Only A Game

Cold Blood

Seven crew. One Antarctic night. One of them is not human.

Play in your browser Download for the C64
Platforms
Commodore 64 disk and web browser
Players
One
Controls
Joystick in port 2, or keyboard, gamepad and touch in the browser
Price
Free

Find it before it becomes all of them.

The night

Kestrel Station, Antarctica, 1983. Week thirty-one. A dog was found wandering on the ice, and that night the storm cut the radio.

Something came in with the ice. It can become anyone it gets alone, and it looks, talks and works just like them until it is ready to take the next one. Two of the crew already carry it.

You have from 18:00 until the relief plane lands at dawn. Ask who was alone with whom. Read the door sensor log before something smashes it. Test their blood while the kits last. Bolt a suspect in the shed and see who freezes. Then burn what needs burning, and hope you burned the right people.

On a real Commodore 64

Captured in VICE with true drive emulation. The disk uses its own fast loader, so the game is in about 28 seconds.

  • The C64 loading screen: the COLD BLOOD logo over the station at night, with 1:INTRO 2:START GAME underneath.
    The loading picture. Press 1 for the intro or 2 to play.
  • An intro scene: three crew eating at the galley table, captioned DINNER. DUBOIS COOKED. AGAIN.
    The intro: nine scenes from the last ordinary evening.
  • An intro scene: two crew playing cards, captioned BRANDT NEVER LOSES AT CARDS.
    Each scene streams from disk while you watch the last.
  • The title screen: COLD BLOOD, the brief and PRESS FIRE above a row of huts on the ice.
    The title screen, with its own SID tune.
  • In the game: the Rec Room at 18:02, with a pool table, sofa and card table, and crew members around you.
    Eleven rooms, seven crew, and a clock running to dawn.
  • An ending: the relief plane on the ice at dawn, with THE STATION IS CLEAN underneath.
    Every night ends with one of several pictures. This is the good one.

The paintings

The intro scenes began as full paintings. The browser version shows them as painted; the C64 redraws each one in 160 by 128 pixels and four colours to a cell.

Kestrel Station under the aurora.
Kestrel Station. Week thirty-one.
Three crew at dinner in the galley.
Dinner. Dubois cooked. Again.
Brandt playing cards.
Brandt never loses at cards.
Okafor bent over the ice core samples in the lab.
Okafor and the core samples.
Kowalski at the radio set, headphones on.
Kowalski. Still no signal.
Halversen holding up a flare by the fuel drums in a storm.
Halversen, out at the fuel drums.
Reyes in the infirmary.
Reyes. A doctor, more or less.
Sato asleep in a bunk.
Sato sleeps. The dogs don't.
A husky staring out of the dark, the station behind it.
And the dog. Found on the ice.

Play it on a C64

  1. Download the disk image below.
  2. Attach it to drive 8 in your emulator, or mount it on your Ultimate 64, 1541 Ultimate or Pi1541.
  3. Type the classic: 
    LOAD"*",8,1
RUN
  4. When the game is in, press 1 for the intro or 2 to start. Joystick in port 2.

On an SD2IEC drive that can't run the fast loader, use LOAD"CB",8 and RUN instead. Leave the disk in the drive: it loads the ending pictures at the end of each night.

Downloads

Prefer not to load anything? Play it in your browser instead.