| Designer: | David Lo |
| Released: | 1983[1] [2] |
| Genre: | Text adventure |
| Modes: | Single-player |
| Platforms: | TRS-80, MS-DOS, Atari ST, Unix |
Beyond the Tesseract is a text-based adventure game developed in 1983 by Canadian author David Lo for the TRS-80. The game was notable for its unique take on the genre and approach to mathematical entities and abstract concepts.[1] In one section the player must navigate a text adventure game, inside the text adventure game. In another the player, while asleep, derives a proof using physical representations of various symbolic logic components.[1]
The game is intentionally vague using a VERB NOUN gameplay mechanic with a vocabulary of just 200.
In 1988 the game was rewritted from BASIC to C as V2.0, for MS-DOS and Atari ST; included was a patch file for V2.0p making it portable to Unix environments. It was published on Usenet that year, where it received a small patch submitted to fix issues in the Unix port, which became version V2.1p. In 2003, it was ported with minor modifications to the Z-machine interactive fiction standard virtual machine by Andrew Plotkin.[3]
Scenario:"You have reached the final part of your mission. You havegained access to the complex, and all but the last procedure hasbeen performed. Now comes a time of waiting, in which you mustsearch for the hidden 12-word message that will aid you at thefinal step. But what choice will you make when that time comes?"
The scenario for the adventure is meant to be vague. Once theadventure has been completed, the scenario will hopefully becomeclear.
Instructions:This adventure recognizes the standard commands for moving(N, E, S, W), taking inventory (I), manipulating objects (GET,DROP, LOOK), and saving games (SAVE, LOAD), as well as manyothers. Use 2-word 'verb noun' commands, such as 'use stack' or'get all'. Only the first four letters of each word aresignificant. The adventure recognizes about 200 words, so ifone word does not work, try another.
Notes:"The "stack" is an acronym for Space Time Activated ContinuumKey. You will find this object very useful. Try the command"use stack"."
This adventure is abstract and a bit on the technical side.Basic knowledge of the names of interesting mathematical objectswould be a definite asset in solving the puzzles. However,detailed knowledge of the technical background is not necessary,although it will make the adventure more enjoyable and reducethe amount of comments of the form "Was that supposed to be funnyor what? I don't get it."
There is no carry limit, no death traps, and over 200 words inthe program's vocabulary, so the player can hopefully concentrate onsolving the adventure instead of solving the program. The mapof the adventure can be draw on a grid. All it takes is alittle experimenting to put all the subsets of locationstogether "logically".
History:The idea of a mathematically abstract adventure came aboutduring the summer of 1983, when I was reading the book Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.I had just read anarticle on writing adventures, and I thought about doing my ownarticle on adventure writing. I did start on the article, andone of the examples of how varied puzzles can be is amathematical adventure where the player has to "use aprobability function to cross a field of improbability to get toa vortex." Sadly the article was never finished, althoughremnants of it can be found in the ADV.DOC file. I startedthinking more and more about a mathematically abstractadventure, and Tesseract was born!
The very first adventure that I wrote was in 1982, titled "Hallof the Mountain King" (find the Crystal of Light). TesseractVersion 1.0 was the second of the three TRS-80 BASIC adventuresthat I wrote in a two-month adventure-frenzy during the summerof 1983. The first was "Project Triad" (defuse the bomb on thespace station), and the third was "Codename Intrepid" (deliver apackage to another agent).[4]