DOS

The Lurking Horror

Description

Despite a terrible snowstorm, a young G.U.E. Tech student travels to the school's computer lab to work on his grad paper. However, something strange has happened. The file containing the student's document has been partially overwritten by the Department of Alchemy's files. At first the student's only goal is to retrieve his lost document, but soon he realizes that something far more sinister is occurring in the depths of the school building.

The Lurking Horror is Infocom's only horror-themed text adventure game. The game is set in the haunted school building, in the midst of a blizzard that rendered escape impossible. The player explores the environments and has to solve puzzles to overcome obstacles. There are hostile creatures in the game, most of which must be defeated or outsmarted by using specific items.

Alternate Titles

• "The Lurking Horror - An Interactive Horror" -- Tag-lined title

Part of the Following Group

• Inspiration: Author - H. P. Lovecraft

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User Reviews

Lovecraft-lite	Terrence Bosky (5238)
One of the last great text-only games ever made	Afterburner (477)
Horror Text Adventure set in ‘M.I.T.’	David Ledgard (63)
Become the protagonist of a Lovecraft-like tale	jgdjgdg jsjgsgsjhfdj (1)	unrated

The Press Says

Happy Computer	1986	88 out of 100	88
The Games Machine (UK)	Dec 22, 2005	5 out of 6	83
Adventure Lantern	Jul, 2006	83 out of 100	83
SPAG	May 15, 1994	7.2 out of 10	72

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Trivia

Copy protection

Copy protection for the game required the user to input the correct Student ID number and password into a computer terminal.

Extras

(From the Infocom Home Page site)
The game contained "G.U.E. at a Glance" (G.U.E. Tech guide), a G.U.E. Tech student ID card, and a red rubber centipede (between two sheets of clear plastic).

References

• G.U.E. Tech was based on M.I.T., the alma matter of most of Infocom's employee's. Locations in the game are similar, along with various M.I.T. slang.
• The college you find yourself at is George Underwood Edwards Tech, aka GUE Tech. GUE was the abbreviation for the Great Underground Empire from the Zork series, also published by Infocom.

Sound

Lurking Horror featured sound for certain systems (like Amiga). Do you want your version of LH to have sound? As of 2000, the missing sound files and a utility to upgrade your .DAT file were available via anonymous ftp from ftp.gmd.de at if-archive/infocom/missing-files, and the file was called LHSOUND.ZIP.

Unofficial Sequel

The premise and setting (radically recast as "PUE Tech") are revisited in Jason Davis's 1991 Amstrad CPC text adventure The Smirking Horror, written with the "Graphic Adventure Creator" (GAC).

Awards

• Happy Computer
  • Issue 01/1988 - Best Text Adventure in 1987

Information also contributed by Afterburner, Adan Baratz, Belboz, Chike Mikesell and Pseudo_Intellectual