Stationfall

Overview

Stationfall was the 25th game released by interactive fiction pioneers Infocom, and the sequel to Planetfall.

Development

The game designer/programmer (or as Infocom called it, "implementor", or "imp") responsible for Stationfall was Steve Meretzky, who was also the "imp" of Planetfall. The ending of Planetfall humorously set up the possibility of a sequel. After its critical and financial success, that sequel arrived four years later in Stationfall.

Story

The player is playing as the same (unnamed) protagonist from Planetfall. Although they have been promoted from "Ensign Seventh Class" to "Lieutenant First Class", they are nonetheless engaged in boring busywork. Their routine is interrupted by a trip to a deserted area that turns out to have been decimated by a disease. They are accompanied on the journey by their childlike robot pal, Floyd (who is revealed at the end of Planetfall to have recovered from seemingly irreparable damage). All of this is directly analogous to the plotline of Planetfall.

As implied by the titles, the deserted area in Stationfall is a space station, rather than a planet. More significantly, the disease in Stationfall is more akin to a computer virus: it causes technology to turn on its creators. First Plato, another robot encountered on the way who has befriended Floyd, turns on the player. Floyd defends the player and kills Plato, but then flees. The player eventually discovers that an alien artifact is propagating the virus, and that it is now guarded by a corrupted Floyd. In order to stop the virus from spreading to other installations, the player must kill Floyd, inverting the emotional climax of Planetfall when Floyd attempted to sacrifice his life on behalf of the player.

(Another robot, Oliver, is also introduced, and at the end of the game, proves to be very reminiscent of the "old" Floyd. This may be a sardonic reference to "Cousin Oliver" of the TV show The Brady Bunch, who was added to the show in a cynical attempt to re-introduce "cuteness" since the show's child stars were growing older.)

"Feelies"

As had become traditional for Infocom, Stationfall's packaging contained collectibles (or, as they were referred to, "feelies") to help set the mood of the game. Stationfall's "feelies" were:

• A "Stellar Patrol" patch
• Bureaucratic forms that correspond to the first scenes of the game
• Blueprints of the space station (10 pages)