A Night Guest

>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

It's an amusing poem (what there is of it, anyway -- the whole thing is quite short), but it's very clear that the game was built around the poem rather than vice versa. Thus, it feels rather like reading a book that forces you to say a magic word before you can turn the page. The "puzzles" (really just figuring out how to respond to the game's cues) don't add much, and I was left with the feeling that the whole thing would have been much more pleasant had it been just an illustrated chapbook rather than a narrative poem pretending to be interactive. Of course, I recognize how amazingly difficult it would be to create a game that actually expressed itself in verse but was a game first and foremost. No doubt that's why it hasn't been done yet.