Ratings and Reviews by The Year Is Yesterday

Go Forth, November 27, 2010

This is but one of the plethora of non-standard commands the game recognizes, and it is this expansive vocabulary that serves as its greatest strength.

When play begins, you set off in an interstellar sailing vessel, bound for mystery and intrigue and unmapped, boundless space. From the get-go, the parser gently encourages you to utilize nautical phrases from "weigh anchor" or "drop anchor" to "unfurl sails." This subtly but effectively enhances immersion: it encourages you to think like the PC, turning this fantastical vessel into something you comfortably command rather than another strange machine. It also allows for some interesting navigation: you are at the mercy of the solar winds, turning movement itself into a constantly-shifting puzzle. Often, your only option will be to adjust the rigging and hope for the best.

The writing, as usual for Plotkin, is superb, and the cosmic landscape is full of mystery and alien beauty. Without spoiling too much, the end-game sequence (Spoiler - click to show)reminded me a bit of Old Man and the Sea, but it feels appropriate and melancholic. Since you are constantly moving forward, descriptions will change with every turn, while remaining similar enough to let you know you haven't left the "room." Puzzles are few and mostly simple, navigation is overwhelmingly linear, and the story is brief, but what's here blazes with the same sense of adventure and discovery that we felt playing pirates as kids.

A hasty IF saved by some clever humor, November 27, 2010

Although this is apparently the third game in a series, it's my introduction to the saga of Alex and Paul, and to the author's work as a whole. Based on what I've seen here, I'll probably be checking out more at some point in the future.

This was written for a Speed IF comp, so room descriptions and implementation tend toward the simplistic. To save time, everything seems to have been nailed down, so you'll be seeing a lot of odd messages like this one:

>take purses
That's fixed in place.

There are also some spelling and punctuation issues, including one in the intro paragraph. The most notable is the dropped apostrophe for things belonging to Paul: "Pauls garden," "Pauls pool," etc. Thankfully, these are not egregious enough to distract from either gameplay or story.

Speaking of story, this title relies heavily on humor. Luckily for us, most of it is genuinely funny. Some of it is meta-humor: for instance, the speakers in the kitchen were playing "Custom Library Messages" by David Fisher when I first entered. There's an object in the same room described as "(unimplemented) cheese," the description of which is "You can't see any such thing. (See? I told you so.)" Unfortunately, other actions result in that ubiquitous fixed-in-place message, spoiling the humor somewhat. There's also plenty of humor related to the world these characters inhabit: aliens have invaded, apparently recently, so everything has been replaced by AlienTech (tm) technology. There are also a group of Dagon cultists who live next door, and a sleeping pirate.

The story does deal with same-sex relationships, which runs the risk of offending people who might be offended by that sort of thing. I was nervous, when I first started, that I was going to be treated to a bunch of jokes along the lines of "gay people are funny lol." Thankfully, Alex and Paul are charming as a couple, if a little sketched out, and Paul's uncle, who follows the PC around making homophobic remarks, is hilariously unlikeable. A few examples of his dialogue (the second shows some of the sloppy writing, but this is about as bad as that gets):

"Alex, me boy! Didn't know I had to keep my back to the wall at this party! Haw! Haw!" He slaps you on the shoulder. "Ha ha, just kidding! I have nothing against queers personally!"

"You know how we could solve this finanical crisis? Just disallow women to work! They're stealing hard working men's job worse then foreigners."

In all, the humor is enough to carry this title as a whole, and gameplay is surprisingly robust for a Speed IF. I did run into a brick wall, literally, when I found that certain items it seemed that I needed for a puzzle couldn't be transported over the wall to Paul's garden or into his swimming pool (I needed two hands to climb or swim). Hopefully a walkthrough or hint system will be implemented later on, because I'm looking forward to seeing how this clever tale concludes.

Neither dark nor humorous, November 26, 2010

First off, I should note that it's clear that, implementation-wise, the author knows his stuff. The help file is extensive, the endings are profuse and various, and he's clearly taken time to allow for multiple ways of achieving - or avoiding - the goal. The quality of the writing is also, from a technical perspective, high: descriptions are concise and occasionally colorful, and there are few if any errors or typos, showing that a high level of care and polish went into this title.

Unfortunately, the issue that I (and many others, judging from the mixed reviews) encountered concerns the premise itself, or rather, the tone the work adopts toward its subject matter. "About the story" promises "elements of dark humor," but I found nothing in my various interactions particularly dark or humorous. This may just be a matter of taste, but let it be said that, although I have some personal experience with the subject matter, I'm no prude. I wouldn't have minded some hilarity, even if it were in ill taste. What I got, instead, was after-school-special material, shallow melodrama.

The author's notes in the help menu may shed some light on this. He says that it originally started as a joke, replacing "You have died" with "You have survived." But somewhere along the way, whether at the coaxing of testers who couldn't stomach the subject matter or of his own volition, he decided that "it wasn't a joking matter." So we've essentially got the setup for a joke, but halfway through it becomes a moralizing tale, and it fails to leave an impression on either count. The PC's motivations for committing suicide are so banal it's almost painful, and the writing encapsulates none of the real angst of depression.

I'll conclude by reiterating what I said at the beginning: as a game, this is nicely polished and shows great care. It's entirely possible to appreciate on those merits alone; it's also possible the ambivalent tone will strike a chord with you that it failed to with me. However, I can't help feeling that the author, for fear of offending people or trivializing a serious issue, held back at crucial moments, resulting in a story that doesn't live up to its implementation.

The Year Is Yesterday's Rating:

We'll always have Rome..., November 10, 2010

Gnocchi. A brunette (Clare?). Violence, remorse, longing. Or maybe plain old penne. The beauty of this game isn't in the story it tells. The beauty is in the story that exists between the lines. What happened in Rome, and why does it stir up such emotions? You have only an aisle, some pasta, a woman and a trolley, and one turn in which to do something. But, as the impressive breadth of unique responses indicates, there's an awful lot you can do in a single moment. Play with it for at least ten minutes before writing it off as a novelty.

a truly accessible "interactive novel", November 9, 2010

We've all heard the (occasionally justified) complaints about interactive fiction: the controls are impenetrable, the puzzles rely more on figuring out how to make the machine do what you want than actually figuring out what to do, etc. After Blue Lacuna, nobody should have an excuse not to try IF. The keyword system and extensively integrated in-game tutorial, as well as adaptive hints that never take you out of the story and two difficulty modes, make this a must-play for newcomers. Of course, the intriguing story, the living, dynamic environment, and the amazingly detailed conversations don't hurt matters. Even if you don't think you have time to devote to a novel-length IF, you should take the opportunity to explore this lush, animate environment.

a defining title in the genre, November 6, 2010

The "first" IF I played, aside from some Zork as a child, and therefore my first experience of interactive fiction that went beyond mere "text adventure," blurring the lines between literature and game. To this day, the experience hasn't been surpassed. There isn't much challenge here: let the story unfold, and just try not to get drawn in by the bleak, arid atmosphere.