"I am a 'Snosae' and my race is as far ahead of yours as yours is ahead of the snails of Earth. You've been brought here for a purpose beyond your comprehension, but I will try to explain it to you anyway.
Long ago a race even more advanced than ours came to our planet to offer us membership in a galactic federation. Of course, we tried to destroy them, as is our way. But we were defeated. Still, these strangers, for unknowable reasons wished peace.
Because of our actions, they demanded that we pass a 'test' before we became member of their federation.
The goal of the test is to acquire four objects and by doing so bring the people of my race together. Supposedly the process of acquiring these objects, along with other clues, will suggest a magic word which will unify us. I know it sounds ridiculous, but we have little choice. We can accept their word for the existence of this magic or be quarantined from the rest of the galaxy."
32nd place (out of 37) in the 5th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition.
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Hello, can anyone tell me how to get started in this game? The opening screen dump asks you for your name, age and then gender whereupon it parses: "You have died." Funny the first time but hardly enticing. I can think of a handful of offerings where you can make the game unwinnable in the first move but not before you've even started.
@Canalboy: You need to have downloaded all twelve files from the SNOSAE page on IFDB -- not just xsnosae.exe.
So I have not so much died as never started. Rum indeed.
Still doesn't work via DOSBox-X with all twelve files in the same directory.
I've just loaded it up in DOSBox to grab a screenshot, with no issues.
I have used DOSBox-X for years. Even Quest runs ok in ADVSYS but with all twelve files copied to the correct folder SNOSAE still quits straight away. Everyy other game (other thirty) work fine in DOSBox-X. The setup.dat file doesn't work in ADVSYS either as claimed on the IF Archive.
OK I hadn't renamed the autofile as autofile.dat. I had removed the .txt file extension but somehow it renamed itself as a text file. That explains all! Perhaps I'll be a bit more observant next time.
I noticed the comment about "advsys" on IFDB. Is this a game that was created in ADVSYS? It seems to be listed as different things in various places, from BASIC to C!?
I think it was written in BASIC with a home brew parser and ported to DOS, although you can allegedy run advint setup.dat to play it via an ADVSYS interpreter. Looking at the files though I can't see how this would work, although the claim is there on the IF Archive; I am not sure if this is the author's claim or not.
I have successfully played Elves '87 and Quest via an ADVSYS interpreter (the latter very buggy) but I cannot see how SNOSAE would work vis ADVSYS. I am not an expert on it though.
The comment on IFDB may just be something automatically added because it's a .dat file.
It felt more like a unique, homebrew parser. Which is how at least one contemporary review describes it. There's not much out there about it online. I think it was too difficult for most of the judges in the IFcomp.