An absolute classic of interactive fiction from a long
out-of-print series called Virtual Reality, penned by Dave Morris of Fabled
Lands fame, and apparently due an upcoming re-release. It jettisons dice rolls
and finicky rules in favour of a fluid and accessible game-play system that keeps
the engaging and frequently haunting story front-and-centre at all times.
Morris cleverly spurns generic fantasy settings or
cookie-cutter far-future dystopias in favour of a reasonably original spin on
the notion of a dying earth. In the Heart of Ice setting, a berserk
supercomputer, its vast intellect driven to madness by a cocktail of viruses,
has seized control of the planetary network of weather satellites and inflicted
an environmental disaster on the suffering world beneath it. The brilliant
simplicity of this idea is that Morris can play around with having familiar
settings altered by completely outrageous climates, while having an excuse not
to obey any kind of environmental realism. Around the end of the 23rd
century, Southern France is a swamp, Italy is a perpetual winter wonderland and
the Sahara is a frozen waste. The descriptions of the Pyramids and the Sphinx
looming over an endless snowfield are instantly evocative in a way that no
fantasy castle in a Fighting Fantasyesque original setting could be.
The story is a straightforward quest for an artefact that
will supposedly turn the wielder into a demi-god and heal the stricken world,
allowing humanity’s fading remnant to revive. The strange mixture of oddball
characters with uncertain agendas, exotic technological gadgets, real-world
locations turned to exotic wildernesses and alternative endings shaped by the
player’s choices makes Heart of Ice more than a run-of-the-mill gamebook
experience.
