Suspended (video game)

Suspended: A Cryogenic Nightmare is an interactive fiction video game written by Michael Berlyn and published by Infocom in 1983. Infocom's sixth game, it was released for Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Atari 8-bit family, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Commodore Plus/4, IBM PC (as a self-booting disk), TRS-80, and TI-99/4A. It was later available for Macintosh, Amiga, and Atari ST.
Plot.
The player's character has been embedded within a facility that controls vital systems, such as moving public transportation belts and weather control, for an Earth-settled planet called Contra. During the player's five-hundred-year tenure, the player would normally be kept in stasis while his sleeping mind serves as the Central Mentality for the largely self-maintaining systems. As the game opens, however, he is awakened by severe error messages; something is going wrong. The facility has suffered catastrophic damage from an earthquake, and the Filtering Computers are shutting down or becoming dangerously unstable. The inhabitants of the city assume that the Central Mentality has gone insane and is purposely harming the city, as a previous CM had done. The player's task is to repair the damage and restore the systems to normal states before a crew arrives at the facility to "disconnect" his mind, killing him, to be replaced with a clone.
Gameplay.
Rather than being free to move about and interact with the game world directly, the player's character spends the entire game in a state of suspended animation (hence the title) and can only interact by controlling the actions of a number of robot surrogates. Each robot has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and describes the same rooms and objects in completely different terms based upon those specializations. The robots are:
So, for example, Auda will describe a room primarily in terms of the sounds being generated there, Poet will describe it in terms of diagnostics of the equipment there (and phrase it in amusingly metaphorical language), and Iris will provide a visual description. All six of the robots can be given orders in conjunction, and some of the challenges the player faces require that several of the robots work together to solve them.
There is a seventh robot, an all-purpose multifunction repair robot named Fred, who spends the entirety of the game broken and cannot be repaired.
"Suspended" has six ways to die.
Release.
Each package included the following physical items:
Reception.
The game sold 99,956 copies.
"Suspended" was well received by critics. "Softline" praised the feelies as "continued breakthroughs in packaging and merchandising", and noted the game's replayability. The magazine concluded that ""Suspended" represents another milestone in the continuing evolution of the interactive computer novel." "Computer Gaming World" considered each robot to have a unique personality, and praised the use of the library computer as an in-game hint system. The game's parser and time-saving techniques (such as a "follow" command) were similarly praised. Brian Moriarty of "ANALOG Computing" also praised the robots' characterization, stating that "a few hours with these electronic personalities will make them your friends" and comparing the experience to that of "a fine novel". He concluded that "Suspended" and other Infocom products "are among the finest examples of a new and entertaining means of self-expression which can now be regarded as 'literature' without apology." "Ahoy!" wrote that Berlyn "has lavished a good deal of complexity and eccentricity into his game. I recommend it." "Compute!'s Gazette" called "Suspended" "an exciting, imaginative adventure game that's likely to keep you glued to your keyboard for hours." Although it also noted how the "response time can be somewhat slow" and "some commands require as long as two or more minutes for a response." But the "Compute!" review concluded: "If the small inconvenience of a sometimes slow response does not bother you, then I can highly recommend Suspended." "Hi-Res" wrote that "Suspended" "is an excellent game" and "a worthy successor to the "Zork" series."
The game received a Certificate of Merit in the category of "1984 Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Computer Game" at the 5th annual Arkie Awards.
Bill Wallace reviewed "Suspended" in "Space Gamer" No. 68. Wallace commented that "If you do like text adventures - difficult ones - then this game is a must."
In 1996, "Computer Gaming World" declared "Suspended" the 58th-best computer game ever released.