Snowball Part 5. Level 9. ATARI ST. 1986

SNOWBALL
(Level 9 Computing)

Snowball is a big adventure game. It has over 7,000 locations and has
taken 9 months to produce. It's probably unique among adventures in
having a realistic, planned background and being set aboard a star-
ship that could actually work.

You play Kim Kimberley, secret agent extraordinary.

Your mission: to safeguard the interstar transport, Snowball 9, as a last
resort following catastrophic accident or sabotage.

Thus when your modified freezer-coffin wakes you with the Snowball
still in transit, you know that something must be very wrong. You're
weakened and disorientated from lengthy hibernation, but the fate of
two million passengers is in your hands!

Instructions

The program asks "What now?" whenever it expects you to enter
another command. Simply type an English phrase to tell it what you
want it to do and press RETURN (or ENTER). The program will act on
your request, ask you for the next command, and so on.

The program knows an extensive vocabulary of English words (over
200) and it looks at your entered command, picking out the words it
knows and "guessing" your meaning from these. Only two or three
words are used for each phrase, so you are advised to keep
instructions simple.

In practice you should find it is simple to state what you want to do,
but if the program does not understand just rephrase your request.
Snowball provides great freedom in possible commands but, to help
you get started, some possible instructions are summarised below:

INVENTORYSEARCH THE ROOM
LOOK AT COFFINPUSH THE GREEN BUTTON
EXAMINE COFFINLOOK AROUND
NORTHWESTGIVE DRINK TO ROBOT
TAKE SPANNEROPEN DOOR
WEAR HELMETWHAT'S MY SCORE
DROP THE RED FORMCUT TUBE WITH SCALPEL

These are only a small sample of the words known by the program. To
save typing, words can be abbreviated (e.g. EAST to E, NORTHEAST
to NE, and AGAIN to A).

The command analyser used by Snowball is even cleverer than that
used in our "Middle Earth" trilogy of games. For example:

* Word order is less important. For example "GIVE THE ROBOT A
DRINK" is the same as "GIVE A DRINK TO THE ROBOT".
* You can take or drop EVERYTHING.
* As well as compass directions for movement, LEFT, RIGHT,
FORWARDS and BACKWARDS are allowed.
* AGAIN repeats the previous command.
* Snowball understands IT, and IT can save you time. Use IT if you
want to act on the same object as in your last command - but please
keep IT simple.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Snowball
• Level 9
• ATARI ST
• Text adventure
• Interactive Fiction
• Aventura conversacional
• adventure games
• solution