User blog comment:Urkelbot666/Experiments./@comment-7706473-20140711110814/@comment-7706473-20140712094009

Are you hoping to help me..?

...

Crack open your deerstalkers and get your coats out, everybody! Let's go on a mythical dive to the early days of mac gaming! Bugashi, if you're lurking in the comments, I summon ye! I feel between us all, there's actually a chance this thing might be unearthed. Let me go over all I remember, though you're not likely to find any mention of it on any big - or recent - site. Here's the information I have - anyone is welcome to contribute information or 'lost' games they're interested in as well! Let us work together, in our united strength!

(And thanks for checking - I appreciate the courtesy.)

The game seemed to be pretty similar to the old roguelikes of the time, most definitely Moria, if you've ever played that? The graphics were very similar to Fantasoft games of the era, to the point that I actually was convinced it was a Fantasoft game, or published by them, for some time. I never found any information to support that theory though, and it's more likely that the whomever made the game ripped some of the graphics from a game like Realmz or the Exile series and threw those graphics into their sci-fi work. You could only control one 'character' at once, and when that character died you got thrown to anyone still alive. This helped ease the pain of permadeath, a little, because in the demo I played there was no way to revive a downed ally.

It was VERY rudimentary, as many shareware games of the era were. I think there were perhaps four stats in total, health, stamina, attack, and defense. You occasionally were told you had to eat food, and you would eventually die if you didn't eat something - and you could eat almost any 'edible' thing, from corpses ala nethack to the moss on the floor. But EVERYTHING, and that includes the rations you started the game with, seemed to (at random) trigger a message about increasing nausea that culminated in your character being paralyzed, ill, and dying.

I think this was to increase the horror and prevent players from 'scumming' the ship, making a show of urgency. As it was the demo was so short (a hydroponic garden, several storage rooms, and a navigation chamber if I recall) that you could avoid it by simply... Not eating.

I'll add more if I can remember, but perhaps that will help you, and I once again thank you for embarking on this voyage of discovery! Good luck, and happy hunting!