Missed Classic: Bureaucracy - Devoured By Llamas (Deleted Scenes & Extras)

Written by Joe Pranevich

I didn’t like Bureaucracy. As we saw last time out, it scored the lowest of the Infocom games so far. I expect this disappointed some of you-- if Jimmy Maher ever reads this blog, that post may have been his last-- but it’s my honest assessment. Bureaucracy was developed over several years and rotated designers more frequently than some people change pants. This led to a disjointed product that didn’t quite live up to its premise or its pedigree. We have no idea which designers came up with each of the game’s elements, but thanks to the Infocom source code leak we have an amazing view into some of what was cut or retained, as well-- possibly for the first time-- to see the founding vision for the game. 

Unlike some of the other games I looked at, we can glean a veritable treasure trove of information from the code leak. Not only do we have several puzzle design documents and a circa-1985 game pitch, but also semi-complete alternate versions of three of the sections: “airport”, “jet”, and “maze”. The airplane portion alone went through five versions that we know of before the developers found a set of scenarios and they liked. Covering all of that may be tricky. My plan will be to first look at the original design document then iterate through each area in sequence, paying special attention to alternate versions and commented-out code to identify as many discarded sequences as I can.  

Will we discover that I like the cut content more than the real thing? Only one way to find out!

Lost Secrets of the Rainforest - Final Rating

Written by Reiko


I am more ambivalent about Lost Secrets of the Rainforest than any other game I've written about on the blog here. Most of the games I asked to write about were ones that I knew something about before I started, and this one is no exception, since it is the sequel to the cheerful Ecoquest. You might think that making a sequel would be easier, since some ideas or characters or settings get carried over from the original game. Yet I find that a sequel nearly always struggles to live up to the bar set by its original. What carries over tends to constrain the sequel rather than letting it be its own thing.

I could expand that into a thesis with examples, but we're here to look at Lost Secrets, so I'll focus on why translating Ecoquest into a rainforest setting didn't result in a similarly charming experience as the original underwater game. I wanted to like it, and some things I did like, but others I didn't.

Puzzles and Solvability

Most of the puzzles were reasonably straightforward; like Ecoquest, the story is pitched around middle-school age, so nothing is deliberately tricky, and there are no dead ends as far as I know. However, I really struggled with several puzzles that felt arbitrary. There was nothing in the first game that was tightly timed, so the sequence in the camp where the goon would catch you if you were in the wrong place too long was rather jarring. I spent the most time on that sequence, having to restart over and over to test where I could go and when in order to get things done. It was tedious at best.

I saw this screen way too much.

What's Your Story: Sabrina LaFey

Answers: Sabrina LaFey
Introduction and captions: Ilmari 

Our community of adventure game aficionados has received a new member. Let us all give a warm welcome to Sabrine LaFey!

Space Quest V - Spring Daze at StarCon-U

Written by Joe Pranevich

Welcome back to Space Quest V where Roger Wilco is just getting started down his road to Star Trek-style heroism. The previous post closed out the game’s introductory movie where Roger fantasized that he was the captain of a starship exploring the galaxy, only to be revealed as nothing more than a simulator. Star Trek geeks might wonder if this is the Space Quest version of the “Kobayashi Maru”, the test that all young cadets must go on to learn if they have the capacity to lose in a no-win situation. Roger doesn’t need that kind of training; he’s perfectly good at being a loser even in winnable situations!

I hope you placed your score bets. I am excited to get into this game, if for no other reason than to find out if it can match up to the previous games in the series despite having only a single “Guy From Andromeda”. Will the new blood help or hinder creativity? There is only one way to find out. 

Eric the Unready - The Gods Must be Crazy

Written by TBD 

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