Border Zone was both published and developed by Infocom. It was released for play onto multiple formats in the late eighties. Border Zone saw time on the Commodore 64, Macintosh, Apple II, and of course the personal computer. Other formats were available, but were less popular for this game of interactive fiction. It is a single player game that uses the keyboard as an input device and is primarily a text-based game.
Border Zone was created to be a reflection of the era surrounding the Cold War.
The game takes place in the city and surrounding area of Ostnitz, which is located right on the fringe of the fictitious countries of Frobnia (which is an Eastern Bloc nation) and the neutral country of Litzenburg. Ostnitz is preparing to celebrate the again fictitious holiday of Constitution Day, and the festivities will be capped off by a speech from Litzenburg’s American Ambassador. However, several factions are hoping to increase tensions…possibly even provoke war…between the super powers, and a plot has been hatched to assassinate the ambassador during his speech.
Border Zone is set up as a series of chapters…a total of three in all. In each chapter, the user will be able to play the part
of a different character. He is first an American businessman, then a Soviet KGB agent, and finally an American super spy. Because the user will be playing on both sides of the fence, so to speak, he will be both attempting to thwart the assassination attempt, or will be trying to ensure that it comes off without a hitch.
Border Zone features some aspects that are very unusual in a text adventure game. For one, there are some real time elements that are introduced as the plot begins to thicken. In other words, game time will continue to tick away, even if the user is not issuing any commands to the parser. This creates an awesome tension and sense of urgency that really is not present in very many text adventure games. There are many actions that the gamer will have to carefully time out in order to succeed at. Overall, the clock does a great job of forcing the story to move forward, even when the user is stuck. This is not to say that the movement is always beneficial to the gamer, but it is certainly an interesting quality. It makes Border Zone a very unique and highly recommended text-based adventure game.
