''The Lurking Horror'' is an

interactive fiction Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text Command (computing), commands to control Player character, characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narrati ...

game released by

Infocom Infocom, Inc., was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called ''Cornerstone (software), Cornerston ...

in 1987. The game was written by Dave Lebling and inspired by the

horror fiction Horror is a genre of speculative fiction that is intended to disturb, frighten, or scare an audience. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon, in 1984, defin ...

writings of

H. P. Lovecraft Howard Phillips Lovecraft (, ; August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American writer of Weird fiction, weird, Science fiction, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. He is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos. Born in Provi ...

(including his

Cthulhu Mythos The Cthulhu Mythos is a mythopoeia and a shared fictional universe, originating in the works of American Horror fiction, horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. The term was coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent and protégé of Lovecraft, t ...

). The original release was for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

Apple II Apple II ("apple Roman numerals, two", stylized as Apple ][) is a series of microcomputers manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1977 to 1993. The Apple II (original), original Apple II model, which gave the series its name, was designed ...

, Atari ST, Atari 8-bit computers, and Commodore 64. It was Infocom's 26th game and the only in the horror genre. Infocom rated it as "Standard" in terms of difficulty. Later, it was ported to the Amiga with the addition of sound effects, making it the first Infocom adventure with that feature.

Plot

The game starts with the player trying to finish a term paper at G.U.E. Tech, a large Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT-like American

university A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

. The player has braved a snowstorm to travel to the school's

computer lab A computer lab is a space where computer services are provided to a defined community. These are typically public libraries and academic institutions. Generally, users must follow a certain user policy to retain access to the computers. This usua ...

to work on the report. The document is now mangled beyond repair, however; with the help of a

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals and solves problems by non-standard means. The term has become associated in popular culture with a security hackersomeone with knowledge of bug (computing), bugs or exp ...

, the player finds that the file has been partially overwritten by the Department of

Alchemy Alchemy (from the Arabic word , ) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first ...

's files. 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. What began as a mere snowstorm has strengthened into a full-force

blizzard A blizzard is a severe Winter storm, snowstorm characterized by strong sustained winds and low visibility, lasting for a prolonged period of time—typically at least three or four hours. A ground blizzard is a weather condition where snow th ...

. The player must traverse the University grounds in an attempt to recover the term paper's data. Much of the

campus A campus traditionally refers to the land and buildings of a college or university. This will often include libraries, lecture halls, student centers and, for residential universities, residence halls and dining halls. By extension, a corp ...

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

demon A demon is a malevolent supernatural entity. Historically, belief in demons, or stories about demons, occurs in folklore, mythology, religion, occultism, and literature; these beliefs are reflected in Media (communication), media including f ...

zombie A zombie (Haitian French: ; ; Kikongo: ''zumbi'') is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. In modern popular culture, zombies appear in horror genre works. The term comes from Haitian folkl ...

s, and sinister references to a recent campus

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Risk factors for suicide include mental disorders, physical disorders, and substance abuse. Some suicides are impulsive acts driven by stress (such as from financial or ac ...

. Failing to set things right in the hidden passages beneath the school will result in a literal fate worse than death.

Development and release

The name of the university, G.U.E. Tech, is an obvious nod to Infocom's

Zork ''Zork'' is a text adventure game first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson (programmer), Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. The original developers and others, as the company ...

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 The Infinite Corridor 203 pp. is a hallway that runs through the Campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, main buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specifically parts of the buildings numbered 7, 3, 10, 4, and 8 ...

is a central feature of the MIT campus, and a door marked "Department of Alchemy" actually exists in Building 2 thanks to a late-20th-century hack. 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 centipede-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). In addition to maps and other information necessary to complete the game, the "G.U.E. at a Glance" booklet contains many jabs at technology-oriented schools like MIT and

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

. 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", a

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

phrase meaning "Everything unknown is taken for magnificent.", taken from

Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars. Tacitus’ two major historical works, ''Annals'' ( ...

(

Agricola Agricola, the Latin word for farmer, may also refer to: People Cognomen or given name :''In chronological order'' * Gnaeus Julius Agricola (40–93), Roman governor of Britannia (AD 77–85) * Sextus Calpurnius Agricola, Roman governor of the m ...

), Book 1, 30.

Reception

The game was very well received. Charles Ardai of ''

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American Video game journalism, computer game magazine that was published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 199 ...

'' wrote of ''Lurking'', "

Stephen King Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author. Dubbed the "King of Horror", he is widely known for his horror novels and has also explored other genres, among them Thriller (genre), suspense, crime fiction, crime, scienc ...

couldn't have done it better". In 1996, '' Next Generation'' ranked it as the 24th top game of all time, calling it "the best adventure game of all time," as well as "one of only two in the horror genre that has ever seemed genuinely scary (''

Resident Evil ''Resident Evil'', known as in Japan, is a Japanese horror game series and media franchise created by Capcom. It consists of survival horror, third-person shooter and first-person shooter games, with players typically surviving in environments ...

'' is the other)." They elaborated that "Not only are the puzzles spot on genius, the writing is fantastic - a brilliant combination of the realism of

... and the nameless, strangling horrors of H.P. Lovecraft." In 1999, '' Next Generation'' listed ''The Lurking Horror'' as number 35 on their "Top 50 Games of All Time", commenting that, "Literate gamers not afraid of their keyboards will find an amazing world inside this text-only adventure game." In 2004, ''The Lurking Horror'' ranked number 10 on

GameSpy GameSpy was an American provider of online multiplayer and matchmaking middleware for video games founded in 1999 by Mark Surfas. After the release of a multiplayer server browser for Quake, QSpy, Surfas licensed the software under the GameS ...

's list of the scariest games of all time.

Reviews

*''

Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine ''Asimov's Science Fiction'' is an American science fiction magazine edited by Sheila Williams and published by Dell Magazines, which is owned by Penny Press. It was launched as a quarterly by Davis Publications in 1977, after obtaining Isaac ...

'' v12 n2 (1988 02)

References

External links

''The Lurking Horror''
at Infocom-if.org

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lurking Horror, The 1980s interactive fiction 1987 video games Adventure games Amiga games Amstrad CPC games Amstrad PCW games Apple II games Atari 8-bit computer games Atari ST games Classic Mac OS games Commodore 64 games DOS games 1980s horror video games Infocom games Video games based on works by H. P. Lovecraft Video games developed in the United States Single-player video games