Starship Titanic
A graphic adventure game by Douglas Adams with a text-parser.
Starship Titanic is a graphic adventure game developed by The Digital Village and published by Simon & Schuster Interactive. Released in April 1998 for Microsoft Windows and in March 1999 for Apple Macintosh, the game was written and designed by Douglas Adams, creator of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It is notable for its ambitious text-parser conversation system and its connection to Adams's earlier work.
Quick Facts
- Title
- Starship Titanic
- Developer
- the Digital Village
- Publisher
- Simon & Schuster Interactive
- Designer
- Douglas Adams / Adam Shaikh / Emma Westecott
- Writer
- Douglas Adams / Michael Bywater / Neil Richards
- Composer
- Wix Wickens / Douglas Adams
- Producer
- Emma Westecott / Theodore Barnes
- Released
- NA · 2 April 1998 (PC) · EU · 1998 (PC) · NA · 25 March 1999 (Mac)
- Genre
- Graphic adventure
- Modes
- Single-player
- Platforms
- Microsoft Windows / Mac OS
Facts from the source article.
Lore & Background
Starship Titanic began development in 1996 and took two years to create. The game takes place on the eponymous starship, which crash-lands through the player character's roof on Earth. The player must repair the ship by locating missing parts of its control system, solving puzzles, and conversing with bots via a text parser called Chat-O-Mat. The game features a Personal Electronic Thingy (PET) that serves as a toolbar with modes for chatting, inventory, interaction, location display, and settings. The main objective is to upgrade from third class to first class to access restricted areas, and to find the memory discs or personality components of the ship's disembodied AI, Titania, who was sabotaged by two associates of the ship's creator, Leovinus. The player also encounters a parrot and a talking bomb that can be armed accidentally.
Reader's Guide
Starship Titanic holds significance as Douglas Adams's return to game design after his work on Infocom's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1984). Adams was inspired by Myst but wanted to populate the environment with interactive characters, leading to the development of a language processor that interpreted player input and responded with over 16 hours of recorded dialogue. The game's voice cast included Monty Python members Terry Jones and John Cleese, and the Art Deco visuals were designed by Oscar Chichoni and Isabel Molina, artists from the film Restoration (1995). Despite being nominated for three industry awards and winning a Codie award in 1999, Starship Titanic received mixed reviews and was a financial disappointment. A tie-in novel by Terry Jones was released in October 1997. The game was re-released for modern PCs in September 2015 by GOG.com.
Did You Know?
- The game features a text parser called Chat-O-Mat that allows players to converse with characters by inputting text.
- Over 16 hours of character dialogue were recorded for the game.
- The voice cast includes Monty Python members Terry Jones and John Cleese.
- A tie-in novel titled Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic: A Novel was written by Terry Jones and released in October 1997.
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