Reviews by Tristano
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Short and Buggy, February 27, 2019The game is fairly short and there aren't many locations in it, so it's bugs and poor implmentation errors tend to stick out a lot (a room with an exit leading to itself, a supporter that is describred as still holding object even after taking them, and a faulty score system at the end).
I've found the playing experience a bit "passive" for my onw taste — you get to win the game by merely wondering around the adventure world and carrying out the most obvious actions that come to mind, some of them seemingly unsignificant toward the adventure goal. Maybe this was the greatest dissapointment, i.e. that you can "win" by apparently just wondering around, for I later discovered on a second play attempt that the game offers dialog commands too (something you'd not guess from the way the game is presented).
Ultimately, it's a puzzless scene presenting a small (but rich and rather fantastic) fictional situation. The descriptions are good and manage to quickly draw the player into the narrative world, and there's a pace to this small IF story. Petty for the poor implementation.
Short, Enjoyable, Re-Playable!, June 28, 2018You can finish this game in about 15-20 minutes ... but almost certainly you'll want to replay it at least once. Can't really say much about the story without spoiling it, except that I recommend it. Well written, simple and fast paced, but there are some twists to the plot that might not be obvious until replay.
After ending the game for the first time you'll realize how clever the author has been on delivering that sense of urgency that will trick you into overlooking those details which are important to grasp what's going on — but being tricked in this game is part of the fun of playing it.
Nice.
Dedicata agli amanti delle magia e del mistero, April 5, 2018Quando mi accingo a giocare una AT di Paolo Lucchesi le aspettative sono sempre alte, e Dietro l'Angolo ha decisamente ripagato tali aspettative. Si tratta di una AT che implementa un sistema di gioco tramite collegamenti ipertestuali, anziché parser dei comandi. Inizialmente, questo mi aveva un po' scoraggiato e deluso — non sono un amante del gioco a link perché trovo sottragga all'esperienza di gioco il piacere di esplorarne i comandi, e ha il difetto di esplicitare tutte le opzioni di gioco disponibili in ciascun turno — ma in seguito mi sono dovuto ricredere: il sistema a link è stato ben implementato, ed ha reso l'esperienza di gioco più veloce, a beneficio di una trama più fluida.
Ancora una volta, Lucchesi è riuscito a catturarmi nel vortice di intrighi e misteri di cui sono intessute le sue avventure. Se (come me) avete già avuto modo di apprezzare La Pietra della Luna, del medesimo autore, allora sicuramente vorrete giocare anche Dietro l'Angolo.
Quel che più mi ha colpito di quest'opera è la maestria con cui l'autore ha saputo dosare gli aspetti narrativi e quelli interattivi lungo il corso della storia, conferendo un ritmo proprio all'avventura in cui si alternano fasi in cui predomina l'aspetto letterario e fasi in cui prevale invece il gioco interattivo, rendendo l'esperienza fluida e non faticosa.
Per completare l'avventura mi ci sono volute tre ore e mezza circa. È stata un'esperienza di gioco molto piacevole, in cui l'interesse è mantenuto vivo dall'intreccio tra magia, eventi misteriosi e le occulte trame di potere che stravolgono la vita del protagonista, mettendo il giocatore costantemente di fronte a scelte difficili. Il finale ti viene incontro come una rivelazione nel momento inaspettato in cui comprendi di trovarti di fronte ad un'inesorabile scelta che, dissipando ogni dubbio residuo, scioglierà tutti i fili irrisolti della trama. Tanto di cappello per il finale ben riuscito.
Dulcis in fundo, al completamento del gioco verranno rivelati dei contenuti extra decisamente appetitosi (tra essi, anche delle vere e proprie scene extra, giocabili).
L'unico motivo per cui non ho conferito cinque stelle a questa AT è per la mancanza dell'interprete di comandi a parser — cosa che, lungi dall'essere un demerito, mi impedisce comunque di assegnarle un giudizio in merito all'implementazione del parser, come regolarmente faccio su IFDB — e, in parte, per il fatto che il sistema a link impedisce l'interazione diretta con certi oggetti, costringendoti ad esaminare il contenitore per accedere all'opzioni dell'oggetto o, nel caso di personaggi, ad esaminarli prima di poter interagire con essi (seppur cosa di poco conto, in diversi momenti del gioco si è rivelato un meccanismo la cui invadenza incrinava il regolare flusso narrativo).
The Perfect Marriage Between «Interaction» And «Fiction», April 2, 2018Gameplay lasted about an hour, and I'v enjoyed every minute of it. I had already played Everybody Dies when it first came out, around 10 years ago, and for all these years it has haunted me as one of those memorable works of IF which I regreted myself for not having reviewed it.
