Shade

by Andrew Plotkin profile

Travel
2000

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Reviews and Ratings

5 star:
(120)
4 star:
(162)
3 star:
(90)
2 star:
(23)
1 star:
(12)
Average Rating:
Number of Ratings: 407
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- witchcock (Gainesville, FL), February 20, 2024

- Raven999, January 27, 2024

- comfysynth, January 22, 2024

- joes, December 29, 2023

- Titania Lowe, November 17, 2023

- Arioch, October 30, 2023

- Snen (United States), September 23, 2023

- RonFromPgh, September 20, 2023

- cheriyato, August 29, 2023

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
One room, almost perfectly realized, August 23, 2023
by tobiasvl (Norway)

This is a very short and enclosed game, without a clear goal at first. After a bit of milling around, you'll realize how to progress through the game as you start receiving tasks to do; this worked very well, even with the later complications that crop up.

After a while, the tasks get stranger and more specific, and as this happened, I ended up progressing by trial and error. For such a compact and otherwise well-realized game, it's strange that it doesn't respond to the specific items/tasks on your list, and so it veers a bit much into "guess the verb around the general vicinity of items referred to in the tasks" territory for me. (For example, when I was asked to (Spoiler - click to show)"unclog the shower drain", the way I eventually managed to trigger that step was with "take shower", and I also had major problems with removing the package from the kitchen storage.)

Despite that, the game works almost all of the time. The story is interesting and vague, and although I felt it became a bit too silly by the end, it's a very good example of a creeping feeling of dread that really only IF can give you.

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- astrella (Australia), August 15, 2023

- ledzeppelin295, August 8, 2023

- Bell Cyborg (Canada), July 21, 2023

- thesleuthacademy, June 28, 2023

- ghostbird12, May 5, 2023

- Hugginnn, April 20, 2023

- Kastel, April 7, 2023

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Pretty good for it's length, cool story, a bit vague, April 1, 2023
by Cygnus (Australia)

Shade. A good intro to IF. Parsers work (obviously). Very polished, short though. Somewhat surreal- definitely comes under its category. You kinda have a linear experience, but then again, everything’s kinda turning to shit as you progress.

Atmosphere was… conductive, I’d say, is the best way to describe it. For the length of this game, I’d say it’s quality was just enough that it filled the short experience with only content that a short game could have.

Somewhat horror? But overall, an incredible introduction to interactive fiction and parsers. Doesn’t need a map, or hints, because you basically just go around this like. Small house thing. No spoilers ;]

Hmmm… what else? It wasn’t really clear on wtf was going on, but I guess that comes under surrealism. Mechanics, again, straightforward and puzzles nonexistent… worldbuilding comes under plot and surrealism. For a game of its length and genre, I’d say it gets a 4/5. For an IF introduction, though, it gets a 3/5.

But it’s a staple of interactive fiction and an effective way of teaching it to people, so… what can ya do?

Also, the longer I play IF, the more I'm convinced everyone is Andrew Plotkin in a trenchcoat.

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- egostat (1st Level, Abyss), March 31, 2023

- miuk, March 9, 2023

- Greg Frost (Seattle, Washington), February 23, 2023

- jaymesjw, February 5, 2023

- Itsame64 (Mcloud, Oklahoma), December 1, 2022

- Cerfeuil (*Teleports Behind You* Nothing Personnel, Kid), October 11, 2022

International Business Times

The solid, algorithmic world of standard text-based games is turned into something more wobbly; after enough weirdness it starts to feel like anything could happen in Shade and that drums up the scare factor.

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