9:05

by Adam Cadre profile

Slice of life
2000

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5 star:
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4 star:
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3 star:
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2 star:
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Number of Reviews: 57
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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Four Stars, December 23, 2023

This is a game I always recommend to people curious about the text adventure genre. It's short, simple, and the parser won't fight you. The twist at the end is fun and the game is fast enough to ensure you reach it. Expect to play through it a second time when you discover the secret.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
I wish there was just a bit more., July 25, 2023

I have a huge folder on my PC full of interactive fiction games that I've been collecting for years, most of which, to be honest, I still haven't tried. Every few years I get the urge to play some, and this time I decided to reorganise everything. As you might expect, this little game was at the top of the list, so I decided to play it. It didn't take long and I found it mildly amusing.

My disappointment with this game comes not from the scenario, which has potential, or the twist, which is both fun and a little bit "meta", or the length, which is suitable (and I'm a big fan of short stories in fiction, so this is really not a problem) -- It's just that I wish the author went a little wilder with it. A player can probably tell right off that something about the situation doesn't add up, and I think the game should give the player a little more freedom to step out of the box as it were and do weird stuff. You kind of have to follow one of three or four expected patterns and trying to do outlandish things (as I think a character in your position probably would) doesn't work. You can't interact with anyone, even though there are a few opportunities that might suggest you could do so. Certain things aren't mentioned in order not to spoil the twist in the game, but you'd think they would be, logically -- one of them is and can provide a little fun when you play the game a second time, and you might even discover it the first time through (revealing the "twist" at the outset and thus allowing you to beat the game), bbut even that has no real possibilities for manipulation.

Still, this is likeable enough. I'd love to see something a bit more playful and expansive from the author on a similar theme. This almost seems like a trial run for something.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
The most-reviewed game on IFDB, March 25, 2023
by MathBrush
Related reviews: less than 15 minutes

As of writing, this game has 54 reviews on IFDB, more than any other game on the database.

I had a review of this game years ago that was mildly spoiler-y, and it was my lowest-rated review on IFDB by far (like 0 out of 9 people found it helpful).

I thought I'd give it another go.

This game is short but memorable, and its main defining feature is the way that it sets expectations. Funnily enough, this helps it serve as a great introduction to IF for newbies, since each command is hinted so heavily without feeling like handholding.

For instance, in my games, on the first turn I'll say something like 'You can PICK UP the telephone', just holding the player's hand very heavily, while this game simply says 'the phone rings'.

The room prominently displays loose objects, encouraging the player to pick them up; mentions only a dresser, encouraging the player to try OPEN; clothing, encouraging the player to WEAR, which then triggers the need to shower, adding a little complexity.

Driving can be complex in other games, but hear any reasonable actions with the car will get you in and going. Even the (Spoiler - click to show)ID card, usually something people code in a weird way, is hinted nicely with saying the reader has a place for you to INSERT the card.

For most people, at least in the years when this came out, the events in the game are completely reasonable and logical ones that they've either experienced or seen on TV (younger players may be confused you can't take the telephone with you). For experienced IF players, the bare-bones house descriptions are par for the course. So in this way, the author manages expectations in a brilliant way.

In my last review, I dinged the game for its bland prose, but looking back, it manages to add a lot of character in small ways. Like, if you eat the pop-tart, it says 'It's not Sunday brunch at Le Trop Cher, but it'll do.' That's clever. So it's not that the game isn't well-written and punchy, it's more like an optical illusion where it takes good descriptions and interesting responses but puts them into the same overall 'shape' as a bad, first 'my apartment' game so you just gloss over them until you realize they had more depth than you thought.

Overall, an interesting game, and an influential one.

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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
short, sweet, with high replay value, March 22, 2023

what a great little beginner's masterpiece! This could be a great intro to IF, and a springboard for so many IF opportunities. I really liked this one a lot. Played through it four or five times just to see what else I could do. 4/5 stars only because it's so short, and I think with a little extra detail it could really shine.

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A subversion of IF cliches, March 22, 2023

Oh, no, you are late for work! Better hurry up or your boss will fire you!

