The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"In the beginning the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a game by Infocom released in 1984, it is based on the novel with the same name by Douglas Adams written in 1979.
Well, actually it was originally written as a radio theater by Douglas Adams in 1978 for BBC Radio 4.
Of course there is also a movie adaptation from 2005, which is rather sub par to the novel and game in my opinion.

The game was co-written by Infocom employee Steve Meretzky and Douglas Adams.
Just as the novel it is a science fiction comedy.

Familiarity with the novel does help in the beginning of the game, but events as the game progresses differs from the novel.

As all of Infocoms games it was an Interactive Fiction, meaning it had no graphics, but rather text that described events, as well as a text input for the player to interact with the game.

And just as most other Infocom games it came with a number of "feelies", merchandise to increase the player immersion into the game.

The feelies include a big red button inviting the player not to panic. That seem to be good advice, since the game is insanely difficult despite having a difficulty rating of Standard according to Infocom themselves.

I don't refer to the common problem of such game as to how to phrase what you as a player want to do to make the game understand you, or the fact that if you miss something earlier in the game, it may be unbeatable (such things where common in adventure games), but rather that the game is straight up sadistic and tends to troll the player (which admittedly is part of the humor of the game).

I will now give an example for the two first turns in the game so *minor spoilers* coming up (skip this paragraph if you want no spoilers).

When I first played the game it probably took like 10 minutes just to get the first turn right. Everything is black. I tried to navigate the game anyhow, but it didn't work. After I while I got desperate trying to figure out why it was black and tried "open eyes", which didn't work. The correct action was "turn the lights on". The second turn was equally frustrating trying to figure out why I couldn't do anything. Turns out the protagonist was lying in bed and you had to write something like "get out of bed". Of course if I was actually the protagonist I would know that.

This is often a problem, or rather the basis for the puzzles in the game; figuring out what is going on based on the information the game Doesn't give you. Like for instance Who you are!

Later in the game the player gets to control different characters, but luckily there is a "Who am I" command.

"Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Another problem I quickly found when playing was that sometimes the right thing to do is nothing.

This means actively writing "wait". But be careful not to wait for too long, or not long enough for that matter.

Without the games manual, that gives a lot of hints of what is possible to do and how to play Infocom games in general, it is of course even harder to play. Luckily, in the gold release of the game there is an in-game hint system (remember, this is back when the web wasn't readily available) for when when you get Really stuck, which was far more often than I would like to admit.

The DOS version of the game has the option to play with color. This only means that the otherwise black background is now instead blue.

DOS version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

In 2014 the game was made freely available on BBC Radio 4's homepage to celebrate the games 30th anniversary. This version has an updated interface with graphics and an inventory bar, which helps a lot considering this is not based on the gold edition with built in hints. (But nowadays you can of course easily find hints online)

To quote the page: "The game will kill you frequently. It's a bit mean like that."

The game is available at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN2PLZG/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-game-30th-anniversary-edition

30th anniversary edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

This certainly is a game mainly for fans of Douglas Adams' strain of humor and not for the easily frustrated. You Will die, A Lot, but hopefully, each time you do you get a tiny bit further in the game.

I liked the game, but then, I've been a fan of Douglas Adams a long time, and I am rather stubborn.
And honestly to Really enjoy this game, I think you need some masochistic tendencies.

"The ships hung in the sky the same way bricks don't" - Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

For those unfamiliar with the story this is what it is about *spoilers ahead*:

Arthur Dent wakes up one morning finding out that his house is about to be demolished to make way for a bypass. While protesting the demolition of his home Arthur encounter his friend Ford Prefect, who turns out to be an alien and researcher for the intergalactic dictionary "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". He explains that the earth is about to be demolished by the Vogons to make room for an intergalactic bypass.

In the last second the two friends manages to hitchhike on one of the Vogon spaceships, before the earth is demolished.