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1-15 of 15 - Edo, August 17, 2023 The writing is good throughout the game, but the best-written parts are in the first person and take the voices of the characters; call me easily persuaded, but I was convinced. I found no false notes in the voices of the characters when they set their own thoughts down on paper -- some unappealing aspects, maybe, but very much true to life.
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| Direct link | Add a comment >INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction [T]here are the bones of an amazing game here. The plot revolves around a future time-travel agency, and the world-building evident in the details of this is just wonderful. Also, some of the things that make it inappropriate for the competition don't necessarily make it a bad game. Quite the contrary, in fact -- the number of options available makes for an incredibly rich gameworld... All in all, a very worthy effort, but I wish it wasn't a competition game. Releasing this game outside the competition would have accrued several benefits. It would have allowed more time to fix those nasty details of implementation and documentation. Players could have approached it as something they could spend a significant amount of time on, rather than having to rush through it to see as much as possible while not giving short shrift to the other 51 games awaiting their attention. And it wouldn't have been presented for formal judging in a not-completely-functional state. Would have, would have, would have. If only real time travel were possible.
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| Direct link | Add a comment - Frodelius, September 19, 2021 4 of
4 people found the following review helpful:
A replay-often time travel game with customizable inventory, February 3, 2016by MathBrush I played this game because Adam Cadre cited it as one of his favorite games ever. You play as a time traveller who is investigating an old house. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Remove vote | View comments (1) - Add comment
- Thrax, March 11, 2015 - PVince81 (Germany), May 16, 2014 - Stewjar (USA), January 29, 2013 - Mr. Patient (Saint Paul, Minn.), February 18, 2012 - Johnman, October 21, 2011 - GDL (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), July 15, 2009 - Linnau (Tel-Aviv, Israel), October 31, 2008 - jfpbookworm (Hamburg, New York), February 25, 2008 - fastfinge (Toronto, Canada), January 4, 2008 Baf's GuideA poking-and-searching game about historical research via time travel. You have a limited time to explore an ordinary home in the days just before a major war turns nuclear. Your main objective is revelatory documents, not so much about the political situation, which is well-known, but about how people lived. After your return, you are quizzed on your findings and evaluated. Loads of backstory, often given through large infodumps. Good degree of detail in the environment, with the aim of giving a sense of the absent characters. Decent prose, but no particular dramatic structure - the story is part of the setting, rather than vice versa. Many, many locked doors and hidden keys. One optional puzzle is rendered unsolvable by a bug, but I notied no bugs beyond that. Exploration is aided by a variety of gadgets, including an automapper and a hint dispenser, but you can only bring a few of them with you in a given session. Which tools you choose to bring will affect what parts of the game you can see, and it'll probably take you multiple sessions with different loadouts to get a satisfactoy picture of the family. It's possible to get a favorable evaluation at the end with most loadouts, but some tools make it a lot easier. (Perfectionists take note: A perfect mission is impossible. Even the author says he's never gotten a mission evaluation above 93% or so.) Features an ambitious extension of the user interface, adding an elaborate system of nested menus to the bottom of the screen. This does not work properly on some interpreters, and can be disabled without affecting gameplay through the command "MENU OFF". I personally liked the "compass" option, which turns the menu into a list of exits, but didn't use it for anything else. -- Carl Muckenhoupt
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