Robot City

[MystFan_245]

This is an adventure game / murder mystery developed by Byron Preiss Interactive on two CDs and compatible only for Windows 3.1 (Easily emulated via DosBox). Based on six novels set in Asimov's universe but not authored by him (Think of the original Star Wars novels), this game takes place in a futuristic city on a distant planet, capable of growing and morphing into anything its computer and robots deem necessary. But when your character arrives, another human is murdered, and since the Three Laws prevent any robot from harming a human, they peg you as the prime suspect for the murder. Thus, you must explore this city to prove your innocence and find out what what's really going on.

 

• Review by Obscuritory: https://obscuritory.com/adventure/robot-city/
• Walkthrough videos:

I've played this game several times and I can effectively break it down two ways:

1. Pros:
   1. Surprisingly complex story with plenty of details to sift through.
   2. Good replay value - the various ways your robot companion Alpha can be customized open different gameplay avenues
   3. Loads of dialogue between your character and the various robots.
2. Cons:
   1. The city streets randomly change, with only a set number of street areas that tend to loop back on each other.
   2. You have a set number of fail states before the robots lose your trust
      1. Being caught by the randomly spawned Hunter robots
      2. Being washed back to your apartment by randomly spawned rain showers (which quickly become flash floods depending on how much you move)

Nonetheless, this is prime Game Dungeon material, as this game seems to have grown as obscure as the original novels, although personally the plot here makes more narrative sense than the novels.

 

Additional note: To impress Ross, I have personally hand-recorded all of the game's music using DosBox's wave capture function. Most of it is droning noise,  and a couple of tracks at the start have sound effects I couldn't remove, but there is some good stuff here and there.https://1drv.ms/u/s!AhoXb8STFlL6g6ART-DzCCVraOi2bQ?e=d6d8lp

 

NOTE: I checked the music terms page and I can say with certainty that the music above is abandonware, as it was never commercially released or uploaded by others. I recorded it myself because the files in-game are in a format too old to access. 

Edited January 5, 2023 by MystFan_245 (see edit history)