Xenomorph

[Fowyr]

octavius
Unkillable Cat

Xenomorph is a little known game from 1990. SF, very SS-esque, Dungeon Master clone without party and stats. Strictly speaking, it's not RPG due to latter, but who cares when it has grid movement.

Game is a treasure trove of very neat ideas and often horrendous implementation of them. Equipment part of manual, for example, can make you jizz into your pants. With five kinds of ammunition for grenade launcher, mines and grenades, but, sadly, they don't have any difference in the game. The game is rife with items like communicators, atmosphere analyzers, several kind of suits and other thingies that looks awesome, but are useless. I think they just released unfinished game.

To finally leave this accursed station you need replace burnt chips in the central computer, refuel ship with antimatter rods (and don't die of radiation poisoning), install operating system and find navigational data. All humans on the station are dead, but there are a lot of equipment to find and use and data disks to read. Remember that I said about SS? It's indeed sometimes feels like SS 0.5, only more clumsy, without stellar maps of SS and with mosters' AI that was programmed by high school student.

Replacement chips are cannibalized from various station's computers, but there is a catch. Remove them and some parts of this level become unoperable. A2 chip controls doors, OMO-Z controls drink-o-mat and probably other vending machines, CNS and NAV control computers used to read data disks...

Order of boards in the maintenance hatch is very, very important. Wrongly placed boards do not work!
A2- CP8 - ABT113 - OMO-Z - CNS - NAV

There are tidbits of useful information here and here, but I will post when remember them.

Manual:
http://www.mocagh.org/miscgame/xenomorph-manual.pdf

Now I present you the main dish. Almost complete set of maps.

U - up stairs, D - down stairs, little points are items, bigger points are often important items.

If you need map for your ship, you should play another game.

To be continued.

 

[Mustawd]

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I agree with Fowyr at least on those parts of his tale that I remember. I last played this game in 1990/1991 and haven't had a chance to get into it properly since. IIRC I got stuck on the air vents map, where hostile green blobs move about. I used to navigate through the game by the trail of corpses I left behind, which became a problem in this case as the green blobs only stay "dead" for a short while - they're unkillable.

The System Shock comparison is accurate; this is far more a survival horror game than it'll ever be a RPG. You have to worry about food and water (and getting cashcards with enough deposits to pay for the food from the vending machines), and ammo is scarce, especially against unkillable enemies.

There's a very silly boss fight towards the end, and the reward for killing it are the floppies containing the badly needed OS for the ship. Considering the location and circumstances of the "loot", one has to wonder exactly what flying leap of logic was reached to justify its location being there (personally I'd have had the fuel rods there).

If there was one game I'd like to see remade into a survival horror game like Alien: Isolation, it's this one. Distance themselves away from the Alien references (like the name and box cover image) and focus on the isolation part. You're the only living human around, the security system is barely functional, you need to cannibalize the station systems to get your ship running, there are hostile aliens around that have God Mode on...it's perfect.

 

[Scroo]

Oh yeah I read about this game on thelegacy.de when I was looking for blobbers, never tried it tho. I guess I should give it a try but too bad it's real time... but thanks for posting this

 

[octavius]

I really tried to like this game, but I couldn't. Was disappointed when CRPG Addict removed it from his list.
Looking forward to Fowyr's continuation.

 

[karnak]

There's a similar game (from about the same period), called Spacewrecked: 14 Billion Light Years From Earth.
The game had a different name of the Amiga version, though.

 

[octavius]

There's a similar game (from about the same period), called Spacewrecked: 14 Billion Light Years From Earth.

Never played it, but on my play list I wrote next to its entry: "Sounds rather boring".

 

[Fowyr]

There's a similar game (from about the same period), called Spacewrecked: 14 Billion Light Years From Earth.
The game had a different name of the Amiga version, though.

Federation Quest, as I remember.

It's indeed very similar in its very flawed brilliance and style. I even checked it, but looks like it was made by different people.
It's a game where you can build and program little robot helpers or guards. Game where is shitton of interesting SF items. The game where you can destroy floors and fall right through them to the deck below. The game where your aim is repair twenty ships gallivanting around with toolbox, glass jars full of coolant liquid and laser pistol for killing pesky and ridiculous aliens. I finished only five levels of Space Wrecked, though.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I had a quick look at B.S.S Jane Seymour (the other title for Spacewrecked) and the interface is god-awful, but the game offers a surprising amount of depth and interactivity.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

The rooms at the top of the level 3 map look to me to be a clue of some sort.

 

[Owl]

I remember how disappointed I was with this game back then on the Amiga; I was expecting a cool sci-fi Dungeon Master clone, but it lacked the features that made DM really good (rpg elements, environmental puzzles...) The graphics and the atmosphere was really good though.

