“Spine-tingling peril, romance and adventure on the high seas!” This was the tagline that drew gamers to Infocom’s 1987 interactive fiction game, Plundered Hearts. Plundered Hearts is, to date, the only Infocom game that could be classified a romance, and features a female protagonist in an effort to lure in the female gaming population.
The lead character of this “choose your own adventure” style of game is young woman in the seventeenth century. She receives a letter from a conniving governor of a distant colony where her father is residing, and learns that her father has taken ill and would do well to have his daughter with him for support.
The governor conveniently provides a ship to transport the lovely heroine to her bedridden father’s side. On her way to the West Indies to tend to her father, the young woman is kidnapped by pirates, one of whom is quite handsome and intriguing. The governor, too, has romantic intentions toward the lass, and so the triangle begins.
The character is a three dimensional woman with a lot of potential to entertain. She is spirited, willful, albeit quite girly at times. She is every bit as likely to pull a sword on a ruffian threatening her love interest as she is to kiss a random “gentleman” or faint from exhaustion. Plundered Hearts is unpredictable, and replayable. There are many choices to be made to achieve a variety
of endings. The game practically dares the character to do things that would be unladylike, rewarding such behaviors with either an advance in plot or the end of the game, depending on the particular indiscretion. There are also some clever puzzles for the character to solve, adding another depth to the game.
Of course, it is a primitive game, and the graphic displays are poor and the non-playing characters do not have nearly the depth of the main character. Since the story revolves around a single protagonist, it doesn’t detract terribly, but the two love interests and the father could have at least been beefed up to “marionette” status as opposed to “tin soldier.” There are also some portions of the plot (which is solid and interesting for the most part) that were just silly and seem forced. Still, Plundered Hearts is a great bit of interactive fiction with an unusual heroine and an interesting setting.