While not an outright parody, 9:05 does a good job of subverting a lot of the tropes commonly used in interactive fiction. You play a character with no backstory, you start the game in your bedroom, and you must accomplish a goal through the solving of various puzzles. To say anything more about the plot would be to risk spoilers, so I will just say that 9:05 starts with a simple setup that turns out to be anything but simple.

Difficulty is very subjective, but I found the game to be easy. The plot is grounded in reality, so all the puzzles have very logical solutions. The game will also offer advice when you type in a command that the parser doesn’t understand. The map is small and easy to navigate.

9:05 is a very short game, but it has a lot to offer to both IF beginners and IF veterans. I highly recommend it.

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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Quicky with a replay, June 27, 2022

A quick little game (Spoiler - click to show), with nudge to replay after the ending.

Because of my play style of b-lining to the end (Spoiler - click to show)on first play and this leaned into that for a twist:clap:

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A big step forward, February 18, 2022
by cgasquid (west of house)

first, we need to look at 9:05 from the perspective of when it was created. certainly, there had been stories that concealed crucial facts from the player as a part of their structure, ranging from the clever (Photopia) to the merely frustrating (The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy). but the standard expectation of the time was that you could trust what the parser told you implicitly and assume you knew everything you needed to about the protagonist (most often there simply not being anything worth knowing).

a game like 9:05 challenges these impressions. the parser and protagonist are (Spoiler - click to show)telling a lie of omission. this is, obviously, a Generic Protagonist just going through the dreary opening moves of a typical slice-of-life game. (Spoiler - click to show)no, it isn't. you're not the Generic Protagonist, you're the person who robbed and murdered them.

9:05 is a very brief game that only rewards a handful of playthroughs before being completely explored. but those playthroughs have something very important to say about the nature of IF.

while i wouldn't exactly call a game that can be finished in three minutes and completely exhausted in ten a masterpiece, this is definitely an important work that signposted some of the narrative techniques used in many later games.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A humorous short game with multiple endings, February 6, 2022
by Cody Gaisser (Florence, Alabama, United States of America, North America, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, Known Universe, ???)

9:05 is a game with a deceptively simple premise: You're asleep. The phone rings, waking you up. It's time to get cleaned up and go, and fast.

A single play-through is very short, so it's a breeze to reach the game's multiple endings (there are at least four).

There are some rough edges (the parser responds oddly sometimes when it doesn't understand the player's commands), but these issues didn't get in the way of my good time.

9:05 is well-written, with some amusing twists. Start the game with realistic expectations - it's not some masterpiece of literature, it's a funny little text game. By those standards, I consider it well worth playing a few times to see what it has to offer.

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2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Unsatisfied, November 19, 2021

I don't get why this game gets such high ratings.

First play: Figure out the twist... it's a trick. There's information you as the player don't have, but if you really were the protagonist you would know this! Is there an explanation for why you don't know this? Does the PC have amnesia or something? Nope. Not that I know of. This doesn't feel like an "awesome" twist to me. It just feels like the author is cheating.

Second play: Immediately beat the game. Wait, that was it? So unsatisfying.

Third play: Scan some walkthroughs first because there must be more to this highly rated game, right? Not much more... yeah, there are some clues that you *could* have found the first time, but nothing that justifies the rating this game gets.

If I hadn't seen so many positive reviews, I probably wouldn't have minded so much... but the fall from those high expectations was rough!

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Quick, fun, and surprising!, October 10, 2021
by Wynter (London, UK)

A short game about getting up in the morning and going to work, but with a twist ending. Plays with your expectations - there are some assumptions you make when you play a parser-based game, and it didn't really occur to me to question them here. Ironically enough, (Spoiler - click to show)when I got to the bit where you leave the house without locking it, I wondered if someone might break in when I was out at work.

If I hadn't been in such as hurry to get to work, I might have done what I normally do in parser games and (Spoiler - click to show)examine everything - in particular, to look under things and behind things. Of course, I did that on the replay.

One bit left me trying to guess a verb: (Spoiler - click to show)"get in cubicle" did the trick.

If I had to give someone a short game to play in order to teach them how to play a parser game, it'd probably be this.

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