'Unknown Dimension' released

[Warrigal (Garry Francis)]

The BDB Project is pleased to announce the release of Unknown Dimension. This game is an adaptation of the Italian adventure Dimensione Sconosciuta by Bonaventura Di Bello. This was his first game. It was originally published on the cover tape of Load’n’Run, no. 37, April 1987 for the ZX Spectrum. It was later rewritten as Amos Newton: Incubo and published on the cover tape of Explorer, no. 8, June 1987 for the Commodore 64 and MSX.

During a recent archaeological dig in Peru, your friend, Professor Baumbeker, discovered an amazing metallic sphere that defied all Inca technology and all modern technology, as well. He kept this discovery a secret until he could determine what it was and where it may have come from.

Late one evening, the professor rang you in a most excited state to tell you that he had used the sphere to see into another world. You promised to come down to his laboratory first thing in the morning to see this new discovery for yourself, but when you arrived, the professor wasn’t there.

While you waited for the professor to arrive, you touched the metallic sphere with your right hand where the professor had described and were shocked to see a vision of the professor.

After absent-mindedly touching the sphere with your left hand, you were teleported into darkness, where you could only hear the dripping of water.

In this game, you must search a strange world, avoid its hazards and discover its secrets in order to find the professor and return him home from this Unknown Dimension.

Let’s not mince words. This game is hard. It starts off in the dark. Your first light source doesn’t last long. You’ll be confronted by two mazes early in the game and you can get killed a lot.

Are you up for the challenge? There are actually plenty of clues to help you navigate the mazes and avoid getting killed. So, examine everything, draw a map and the mysteries of the Unknown Dimension will be solved in no time.

The game can be played online, downloaded as a z5 file to play in your favourite Z-code interpreter or downloaded as a disk image to play in selected retro computers.

[rovarsson]

Old school darkness and mazes?
Downloaded and in my to-play folder.

[Piergiorgio_d_errico]

On Amos Newton, I must do a massive 'fess up.

these early Italian IF have impacted myself much more that I imagined. Consciously, I have forgotten the general background of Amos Newton (I remember now that back then I chuckled on the self-referencing project name), then, re-reading the scans, I blushed realising that inconsciously I haven’t forgotten. Totally NOT forgotten, and resurfaced in my creative mind more than 35 years after.

Warning: major spoilers ahead for Unknown dimension, Isekai and First Contact

(taking a deep breath)…

but let’s put things straight and in order: the general background of both Amos and Etuye Alasne is the VERY SAME, a space/time traveller, thru the mind/souls of alien people.

and, thru basically the very same device: Amos’s Explorer Sphere and Etuye’s azure Octahedron of Past Lives are, in practice, the very same object, and I’m dumbfounded that forty years later I inconsciously resurrected this narrative device from the 1980s…

Of course, both Amos and Etuye use their device (basically, the same…) for the same scope, exploring strange, alien worlds and solving problems in their worlds (in Isekai’s case, the device backfires, and the “alien” (actually a terran…) explores Etuye’s world) (ISTR that even the very first Amos story tackles social issues, in this case, colonisation and exploitation ?)

short non-spoiler version: Etuye Alasne is substantially the daughter of Amos Newton, and I’m dumbfounded and at total loss on how I unconsciously taken the very same background and general story from IF sessions done more than 35 years ago.

now, I can’t make heads nor tails. fact is, Amos begot Etuye. How, is the true mystery inside my mind.

dumbfounded regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

[Warrigal (Garry Francis)]

Unknown Dimension was the first game that Bonaventura Di Bello wrote. He distributed it amongst his friends, then submitted it to a competition being run by Arcadia S.r.l. He wasn’t allowed to participate, but they offered him a fee to publish the game in Load ‘n’ Run. It was quite some time until the game appeared. When it did appear, it had no introduction or backstory, unlike all his later games.

In the meantime, Edizioni Hobby, contacted BDB because they needed a coder who could crank out three adventures every month for the ZX Spectrum in a new magazine called Epic 3000. The first two issues introduced Amos Newton as a protagonist and the games @Piergiorgio_d_errico alluded to featured a metallic sphere that allowed one to see into the mind of another character and control that character’s actions.

Some time later, BDB rewrote Unknown Dimension as Amos Newton: Incubo (meaning ‘Nightmare’) and added Amos Newton as the protagonist, but the role of the metallic sphere now allowed teleportation, rather than mind control.

Our adaptation uses the original title, as this is more in keeping with the story, but the game itself is closer to Incubo. The puzzles were very similar in both of the original games, but the story made no sense whatsoever. We’ve tried to fix that, but, in doing so, we had to move things around and introduce some new puzzles. The whole process and the design decisions would probably make for an interesting post mortem, but it would necessarily be chock full of spoilers.

Note that I was using the editorial ‘we’ above, as Gianluca Girelli (@g0blin) acted as my sounding board for bouncing off ideas in all three of the games that we just released. He came up with some of the ideas himself and was also the alpha tester. It’s been a pleasure working with him.