Rama (video game)

Rama is a point-and-click adventure game from Dynamix, a subsidiary of Sierra On-Line. It launched for MS-DOS and Windows in 1996, with a Classic Mac OS version following in 1997, and a PlayStation release in Japan in 1998. The game draws from Arthur C. Clarke’s *Rendezvous with Rama* and *Rama II*, blending plot elements from both into a story where the player takes on the role of a replacement crew member sent to explore an interstellar vessel and unlock its secrets. Critics praised its music, story, and alien creatures, and often compared it to *Myst*. It was Clarke’s second game involvement, after the 1984 text adventure *Rendezvous with Rama* by Telarium.

Gameplay is from a first-person perspective. Players interact with objects, pick up items, examine them in an inventory, and use them to solve puzzles. A wrist-mounted computer helps with exploration, handling communications from other characters, storing data files, and showing a map. A small android assists as an interface for examining objects.

The story begins four years before the game, when a giant cylindrical object enters the Solar System. The International Space Agency names it Rama and sends the “Newton Team” expedition. They find Rama is a hollow, rotating cylinder with vast cities, populated by alien species collected during its travels: Myrmicats (seen in images but not encountered), Avians, and Octospiders. The native beings are Biots—biological robots built by Rama’s creators. The player is an anonymous, silent protagonist, an astronaut replacing Valeriy Borzov, who died mysteriously on the mission. The player first explores the Plains, gathering items to solve logical and mathematical puzzles. Two Raman cities, nicknamed “London” and “Bangkok,” are visited to learn about the species. Puzzles involve completing shapes and doing math in octal and hexadecimal. After the Plains are fully explored, Rama shifts to a collision course with Earth. A special team—Heilmann, Borzov, and O’Toole—heads to “Project Trinity” to arm bombs to destroy Rama. The player goes to the “New York” island in the Cylindrical Sea, where a bomb is located. There, the player learns Rama has changed course away from Earth, but the bombs are set to explode in six hours. O’Toole, who knows the disarm code, is lost, so the player must interpret the code and find the bomb in that time.