Augmented Fourth

Baf's Guide

A light fantasy romp about a luckless (and talentless) musician who ends up chucked in an oubliette after offending the King. The result is a puzzle-solving exercise with a humorous touch in the mold of Sorcerer or Frobozz Magic Support. Mild hints are provided by Hitchhiker's Guide-type reference books. The puzzles are creative, but for the most part not too difficult; it's possible to get trapped in one area, but you are warned about this. Surprisingly solid for a first release.

-- R. Serena Wakefield

IF-Review
Augmented Fourth is a fairly easy puzzle romp whose appeal lies in wackily charming worldbuilding and sly jokes/reworkings of classic IF and fantasy tropes. It's well-crafted and polished (going to show, perhaps, that there's no reason an author's first-ever release can't be competently assembled) and I encountered no bugs. It did, however, have some irritating patches, mostly related to the design of the puzzles.
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Classical, October 13, 2008
"Classical?", I hear you ask. "What on earth do you mean? Do you mean it has class?" Well, yes, it does, but that's way beside the point. "Do you mean it features greek mythology?" Not at all. "Then you mean it's an old, ancient game?" Ancient? 8 years old at the time of this review? Even Zork isn't exactly ancient, just... very wise and very sage by now.

No, I mean classical in the textbook sense - in that this is a, er, textbook example of a good game. I mean that this game could, and should, be used to teach basics of IF. Classical.

The whole background story of "Augmented Fourth" is worthy of Terry Pratchett, in that it's silly, funny, and never quite ridiculous enough to put us off. Of course, Pratchett relies on his characters and makes the humour derive from them, whereas Mr. Uri just has his characters behave on a rather skewed reality... still, within that reality, their behaviour is cohesive, coherent, and laugh-out-loud funny.

"Augmented Fourth" isn't a new-style story-heavy game, though. It's not exactly a puzzle-fest either. It's not a cavern romp, exactly. What it is is a tightrope walker, always treading on the fine balance between all of these. Interesting and funny characters; a sizeable game map which truly evokes exploration; good, solid puzzles, including a very nice alphabetic maze in which the trick is really getting out, but not because of any spacial puzzle per se... one has the impression that the author has tried many different games, took out the bits he liked the most about them, and set out to creative a single game where none of these bits would take precedence over the other.

Therefore, this is the most balanced game I've ever seen, in all respects. Even in the way it balances old-school-text-adventure-puzzling-and-exploration and new-school-emphasis-on-characters-and-plot.

This might sound rather humdrum - true balance is boring, not exciting. To counter this, the author has added a wildcard in the form of a trumpet. You are a musician, and you collect sheets of music as an Enchanter player would collect scrolls. Surprisingly, this does not feel like a gimmick, which is enough to heartily congratulate the author. It does add to the experience.

This musical theme surrounds the entire game, but in some places and situations it's less obvious, more subtle... and sometimes it's not there at all, because in that place there's some other theme worth showing, and the author decided not to bludgeon us with a single theme. You see? Balance.

The game is polite, often merciful - it's a game to be enjoyed without fear of being punished. It's sort of a light-Zork. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that this is the new generation Zork, featuring solid gameplay, good puzzles, a true sense of exploration, adding the things the new generation of IFers have come to look for in IF: a good story, or at least an entertaining one; good prose, not too purple, certainly not too terse; fair gameplay; and fun, fun, fun. This game is *fun*.

This game is a textbook example of what makes a game good. Like all textbook examples, it may lack a little "oomph", but I'll still heartily reccommend it to absolutely everyone I meet - especially newcomers who want to get a feel for the old-school games but are daunted by what those games consider to be "fair".

NOTE - It occurs to me that I may have misused the term "classical", and "classic" might have been a better choice. Still, my apologies to the linguists out there, I'll keep "classical" because of the musical conotations of the word.

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