I consider this game a masterpiece — I though it was one when I first played it, and I confirm it today. It's hard to review it without giving away anything that would spoil the pleasure of discovering by yourself what makes Everybody Dies stand out in respect to many other works of IF; but I'll try nonetheless.
First of all, it's very well written. The author manages to sketch a slice of life in a very vivid manner, bringing quickly to life characters and their surroundings, and he does so without excessive verbosity — dialogues and details are so skilfully brushed on the story canvas that the player has no choice but to sink into the narration with pleauserful abbandonment.
In this work, both the interactive and the fiction aspects of IF are highly honoured. Puzzles, characters and plot are so tightly knit together that in no single moment you're going to loose sight of the overall story. The story pace is amazing, and there are plenty of twists and turns that keep it relentlessly alive, till the very end.
As a bonus, add to that the pleasant illustrations which mark the various milestones of the adventure, adding atmosphere to an already rich environment.
The story also brushes with some contemporary social issues, leveraging the medium to subtly reflect them upon the player and the story from different angles. After completing the game, I couldn't escape a feeling that there was a wholistic flavour to the experience, where everything was connected to everything else in multiple ways ...
Can't say more without spoiling the story! Just dive into it.
Early Games That Left Lasting Impressions, March 30, 2018I've played "The Dallas Quest" about 34 years ago, on my C64. I must have been around 13, yet it's one of the early IF games I remember more vividly — well, at least there a particular scene toward the end of the game that stuck with me, most of the plot has faded away in my memory now.
We all have seen thousands of ads, played hundreds of games, yet there is always some ad that keeps popping up in our minds from the distant past, and some games that we remember most, despite the hundred of better games we've played after it. Why? Who knows...
I wasn't a fan of the Dallas show at all, but I remember enjoying this game a lot. I can't really say why this, of all games, survived stronger in my memory than others — and I had played a lot of IF games even back then. If it's true that "time will tell" and that in all things the test of time is a proof by itself, then there must have been something special about this game that made it memorable to me.
A Well-Balanced SciFi Tale, March 30, 2018You can expect a gameplay of about three to four hours to complete the whole story.
The adventure setting is remarkable and it's clear that the author has put great efforts into worldbuilding details. Without giving away too much about the game, you can guess from its title and cover that the protagonist is a teenager plant-creature; so you'll be both experiencing the story with the eyes of a young NPC as well as another species. This adds depth to the game because just about everything you'll come across is seen from the odd perspective of a universe where the main life forms are plant-like versions of our race.
I've felt like I was living through a fairy tale, but more on the SciFi end of narrative. Right from the onset you become aware of your main goal, the rest of the game is about working out how to accomplish it. You'll be facing a middle sized (and symmetrical) map, with new locations becoming accessible as you accomplish tasks. Puzzles are meaningfully tied to the plot (not the usual out of context puzzle, stuffed in the game just for the sake of making it "IF-likish"), so there is a balance between things you know you have to do, but lack the know-how or resources to, and tasks that when solved reveal more about the steps ahead of you toward the goal.
Having said that, the plot is a bit stale as puzzles solutions don't really drive the story forward, they just bring the end closer. The author could have enriched the plot a bit more, providing a few story twists here and there. There are some hints along the path as to unexpected dangers that might lay ahead, but these scarcely bring a true plot twist when you finally encounter them, and they have a weak impact on the overall plot.
Nevertheless, it was a delightful adventure to play. Exploration was gratifying because every interaction revealed a little bit more about the unusual world of the game. The puzzles are not too difficult, but you need to study carefully the environment to work out a plan of action. There aren't many useluss distractions in the game, and overall if you can interact with something it's because it's meaningful to the story (there are a few expections). The game is well written and polished, but it could have done with a few synonims implemented here and there, and better disambiguation rules.
The overall pace is peacefully slow, and there is a sense of timelesness to the atmosphere. Toward the very end, the story suddenly accelerates, and the ending seemed a bit out of tune with the previous part, a bit too fast and abrupt.
This is one of those games that will leave a strong and lasting impression in me, and it's strong and cute imagery is not going to fade away easily from memory. Yes, it's a memorable game.
Una AT «Spuntino», March 29, 2018Come da descrizione, questa AT è intesa come "un esercizio in Inform" dal suo autore, si tratta quindi di un'avventura molto breve, giocabile come «spuntino» in una decina di minuti. Singola stanza, pochissimi oggetti ... ma non per questo meno piacevole da giocare.
