The Colony

The Colony came out in 1988, written by David A. Smith and published by Mindscape. It puts you inside a first-person world built from solid polygons that redraw in real time as you walk, at a point when 3D on home machines usually meant a handful of wireframe lines and a lot of patience. Calling it a shooter is misleading; it is an exploration adventure that occasionally hands you a gun.

You play a space marshal answering a distress call from a research colony on a distant planet. The colonists are gone, the corridors are empty, doors are locked, and something is living down there that should not be. Everything runs through the mouse: push the pointer toward the edge of the screen to turn and move, click an object to use it. Obvious today, brand new in 1988.

Pacing is what makes it work. The colony is large and layered, full of terminals, lifts, storage rooms and scraps of information that slowly explain what happened here. Nothing hurries you and nothing holds your hand; you map the place in your head, and getting lost underground with thin ammunition is genuinely unpleasant. Part of the journey is driven rather than walked, which no other real-time 3D game let you do at the time.

Two things need forgiving now: the world redraws slowly, and the PC version is black and white, so the mood rests entirely on empty space and sound. Accept that and the game holds together remarkably well, because the silence before you open the next door still does its job. Anyone hoping for fast action will be bored, since this is a game about looking around carefully and remembering the way back.

On oldgame.cz it runs straight in the browser, with nothing to install.