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The Lurking Horror

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The Lurking Horror
The Lurking Horror cover art
Developer(s)Infocom
Publisher(s)Infocom
Designer(s)Dave Lebling
EngineZIL
Platform(s)Amiga, Amstrad CPC/PCW, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, Macintosh
Release1987
Genre(s)Interactive fiction
Mode(s)Single player

The Lurking Horror is an interactive fiction computer game released by Infocom in 1987. The game was written by Dave Lebling and inspired by the horror writings of H.P. Lovecraft (including his Cthulhu Mythos). Like most of Infocom's games, it was released for several platforms simultaneously due to the portable Z-machine.

The original release included versions for DOS, the Apple II, Atari ST and Commodore 64. Later, it was ported to the Amiga with sound effects, an asset the other versions did not feature. Despite its relatively high sales figures, Lurking Horror was the only horror game ever released by Infocom.

Plot

The game starts with the player trying to finish a term paper at G.U.E. Tech, a large MIT-like American University. The player has braved a snowstorm to travel to the school's computer lab to work on the report. The document is now mangled beyond repair, however; with the help of a hacker, the player finds that the file has been partially overwritten by the Department of Alchemy's files (the title of the Department of Alchemy is a reference to a well-known hack at MIT, which several of Infocom's founders attended). 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.

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What began as a mere snowstorm has strengthened into a full-force blizzard. The player must traverse the University grounds in an attempt to retrieve their files for their report. Much of the campus 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 demons, zombies and sinister references to a recent campus suicide. Failing to set things right in the hidden passages beneath the school will result in a literal fate worse than death.

Feelies

All of Infocom's game packages since Deadline included extra content in their game packages called "feelies". 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 millipede-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.

Notes

  • The Lurking Horror was one of Infocom's first titles to feature sound. Creepy sound effects would play at appropriate times in the game in an effort to intensify the horror atmosphere. This marked one of the few major additions to the Z-machine with the exception of graphics; traditionally, Infocom had scorned such changes in favor of expanding the parser capacity and overall size of game files.
  • Infocom rated The Lurking Horror as "Standard" in terms of difficulty.
  • The name of the university, G.U.E. Tech, is an obvious nod to Infocom's Zork 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 is a central feature of the MIT campus, and a door marked "Department of Alchemy" actually existed in Building 2 thanks to a late-1900s hack.
  • In addition to maps and other information necessary to complete the game, the "G.U.E. at a Glance" booklet contains many loving jabs at technology-oriented schools like MIT and Caltech. 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". This is a Latin phrase meaning "Everything unknown is taken for magnificent."
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