the forest is climbable, and at the top, a little wooden door is opened by my wooden key, but I get no further; the room is empty save for loose floorboards that I'm told are too heavy to lift.
• In the hills to the north, a  spiritual leader dwells in suitably austere living space, and is remarkably unhelpful.

 

And now I'm stuck. There are two other events I've seen while exploring, but I've restarted since and am unable to figure out what triggers them - an adventurer on horseback appeared once, somewhere around the main path, and Kronos appeared in the forest clearing demanding that I murder the adventurer with a cursed chest in exchange for my freedom from the wristband. Sound fishy, but I guess it's not called The Pawn for nothing.

 

My Trizbort map (so far) - most of the extraneous room connectors are removed in order to keep the map from looking like a Factorio blueprint:

Game 460: Little Computer People

Background: 

In late 1985, Activision's R&D department made a breakthrough computing discovery; that so-called "Little Computer People" dwell in every personal computer, and possess individual appearances, names, and personality traits. To aid in their study, researcher David Crane created the "House-on-a-Disk" diskette, a simulated three-story house with five rooms and a spacious attic, which said people can live in and be directly observed.

These studies have, of course, been long abandoned, superseded by projects such as "The Sims" and "The Sims 4" which do not require obsolete 8-bit personal computers. However, the sudden scarcity of RAM in the year 2025 impels fieldwork with more modest requirements, and with it, an opportunity for a retrospective in 64KB. How are these Little Computer People doing after 40 years? Can they tell that their natural habitat is also a simulation? Does the Y2K bug affect them?

 

Video log of activity:

 

Field notes:

 

9:30: Simulation begins. A Little Computer Person (henceforth to be referred to as LCP) enters the domicile and begins to inspect it. The kitchen pleases him. The computer in the study does not. LCP uses the washroom, does not flush or shut the door, and barely washes his hands afterward.

9:35: LCP goes to the living room and sits on the lounge chair for less than a second before standing back up. Exits and leaves the lights on. LCP inspects the bedroom and leaves the closet door and all drawers open. Attic and kitchen are re-inspected before he leaves via front door - at least he closed the refrigerator.

9:37: LCP returns with a small parcel of his personal effects. A small dog follows. LCP watches television, then acknowledges my presence by turning his head toward the glass of the computer monitor. He speaks, but I cannot understand his language. I suggest to him, through a teletype-like interface, that he type me a letter, but he ignores me and goes downstairs, leaving the TV on.

9:39: LCP picks up the phone and speaks. Did he mean to speak to a friend, or is he trying to speak to us? He didn't dial. Either way, I still can't understand him. LCP then does jumping jacks in the master bedroom.

I said please!

 

9:40: LCP puts on a 33 1/3 RPM record. "We Wish you a Merry Christmas," and sits and watches TV quite unmerrily. Perhaps a new record might brighten his mood?

9:41: LCP taps on the glass of the monitor and requests a game of "Card War."

This is an incredibly boring and drawn out game of chance with no strategy and no decisions whatsoever, but this is also the most interactivity that's been offered since the simulation started, so I humor him. Playing improves his mood somewhat, namely when he is winning, but beating his hands makes him grumpier.

9:47: I unilaterally end the game, being ahead by 26 cards at the time with no end in sight, and LCP is visibly unhappy. I send him a new record as a holiday present, which he dispassionately collects from the front door and stashes away.

9:49: LCP makes another unintelligible phone call. I call him, and we speak, unproductively.

 

9:50: LCP plays his new record, a progressive rock album, and leaves the house, not bothering to stop the player.

9:51: LCP returns and makes another phone call. I attempt to pat him on the back; he stands up before the network-activated mechanical hand can make physical contact. Nevertheless, and to my surprise, this immediately improves his mood. Could simple touch be the key to a good disposition? LCP turns off the record and feeling inspired, plays some piano, and shows himself to be fairly skilled.

The sprite animation does a reasonable job of looking like the LCP is playing music and not just pressing random keys.

9:54: LCP washes his hands and prepares a quick, unheated meal.

9:56: LCP brushes his teeth. I try to tell him to turn off the TV, but he ignores me again.

 

9:57: LCP makes another phone call, then goes upstairs to watch more TV. I end the observation, leaving him to his devices.

 

Addendum:

I return briefly in the afternoon. LCP is named Ian - I learn this as I'm able to coax a letter out of him.
 

Ian misspells 'typist' before backspacing and correcting.

Strange - his water cooler isn't empty! In fact, it's at the same volume as when I left it. Is he rationing?

I dutifully fill it to the brim and offer a phone call, but then I leave.

 

GAB rating: N/A.

Little Computer People is a cute semi-interactive toy, but it's not a game, and there's only so much to see and do. Even in 1985, I have to imagine that I would have exhausted the possibilities of this house-on-a-disk very quickly and gotten bored of it.

Also, in a rather consumer-unfriendly twist, though one that makes sense in-universe, once you generate an LCP, you're stuck with him on your disk forever, without any way to "reset" the game except by using fanmade utility disks. The manual even recommends ordering more house-on-a-disks if you want new LCP's. I don't think they can die through neglect a la Tamagotchi, but wouldn't it be cruel if they could?