Dog Star Adventure
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| Dog Star Adventure | |
|---|---|
 Cover of SoftSide May 1979 | |
| Developer | Lance Micklus |
| Publisher | SoftSide |
| Platforms | TRS-80 (original) Commodore PET |
| Release | 1979 |
| Genre | Interactive fiction |
Dog Star Adventure is a text adventure game written by Lance Micklus in TRS-80 BASIC and published as the cover article in the May 1979 issue of SoftSide magazine. It is historically notable as the first example of the source code to a text adventure being published,[1][2] and as a result, many later text adventures are based on its concepts.
The game takes place in the Star Wars universe, loosely following the plot of the movie during the action that takes place on the Death Star. Names of the various characters are changed to avoid copyright issues. The player has to gather a number of items to repair their ship, rescue princess Leya, and escape without being detected by the many Roche Soldiers.
The game was simultaneously released on cassette tape by SoftSide publishing spin-off, The Software Exchange. A port to the Commodore PET was made by David Malmberg in 1980, with most of the names returned to their Star Wars versions. The original source was republished in The Captain 80 Book of BASIC Adventures in 1981,[3] and again in the June 1982 issue of Computer and Video Games.[4] It was also sold by Adventure International under the name Death Planet: The Dog Star Adventure.[5][6]
Gameplay
Dog Star is based on a two-word parser, with the user entering verb/noun phrases like TAKE CHEESEBURGER. A small number of commands can be shortened to a single word, like NORTH, or even shorter, N. The game is played by the player issuing commands to move about the game map and collect various items.[7]
The game begins with the player in control of a robot hiding in their spaceship. The ship is disabled and trapped within a hangar. The player needs to collect several items in order to win, including money, the enemy battle plans, and Princess Leia, the leader of the Freedom Fighters. These are scattered around the game map, some of them protected by various puzzles or traps.[7]
The game had a number of additions to the basic two-word model. Among these was a cheeseburger which had to be fed to a security robot. The cheeseburger cooled off over time, forcing the user to complete this task before that occurred, a concept Micklus refers to as a "time bomb". The game also included a storage depot filled with "all kinds of things", including many of the items needed to complete the game. The player had to find out what items to TAKE by carefully reading hints spread through the game. Finally, the game also included a feature from the classic Hunt the Wumpus: in certain locations the game would tell the user about nearby sounds, which the player had to use to avoid dangerous encounters.[8]
