1985 · Square · Adventure · Text adventure

The Death Trap

An adventure game released in 1984. It was Squaresoft's first game.

Released: 1985
Platforms: FM-7 NEC PC-8800 series PC-8800 Series PC-9800 Series
Genres: Adventure Text adventure Visual novel
Developers: Square
Publishers: Square
Modes: Single-player
Themes: Survival
Country: Japan

About

The Death Trap is a text adventure developed and published by Square for the PC-8801, PC-9801, and FM-7 in 1984. The game and its supporting computer platforms were only released in Japan. The Death Trap is the first game developed by Square, created before they were even an independent company. At the time, Square was a software branch of Den-Yu-Sha, a Japanese power line manufacturing firm; it was not until 1986 that Square was independently established.

Square released a sequel in 1985 called Will: The Death Trap II. Square's third and final text adventure game was called Alpha, released in 1986, and tells a science fiction story in the same style as The Death Trap.

Keywords

modern warfare
cold war
anime
interactive fiction
murder
death
doctor
airplane
zebra
modern military
world map
branching storyline

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The Death Trap is a silent (no sound) text parser adventure game, which relies on simple command lines from the user's input to progress through the game. As opposed to most "text adventures", with only text as output, The Death Trap provides graphical feedback using full screen still images.

Story

The game's plot revolves around a spy in an African country during a civil war. The story also involves biological warfare.

The game's plot is set during the 1980s. In the game, the Cold War has become tense, and many countries have begun to prepare for a global-scale war, working on new weapons. One of such countries is the mysterious "B country" in Eastern Africa, which in an attempt to create biological weapons kidnaps the famous scientist Dr. Gitanes. An agent named Benson is sent to B country in order to rescue the doctor and avert the new threat to world peace.

Development

The Death Trap was the first game developed by Square, a computer game software branch of Den-Yū-Sha Electric Company. Masashi Miyamoto, who founded Square in September 1983, believed that it would be more efficient to have graphic designers, programmers and writers work together on common projects. Upon Square's inception, Miyamoto initially hired as their first developers university students Hironobu Sakaguchi and Hiromichi Tanaka, and a few others. They shortly began work on Square's first game, The Death Trap.

Sakaguchi noted in 1985 that he had expected to only do clerical work, not develop video games, yet was appointed a producer for the game. Sakaguchi was also a scenario writer for The Death Trap even though he too was a part time employee who had just left university. Harunobu Kato and Tanaka served as programmers. Other scenario writers were Miki Yukinoura, Akihiro Hayashi and Takashi Suzuki.

Reception

The Death Trap received little attention at the time of release, though it was successful enough for Square to immediately go on to create a sequel: Will: The Death Trap II. Hironobu Sakaguchi, Hiromichi Tanaka, Harunobu Kato and Hiromi Nakada continued developing games for Square, while the rest of those credited left.

Retrospective examination from PC Gamer called the game's art "rudimentary". USGamer described the plot as a Cold War era spy thriller.