Aurora Adventure

"A few sensations seem to be trying to penetrate the fog in your woozy and incoherent mind. 'Cold' is the first. In fact, cold almost seems inadequate to describe this sensation. You are absurdly, unbelievably freezing. The second sensation is 'white'. Yet even as your unfocused eyes register that you are surrounded by white, this doesn't strike you as odd. You feel that you are used to white surroundings and have indeed been among them for some time now. It is the latter observation that nudges your mind, which is gradually regaining its functionality, back towards reality. You should be cold and surrounded by white because you have been in cryo on a spacecraft. The Aurora, to be precise, on its year-long flight for Gliese 581g. You rub your eyes with the heel of your hand and mutter, "Gail's going to laugh at me. People in cryo look so peaceful, but...augh.""

An interactive fiction by Jewelled Dragon (aka Katz) that follows Jake Bouchard, ship's physician of the intersidereal craft Aurora, as he awakens out of cryo to find that the ship is off course and the commanding officers unable to awaken. It's up to him to awaken the crew, get the vessel working, and figure out if it was accident or sabotage.

It's an unusual text-based game in that it has an ensemble cast that you can both interact with and play as. Often a task can only be completed by a specific crew member.


 * Acceptable Breaks From Reality: Do you want to be on an interstellar spaceship or not?
 * Adorkable: Gail.
 * Aliens Speaking English: Averted, since all the dialogue implicitly goes through the xenotranslator's text interface.
 * Applied Phlebotinum: Did an unclean amount of hand-waving for this story.
 * Artificial Gravity
 * As You Know: Lampshaded; if you read the official mission files, characters will complain that they knew all that already.
 * Bizarre Alien Biology: The zivri are insect-like HiveMinds that communicate via radio signals.
 * Command Roster
 * The Captain: Commander Connor
 * Number Two: Captain Parekh
 * Cunning Linguist: Dr Hassan
 * The Medic: Jake
 * The Scientist: Dr Liang
 * The Computer Nerd: Gail
 * The Engineer / Mr. Fixit: Wu Feng
 * Red Shirt: Aleksey
 * Convenient Coma
 * Cyberspace
 * FTL Travel
 * Happily Married: Jake and Gail
 * Magical Defibrillator
 * Mission Control: Trying to resume contact is one goal of the game.
 * Multinational Team
 * News Travels Fast:
 * Not That Kind of Doctor: In addition to Jake, there are a couple of PHD's on the ship. They will not be amused if you try to get them to do medicine.
 * Puzzle Reset: Cyberspace.
 * Reasonable Authority Figure: Commander Connor
 * Second Person Narration
 * Subspace Ansible
 * Subspace or Hyperspace
 * Take Your Time: Whatever, it's just a heart attack.
 * Talk to Everyone: Rarely essential, but often helpful.
 * Teen Genius: Aleksey was one (he's now 21).
 * This Ain't Rocket Surgery: It is, actually.
 * Welcome to Corneria: There's only so many "Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about" stock phrases one character can have.
 * This Ain't Rocket Surgery: It is, actually.
 * Welcome to Corneria: There's only so many "Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about" stock phrases one character can have.