''The Lurking Horror'' is an

interactive fiction '' Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the f ...

game released by

Infocom Infocom was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called ''Cornerstone (software), Cornerstone''. ...

in 1987. The game was written by

Dave Lebling Peter David Lebling (born October 30, 1949) is an interactive fiction game designer ( implementor) and programmer who has worked at various companies, including Infocom and Avid. Life and career He was born in Washington, D.C., grew up in Mar ...

and inspired by the

horror fiction Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to frighten, scare, or disgust. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror, which is in the realm of speculative fiction. Literary historian J. ...

writings of H. P. Lovecraft (including his

Cthulhu Mythos The Cthulhu Mythos is a mythopoeia and a shared fictional universe, originating in the works of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. The term was coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent and protégé of Lovecraft, to identify ...

). The original release was for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few oper ...

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-mol ...

Atari ST The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...

Atari 8-bit family The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE ...

, and

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in ...

. It was Infocom's 26th game and the only in the horror genre. Infocom rated it as "Standard" in terms of difficulty. Later, it was ported to the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...

with the addition of sound effects, making it the first Infocom adventure with that feature.

Plot

The game starts with the player trying to finish a term paper at G.U.E. Tech, a large

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

-like

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

university A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

. The player has braved a snowstorm to travel to the school's

computer lab A computer lab is a space where computer services are provided to a defined community. These are typically public libraries and academic institutions. Generally, users must follow a certain user policy to retain access to the computers. This us ...

to work on the report. The document is now mangled beyond repair, however; with the help of a

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...

, the player finds that the file has been partially overwritten by the Department of

Alchemy Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim worl ...

's files. Although the game begins as a quest to try to salvage the term paper, alarming events soon unfold, revealing a powerful evil within the school's depths. What began as a mere snowstorm has strengthened into a full-force

blizzard A blizzard is a severe snowstorm characterized by strong sustained winds and low visibility, lasting for a prolonged period of time—typically at least three or four hours. A ground blizzard is a weather condition where snow is not falling b ...

. The player must traverse the University grounds in an attempt to recover the term paper's data. Much of the

campus A campus is traditionally the land on which a college or university and related institutional buildings are situated. Usually a college campus includes libraries, lecture halls, residence halls, student centers or dining halls, and park-like se ...

is deserted and covered in snowdrifts, rendering walkways impassable. The only accessible avenues are steam tunnels and a small complex of buildings. In the course of unraveling the mystery, the player encounters

demon A demon is a malevolent supernatural entity. Historically, belief in demons, or stories about demons, occurs in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology, and folklore; as well as in media such as comics, video games, movies, anime, ...

zombie A zombie (Haitian French: , ht, zonbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in whi ...

s, and sinister references to a recent campus

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and sub ...

. Failing to set things right in the hidden passages beneath the school will result in a literal fate worse than death.

Development and release

The name of the university, G.U.E. Tech, is an obvious nod to Infocom's

Zork ''Zork'' is a text-based adventure game first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. The original developers and others, as the company Infocom, expanded and ...

games, which are set in the Great Underground Empire. In ''The Lurking Horror'', G.U.E. Tech is an abbreviation for "George Underwood Edwards Institute of Technology". Many features of G.U.E. Tech, including the steam tunnels, are modeled after MIT, which many of Infocom's developers attended. In particular, the

Infinite Corridor The Infinite Corridor 203 pp. is a hallway that runs through the main buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specifically parts of the buildings numbered 7, 3, 10, 4, and 8 (from west to east). Twice a year, in mid-November a ...

is a central feature of the MIT campus, and a door marked "Department of Alchemy" actually exists in Building 2 thanks to a late-20th-century hack. All of Infocom's game packages since '' Deadline'' included extra content in their game packages called "

feelies Infocom was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called ''Cornerstone''. Infocom was founded on ...

". The feelies for ''The Lurking Horror'' included: a student ID card; "G.U.E. at a Glance", a guide for freshmen of the school, including maps of the campus and buildings and background information on the school; a rubber centipede-like creature reminiscent of one of the monsters in the game (this was not mentioned on the package, and made for a creepy moment even before the user played the game). In addition to maps and other information necessary to complete the game, the "G.U.E. at a Glance" booklet contains many jabs at technology-oriented schools like MIT and

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

. These straight-faced jokes include "In spite of what your roommate will tell you, G.U.E. Tech does not have the highest suicide rate in the country" and "Women: There's no need to go anywhere. With a male/female ratio of 6:1, someone WILL say hello to you." G.U.E. Tech's motto, seen on the student ID card in the feelies, is "Omne ignotum pro magnifico", a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

phrase meaning "Everything unknown is taken for magnificent.", taken from

Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historiography, Roman historians by modern scholars. The surviving portions of his t ...

(

Agricola Agricola, the Latin word for farmer, may also refer to: People Cognomen or given name :''In chronological order'' * Gnaeus Julius Agricola (40–93), Roman governor of Britannia (AD 77–85) * Sextus Calpurnius Agricola, Roman governor of the mi ...

), Book 1, 30.

Reception

The game was very well received. ''

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through ...

'' wrote of ''Lurking'', "

Stephen King Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", a play on his surname and a reference to his high s ...

couldn't have done it better". In 1996, '' Next Generation'' ranked it as the 24th top game of all time, calling it "the best adventure game of all time," as well as "one of only two in the horror genre that has ever seemed genuinely scary (''

Resident Evil ''Resident Evil'', known in Japan as is a Japanese horror game series and media franchise created by Capcom. It consists of survival horror, third-person shooter and first-person shooter games, with players typically surviving in environments ...

'' is the other)." They elaborated that "Not only are the puzzles spot on genius, the writing is fantastic - a brilliant combination of the realism of

... and the nameless, strangling horrors of H.P. Lovecraft." In 1999, '' Next Generation'' listed ''The Lurking Horror'' as number 35 on their "Top 50 Games of All Time", commenting that, "Literate gamers not afraid of their keyboards will find an amazing world inside this text-only adventure game." In 2004, ''The Lurking Horror'' ranked number 10 on

GameSpy GameSpy was an American provider of online multiplayer and matchmaking middleware for video games founded in 1996 by Mark Surfas. After the release of a multiplayer server browser for the game, QSpy, Surfas licensed the software under the Game ...

's list of the scariest games of all time.

Reviews

*''

Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine ''Asimov's Science Fiction'' is an American science fiction magazine which publishes science fiction and fantasy named after science fiction author Isaac Asimov. It is currently published by Penny Publications. From January 2017, the publication ...

'' v12 n2 (1988 02)

References

External links

''The Lurking Horror''
at Infocom-if.org

''The Lurking Horror''
at the Amiga Hall of Light * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lurking Horror, The 1980s interactive fiction 1987 video games Adventure games Amiga games Amstrad CPC games Amstrad PCW games Apple II games Atari 8-bit family games Atari ST games Classic Mac OS games Commodore 64 games DOS games 1980s horror video games Infocom games Video games based on works by H. P. Lovecraft Video games developed in the United States