The website of one of the developers is worth a read, it explains (among other things) why the game feels unfinished:

Interceptor put a lot of pressure on for a fixed release date, which meant that we simply ran out of time to do everything we wanted to do. This meant that despite many late nights (and all nighters - we physically moved into the office and slept there) some items were never fully implemented. The AI wasn’t particularly clever (actually it just randomly chose a direction to go in when it reached a junction) and the communicator didn’t do anything (we rationalised that there was nobody to talk to – but I had originally intended for there to be some purpose to it).

Originally we had planned to let the player have the choice of a number of male and female characters – but memory constraints and lack of time to develop the interface that would allow the player that choice at the start of the game prevented that (though you can still see a female character in some of the early screenshots).

There was also one great big bug which meant that the green blobs that inhabit some of the tunnels become invulnerable after being frozen once. We had planned much more complicated behaviour – allowing a big one to be fragmented into several small ones for example (and vice versa) but again time wasn’t on our side.

Unfortunately financially Xenomorph was a disaster for me. I received a small fee per month while working on the game, with a promise of good royalties and a retainer for the next game. The game garnered good reviews and sold reasonably well, unfortunately Interceptor Micro’s went into liquidation before they got around to actually paying me the royalties they promised or the retainer. I was left broke and ended up leaving the industry for a while to get a proper job.

 

[Terry Greer]

Hi

I'm the game designer and artist from Xenomorph - thanks- it's really interesting to get feedback after so long.
All the criticisms so far levied it at are totally valid - my apologies. There is a lot I would have liked to change - and a lot that should have been better (Apart from bugs and content we had to miss out the disc swapping in particular we absolutely hated but couldn't solve in the time frame).
Having said that it was a game very much of its time - with a tiny budget and development time. And time hasn't been kind to it. I go into some of the problems on my webpage.

I still hope one day to do it properly - and update it well in the same way that Legend of Grimrock successfully updated Dungeon Master.
That will be some way of though - and probably involve a kickstarter.
In the meantime - its really useful to get feedback about what was liked (and what wasn't) .

The sequel (Drift) would have been a true squad-based RPG - and was looking really good until Interceptor went bankrupt.

 

[Infinitron]

Wow. Crooked Bee felipepepe

 

[octavius]

In the meantime - its really useful to get feedback about what was liked (and what wasn't) .

This is what I wrote in another thread five years ago:

No one has commented on it in this thread and there is very little info to find on the net. Not even Andrew Schultze seems to have played this one.

The premise of the game is not very original, but it makes for a good game setting: your ship crash lands on a mining planet where all the miners have been killed, and you have to find a way to repair your ship in order to get back to Earth.
The short story included with the game gives a nice background to the game and the inter pilot banter reminds me of Robert Heinlein's novel Double Star.
Incidentally the mining planet is located in the Sirius system which itself it a double, or binary, star system. Sirius is an odd choice, since it's only a few hundred million years old and thus not old enough for any life to have formed. But maybe the aliens are not native, like in the first Alien movie?

Anyway, the game is like Dungeon Master in space, only with one character in stead of a party. But it's less dynamic than DM - you can't throw or examine stuff, for example. OTOH in one aspect it's more advanced than than even the later Doom games - you can aim the gun anywhere in the playing area.
The game reminds me a bit about the old ZX Spectrum game Marsport, but most of all it feels like a precursor to System Shock - everyone is dead, you are fighting robots (or are the little runts you first meet aliens?) and every human is dead and all communication is done by reading data disks the miners have left. And it also seems to feature two of the things that put me off System Shock 2 - respawning enemies and severe shortage on ammo. In DM and even SS2 you could melee with the enemy; this seems not to be the case in Xenomorph, and with the little robots/alien (why the hell can't I pick on the remains and examine them?) seemingly respawning it seems the game may be more frustrating than fun. And the lack of a compass makes mapping difficult, as it seems you are often turned in a different direction when going up and down ladders. Even old Marsport had a compass.

Yes, the game is nice in theory, but in practice it gets too tedious, especially the micromanagement of food, water and ammo. The levels are too large and empty, and downright illogical. That fetch quest bit reminds me again of Marsport. I gave up on that game when I realized that after the initial exploration all it involved was carrying items back and forth, and only three at a time (four if not carrying a weapon).
So I will not spend more time on Xenomorph.

 

[Owl]

This is so cool, a developer of a 25 year old obscure game just appears out of nowhere, in a thread about his game.

Where else could something like this have happened?

Only on the Codex.

 

[octavius]

CRPG Addict's blog has also attracted some designers of old, obscure games.

 

[Terry Greer]

Octavius - thanks - absolutely - all valid. It's not a game that fosters repeat play (as Dungeon Master did).
Again - that was largely down to rushed development and a company that wanted to just get stuff out of the door without proper playtesting. Many companies were like that back then (not that that's an excuse).


