Circuit's Edge

[Crane]

Has anyone played this?

Circuit's Edge is a computer game developed by Westwood Studios and released by Infocom in 1989. It was based on George Alec Effinger's 1987 novel When Gravity Fails. The game was a hybrid interactive fiction/role-playing game; it contained a window of text, a graphic window for depiction of the player's current location, and various menus and mini-windows for character statistics and other game functions.

...

The player assumes the role of Marîd Audran, a private detective. The game is set in "The Budayeen", an entertainment / criminal quarter in an unnamed city somewhere in the Middle East that is based on New Orleans. While running a series of errands/"business deals" for "Saied the Half-Hajj", a friend of Marîd's, Marîd is framed for the murder of a man named Kenji Carter. Although Marîd's influential patron Friedlander Bey clears him with the local police, Bey asks him to look into Carter's death. Doing so leads Marîd deep into the criminal underworld of the Budayeen.

I'm a sucker for cyberpunk games, and this looks like it could be good if the interface isn't too difficult to use.

 

[Infinitron]

Fun fact: Before the days of the Internet when such things become ubiquitous, I had a directory full of precious walkthroughs and hint files, which I acquired from a friend on floppy disk.

That subdirectory contained a walkthrough for this game, which is the only reason I know it exists.

 

[Crane]

Box Shots

Somebody made a map of the in-game city

HG101 Entry
Museum of Computer Adventure Game History entry

 

[ghostdog]

While I find the book it was based on (When Gravity Fails) lackluster, the setting is certainly great for an adventure/rpg. I'm wondering how it compares to the Neuromancer game, they seem pretty similar. Naturally, Neuromancer has clunky UI issues.

 

[Crane]

While I find the book it was based on (When Gravity Fails) lackluster, the setting is certainly great for an adventure/rpg. I'm wondering how it compares to the Neuromancer game, they seem pretty similar. Naturally, Neuromancer has clunky UI issues.

I've played a little bit of both. The UI in Neuromancer is easier to deal with than the UI in Circuit's Edge. At first, you'd think the graphic window could be interacted with, like in the old Legend adventure games, but it's just there for show. You have to use the clunky "Look", "Talk", etc. dropdown menus. Also, traveling around the city is a little weird at first, since you're just traveling along a grid with the arrow keys (thus, positioning yourself correctly can take a little extra effort). Still, it's pretty interesting so far.