Silicon Dreams
| Silicon Dreams | |
|---|---|
Cover art
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| Developer(s) | Level 9 Computing |
| Publisher(s) |
Firebird - United States Rainbird - Europe |
| Designer(s) |
Snowball Nick Austin, Mike Austin and Pete Austin with additional help from Ian Buxton. Return to Eden Nick Austin and Chris Queen with art by Tim Noyce The Worm in Paradise Nick Austin, Mike Austin and Pete Austin with art by James Horsler |
| Engine | 32 K virtual machine (custom) |
| Platform(s) | Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Amstrad PCW, Apple II, Atari 8-bit family, Atari ST, BBC Micro, Commodore 64, DOS, Macintosh, MSX, ZX Spectrum |
| Release | 1986 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure game |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Silicon Dreams is a trilogy of interactive fiction games developed by Level 9 Computing during the 1980s. The first game was Snowball, released during 1983, followed a year later by Return to Eden, and then by The Worm in Paradise during 1985. The next year they were vended together as the first, second and last of the Silicon Dreams. Early advertisements gave it the title of Silicon Dream, but it was pluralised later.
As most Level 9 games, the trilogy used an interpreted language termed A-code and was usable in all major types of home computer of the time, on either diskette or cassette. Level 9 self-published each game separately, but the combination was published by Telecomsoft, which sold it in the United States with the tradename Firebird and in Europe with the tradename Rainbird.
The trilogy is set in a not too-distant future when humans have started colonising space. For the first two instalments the player has the role of Kim Kimberly, an undercover agent, whose goal in Snowball is to save the colonist's spacecraft from crashing into a star, and in Return to Eden to stop the defence system at the destination planet of Eden from destroying the craft. In The Worm in Paradise, the player, with the role of an unnamed citizen of Eden, must travel around the city of Enoch, learn its secrets, earn money and save the planet.
The games use a text parser for entering commands at the "What now?" prompt. The parser can interpret more than a thousand words to control movement or actions. It looks at the command, picking out two or three words it knows, ignoring the order, and tries to guess what is meant. For movement, the usual commands for moving 'NORTH', 'SOUTH', 'EAST' and 'WEST' are available (and their abbreviated forms of 'N', 'S', 'E' and 'W') as well as 'UP' and 'DOWN' ('U' and 'D' respectively) and a number of other directions and 'modes' of movement (like 'JUMP'). For actions, it understands how to pick up objects, opening doors, lighting lamps, as well as dropping objects and wielding them. Additionally, there are commands to invoke 'SAVE' and 'RESTORE' of game positions to cassette tape or floppy disk (for some systems also to RAM), ask for 'HELP', turn off pictures and turn them on again with 'WORDS' and 'PICTURES' respectively, an 'OOPS' command to undo previous commands.
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