A Mind Forever Voyaging

aka: A Mind Forever Voyaging - a science fiction story, AMFV, PRISM, Steve Meretzky’s Interiors
Moby ID: 94
Commodore 128 Specs
Buy on Amiga
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Description official descriptions

The year is 2031 and the world is near the brink of economic collapse. To avoid this, the president comes up with a plan to stop the disaster - but before applying it, the long-term impacts on the world need to be validated. This is done with a simulation visited by the computer project PRISM, designed to be a true AI. The game starts when PRISM awakes from a simulation of his own, human life and is told that he is in fact the world's first sentient machine. At this point, the player takes control over PRISM.

A Mind Forever Voyaging is a text-based interactive fiction game. The player reads descriptions which detail the surroundings and communicates with the game by typing in commands. Most of the time is spent in simulation mode where the player repeatedly visits the town of Rockvil and needs to record situations of everyday or special activities going on. If the player has recorded enough, the game progresses and the simulation ten years ahead can be visited. However, the recording device has no unlimited capacity - when full, the player needs to exit the simulation and let the recordings review by the project leader. Then the current simulation can be simply started again from the start to find new situations - the same applies when dying.

Between simulations and toward the end there are situations outside the simulation, but overall the game is light on puzzle-solving and more about experiencing how said plan changes Rockvil and its people over time. Outside the simulation there are three more modes to enter: communications (switching to various video/audio units to examine other locations and people), library (various documents and other information to read) and interlace (communicating and giving orders to the own subsystems).

Groups +

Screenshots

Credits (DOS version)

21 People

Design
Development tools for Interactive Fiction Plus
Help from
Playtesting
Various Wizardries on the Micro-Computers
Package Design by
Package Art
Photography
Advice and Support

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 80% (based on 7 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 59 ratings with 5 reviews)

More Story then Game

The Good
The story was a gritty, interesting "projection" about what could happen when something that looks too good to be true is. This is Infocom's most adult story/game with a serious tone, a departure from Steve M's well-known humor.

The Bad
There wasn't any GAME! You just wandered from sequence to sequence, observing. At the end, there was some kind of puzzle, but not much. I never understood why it was rated Advanced.

The Bottom Line
A neat concept for an interactive novel, but with little interaction.

DOS · by Tony Van (2803) · 1999

Infocom's underrated treasure

The Good
This game doesn't attempt to boggle your mind with puzzles, that's not what the game is about. This game puts you into an interactive world that changes through the ages. The plot is magnificent; you are PRISM, the world's first sentient computer who is instructed to see if the President's Plan For Renewed National Purpose is a worthy cause, to bring the nation out of a state of chaos.

The Bad
I really liked this game, but if I had to complain, it'd be about the lack of mentioning the "record" function in the manual, it confused me a bit.

The Bottom Line
My favourite Infocom game ever, and an infinitely replayable game.

DOS · by xofdre (78) · 2002

A seriously weird game that will stay with you for a long time

The Good
The only text adventure game I've ever liked; A Mind Forever Voyaging is not played, it's experienced. Infocom was famous for their statement regarding graphical games, which I quote here: "You'll never see Infocom's graphics on any computer screen. Because there's never been any computer built by man that could handle the images we produce. And there never will be. We draw our graphics from the limitless imagery of your imagination - a technology so powerful, it makes any picture that's ever come out of a screen look like graffiti by comparison." I think most gamers reading this would disagree, but there's no denying they made some genius games and this is perhaps their crowning achievements.

The plot has similarities to Stephen King's The Dead Zone. Taking place in 2031, A Mind Forever Voyaging depicts a dystopian future world where crime, war, pollution, poverty etc are going through the stratosphere. But a charismatic man in the US senate, Richard Ryder, is trying to change all that. Like the politician in King's novel, he proposes sweeping reforms to tax, employment and draft laws that will effectively turn the US into a police state. Understandably, there is a lot of controversy over Ryder's plan and more data is needed before anyone will green light it.