BTW - The choice of Sirius was because at the time I'd read Robert Temple's the Sirius Mystery - and I liked the idea of working that in however tentatively (mentioned in the novella). However you're right it is a bit young (240 million years) and the life wasn't native (this would have been explained in the sequel). Other reasons for choosing it was that it was one of the few stars that people may have heard of, and is relatively close (only about 9 light years).

There were also no respawning enemies in the entire game - the blobs though - that was a mistake. The idea behind those was that they would crystalise - for a while, then rejellify - only they then couldn't be affected by the weapon that targeted them last. (Sort of like the Borg kept modulating their shields).
Sadly it was a last minute and undiscovered bug in this that caused them to be invulnerable after being shot. But I don't count those as respawns.
There was also an intent that a crystine blob could be shot and it would shatter and spawn a small number of smaller offspring - I can't remember now if this was implemented - bit broke under the same bug - or we ran out of time.

 

[Terry Greer]

Also the comment about not being able to loot bodies or poke around in the remains to harvest useful stuff - absolutely. Another 3 months dev would have made a huge difference. The Xenomorph reboot (if i ever get around to it) has that in spades - even to being able to rebuild, reprogram and re-equip robots to accompany you. And lots more puzzles and a more RPG approach to the whole thing

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Cool thread.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Oh wow.

Terry Greer it's an honor to have you in this thread. I still own my boxed copy of Xenomorph that I bought in...early 1991 I'd guess, and I keep it around for the idea of the game, rather than the game itself. For the game most certainly intrigued 12-year old me back then, and it has a lot of good things going for it, like the novella (poor Hydrant ) and (in hindsight) how such a crude game managed to convey such an intense atmosphere.

Those green blobs were not supposed to be unkillable? Well, that's a bug that made me like the game more - throwing a spanner in the works that I would have to plan around...shame that 12-year old me wasn't very good at that.

And it's only now that I'm realising just how big an influence the game must have been on System Shock - in fact, the gameplay video you link to on your website uses System Shock music in it (to great effect) and the video's author even calls Xenomorph "System Shock 0.5".

I'm sad to hear that The Tale of the Unpaid Gaming Programmer applies to you as well, this is one of the worst things about getting into gaming as a creator.

As for your thoughts on remaking Xenomorph in a similar style as Legend of Grimrock...I think it could work. Keeping the grid aspect of the game will certainly lighten the development process.

Finally, I'd like to say Thank You. I haven't played the game for decades, but the memory still sits with me. I hope your future plans come to fruition.

 

[Fowyr]

Just wow, indeed.
I was just drained yesterday by mapping last level, so I written, but do not posted my next notes, and opening thread and finding one of the developers of the game was unbelievable.
Thank you very much for Xenomorph.

So, let's roll.

Owl
Very interesting read.

Brian Aldiss’ ‘Non Stop’ and Jame’s Blish’s ‘Surface Tension’

Just re-read both a year ago.

There was also one great big bug which meant that the green blobs that inhabit some of the tunnels become invulnerable after being frozen once.

Heh, got it on Ducts 3 in the small tunnel that leads to ladder up while low on health. Hex edited my coordinates to skip it. Offset 06, by the way.


On the health and sustenance.

Character has water and food satiation bars. They are replenished by consuming beverages (mostly sold by vending machines, there are probably just a several cans of beer laying around the station) and food. Mineral water from drink-o-mat is the best source of water, BTW.
Food is a plenty on upper levels, but becomes incredibly scarce on lower. I remember finding the single can of tuna on the last five floors. It's sold in the vending machines too.
Famished or dehydrated character starts to lose health when walking. It can be damaged by monsters, duh, and by exposure to radioactive materials, i.e. antimatter rods, as well.
Fed and watered character starts to replenish stamina bar that can be used for fast movement. Sounds useful? Not for me, at least. Most time in the game I counted map tiles and sudden surge of speed could botch results.
Food and water are consumed way, way too fast. You can easily lost both full bars on the just one level. And I'm not talking about labyrinths of ducts. Just old plain level 1 is suffice.
Are you trembling in your boots already? Do not fret! Remember key words "when walking". So if you lost all mojo, you can just wait for a spell to regain health without spending credits on the food, water and medicine. Radiation damage is cured using medicine number six from vending machine.
Frankly, I just saved right behind stairs and mapped level. And only then I loaded game and collected all useful items using my map.

Ducts 2. The most frustrating level in the game.

Last level.

Reuploaded cabins as well.


Next will be thoughts on mosters, repair, interface and weapons.

And of course maps. I need to correct and redraw them. They are a mess.

 

[Owl]

I keep it around for the idea of the game, rather than the game itself.

I agree. A deep rpg/adventure game with Dungeon Master-style pseudo 3d graphics, in a classic scifi-horror/hard scifi setting? This was basically my dream game in those days. In theory it should have been amazing, my expectations were very high. Of course i was disappointed, even though the game is still good and worth playing in this state.

