Universe - Time Enough for Love

Written by MenhirMike

As I'm starting this session I notice a slight annoyance: There is no main menu with a quick load option. Universe originally came on 6 floppy disks (plus the save disk) and it only supported one floppy drive. So I need to boot from Disk 1, wait for it to load, insert Disk 2, wait until I'm back on the asteroid to begin the game, go into the disk menu to load, insert my save disk, load the game, and insert the disk I need to be on. Since the game does not support installation on a hard disk, this is mildly inconvenient. This is not a big deal in 2025 since I could play the MS-DOS version, speed up the emulator, use WHDLoad, or do what I did back in the 90s and download an HD Installer that some cracker group made. But I did want to mention it to be period accurate and to give the developers credit: Loading times are pretty decent and disk swapping during gameplay is manageable. Not counting swapping in and out the save game disk of course. Another much bigger annoyance: Pressing the Escape key opens a screen with Restart and Load Game options, but no way back out. So if I press escape in the middle of gameplay I’m stuck on that screen. Another commenter remarked that in the MS-DOS version, the game just dumps you to the DOS prompt. Talk about taking the Escape key a bit too literal.

Back to the plot. We’ve been invited into Silphinaa's home where we learn that Erdic is a very ancient language. There are multiple-choice dialogue options as well. If there is only one choice the game automatically picks it for us. We can ask her where we are, for directions to Ashby, or for a bite to eat. She tells us that the Imperial Prefectorate is clamping down on what used to be a humble asteroid cluster and demand more and more duties to be paid. Her father was taken away by imperial droids and she expects to be taken soon. And as with any good authoritarian regime, the neighbors are happy to sell out anyone for a few credits. Since we have no identification, the droids would also take me in (as I found out earlier when talking to the sentry droid led to a game over). Phew, good that Boris managed to find the one helpful person on this floating space rock!

Ashby-de-la-Zouch is a real place, near the Derbyshire and Staffordshire borders in Leicestershire, which are also real places.

Silphinaa tells us to make our way to the Wheelworld and seek out Malinaa to get safe accommodation. Boris (whose full name is Boris Verne) has another strange reaction and tells her that droids are approaching the door. She tells us to run upstairs, which starts our first timed life or death puzzle. The way upstairs is locked by a door that requires a five digit code. There is one obvious code in the manual, but this is not the time for it yet. Trying to talk to Silphinaa is also fruitless. I can’t find any clue to the code and die to the droids making their way in. There’s some actual game over artwork that is a bit more interesting than the usual death message.

 

At least room and board are included.

After a bit of trial and error, I bashed the keypad with the metal pipe (thankfully these electronic locks are fail safe instead of fail deadly). I do wonder if there is any legit passcode for this keypad because I could not find it - if there is, please let me know in the comments!

Unfortunately, if you don't save in the few seconds before the droids break in, you have to re-do the entire dialogue again. You can right click to skip dialogue lines quickly at least. After the pleasant introduction on the asteroid, the game starts to show some cracks due to a lack of hints or guidance towards puzzle solutions.

I reloaded about 10 times in this section. Remember how I was just praising the game for quick loading times and infrequent disk swapping except for the save disk? Yeah. I will not fault the game for a lack of auto-save, given the meager system requirements and it not being the style of the time.

Georg Ohm says that Resistance is Voltage divided by Current.

We made our way upstairs while Silphinaa is being taken away by the droids, who are still chasing me. The time limit is a lot more generous while I am exploring upstairs. I open a wardrobe and find a suit inside of it, which makes me utilize the Wear action for the first time.

The suit has a built-in computer, and I also found an ID Card and a Key Card in my inventory. (Aside: I’m curious where the concept of an arm mounted computer originated. Fallout has a very famous one, but that didn’t arrive until 1997. Unfortunately, “arm computer” is a bit hard to google thanks to the Acorn RISC Machine.)

Not big enough to hold a fourth wall though.

Here's another interface/pathfinding annoyance: There is a computer console above Silphinaa’s bed. I get the thumbs up icon when I use it, but then nothing happens. I have to move Boris close enough to it before I can successfully use it. This will not be the last instance of needing to move Boris around a little bit for an interaction that’s clearly correct and gets acknowledged with a thumbs up to actually work.

The console allows me to change the music to genres like ambient escalator, heavy silicon, or cryotrance. Sadly, this is a bait and switch because the in-game music does not change. Oh well, at least the window shutter works. We jump out of the window into the parking lot where a speeder is parked.

See Kia/Hyundai, THIS is how you deal with car jackers!

We're literally jumping into the car. Only to get zapped by the anti-theft device. After using the arm computer to disengage it we're informed that it's a Personal Transport Vehicle, or PTV. I inserted the key card into a slot that I found after some pixel hunting to start up the PTV, which also reassures me that my fuel and shield gauges are maxed. I found the Anti-Theft code keypad after some more "click on everything". The manual says that my Personal PTV Number (Personal Personal Transport Vehicle Number) is 87764. I applaud them for making the copy-protection fit thematically.

How nice of the three robot stooges to see us off.

