Slouching Towards Bedlam

by Star Foster and Daniel Ravipinto

Steampunk
2003

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- Sly Curado, June 8, 2009

- Mark V. (Madrid, Spain), June 2, 2009

- ReasonAnce (Poland), May 18, 2009

- Hipster Scumbag, May 11, 2009

- PoliteNate (Ottawa, ON), April 3, 2009

- Mark Jones (Los Angeles, California), March 31, 2009

- Jerome C West (United Kingdom), March 18, 2009

- winky, February 24, 2009

- Ben, February 10, 2009

- Lenya, January 14, 2009

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
Forgotten masterpiece, January 10, 2009

Slouching Towards Bedlam was the game that introduced me to modern IF so I might not be the most objective person to review the game. Still I am probably not far off saying that the game is too often forgotten when we are talking about the modern classics.

The game is about exploration and finding out what has happened in the asylum where the protagonist works. Assisting him is Triage, a hearwarmingly steampunky computer/dictation machine, that can give details and information of the surroundings. While it doesn't actually do anything other than follow the protagonist around and show information on request it is an important part of the whole and the game would be seriously lacking without it.

What brings Slouching Towards Bedlam above others is the way it builds and sustains the atmosphere and mood. The only other game that accomplishes the same is Anchorhead and I would be hardpressed to choose which one does a better job. Another nice touch is how meta-game commands (UNDO, SAVE, RESTORE etc) have been given an in-game explanation. They fit seamlessly into the story, not feeling like artificial additions.

The game is not entirely without flaws, of course. Some gameplay mechanics are unnecessarily awkward (for example making the player type long strings of numbers to a machine one at a time) but my main quibble is that some puzzles feel like they are there only because "IF must have puzzles". They break the mood and yank the player out of the game's world. The authors could have trusted their creation to work as a game without locked doors and hidden items.

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- Adam Biltcliffe (Cambridge, UK), December 28, 2008

- Paul Vick (Seattle, Washington), December 2, 2008

- ensoul, November 15, 2008

- Linnau (Tel-Aviv, Israel), October 31, 2008

- wlerin (Orichalcum Citadel, California), October 8, 2008

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
Interactive Metafiction, at last!, October 1, 2008
by Fra Enrico (Torino, Italy)

When 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.

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- hywelhuws (Clynnog Fawr, Wales, UK), September 21, 2008

- madducks (Indianapolis, Indiana), September 5, 2008

- Genjar (Finland), August 31, 2008

- Maze (Rome, Italy), August 6, 2008

- jwbjerk (Mid-West USA), July 22, 2008

- alice-meynell, July 20, 2008

- Ben Treat (Maine, USA), July 11, 2008

- Nathaniel Kirby (Pennsylvania), June 30, 2008


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