is a text adventure developed and published by Square for the NEC PC-8801, NEC PC-9801, and Fujitsu FM-7 in 1984. The game and its supporting computer platforms were only released in Japan. The Death Trap is the first game developed by Square, created before they were even an independent company. At the time, Square was a software branch of Den-Yu-Sha, a Japanese power line manufacturing firm; it was not until 1986 that Square was independently established. Square released a sequel in 1985 called Will: The Death Trap II. Square's third and final text adventure game was called Alpha, released in 1986, and tells a science fiction story in the same style as The Death Trap. Gameplay The Death Trap is a silent (no sound) text parser adventure game, which relies on simple command lines from the user's input to progress through the game. As opposed to most "text adventures", with only text as output, The Death Trap provides graphical feedback using full screen still images. Plot The game's plot revolves around a spy in an African country during a civil war. The story also involves biological warfare. The game's plot is set during the 1980s. In the game, the Cold War has become tense, and many countries have begun to prepare for a global-scale war, working on new weapons. One of such countries is the mysterious "B country" in Eastern Africa, which in an attempt to create biological weapons kidnaps the famous scientist Dr. Gitanes. An agent named Benson is sent to B country in order to rescue the doctor and avert the new threat to world peace. Development The Death Trap was the first game developed by Square, a computer game software branch of Den-Yū-Sha Electric Company. Masashi Miyamoto, who founded Square in September 1983, believed that it would be more efficient to have graphic designers, programmers and writers work together on common projects. Upon Square's inception, Miyamoto initially hired as their first developers university students Hironobu Sakaguchi and Hiromichi Tanaka, and a few others. They shortly began work on Square's first game, The Death Trap. Sakaguchi noted in 1985 that he had expected to only do clerical work, not develop video games, yet was appointed a producer for the game. Sakaguchi was also a scenario writer for The Death Trap even though he too was a part time employee who had just left university. Harunobu Kato and Tanaka