We speed into space, pass out, and see a vision. The Supreme Cognitor is tasking Baron Kaleev to seek and destroy the new alien presence in the Pfallenop cluster - that's us! And right after we are approached by another ship who hails us. Sadly, it's not some cool Terminator rip off like in Space Quest 3, or even the just mentioned Baron Kaleev. Instead, it’s Snorglat, galactic entrepreneur of the trading vessel Darfugh. Yes, really, that’s the name of the ship.

I want to be Kaleev instead of the Kaleev!

He thinks we're a pirate. We’re asking him how to get to Wheelworld, only to be told that he doesn’t care about scum like us… but if we had something to trade, maybe we can do business? Unfortunately, we don’t, so he lets us off - this time. (There are some other dialogue options that lead to him blowing us out of space, so he’s not joking about not liking pirates)

I like the creature design here. I wonder if his thighs are uncomfortable, squeezed under the console?

Interacting with the navigation computer opens up a map which we can scroll around with to find Wheel world, spelled as two words here. Unfortunately, our current fuel supply isn't enough to get there. I assume that we have to find something that Snorglat wants to trade for.

There are three planets within reach, and each planet allows selecting one of four quadrants. The closest planet is Loksass 3, which is barren and toxic and all 4 quadrants are too dangerous because of volcanic activity. The manual describes it as "very unimportant".

Jor-Slev 4 ("an irrelevant rock planet") consists of an ant-eater like alien that eats little blobs coming from a hole. There is a rock nearby which triggers my adventure gaming instincts and causes the creature's demise by throwing the rock at it. Why did we do that? Because it's an adventure game, of course. More and more blob creatures emerge from the hole, like tribbles. I notice that they huddle around my PTV without getting in, and I don’t see any way to interact with them.

It wouldn’t be an adventure game without being at least a partial sociopath, wouldn’t it?

With nothing obvious to do, I go to another quadrant where I find a hermit stranded on this planet. He tells us that he eats anything that moves. So I guess I need a way to capture the blobs and bring them to him? Going back to the blobs shows that the alien is alive again (so I guess eating the rock just knocks them out). Using another rock to release the blobs, I try to capture them with the fast food container, lure them into the PTV, or anything else I have in my inventory, to no avail.

Is it me, or does the front of the speeder look a bit like Darth Vader’s mask?

I guess I can't do anything here. Let's try the last planet we can reach, Balkamos 7 ("an extremely insignificant planet [...] simply included to take up space"). Well, it's not so insignificant overall. Here I find a crashed space ship and a cleaning droid to pick up. The music changes to some funky alien music. Speaking of aliens, there are some strange aliens here stealing my car. HEY! Well, I guess I should've turned the shock field back on. Using the computer with the car does not work though, because the car is not a hotspot on this screen. I try to reload my game and remove the key card or otherwise engage the anti-theft device before the aliens can get to my PTV but nope, no luck. Can't attack them or throw rocks at them either. I eventually found a container with pest repellant on another screen. This is the first inventory on inventory puzzle, combining the cleaning droid with the canister of pest repellant yields a Droid + Canister, which I can use to shoo away the aliens and reclaim my car.

“Joyride” is a song by Swedish pop duo Roxette, released in 1991.

Alright, let's try Jor-Slev 4 again. Using the droid as a vacuum cleaner to suck up the blobs does the trick. The hermit eagerly takes the blobs (his favorite food!) and gives us a "pretty stone thing" in return. This turns out to be a “narcotic carvite”.

The word carvite seems to be completely made up for the game.

This entire section felt a bit off. First, the navigation computer interface is a bit awkward: Chart a course to a planet to orbit it. We then need to descend to the planet where we get to see a flyover that might've looked cool in 1994 if it hadn’t already been done much better in Cryo’s Dune two years earlier. From here we select a quadrant and usually get told that it’s too dangerous to land there, or we actually get to a new location. The three planets have three total quadrants accessible. Window dressing is important for the atmosphere of the game, but this felt a bit tedious. I wonder if later parts of the game make better use of the navigation computer interface.

The carvite must flow.

Let's look at the sequence of events: We escaped the Pfallenop cluster, being pursued by imperial droids, who just took away the person that was helping us, with our destination being the Wheelworld, and then had a vision of Baron Kaleev being sent to hunt us. Good stuff, much tension. Next up we meet some random space trader, go to three planets that the manual describes as "insignificant", find a pest repelling cleaning droid that we use to reclaim our car from aliens, knock out another alien with a rock in order to capture some blob creatures, and then trade those to a hermit for narcotics. Adventure game stuff.

The game does impress with the description of inventory items.

It is important for a story to occasionally release the tension a bit, give the reader a breather, and build up to the next exciting action sequence. But here it felt like pulling the emergency brake on a bullet train, the pacing just came to a complete halt. I’m arguably not a narrative designer, but I would’ve put the Baron Kaleev vision here or whenever we trade the carvite with Snorglat as a way to end this section of the game and re-ignite the tension.

At least I assume that trading the carvite with Snorglat is next because it explicitly mentions that it’s legal to trade it on Wheelworld and Snorglat told us he was looking for a trade.

Will I be right? Find out next time on “Verne’s travel guide to insignificant places”!

Session Time: 2 hours 30 minutes

Total Time: 4 hours 15 minutes