DESCRIPTION

It's sometime in the future, near the beginning of the 23rd century in the Budayeen, a small and seedy corner of a North African city. You are Marid Audran, a small time courier and detective, no one special. But, you're about to make something of yourself because you've gotten cybernetic enhancements. With them, you can plug in skill chips that enhance your abilities or give you entirely new ones.

Circuit's Edge is a text-based RPG adventure based on George Alec Effinger's novel When Gravity Fails. The game is played by selecting an action from a pull-down menu of possibilities located at the top of the screen, then applying it to an appropriate object.

Commands in the game include look, talk, inventory, action, map and exit. Under the action command you select from choices like chip in or chip out, sleep, fight or get item among others. Different windows include a first person perspective of the world or the inside of various buildings, conversation text, directions (when moving within the city) and an option for a pop-up map of the entire city.

The main objective of the game is to find a notebook for one of the largest crime bosses in Budayeen. If you fail to either find Friedlander Bey's property or are too slow in recovering it, you die and the game starts over. The role playing elements in Circuit's Edge include six attributes: food, stamina, agility, rest, strength and life (depicted by bar graphs).

You navigate around the city by using arrow keys or a mouse and can talk to the characters in the game by typing in a subject you want to talk about. You enter a building simply by facing its door. When wandering the mean streets of the Budayeen, you will be accosted by random thugs looking for money and can be hurt or even killed if you can't fend defend yourself.

The game is played in real time, thus game time passes even if you do nothing. Your world revolves around your apartment in the Budayeen where you can rest to recover from work and save the game. Because of the real time element and the inability to save the game other than in your apartment, it is not possible to save in every situation and time is definitely against you.

Can you survive this dark and moody environment replete with drug dealers, strippers and unsavory criminals from Westwood? Enter a world of the future in Circuit's Edge and give it a try. ~ Kyle Knight, All Game Guide