Shade

by Andrew Plotkin profile

Travel
2000

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Reviews and Ratings

5 star:
(121)
4 star:
(162)
3 star:
(90)
2 star:
(23)
1 star:
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Average Rating:
Number of Ratings: 408
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- rootmos (Stockholm, Sweden), December 19, 2010

- GreenSnake, December 4, 2010

- Markoff23, November 22, 2010

- Sophronisba, November 7, 2010

2 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
a defining title in the genre, November 6, 2010
by The Year Is Yesterday (California)

The "first" IF I played, aside from some Zork as a child, and therefore my first experience of interactive fiction that went beyond mere "text adventure," blurring the lines between literature and game. To this day, the experience hasn't been surpassed. There isn't much challenge here: let the story unfold, and just try not to get drawn in by the bleak, arid atmosphere.

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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
Ultimately unfulfilled, October 20, 2010
by Venya (Olalla, WA, US)
Related reviews: newbie

...though perhaps that was part of the point.

Initially, I felt like I was humoring the game, waiting for it to give me some reason to do something. Then I was weirded out. Then I was very weirded out. (Spoiler - click to show)Having spent some time in Afghanistan, I am more familiar than I care to be with sand that gets in everything--I had a rather strong emotional reaction as things started getting, er, shifty.

Unfortunately, after a while, I just started getting annoyed. Part of that is simply from inexperience with the medium--I have not done many of these, and I have a better sense now of what is needed to progress than I did starting out. But after a while it became clear that everything was heading in a certain direction, and it was only left to me to figure out the right keywords to make it go that way in a timely fashion; this is where the annoyance really came in.

The ending was odd. It's hard to strike just the right note of ambiguity without leaving most people scratching their heads wondering what just happened. For me, it wasn't quite right, but other people apparently were enthralled with it, so I'm not willing to criticize too much.

Enjoyable. Creepy, particularly if you have spent much time in deserts. The more I think about it, the more I like it. Even if you end up hating it, you'll probably think about it a bit, and it only took this tyro about 50 minutes--surely you can spare an hour.

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- FeralPawn (Australia), October 15, 2010

- Adam Rezich, October 11, 2010

- Chris Longhurst (Oxford, UK), September 30, 2010

- Brian Lavelle (Edinburgh, Scotland), September 12, 2010

- Aaron (Lille, France), August 29, 2010

- peterb, August 27, 2010

- Clemency Jones (England), August 26, 2010

- Telvayne (Tennessee, USA), August 18, 2010

- Alder (San Francisco), August 15, 2010

- Joel Webster (Madison, WI), July 26, 2010

- Celestianpower (Gloucestershire, UK), July 25, 2010

- Buffaloelvis, July 22, 2010

- Mr. Patient (Saint Paul, Minn.), July 19, 2010

- karcher, July 11, 2010

- Stickz (Atlanta, Georgia), June 23, 2010

- Dan Efran, June 15, 2010

- strikemeyer (Atlanta, Georgia), June 12, 2010

- Masada, May 29, 2010

- Patrick M. McCormick (United States), May 20, 2010


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