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About the StoryOn the old pilot station island, where you live with your parents, the war fought with Earth and Martian rocket-ships and Atomic Heat Rays exist only in the sonorous voice of the newscaster on the radio, and as food for your imagination. Today your parents have left you alone to mind the station while they head for the mainland for some supplies. A big job for a six year old, who is about to have an encounter that changes his life forever.Game Details
Language: English (en)
First Publication Date: April 6, 2012 Current Version: 2 License: Creative Commons Development System: Inform 7 Forgiveness Rating: Tough IFID: //1495D658-8F3E-4D60-A1E0-3EB0274657CD// TUID: 6lkbwncfsvp77c8y |
Awards
1st Place - Spring Thing 2012
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5 people found the following review helpful:
Bees, roses and a dark sea, June 28, 2012by Sam Kabo Ashwell (Seattle)
Related reviews: childhood, setting, spring thing, science fiction, SF, fantasy, make-believe
Citing Ray Bradbury as a primary influence, this feels very much like a SF short story from the 50s or 60s, the sort of SF you could make a movie about without any need for a special effects budget. The protagonist, a child, lives with his parents on an island across the bay from Astro City. Earth is at war with Mars, and the protagonist plays make-believe games based on this distant conflict. But then a rocket-man washes up on the shore, and reality and fantasy intermingle. (There is a general feeling of WW2 fiction here.) Related reviews: childhood, setting, spring thing, science fiction, SF, fantasy, make-believe
Though capable overall, both the writing and the overall design have some rough patches. The prose feels a little first-draftish in places. Most of the gameplay is quite narrowly focused -- probably too much so, in the make-believe sequence -- but there are a couple of points where the solution is a little counterintuitive. The denouement is rather heavily foreshadowed, the protagonist is perhaps a little bit too much of a Disney innocent. But there are many gleaming moments here, little bursts of rich, world-grounded imagery that make this feel less like a fantastic piece and more like a childhood memoir.
As science fiction IF goes, it's uncommonly good in that it has its feet planted on the ground, it grasps and is concerned about the flight-of-fancy aspect of the genre.
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This is version 7 of this page, edited by Janos Honkonen on 9 May 2012 at 7:29am. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item