Visible Suspended is now available to all

August brings us Suspended, Michael Berlyn's cryogenic nightmare.

As usual, the source code repository is also live, licensed with the open-source MIT license.

Suspended surely had the most inspired package concept of Infocom's early years. The Starcross flying saucer was more eye-catching; the Witness newspaper was more detailed. But Suspended's serene cryo-death-mask was a genuine shock when you brought it home and eagerly tore off the shrink-wrap.

Mask photo courtesy of MoCAGH. Manual from my own collection.

The gameplay was a shock as well. No bold explorer or diligent detective this time! You play a silent corpsicle controlling six quirky repair robots in a devastated underground complex. No single robot is capable of much. You have to coordinate their movements to get a handle on the problems facing you.

Or, I should say, facing the entire planet. The Complex is the nerve center for Contra's weather control, transit system, and other vital functions. Your "score" measures thousands of deaths on the surface as conditions deteriorate. Better get those repairs queued up, or an irate delegation will swap you out for a clone.

The game is a mix of Infocom's usual story-world with a simulationist time-management challenge. First, figure out how to complete the repairs. Then figure out how to do that and monitor and minimize the surface death total. Once you've got that nailed down, there's an ADVANCED mode which worsens the initial damage to the Complex.

(Then there's IMPOSSIBLE mode, which is a joke. My game The Dreamhold has an IMPOSSIBLE mode which was directly inspired by Suspended.)

The package included a map and tokens to help you track your bots' locations. I loved fantasy maps as a kid; I can still reach that sense of awe when I look at the bold, colorful layout. Naturally, I've integrated the original map and robot markers into Visible Suspended. No boxes and lines this month...

My recreation of the Contra Underground Complex map.…