Shade is gripping, creepy, and creative.
However, it gets repetitive after a while. To an extent, this helps build up the suspenseful environment because the actions that you performed a few turns ago don't work anymore. Everything goes more and more wrong... but I feel like the game could have been trimmed down a little in this respect.
I also found that the ending was a little bit anti-climatic. It was almost like the author was trying too hard to be profound and it ultimately became meaningless.
Pacman is a junkie.
Very, very short; no puzzles.
But the fact that Pacman is portrayed as a junkie makes it worth playing the game through once. The writing is really fresh, and the game is funny in a darkly comedic way.
Zero replay value, however.
Quite simply: hilarious.
The humor comes not only from the 300+ word descriptions that occur during two actions, but from the prose and backstory. If you're the type of person who reads romance novels because the prose is hilariously purple, you should play this game.
There is actually some plot in this game. It's simple, but it exists, unlike one-turn joke games like "pick up the phone booth and aisle".
The one quibble I have with it is that the command "look around" doesn't work, so sometimes it's hard to know what direction to go in.
Likewise, if you type "N" and get lost in the forest, typing "S" does not get you back to your original location.
These two errors made me take off one star, but it's still damn funny.