A Mind Forever Voyaging

The Good
A Mind Forever Voyaging (AMFV) is another text adventure from Infocom, but it's slightly different from the company's text adventures that I played during the years such as Zork. It is the first of the “Interactive Fiction Plus” line, meaning that the game has greater memory requirements. However, in my opinion, it also means that the mechanics are different and that there is one instance of graphics.

In the year 2031, a sentient machine, known as PRISM, has lived an artificial life. It wasn't until your twentieth birthday that you find out that you are actually a computer designed to enter a simulated world in the future, see how society will be influenced by “The Plan”, and report your findings to the government so they can determine if it is worth implementing. Under “The Plan”, the future scenario may be idyllic, but you sense that something is wrong; and as time passes, you feel that you should be doing more than just sightseeing.

You are given five modes which you can use, with the majority of the game spent in “Simulation Mode” where you witness the events around you and record them, and present these recordings in “Communications Mode”. The commands that you enter at the keyboard can be short or complex to the point where you can specify two actions you want to make.

In Sim Mode, you can select what year into the future you want to view (in increments of ten) and what's great is that the future is different every time you visit. In each of the simulations, you have an apartment in the peaceful city of Rockville, South Dakota. You also have a loving family and there is no threat to them. Within the next forty years, the same apartment is raided by the Border Security Force who are looking to stamp out illegal immigrants, one of your children is converted to the Church of God's Hand, and the entire city begins to deteriorate.

What's also neat about AMFV is the way this is the first Infocom game I have played to use copy protection. Every time you try to enter Sim Mode, you have to refer to the Class One Security Mode Access Decoder that comes in the box. The Access Decoder is a code wheel similar to that use with The Secret of Monkey Island, and the game cannot be completed without it. Also, I noticed one instance of graphics when you have to go through a test earlier in the game.

Each copy of AMFV comes with the game disks and manual, as well as Dakota Online Magazine, a full-color map of Rockvil, a pen, and the aforementioned Access Decoder. Inside Dakota Online is a story about how PRISM came to be, and a couple of reviewers on here have been bragging about how excellent this is. I also recommended reading this story before playing the game. If you have an illegal copy, you will miss the joys of having all these freebies.

The Bad
The only thing I didn't like was waiting a long time for a new simulated year to become available, even after you completed the previous ones. I had to wait two whole days before I could complete 50-year sim. Infocom could have made sims available when certain conditions were met, and one of these could have been that you have to do one or more sims that had been given to you earlier.

The Bottom Line
A Mind Forever Voyaging is a more advanced Infocom adventure where you take control of a computer sent to witness the effects of “The Plan” in a simulated future, and report your findings to the government. It is one of the titles in the IF+ line, due to the fact that requires more memory and that the game mechanics are quite different. Also, like any Infocom game out there, AMFV comes complete with “freelies”, and these are worth having even if you don't have any plans to play this 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.

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.