Hibernated 1 - This Place is Death

Have you ever dreamed about a journey far beyond the known regions of the universe? Hibernated 1: This Place is Death is a Science-Fiction text adventure for C64/C128, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Amiga, Atari ST and MS-DOS. It is the first interactive story in an epic trilogy centered around Olivia Lund, who has been sent on an interplanetary exploration mission by the Terran Alliance. After being in hypersleep for more than 200 years and with more than 800 light-years being travelled, her ship, the Polaris-7, crosses paths with a gigantic alien vessel and is captured by a tractor beam. Olivia soon finds out that this may not be her only problem. There is no communication and there are no signs of life. The extraterrestrial spacecraft just continues to drift through the cosmic void, something it seems to be doing for thousands of years now. This is a tomb in-between the stars, which Olivia has to enter to extricate herself from this interstellar trap. Io, the navigation robot of the Polaris-7, is probably her only friend now. Far away from home and surrounded by death and decay, she found the answer to one of the greatest questions of mankind. Are we alone? The answer is: yes, out here, we are more alone than ever.

PHYSICAL RELEASE

Hibernated 1 will also be available as a physical release with extra goodies and a bonus game later this year! Watch the official page at Pond Software or our forums!

GAMEPLAY

Hibernated is a text-only adventure. It works with a two-word-logic, e.g. EAT APPLE, EXAMINE CUPBOARD. The parser is capable tough to understand better forms of expression. So you could write N to go north, you could also write GO NORTH. You generally move with N(orth), S(outh), W(est), E(east) or any other direction that is written in the room description like e.g. UP or SE. You don't have to search for hidden exits, everything is clearly visible to you. A door though might be locked, which is a different cup of tea. 

The game comes with many synonyms that enhance the gameplay, e.g. EXAMINE BODY, CHECK CORPSE, INSPECT DEAD would all result in the same operation. LOOK AT is also a synonym for EXAMINE. To satisfy your expectations: corpses actually ARE objects in the game. Not only nouns have synonyms, the same counts for verbs: GET, GRAB, TAKE would all invoke the same operation. 

You can save and load your progress at any time. Type HELP in-game to learn more about disk / tape operations. 

Type REDESCRIBE if you want to read the room description again. 

Hit INVENTORY to have a look at the items you're carrying. 

The most common three operations have a short form: you can write R instead of REDESCRIBE to redescribe a room, I to check the inventory and X to EXAMINE an object. 

QUIT or STOP allows you to return to Basic. 

Common instructions are: USE, EXAMINE, DROP, TAKE, SEARCH, OPEN, PUSH, N, S, E, W. Other instructions derive from hints you get while progressing.

Type HINT to get a more or less cryptic hint how to achieve the next major goal in the game (progress-level).

HOW TO SOLVE THE MYSTERY

* Draw a map. That's probably the most important aspect to win this game, Hibernated doesn't differ much in that from other text adventures.

* Keep your progress in mind. Hibernated is heavily based on dependencies and progress levels. You might have the right idea (verb noun combination) but the time is wrong. Just because an operation doesn't work does not necessarily mean it won't work later, e.g. why should you USE TOILET if there is no need for that? Why should you SEARCH for TOILETPAPER if you don't need it? Io sometimes gives you hints about the steps necessary for the progression. And sometimes, even the time is right, the idea is right but the place is wrong. That's also for you to consider. If you want to take a shower, you go to the bathroom. Yes, that was a metaphor.

* Examine a lot. Not only does examining give you useful hints - and think twice about what you read, Hibernated comes also with a lot of hilarious jokes and references. So be sure to examine everything, including the objects you carry and encounter as you might be otherwise missing most of the fun.

* Searching rooms is not a thing, e.g. SEARCH AREA. Searching an object though is fine, e.g. SEARCH CUPBOARD.

* Use a shortcut. On the alien ship you can type anytime GO POLARIS to get back to the Polaris-7 with skipping all the rooms in-between. You will need to go back quite a few times so this is a VERY handy feature. The feature won't work if you're not wearing your space suit as that would result in a gameplay paradoxon. Also it makes sense in a logical context. When you're in outer space you're not only wearing your old worn-out underpants.

* This game does not contain any references to Colossal Cave Adventure. Ok, there might be at least one in.

* Don't die. There is JUST ONE situation in the game where you can actually die and it is not very hard to guess how that might be achieved. If you manage to die in that one situation, you probably might want to consider to not play any adventure game in the future.

Hibernated 1 is (c) 2018 Stefan Vogt and Pond Software Ltd.