Release Date: 1990
Platform DOS

Note: Review was originally posted April 4, 1990

Earthrise is a science fiction adventure game in which you are sent on a space shuttle to investigate the asteroid Solus, whose base has stopped responding. Once there, you must enter the doomed base while eliminating the alien menace. The game engine resembles Sierra On-Line’s AGI system used in their early days, with text input, 16-color graphics and rectangular boxes for text. Matt Gruson is the main author of the game, released in 1990 by Interstel. Matt has released other adventure games such as Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender, and he is now working at Accolade/Infogrames.

As in all adventure games, the puzzles fluctuate between easy and hard. The game’s plot progression is swift and constant. Death is also constant, for being alone on an asteroid infested with vicious alien creatures and surviving is a difficult task. You can also die at your own hands by forcing the character to enter a unpressurized module without his helmet. The puzzles are laid out well, though, and provide enough information to keep us going without telling too much. Puzzles receive an A-.

The graphics are well-done, but occasionally the detail is too low in the rooms. Obviously they lack the refinement found in larger companies’ games. Other than that, they do their job revealing the interiors of the shuttle, the asteroid and the colony modules. The characters are also well-animated, and the aliens are very suggestive. Gore and death sequences are very fun to look at, too. 🙂 For all this, I give graphics a B+ because they really make me feel as though I am inside that colony, not knowing what to expect around the next corner.

As happens with older games, Earthrise’s sound support is very limited. The available choices are speaker or Tandy. I give the sound a B- because in 1990 there were already numerous available soundcards.

Overall, it’s quite a challenge to discover what happened to the scientists on the base, allied with fairly good backgrounds and some entertaining sequences.