 

[RPGHope]

Necroposting but felt like I should since Xenomorph is one of my most favorite games of all time. Yeah it had its flaws, tons of stuff was unimplemented, but it DRIPPED with atmosphere, and the novella was great! (As mentioned before, poor Hydrant! That part made me really sad. Imagine if that part was implemented in gameplay and you had to space Hydrant right at the beginning of the game.)

With regards to food/water scarcity, it's really just a money scarcity. At the beginning of the game you're limited by your own supplies and the balance on your credit card (a bit maddening that you can't actually check the balance on it -- it just runs out when it runs out). I found though that beverages are the single biggest drain though, and Kopek coffee is a terrible value for your money. As mentioned by someone earlier, mineral water from the Drink-o-Mat machines is the best value -- so what I do is I just let Griffin go thirsty for the first part of the game until I encounter the first Drink-o-Mat -- which is admittedly several levels down, but mineral water is worth the wait and if I save money by not buying coffee I never have to worry about going thirsty again.

What actually kills the game is the lack of scarcity of ammo and how powerful some early weapons are. You find the Magnum on the very first level and it's easily the best weapon in the game (the assault rifle is good too but doesn't seem to do appreciably more damage). Also -- and this is based on the Amiga version so take it with a grain of salt -- the system I played it on seemed to affect the amount of damage the starting laser pistols do. When played on my stock 1M A500, I had to burn through an entire battery or two just to kill a simple security droid, but later when I played the game on my A4000/060 it only takes a few shots. I never used the particle cannon as it didn't seem to do appreciably more damage despite how the manual played it up as the best weapon.

Both your credit card (for vending machines) and photo ID card (for drug dispensers) have a limited amount of credits, so for instance you can't withdraw healing drugs infinitely. In fact you need to make sure that you have credits for the anti-radiation drugs (the white-colored ones) late-game unless you want to be forced to rest constantly -- as the antimatter pod doesn't seem to have been implemented in the game so you just carry around unshielded antimatter batteries. (Although it looks like you're just carrying raw antimatter -- which is silly).

...but yeah, scarcity of ammo or lack thereof is what really kills it. Despite the credit system on both kinds of cards, your photo ID card seems to grant you unlimited reloads at ammunition dispensers. Never once was I denied a reload -- I just made sure every single magazine/battery I had was filled to max and made sure to never let the monsters block my path back to the nearest reload station. Once you find that first dispenser on the level above the labs, all ammo anxiety goes away. I've debated trying to play a runthrough where I never use the ammo dispenser and consider all magazines and batteries one-use items. That might be interesting (especially since the motion tracker also eats batteries -- I had the tracker out more or less constantly and it would be interesting to play in a way where I had to choose only to use it when absolutely needed). It would definitely make clearing the levels of enemies impossible and instead I'd have to try to herd and trap xenos into locked rooms, etc.

I really liked the borg-adapting blobs. It would have been more cool if they'd been implemented properly and let you freeze them once per weapon/ammo-type instead of the one-freeze-and-that's-it way they wound up. That would definitely give the otherwise-useless stun gun a purpose. A lot of people thought the blob invincibility was just a glitch, but the adaptation is actually hinted at in data logs you find from scientists that were studying the creatures. This made them the most dangerous enemy in the game since it was easy to put yourself in a no-escape situation if you let them corner you in the ducts (hope you didn't save in that situation like I did on my first attempt! I had to start over from the beginning.)

I'd love to hear more backstory on the later xenos. The machinery-level spider things between the labs and the armory and the floaty things in the mines I found particularly terrifying. I also like that the game gave you time for atmospherics, like exploring the crew quarters and medbay for backstory and wondering where everyone went.

There's actually an early alpha/tech-demo of the game that got leaked and is floating around online. I don't know if Terry was the one who uploaded it or not, but it's interesting because it does include some equipment that never shows up in the final game, like the fire extinguisher.

The game manual mentions 5 versions of the game, of which I've played 4 of them. The Amiga and AtariST versions programmed by David Neale seem to be the best, with the Atari ST version having slightly grainier sound and lacking the intro/ending music of the Amiga version. The MS/DOS version also seems identical except with incredibly crappy sound (though Terry claims that some bugs were fixed). I recommend playing the Amiga version.

The C64 version by Ian Denny is weird. It's definitely the most advanced version in some ways (character select screen!) and it's amazing in how it seems to have implemented pretty much everything from the 16-bit versions of the game, but obviously the graphics are a bit worse for wear. I'm still really impressed by it and I'd like to try to complete it sometime.

So here's the real mystery -- the manual explicitly says David Neale made an Acorn Archimedes version of the game, but I've never been able to find it anywhere. It might be the holy grail if it's found someday. =)