A Change in the Weather

Baf's Guide

A deceptively simple premise: You get stuck out in the rain. This is one difficult little game, made of interlocking time-sensitive parts with ample opportunity to get things irrevocably wrong. Consists of two acts, one before and one during the all-important and landscape-transforming downpour. Well-polished prose. Excellent building of tension. Odd and twisty map. Very satisfying.

-- Carl Muckenhoupt

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5 star: (2) 4 star: (14) 3 star: (6) 2 star: (2) 1 star: (2)

Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 2 Write a review

Frustrating, well worth playing anyway, June 17, 2009
For me the main obstacle was that certain puzzles require you to have a good idea of the 3-D topography of the game world. I'm not very good at constructing that kind of thing in my head, and the game, although decently clear, was not very good at helping me, and so there were several key actions that I never would have guessed without a walkthrough.

The parser is also limited, but that didn't really give me trouble.

What the game does do exceptionally well is build a sense of isolation and real dread out of what would seem to be an innocent scenario. The writing is excellent, not just in the sense of describing sunsets (though it does that too), but in that it maintains a subtle and seamless emotional tone throughout. Your friends are just across the river, but you nevertheless get the feeling that there is something serious at stake -- much more so than in most games where you are jumping off buildings and saving the world and so on.

My advice is to go in committed, spend some time, and try your best, but look at a walkthrough before you start to hate the thing. The solutions to the puzzles are satisfying but not worth banging your head against the wall for.

Puzzle-fiends Only Need Apply, October 20, 2007
Honestly, that's the only way to sum up this game. While it features well-written prose and probably the best use of weather in IF, the puzzles utterly destroy any enjoyment you can wrench from the game. Not only are they timed puzzles, but feedback is wholly missing. Result: you die over and over again until you finally throw your hands up and find something more humane. It's a shame that the prose is wedded to such monstrously unfair puzzles.

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