The Collection Chamber: EARTHRISE

ATTENTION: GUILD INVESTIGATOR

All contact with our mining colony on Solus has been lost. The mechanically propelled asteroid is now traveling out of control, and Solus is predicted to collide with Earth - unless the main engines are restarted in time. Report to Mining Guild HQ immediately for your assignment.

That was all that the message from the main office had to say. Why do you always get the tough assignments? After all, your solution to the Ursula-X incident was really just a matter of luck. But now, as the Mining Guild's top Investigator, it's up to you to save the company billions of dollars - and possible billions of lives!

Well, all in a day's work...

In EARTHRISE, a sci-fi animated graphics adventure, your job is to explore an asteroid and 100-room mining station, and figure out how to fix the engines before it crashes into Earth. Game control is easy with simple text and keyboard commands, pop-up windows, and Help menu.

There are multiple paths to your solution, all loaded with challenges, plus several surprising ways to meet your demise. Rely on your trained investigative mind, ingenuity, and lots of luck to solve this crisis before EARTHRISE.
EXPLORE the beautiful landscape. Wait a minute - this doesn't look like an asteroid!
MEET NEW FRIENDS. On seconds thought, he doesn't look so friendly after all.
BOLDLY GO where no one else wants to - a deserted asteroid mining station on a collision course with Earth.
USE YOUR SKILLS as a trained investigator (like breaking and entering, creative engineering) to locate and repair damaged systems.

~ from the back of the UK box

Sierra's Adventure Game Interpreter development engine, or AGI as it is more commonly known as, defined graphic adventures in the 80's, but by 1990 it was all but abandoned in favour or their SCI program (Sierra Creative Interpreter). That didn't stop Matt Gruson, a one-man game designer, programmer and future Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender creator, to copy that engines features to create Earthrise, a 1990 sci-fi adventure with a very familiar text-parser-based system.

Much like the earlier games in Sierra's 'Quest' quartet, Earthrise's unnamed main character is controlled directly using the arrow keys or number pad. If you want to interact with anything, you'd need to type it in in much the same way as a text adventure. I was never too keen on this set up, despite some visually interesting graphics for the time. It had all the same trappings of a text adventure, where is would be more difficult to enter the correct sentence the game wants than to solve the puzzles. Most commands in Earthrise are simple enough, with a basic verb-noun structure for a variety of actions. The most used ones even have their own keyboard shortcut; for example, press F9 to pit on your space helmet or F10 to take it off. You can even define your own short cuts in a nifty feature that should be retro-fitted in all of the older games of this type.

Press F8 to look at your watch. It will tell you how long you have left, the current air pressure and remaining oxygen (left).
Fill up your oxygen tank at one of these refill rooms (right).

The problem comes when you want to do something more complex than 'press button' or 'open door'. If you want to break some glass with a hammer, that exact turn of phrase is needed - 'break glass with hammer'. Typing 'use hammer on glass' in much the same way as you would a LucasArts point-an-clicker will not work. Remember the order; verb, environmental noun, inventory noun.

Taking a look at the pre-assigned shortcuts will give you a little clue on how the major puzzles work. By having dedicated buttons for your helmet tells you that you'll be playing dress-up quite frequently. And you will. After a short stint on a space craft at the beginning, you'll be spending most of your time at an asteroid mining facility where air and pressure regulation isn't always up to code. Panels on corridor walls will alert you on whether the location is habitable or the air breathable. Play close attention to the doors too, as they will hint at what it's like beyond. They will open and close automatically regardless, but only when you enter a room will it become dangerous. And by dangerous, I mean your head will explode in a pixelated cloud of claret.

Look at corridor panels to tell you where you are and whether you can survive without your helmet (left).
Define your own oft-used commands by pressing F7. Make sure 'Press Button' is one of them (right).

There are many other ways to die, too. So save often. That being said, most dangers are obviously signposted and may even give you enough time to high tail it back to safety. A hungry green monster stalking a corridor will bite your head off if you get too close, but you'll have to get close to be eaten. I found myself creating saves just so I can die and watch the vividly gruesome animation sequences.

One of the more memorable deaths involves you being the unwitting prey for a giant spider. Defeating it has one of the more convoluted solutions, but it is indicative of the game as a whole. On the asteroid surface, a skylight peers down into the greenhouse where it lives. It is made of glass, so smashing it with a hammer will destroy anything living beneath it. You can now safely make it pass the arachnid's guts to get to the other side. Getting past creatures makes up the bulk of the game, and they require you to use a specific item on them or somehow manipulate their environments. Generally, it's rather easy even without the hints gathered from notes and noticeboards placed around the station. Even if the puzzles are rather simple, I still found them entertaining enough to figure out.

Looks like I've been turned into spider food! (left).
You'd have to figure out how to squish it before you can proceed (right).

Much like the puzzles, the story is rather simple too. You are a generic scientist and engineer sent out to a mining asteroid circling the Earth. It's facility has gone silent, and the asteroid itself has veered off its man-made course towards our planet itself, which can't be good. You have to figure out what's happened and manoeuvre it away from catastrophe, all before the Earth will rise on the horizon. Naturally, aliens are involved. While simple, the premise is not basic, doing just enough to entice you into this game world without convolution. You can piece together the fate of the miners by reading texts throughout the facility, but they're not necessary to complete the game - or get the full 800 points (though randomly picking up a smelly sock for no reason gives you 15 points).

Despite releasing in 1990, Earthrise would more comfortably fit alongside games from at least three years prior. As such, the archaic text-based design has aged it to such a level that would deter newcomers to the genre. Even so, it is a far more forgiving game than Sierra's output which would make this the perfect primer before heading off in that direction. Recommended.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses the DOSBox-X build of DOSBox to bring the game to modern systems. Manual included. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 23.0 Mb. Install Size: 55.6 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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