Send in the Clones: A New Text Adventure for the Einstein

The Friend Computer has a mission for you. Unfortunately the briefing has come through as “Your mission is to... crackle... hiss... retrieve...”, asking what it meant is probably treason, and so is failing to do it. Luckily you have seven spare copies of yourself.

Send in the Clones is a new text adventure for the Tatung Einstein by L. Boffin, author of 1D Life, and it is free to download from the library today. It is set in the world of Paranoia, the tabletop role playing game of the mid 1980s: you are a Red level troubleshooter in Alpha Complex, an underground city run by the paranoid Friend Computer, where almost everything is treason. His own description: “Imagine HAL programmed by Monty Python in a movie directed by Rob Zombie.”

Eight Lives, Used Wisely

You start with a family of eight clones. When one dies, the next takes over and keeps whatever the last one was carrying, and in this game dying is less a failure than a tool. Each clone picks a secret society, a skill and a mutation, and those choices decide what it can do, so working out which clone to spend on which problem is the heart of the puzzle. The game understands a verb and a noun, with a second noun or an adverb where needed, saves your progress, and scores out of 210.

Built in C, Tested in MAME

It is written in C, and the source is on L. Boffin's GitHub, where any later versions will appear. We played it through five rounds of testing with him over the last fortnight, reporting what we found and trying each new build, until it could be finished for the full score. The download is the disc as he ships it, with a copy for MAME so that saved games work there too.

Boot it, pick a secret society, and try not to be seen reading this. Stay alert. Trust no one. Keep your laser handy.