Escape From Mars is an interactive text adventure written by Rodger Olsen and published by Aardvark. They published six games in 1980 and I’ve played four of them thus far including this one. Trek Adventure, Vampire Castle, and Deathship were the previous three. Escape From Mars was originally written for the Ohio Scientific (OSI) and then later ported to the Commodore 64/128, Sega SC-3000, TI 99/4a, Timex Sinclair, TRS-80 Coco, VIC20 and even the PC.
Escape From Mars, as the title suggests, is a game which finds you stranded on the titular planet. You have to repair your ship in order to escape. It is a rather tight game with a limited number of locations which serves the game quite well. You begin the game in the engine room of your ship and a textbook found in that location reveals that you need alcohol for fuel. A bill found in the locker describes what is needed to make a still. This information embarks you on a quest for equipment and ingredients so that you can escape.
It is imperative that you obtain what is called an oxybottle from the ship. This allows you to survive in the atmosphere of the planet as you move from location to location. You have a limited number of moves with this piece of equipment which seems to function much like an oxygen tank and each time you return to the engine room the oxybottle automatically recharges. If you do not get back in time before your oxygen runs out you perish and have to begin the game all over again. I speak from experience.
The first puzzle in the game which caused me some consternation was trying to discern how to remove the injector and tubing which I found in a cellar and maze below a Martian home. While exploring the inside of a Martian home I pulled aside a rug to reveal a trapdoor. You can only open the trapdoor by smashing it with the jeweled club that you find inside of a sandsled. A ramp below the trapdoor reveals a maze which contains an injector that you need and also a cellar which contains some tubing which is also essential. The problem is that when you pick these items up the game will not let you carry them back up the ramp because of their weight. I could also find no other exits out of the maze. This particular conundrum turned into a considerable time suck for me until I broke a large stand up mirror also found in the Martian home. Breaking the mirror revealed a secret passageway that leads to an observatory and a ledge where I find a coil of rope. Once I had the coil of rope in hand I took said rope to a well and tied it to a statue near the well. This allowed me to climb down the well which also leads to that same maze found beneath the Martian Home. In this way I was able to finally remove the injector and tubing. I questioned why climbing up a rope with these items was easier than walking up a ramp with them but remember it is an adventure game puzzle not real life.
The rest of the game involves you collecting the ingredients to make alcohol. You’ll have to grow some wheat, obtain water, light a fire and voila! you have alcohol.
The Aardvark writers and publisher seem to have a fascination with pockets. Once again I encountered an issue where the suit I was wearing contains a pocket. If you do not open the pocket and look inside; the harmonica and lighter contained therein will not be added to your inventory or accessible. Once you DO look inside the pocket however you can obtain or use both items. You’ll need the lighter to light the fire to make your alcohol and you’ll need the harmonica to lure a Martian to you. Yes that’s right. Whichever location you’re in, if you play the harmonica, over and over, a Martian will eventually appear (you hear a rustling sound coming closer and closer each time you type PLAY HARMONICA – which makes me wonder what a Martian looks like) which you can then capture with your NETS. Once you have captured the Martian you can then take his helmet which you’ll use to collect some water from a swamp.
Once you’ve made your alcohol it is a simple matter of getting back to the ship and then taking off. I liked this game and thought it was another fine offering from Aardvark. All of the text adventures I’ve played from the company so far have had an interesting plot, tight map locations, and a goal to accomplish. They have avoided the treasure hunt trope which was famous during this period. I still have two more text adventures from them to experience yet.
My next challenge involves another text adventure entitled the House of Thirty Gables – that’s a whole lot of gables! Until then…
Another fascinating write-up! While all of your reviews are, of course, interesting, it’s your accounts of the lesser-known games that I enjoy the most.
These Aardvark games, which were ported to the Timex TS-1000/ZX81, were little known in the UK, the ZX81’s home country. Between 1982 and 1984, I played every ZX81 adventure game that I could lay my hands on and I’m sure that I never heard of any of these. Judging by how much you’re enjoying them, I’m sure that they would have sold well if someone had imported them to the UK!
Thank you William as always for your contributions. Loved the Aardvark advertisement you included. One thing about many of the first iterations of these Aardvark games is that the company had to include a notice in the game’s manual that went like this; “the one compromise we had to make to get it all in 8k was to eliminate most failure messages – those that tell you that you can’t do what you tried. We just ignore commands we can’t carry out so always look around again to see if your command was executed” I know with the OSI version if you OPEN LOCKER there was no change at the prompt. You would have to leave the room and come back in and allow the area to reset to see the consequence of your actions. In the Commodore 64 versions which I’ve been playing this was never an issue. Once I typed in OPEN LOCKER, as an example again, I would merely have to type LOOK AROUND. I know on earlier versions this issue caused frustration with many gamers. I thought the games themselves however, their premise and the cohesiveness of their maps and puzzles was well executed. I was aware of the issue and I think it helped me to not prejudice the game based on technology limitation decisions.
One more thing – as you can see from this example, Aadvark’s approach to describing its adventures was decidedly different!
https://archive.org/details/syncmagazine-v2_n4/page/n19/mode/2up