Artificial Gravity Mac OS
Floating platforms held in place by the artificial gravity. You are able to walk on these. Gravity turners will change your personal direction of gravity when you walk across them. Boxes can be picked up and moved to another location to help you overcome obstacles. If the hardware in your mac won't support an upgrade to more recent OS X versions, don't waste your time. Apple have not maintained backward compatibility: the minimum versions of Xcode or Application Launcher needed to meet the app store requirements won't run on 10.6.8.
| Symbiocom | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Istvan Pely Productions |
| Publisher(s) | Bethesda Softworks |
| Designer(s) | Istvan Pely, Sherban Young |
| Artist(s) | Istvan Pely |
| Composer(s) | Seth W. Jones |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS |
| Release | 1998 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure, Sci-Fi/Cyberpunk |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Symbiocom (also known as Syn-Factor) is a first personadventure game developed by Istvan Pely in 1998. It is a pseudo-sequel to Majestic Part 1: Alien Encounter (1995) and the predecessor to Zero Critical (1999).
Plot[edit]
The player is a new service technician aboard I.S.T. Rident, a class B space-faring passenger liner in the Delta quadrant. Implanted into the player's brain is a 'symplant' (or simply, a 'sym'), a symbioticartificial intelligence designed by SYNSYM Corporation to act as a companion as well as a tool to help people in scientific and technical disciplines work more efficiently.
Artificial Gravity Mac Os 11
The Rident was experiencing a problem with its artificial gravity generators, and as a maintenance engineer, the player was assigned to fix the ship's gravity arrays. As a safety measure, Captain Roland Tailor and co-pilot Yuri Ruport decided to keep the ship's worm-drive off-line while the gravity generator is being worked on. Disabling the worm-drive significantly reduced the speed of the vessel. At this point the Rident was attacked by two war ships. The Rident shakes violently, knocking the passengers off balance, and alarms all around the ship start going off. The captain orders an SOS distress signal to be sent and hollers to prepare the lifeboats. The player falls unconscious while busy fixing the ship's gravitomagnetism.
The game begins with the player being woken by alerts from the implanted sym. I.S.T. Rident is left adrift in the depths of space and the player is alone aboard a deserted spacecraft. The player's objectives are to escape from the crippled transport and to find out who destroyed the ship and what happened to the 163 crew members and passengers aboard.[1][2][3]
Development[edit]
The game was developed by Istvan Pely and his team, Sherban Young (screenplay writer) and Seth Jones (musician and sound editor). Symbiocom was intended as a pseudo-sequel to Majestic Part 1: Alien Encounter (1995) as it takes place in the same universe. Whilst the storyline and characters of Symbiocom do not continue over in the subsequent game Zero-Critical (1999), there are few references to its events.
In an interview in 1998, Istvan Pely stated that Symbiocom was implemented very close to its original concept. He added that:[4]
I wanted to depict a very realistic future with a story that revolved around a corporate conspiracy, a story about normal human beings and issues. There's a cyberpunk flavor to the game, and it raises interesting concepts about human identity.
Gameplay and reception[edit]
The protagonist of this game is both nameless and faceless, a feature that was praised by certain critics.[1] The game is divided into five chapters, each taking place in a completely different environment. Each location is displayed with 3D pre-rendered graphics and a 360° view. Movement is restricted to sudden jumps between still screens and 'move along a rail' videos from location to location.[3][2] The locales are generally unpopulated. There are very few character interactions throughout the game. Most of the player's interactions take place with drones and entertainment robots. The player's sym talks to the player in text only.[2]
The puzzles are inventory and logic types. In his review, Gordon Aplin (1998), states that the puzzles 'are not too difficult for experienced adventurers and are logically consistent within the game world.' It is possible to die in this game, however the player will be automatically restored to a point before they made their fatal error.[1]
The game has been compared to the film Soylent Green.[4]
References[edit]
Citations[edit]
Bibliography[edit]
- Tanguay, David. 'Symbiocom'. sentex. Retrieved 16 April 2021.
- Jones, J. 'Symbiocom (1998)'. MobyGames. Retrieved 16 April 2021.
- White, Craig. 'Interview with Istvan Pely'. Just Adventure. Retrieved 16 April 2021.CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
- Aplin, Gordon. 'Syn-Factor / Symbiocom'. Metz O'Magic. Retrieved 16 April 2021.CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
At a glance
Cons
Our Verdict
The “endless running” genre that was first made so popular by Semi-Secret Software’s Canabalt has been explored in many recent App Store releases, and Miniclip‘s Gravity Guy looks to expand further on the idea by introducing an interesting gravity-based mechanic into the mix.
Mac Os Mojave
Gravity Guy throws you into the shoes of a mysterious gnome figure with the ability to flip gravity at will. You’ve just escaped from prison, and now you’re on the run from what appear to be law-enforcement robots. It’s a minimalist story at best, but it does a decent enough job of setting up the action that follows.
As the gnome, you’ll run from left to right automatically. A robot will always be hot on your tail, so the trick is to not get caught up on parts of the environment, or you’ll be caught and promptly zapped with a laser gun. The only real tool at your disposal is your ability to flip gravity, which can be accomplished by tapping anywhere on the screen. You’ll have to use timing and your character’s momentum to successfully make it across large gaps, while other level segments will require you to rapidly switch gravity to avoid small gaps in levels.
An interesting (and I think problematic) part of the game’s design is that flipping gravity while in midair simply doesn’t work. This often makes the game unnecessarily frustrating, especially because of the speed at which later levels move. There are plenty of checkpoints, but I found myself dying over and over again so many times in some segments that the game was no longer fun. It’s a very trial-by-error sort of game, and while that actually works for games like Super Meat Boy or Mega Man, the fact that you have no real control over your character’s movement makes Gravity Guy downright frustrating.
There’s a multiplayer mode that allows up to four players to gather around one iPhone screen and compete to see who can survive for the longest amount of time, but (as you might imagine) even two fingers jabbing at an iPhone at once is enough to completely obscure the on-screen action from all of the players, so that too is a throwaway addition.
Gravity Guy isn’t a bad game, especially at its price point, but players who put any amount of time over 20 minutes into the game will find that eventually it becomes something of a joyless chore to play. If you’re in need of a pick-up-and-play title to tide you over on your commute the game might be worth considering, but most gamers will want to pass on this one.
[Ryan Rigney is a frequent contributor to Macworld.]