So Far

Download

	SoFar.z8 For all systems. To play, you'll need a Z-Machine Interpreter - visit Brass Lantern for download links.
	sofar.zip THL hint file (Compressed with ZIP. Free Unzip tools are available for most systems at www.info-zip.org.)
	SoFar.sol solution
	SoFar.step solution

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So Far
by Andrew Plotkin

Surreal
1996

(based on 39 ratings)
1 member review

About the Story

Sitting in a cramped theatre, irritated that your partner apparently hasn't turned up, you are strangely intrigued by a current of air. It will lead you to a place very different from your own familiar surroundings...
[--blurb from The Z-Files Catalogue]

Game Details

Language: English (en)
Current Version: 6
License: Freeware
Development System: Inform 6
Baf's Guide ID: 193
IFID: ZCODE-6-961218-4F87
TUID: rcrihauxixy48svr

Awards

Winner, Best Game; Winner, Best Writing; Nominee, Best Story; Nominee, Best Setting; Winner, Best Puzzles; Winner, Best Individual Puzzle - 1996 XYZZY Awards

Editorial Reviews

Baf's Guide

In this haunting and dreamlike work, you discover unnatural shadows that allow you to travel to a variety of strange places, each with a different prevailing mood. A sprawling work, thick with prose, variously enchanting and disturbing. Has a definite recurring theme of near-misses and creative tension, as well as numerous less-identifiable undercurrents with plenty of room for interpretation and speculation. (Is the tribal dance you witness in the grasslands just another retelling of the play you watch in the prologue? Is there some connection between the sculpture in the park and the coming lunar conjunction?) Excellent puzzles, chiefly based on experimenting with unfamiliar objects. Lots of attention to detail, especially irrelevant detail, with the effect that the world seems much larger than it is. Highly emotional and pleasantly confusing.

-- Carl Muckenhoupt

IF-Review
This is the kind of game where you not only have to read each piece carefully and thoughtfully the first time, you also have to stand permanently apart from what's going on. You're doing things that make no real logical sense -- by the hundred, it seems. Graham Nelson's Player's Bill of Rights is triumphantly defied by some of the acts of intuitive leaping, save-and-restore decipherment, and hindsight required to get through the game properly. Even so I only managed with liberal use of Lucian Smith's Invisiclues and suggestions from friends on ifMUD. As Duncan Stevens says in his recent SPAG review of the same game, _So Far_ works thematically, but the plot doesn't entirely make sense.
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Member Reviews

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

Average Rating:

Number of Reviews: 1
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

Horribly unfair, hauntingly beautiful, March 29, 2008

by jingold (UK)

There are very few bits of IF that have stayed with me and will do forever. So Far is one of them, which in a way is a terrible shame, because it's almost impossible to share with anyone else. The game is famously difficult and cruel (it's the only game I can think of that actively encourages players to do self-destructive things) and to say I got through it without hints would be a lie, lie, lie. But it was a beautiful thing, finely wrought, casting shadows across itself like a spinning sundial. It made me feel horribly jealous not to have written it and deeply privileged to have played it. Sigh -- those were the days...

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Recommended Lists

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Polls

The following polls include votes for So Far:

very hard games by aw1231
I am look for the hardest IF games ever.

Game mechanics as story by aaronius
In the best story-centered board games, the rules and system mechanics create or encourage the sorts of stories the game is supposed to be about; one suspense-themed game I discovered recently uses a Jenga tower to create rising dread in...

Influential Games by IcyChoc
As a historical exercise, I've begun compiling a list of IF games that have either done something ground breaking with the medium or otherwise influenced it; and I've turned it into a poll so everyone can have input on the expansion....

See all polls with votes for this game

This is version 3 of this page, edited by Emily Short on 5 April 2008 at 1:39pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item