Universe - Final Rating

Written by MenhirMike

To quote Frodo Baggins: It’s done.

The Universe Wikipedia article has this to say about the development:

Responding to some of the criticism directed at Curse of Enchantia, Core Design described Universe as being "a lot" more logical and less linear than their first adventure game. They also described the text-based system as an improvement over the use of only icons, the benefits being that it allowed conversations between characters and simply "it works". They also acknowledged that Curse of Enchantia had "suffered considerably" due to inclusion of action sequences, something that "adventure gamers don't want in their games”, so the ones in Universe were made "short and simple" enough.

Did Universe deliver on those promises? 

Universe - Won!

Written by MenhirMike

We left the Mekalien crawler with a cloaking device in our hand, where we can insert the Power Gem. This results in a device that’s powerless and devoid of life - wow, for all the trouble we went through to get the Power Gem, it’s been pretty underwhelming so far. Since the Mekalien didn’t give us any direction, I figure that making my way to the Mekalien Defense Outpost one more time would be the way to go. After all, if the Emperor is leading his fleet to war, a defense outpost sounds like a perfect place to meet him and maybe use the cloaking device to sneak aboard his flagship?

Alas, it was not meant to be, there is nothing except for empty space on the defense outpost. Not even a “Go away or be blasted out of space!” warning one would expect when approaching a military base in the middle of an active conflict. While flying around aimlessly again, I finally ran into a Colossus prison ship when entering the Mekhallantor Galaxy, which showcases yet another great piece of artwork. Neat, so maybe I’m going to use the cloaking device to spring Malinaa and Silphinaa out of prison and escape with them in tow?

If only the writing was as good as the art.

Universe - The Door into Summer

Written by MenhirMike

We begin this session in the spaceport after our daring escape from Baron Kaleev, ready to buy a ticket out of here. The only ticket is to the Mekanthallor Galaxy, and the airline doesn’t even guarantee that we get there because it’s a conflict zone. I tried to see if the high security ID would buy me a ticket elsewhere, but it cannot be used at all here. I had pretty high hopes when I got it, but so far it’s been completely useless.

I am surprised that Silphinaa’s ID still worked to buy a ticket on a space ship - I guess that Science Fiction authors of the early 90’s couldn’t foresee the TSA? But no such foresight was needed, 1990’s Total Recall had better airport security and required at least a disguise.

It also gave us the awesome shot of an animatronic head opening.

With the ticket in hand we’re entering the landing shuttle that brings us to the freighter, just in time before Kaleev’s droids catch up to us. If the Baron is directly ordered by the Emperor King to chase us, why didn’t he lock down the spaceport to prevent escape? I wonder if Kaleev learned all about law enforcement practices from the Lytton police department. (Thinking about it, Keith and Kaleev do sound somewhat similar, so the theory might have legs.)

Universe - Have Space Suit - Will Travel

Written by MenhirMike

I made my way back to the Pfallenop cluster and ran into Snorglak again. I could trade the narcotic carvite with him, and he said that we’d need to finalize the trade on Wheelworld. There was a short arcade section where I needed to dock with his docking clamp (not a euphemism), and it took a moment and some bouncing off the clamp for me to realize I needed to press the right mouse button to engage the clamp, and off we went.

I must have hit eighty-eight miles per hour with this baby.

That explains what the excursion was for, and one could argue that the setup was there: We don’t have enough fuel in our PTV to get to Wheelworld from Pfallenop ourselves. We meet a trader with a big ship that wants to trade, but we have nothing to trade for. We are left alone and find something to trade, and we arrange a trade that gets us to Wheelworld. The game doesn’t hand hold us to the solution and lets us figure it out ourselves. That’s great, isn’t it?

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.

Universe - Stranger in a Strange Land

Written by MenhirMike

Having landed on the asteroid and being given some sort of goal to get us going ("try and find a way out of this place"). Let's explore!

The interface is controlled with the left mouse button to walk somewhere and interact with stuff, while the right mouse button brings up a button bar at the bottom. There are icons for "Pick Up", "Options", "Use", "Look", "Talk", "Attack", and "Inventory". The "Options" item opens another menu with additional commands: "Insert", "Push/Pull", "Eat/Drink", "Wear", "Throw", "Combine", "Open/Close", "Jump", and "Info". The "Info" item opens a third menu with "Disk I/O", "Copyright Info", and "Scene Info".

Elegance or Nuisance? Time will tell.

This feels like an attempt to declutter the interface: Important stuff like Pick Up, Use, Look is directly there, while secondary commands are just a click away. But we’re also in the weird transitional phase in adventure gaming between a large amount of verbs and future games with essentially just Use and Look. It will be interesting to see how much the verbs under "Options" get used, because if you have a bunch of verbs you really need to use them in the game design. This has the potential to be also very clunky if most of the game requires an extra click to go through Options all the time.

Game 164: Universe (1994) - Introduction

Written by MenhirMike

British game developer Core Design is one of the more beloved Amiga developers, thanks to classics like Rick Dangerous, Chuck Rock, Banshee, or Bubba 'n' Stix. Of course, the one game that overshadows all of their other games combined is Tomb Raider, which also helped Sony’s PlayStation dominate the market even more than it already did (despite first releasing on Sega's ill-fated Saturn console).

But we're here to look at their adventure game output, and they are certainly not beloved for that. In fact, there are only two games to list: 1992's Curse of Enchantia (which was reviewed here by Alfred n’ the Fettuc and scored a whole 22 points) and today's topic, 1994's Universe. I almost thought that they had a saving grace because they also made Hook - but that's actually an action game on Genesis and not the adventure game, which was made by Ocean Software.