These events coincide with the creation of the world's first sentient computer, which happens to be you. You've lived 20 years of your life as an average suburban man, until one day a scientist walks into your life and explains that you are not in fact human but a computer program who is living in a simulated world in a computer lab. Since Ryder is pushing his plan so aggressively, you must travel into an alternate future (created through another simulation) to see if the plan would actually work. Once you've collected enough information, you must return to the real world and make a report to the scientists.

If you think that's a crazy idea for a game, you've got it in one. AMFV is very different from your usual text adventure. There are NO puzzles (except for a small one at the end) and very little dialogue. It's possible to die, but since the game takes place in a simulated world you can simply jack back in. This game is about exploring and observing. Are the people happy? Is the economy strong? Is the government abusing its power?

Since AMFV is experienced rather than played, it's kind of hard to call it a game at all. The term "interactive novel" may carry a lot of negative connotations these days but that's what this is. It's a captivating experience that defies comparison to almost any other game. One of the coolest things is that you can slip in and out of the same city at varying times in the future. Sure, maybe things look fine 10 years from now. But what about 20? 40? 80? In one of the alternate futures you visit there's been a nuclear war and you must fight off attacks from zombies and mutant dogs. I'm telling you, this game is weird.

But it's not a completely random excursion into dreamland either. There's a strong plot tying everything together and AMFV is quite politically sensitive next to other Infocom games, particularly in its criticism of right-wing conservatism. And the cynical way in which it looks at mankind's utopia dreams meant the game was billed as the world's first serious speculative fiction game, and regardless of that statement's truth there is a lot of similarity between AMFV and the hard SF novels of the 50s and 60s.

In the Infocom tradition you get a box of feelies (including a ballpoint pen, a fictional magazine from the future, and a color wheel allowing you to crack the game's copy protection). AMFV also comes with a professionally written novella detailing your character's "life" that is so good you could seriously publish it, never mind the crappy 800-word intros that get shoved in game manuals these days. "Less is more", who the hell came up with that idea?

The Bad
Nothing, unless you want to get petty and complain about the game's complexity (there's a huge vocabulary of several thousand words and a lot of your time is spent typing in synonyms) and its often-dubious interactivity. Like I said, it's a long stretch to call AMFV a game.

The Bottom Line
A weird-ass adventure game, AMFV is almost one of a kind. Now regarded as one of the greatest games in the Infocom canon, but curiously underrated all the same, there will perhaps never be another game like AMFV.

What if AMFV had graphics? To be honest, I'm not sure whether I would have enjoyed it as much. Perhaps this is a game best experienced with your imagination.

DOS · by Maw (832) · 2007

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

A Mind Forever Voyaging appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Extras

A Mind Forever Voyaging contained a copy of "Dakota Online Magazine"; a map of Rockvil, South Dakota; a yellow pen ("Quad Mutual Insurance"); and a Class One Security Decoder (used for copy protection). As of 2004 it was reported that the pen still is in working condition.

References

The man on the cover looks like a young Timothy Hutton.

Awards

  • GameSpot
    • December 17, 1999 - 2nd Best Ending in PC Gaming History (Editors' Vote)

Information also contributed by Maw and James Evans, WizardX

Analytics

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Related Sites +

  • Crapshoot
    A humorous review on PC Gamer
  • Infocom homepage
    At this site you can find information on ALL of Infocom's interactive games, Infocom related articles, sample transcripts, InvisiClue hints, walkthroughs, maps and information on buying Infocom games today.
  • The Commodore Zone
    All about the game with introduction, images, related links and comments area.
  • The Infocom Gallery
    High-quality scans of the grey box package and manual of A Mind Forever Voyaging.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 94
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Brian Hirt.

Commodore 128 added by Corn Popper. Apple II added by Droog. Macintosh, Amiga added by Terok Nor. Atari ST added by Belboz.

Additional contributors: Dietmar Uschkoreit, Belboz, Adam Baratz, xofdre, Pseudo_Intellectual, mo , c64fan, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack.

Game added March 10, 1999. Last modified March 9, 2024.