Roberto Grassi è riuscito a condensare in un'avventura brevissima una storia che (nel suo piccolo e nella sua brevità) è compiuta. Il tuo personaggio ha una chiara missione di fronte a sé, e tutti gli attributi per completarla — e, detto per inciso, se non fosse per un incidente di percorso, il personaggio non avrebbe bisogno del tuo aiuto.
La vera domanda è se tu, in veste di giocatore, sarai all'altezza di metterti nei panni del maestro dei ladri di diamanti, e rubare dai gioelli della corona nientemeno che il Koh-i-Noor, il più grande diamante bianco al mondo!
The Dark Side of Kabbalah, March 26, 2018I truely enjoyed this game (about three hours play, using hints now and then).
Denfinitely, an unsual work of IF. The atmosphere is dark and feverish, the plot explores the dark side of Kabbalah. Thrown into the main character's shoes, you'll be playing this adventure through the eyes of Jack Pudlo, a young jewish boy whose precarious health turned him into a cynical misanthrope. It's very well written, every part of the text reinforces the main character's mental state and his (sick) relation to the surrounding world.
The map is not huge, but in order to explore it in full you'll need to unravel many puzzles. The game is claustrophobic, crude and profane; reality is constantly blurred by a mixture of Jack's paranoia and hallucinations, on the one hand, and occult manifestations and magic, on the other. This is as much as I can say without spoiling gameplay.
The implementation is smooth, and I've only stumbled in a single disambiguation problem during the whole game. There are no "guess the verb" situations and commands parsing is implemented rather mercifully; smart implicit actions replace tedious commands sequences, sparing the player endless typing when it's obvious what he has in mind. The commands set in not huge, and non standard commands are either obvious or hinted at in the text. I advise you try out any action that comes to your mind, for the atmosphere of the game will push you in directions that are worthy to explore (especially the dark side of Jack), even when these actions might not have a direct impact on the story course.
Jack Pudlo reminded me of Francis Orme, the main character of Edward Carey's Observatory Mansions, who's own narrative (like Jack's) is distorted by his own personality and selfishness, and chronic disease becomes an excuse to moral superiority and misanthropy.
The story ending is quite unexpected, and I still can't decide what to make of it. The ABOUT text is very strange indeed, and I'm left with the impression that it contains clues to decode further layers of narrative meanings — for example, the theme of "war" is mentioned in the ABOUT, and constantly leaks into the story background, from the distant sounds of the outside world, growing in intensity as the story approaches its end, but it's never explored or directly connected to the plot. Kabbalah being a central theme (and device) to the story, I suspect that there is more to the plot than meets the eye at first sight.
Great Fun, Nice Story, May 18, 2015PataNoir is an unusual type of IF game. I can't really say more without spoiling the game experience. So ... just open it's story file, turn off the tutorial mode and enjoy it as it comes. Within a short time you'll realize what makes it different from other works of IF.
It can be solved in a couple of hours, and there is a good (and cleverly devised) hint system if you run out of ideas.
I've found the story dull enough to give up on the game, May 9, 2015I've given up on this game before completing it, so my review might be impartial. What prevented me from finishing it was the general sensation of fragmentation I got from playing it so far: switching from one point of view to another didn't really provide an enhanced view of the story, as some other multiple-viewpoint IF works did.
Interactivity is rather limited in this game, it's more on the story side of IF than the traditional game-puzzle sort. Therefore, all expectations shift from mechanics to storytelling.
Somehow the story didn't hook me in enough to stay in the game and play along with the author. I think there is a lack of background story, the player is just thrown into stage without much to work on, which gave me a sense of disorientation. Changes in viewpoint occur too often, without much really happening between each switch. Also, I would have expected POV changes to bring about some good cliff-hanging, leaving you wondering about the fate of the character you just jumped out of his shoes; but this doesn't happen simply because there isn't enough at stake in the story to care about any of the characters your playing in turn --nothing to make you either like them or hate them, they are just so flat and unfleshed that the only thing differentiating them is their names.
Maybe it's me who missed out some of the core points, but so far the overall sensation was that the most (and best) I could do was just playing along with the story plot as it comes. I didn't feel much choices and freedom of exploration, the world geography is rather claustrophobic and interaction with the environment very limited--and, surely, not encouraged by descriptions.
Maybe if I bore patient I might have discovered that the story changes and opens up later on, but so far I got bored and with all my effort I just couldn't feel a solid narrative grip that could keep me going along with the plot — even though the theme is of my liking and I had good expectations.
Possibly, the failure I experienced could be attributed to the attempt of conveying suspence through mystery: but where the plot should "thicken" it actually slims down, leaving an already rather clueless player even more clueless about the true motives that keep him going wherever he's meant to be going.
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