C.I.A. Adventure
Description
C.I.A. Adventure is a text-based adventure game. The player works for the C.I.A. and is assigned to recover a valuable ruby. The ruby is being used in a top secret laser project, but it has been stolen by a spy ring called Chaos! It is believed the ruby is still somewhere in the neighborhood. For this assignment, the player will be working with a partner (the computer). By entering two word commands, the player can tell the computer what to do in order to explore their surroundings and find clues. The player must make sure Chaos doesn't catch them.
Screenshots
Credits (TRS-80 version)
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Reviews
Players
Average score: 2.2 out of 5 (based on 4 ratings with 1 reviews)
Promised a lot more than it delivered.
The Good
Any game that moved away from the normal treasure hunting is okay by me & the premise of you as a CIA operative who has to recover a ruby that has been captured by a secret spy ring known as CHAOS sounds good. After initially making some headway in the villains headquarters, through some looking around & a bit of help you come to a standstill. Descriptions were sparse but adequate early on with no graphics.
The Bad
Implausible puzzles that you are either given no clue whatever in what you need to do, or make little sense in the scheme of things. A good example of the latter is entering the building in beginning & not being able to proceed with that object, despite being very small & easily hidden. Although I finally used a walkthrough, gone are the days of playing for months without help, I found the answers were unfair & in certain cases didn't work. Presumably not putting the exact information in. Limited parser which didn't tell you what it understood, & no interaction at all between any characters there were, left the game lifeless.
The Bottom Line
This basic early adventure was originally released on the TRS80, then versions appeared for the C64 & DOS machines, as well as later port over to Inform. I started playing the DOS game then moved over to the Inform port, but the only difference is the save facility & adds nothing to the original.
For its time it was probably good value, but it is disappointing the later port didn't take advantage of that parsers features. What starts out as an interesting spy quest, quickly turns into a guess the verb or what the programmer wants type of game, which is a shame as it could have a lot better with a bit more flesh on the bones. Adventures from Level 9 & others were entering the market at this time to soon change them for the better.
DOS · by zorkman (132) · 2015
Trivia
Z-Code port
In 1996, this game was ported to the Inform programming language. There is a Z-Code version available, which adds a full-sentence parser to the game.
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Related Sites +
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C.I.A Adventure remake and source code
Here you can find a fan-made remake that's very faithfull to the original, but supports loading and saving games. There are Win32 and Linux binaries available for download. The author provides not only his remake's source code, in C, but also the original 1980' TRS-80 release source code, in BASIC. -
C.I.A. Adventure on Baf's Guide to the IF Archive
Contains download links for the original BASIC version of this game as well as a newer Z-Code version. Also has links for the Inform source code and a walkthrough.
Identifiers +
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Servo.
TRS-80, Commodore 64 added by Nélio.
Additional contributors: Mirrorshades2k, Nélio, Patrick Bregger.
Game added March 3, 2004. Last modified August 17, 2023.