How to play Silicon Dreams on Mac

Game summary

Silicon Dreams is a trilogy of interactive fiction games developed by Level 9 Computing during the 1980s. The first game was Snowball, released during 1983, followed a year later by Return to Eden, and then by The Worm in Paradise during 1985. The next year they were vended together as the first, second and last of the Silicon Dreams. Early advertisements gave it the title of Silicon Dream, but it was pluralised later. As most Level 9 games, the trilogy used an interpreted language termed A-code and was usable in all major types of home computer of the time, on either diskette or cassette. Level 9 self-published each game separately, but the combination was published by Telecomsoft, which sold it in the United States with the tradename Firebird and in Europe with the tradename Rainbird. The trilogy is set in a not too-distant future when humans have started colonising space. For the first two instalments the player has the role of Kim Kimberly, an undercover agent, whose goal in Snowball is to save the colonist's spacecraft from crashing into a star, and in Return to Eden to stop the defence system at the destination planet of Eden from destroying the craft. In The Worm in Paradise, the player, with the role of an unnamed citizen of Eden, must travel around the city of Enoch, learn its secrets, earn money and save the planet.
First released: Dec 1986

Play Silicon Dreams on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Silicon Dreams on a Mac is through Parallels, which allows you to virtualize a Windows machine on Macs. The setup is very easy and it works for Apple Silicon Macs as well as for older Intel-based Macs.

Parallels supports the latest version of DirectX and OpenGL, allowing you to play the latest PC games on any Mac. The latest version of DirectX is up to 20% faster.

Our favorite feature of Parallels Desktop is that when you turn off your virtual machine, all the unused disk space gets returned to your main OS, thus minimizing resource waste (which used to be a problem with virtualization).

Silicon Dreams installation steps for Mac

Step 1
Go to Parallels.com and download the latest version of the software.
Step 2
Follow the installation process and make sure you allow Parallels in your Mac’s security preferences (it will prompt you to do so).
Step 3
When prompted, download and install Windows 10. The download is around 5.7GB. Make sure you give it all the permissions that it asks for.
Step 4
Once Windows is done installing, you are ready to go. All that’s left to do is install Silicon Dreams like you would on any PC.
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