Out of old RPGs, so let’s move on to interactive fiction games. This is The Lurking Horror (1987), a rather late Infocom game (perhaps their last truly great one) and their only foray into horror. As the name implies, it is very much inspired by Lovecraft’s work.

The game is set at the fiction GUE Tech and begins with the player stomping through a snow storm to the computer lab to finish a term paper. A weird glitch in the file reveals something strange is going on at the school’s Department of Alchemy, something…supernatural! Because of the snowstorm, the university is pretty much deserted and impossible to navigate, forcing you to use the underground steam tunnels to get from building to building. This immediately sets the mood of isolation and helplessness. Dave Lebling’s prose effectively switches from the mundane to the horrific and back again. Lots of folks consider this one of the scariest videogames ever made for good reason.

It’s also pretty funny, as Infocom games tend to be. GUE Tech is a send-up of MIT, the university where the founders of Infocom, including Lebling, attended. In an amusing case of jokes coming full circle, practical jokers have at various time labeled various doors at MIT the Department of Alchemy.

Infocom’s games  came with various props to further set the mood — “feelies.” This one is above average, containing a student ID, a campus guide book and, unpleasantly, a rubber centipede thing. The guide and the ID are advertised on the box. Not so much the centipede, making for a potentially unpleasant surprise. Have I mentioned how much I hate centipedes?