Boldly going where angels fear to tread: The Infocom classic Planetfall

In a post by @elseleth yesterday I was reminded of the classic Infocom text adventure games. That started me nostalgically reminiscing, and reminded me that I had never actually completed Planetfall, one of the first computer games I had ever played. I had gotten close to the end back in the day (eventually getting some help from the Invisiclues hint book), but because there's a timing-related element to the game (you are infected with a disease, so you gradually get weaker and more constrained in how much inventory you can carry) I couldn't quite seal the deal without restarting from scratch, which I didn't do.

Since I couldn't quite shake that nostalgic itch, today I downloaded a “frotz” parser and downloaded the data file for Planetfall and played the game. I remembered that having a decent map was an important part of play (one of the reasons I got stuck as a kid was that I didn't realize there was a second exit to the small office that led to a large office with another acesss card – also it's kind of strange how specific details like that can stick in my memory), so I busted out some pencil and paper for a proper old-school interactive fiction experience:

It's hard to tell what the experience of playing this game fresh would be, I had a combination of vague recollections of both play and reading the hints from long ago, so there wasn't a huge amount of mystery. Some of the puzzles were pretty tedious (one has you trekking back and forth between two distant rooms, including riding an elevator where you need to type in the “wait” until it gets to your floor). I did look up a few hints this time, too (figuring out what to do with a “bent metal bar”, and realizing I could actually interact with the big doors in the main lab). I also breezed past a lot of the background “lore” in the game, which tended to short-circuit some of the humor. All of the written information on the planet you land on is written in a dialect that's “a corrupt form of Galalingua”. Basically there are some letter substitutions, single vowels make short vowel sounds, and double vowels make long vowel sounds. Here's the fist instance of it you encounter in the game, at a plaque on an observation balcony overlooking the countryside:

SEENIK VISTA
Xis stuneeng vuu uf xee Kalamontee Valee kuvurz oovur fortee skwaar miilz uf xat faamus tuurist spot. Xee larj bildeeng at xee bend in xee Gulmaan Rivur iz xee formur pravincul kapitul bildeeng.

Since you're reading somewhat phonetically you're basically doing a funny accent in your head whenever you read any of the material.

Spending a few hours playing a text adventure that I already basically know the ending to may not have been the most effective use of my time, but now I can at least say that I've done it. And the trip down memory lane was nice, and it was interesting to experience recalling some of the elements extremely vividly and having absolutely no recollection of others.