Ratings and Reviews by Fra Enrico
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5 wasted minutes, October 12, 2008What is this? A short exercise by people who are learning the inform language? If not, this is a hoax. A short, empty, hollow, meaningless adventure lasting no more than 20 actions, which steals away 5 minutes of your time in front of very brief descriptions and very few choices.
The setting? A two-rooms ligthouse. The goal? Turning on a lamp. The way to achieve it? (Spoiler - click to show)Open two doors, and push a button. How exciting.
Nothing more.
I couldn't imagine something less interesting. I don't know the score this game will get in IfComp08, but it doesn't matter. There is nothing here worth the worries. I don't dislike short and simple games, but this one doesn't even deserve the name of it.
Interactive Metafiction, at last!, October 1, 2008When I first began this game I was struck by the first paragraphs. A setting in a psychiatric hospital, a doctor consulting files on magnetic-recordings, something weird had happened: I thought: great, a steampunk setting so well written, with the perfect prose style, with beautiful details. Keeping on reading, I found more great fictional and setting elements: strange technologies beautifully depicted, originally conceived, perfectly fitting to the setting and to the plot.
I understood I was reading a beautiful game. My breath was shortening.
But I understood what the game really was when I fell into strange, unusual, incomprehensible messages from the system. I spent hours of wondering what was going on, and when I finally got it, I was kind of illuminated. My mind was cleansed. I found a great piece of Metafiction: the language was part of the world, and I, as Bastian in the Neverending Story, was part of it.
This is a rare game, where the language (both in the prose than in the system language) is part of the story, and one can't go without the other.
The story itself is quite odd, a science fiction settled in a steam-punk 19th century world. Strange machines require the most effort from the player to be understood, but they are great part of the game, and provide the most challenging puzzles. It's a pity that the city, the people, the historical features are not deeply detailed as the devices, but it's
nothing more than a small blot.
This game is thrilling and deeply exciting. Maybe it's too short. Once you get the mechanism, it's over. But it's worth re-playing it: there are different possible endings (Spoiler - click to show)(solutions say there are 5).
Slouching Towards Bedlam is one of the greatest games because of its original work on the writing and language aspects, never so deeply integrated with the meaning of the whole background. And thinking about a medium based on language, I said to myself: at last, what a great deed of creativity. Bow to Bedlam.
The fiction part of Interactive Fiction, October 1, 2008This is a short story more than a game: Thorn was originally a short tale by the writer Eric Mayer, who adapted it himself in interactive form. This is the main reason for which I like this game. I love when Interactive Fiction is, most of all, Fiction: good tale with good prose, and an interesting plot. I'm not into puzzle-fest games: if a thing I have to read has not a good writing, I don't read it. Thorn is a good thing to read.
This particular story is one which needs the reader to push things onward every once in a while - like a rethorical isntrument: imagine a teacher reading a tale to his children, stopping sometimes asking "Are you kids with me? What would you do next? Let's see what the hero does" and so on. The multiple-choice ending completes the whole thing.
The story itself may not be very original, but it has a full sense of mistery and suspension: the character of professor Wilkens is melancholy yet simple, the setting in its whole is very good - a classic of mistery stories (the tale is inspired by M.R. James, and you can clearly see it).
The interactive part is very small: few actions to do, and the NPCs are very simple. The few puzzles are very easy. Reading is more needed than thinking in this game. This can be seen as its weak point, and it surely is. The game doesn't need much effort to be solved, and ends soon. But what it leaves behind is a good ghost-story, and that's enough for me.
Note: I am the author of the italian translation of this game.
One of the few games to deserve the "horror" tag, September 29, 2008Short? Indeed, but creepy, gloomy, scaring enough, with the perfect dose of horror elements: an old church, a graveyard, rain pouring all over you, dead trees, ancient rites, an old and maligne villain.
The game is quite short, but satisfying: the challenges are not too hard, but neither too predictable.
The Lovecraftian background is not so big: of course you can find there a lot of lovecraftian themes, and if you know Lovecraft enough you can easily guess what's happening; but this doesn't spoil the story, since Lovecraft is nothing more than a faint inspiration here.
Most of all, I'd rather put the attention on the horror-style of writing: as a short creepy tale, this game is well written and is one of the few games which can deserve the "horror" tag on them.
A good game, short and to the point, with just few imperfections and a short longevity which make it lesser than it could have been.
Suggested to the beginners of IF - both in writing as in playing!
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