Borrowed Time | |
Producer: | Richard Lehrberg |
Artist: | David Lowery Curt Toumanian Greg Miller |
Released: | 1985: Apple II, C64, IBM PC, Mac 1986: Amiga, Atari ST |
Platforms: | Amiga, Apple II, Atari ST, Commodore 64, IBM PC, Mac |
Borrowed Time is an interactive fiction game about a detective, who tries to rescue his kidnapped wife. The game was developed by Interplay and published by Activision in 1985. Mastertronic republished it as a budget title as Time to Die.[1]
The plot in the style of a detective story of the noir crime genre is set in the USA of the 1930s. The player takes a role of a private detective, Sam Harlow. His ex-wife Rita Sweeney has been kidnapped, and he tries to free her. In the process, he is pursued by gangsters who are after his life.
Borrowed Time is a text adventure with a complementary graphical user interface. Control is via the keyboard, alternatively, many commands and objects can be selected from a graphical menu with a joystick or a mouse. Moving around is done in the same way - a selection window with cardinal directions is available. The player must interrogate suspects and collect evidence at the various locations in order to achieve the game goal. Some game actions have a time limit for problem-solving.
Borrowed Time was produced by Interplay for Activision and was part of a $100,000 contract that included a total of three adventure games.[2] Interplay founder Fargo already had experience in the adventure genre: his first game was the adventure The Demon's Forge, released for Apple II in 1981. The parser used by Interplay was developed by Fargo and a collaborator, and at one stage of development had a dictionary of 250 nouns, 200 verbs, and could evaluate input with prepositions and indirect objects.[3] The same engine had been used in the previous games Mindshadow and The Tracer Sanction. The writing and much of the game design were done by Subway Software, a company founded by game journalist Bill Kunkel specifically for Borrowed Time. Fargo outsourced the writing because he felt that no one at Interplay could produce quality prose.[4]
Info rated Borrowed Time four stars out of five, describing it as "a big step forward in the realm of 'interactive entertainment' ... a tonic to jaded adventurers", and praising the game's graphics, parser, and humor.[5] Compute! wrote that "Activision has created a delightful game environment with the look and feel of those classic hardboiled detective movies and novels".[6] Computer Gaming Worlds Charles Ardai called Borrowed Time "a superbly cinematic graphic adventure" that was too brief and deserved a sequel.[7] A German reviewer recognized the challenging storyline, the detailed graphics and the comfortable gameplay.[8] He gave Borrowed Time 82 out of 100.[9]