Chaos

>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

Orchestrated strategically and used creatively, these techniques could make for a masterful, groundbreaking work of IF. Chaos isn't that work, but its experimentation does open up some very interesting, and mostly unexplored, territory. Beside this, the plot of the game seems quite inconsequential. There's a ship to be repaired, and various puzzles to solve, some required and some optional. These puzzles are decent, and the writing is passable, and although there are a number of coding problems, the game is at least finishable. It's a bit of a throwaway, though, a mediocre competition entry except for the unique approach it takes, almost offhandedly, to forms of address in IF. I enjoyed thinking about Chaos more than I enjoyed playing it, but if the author's next game explores the techniques employed here in a consistent, systematic, and clear way, the result will be well worth a few false starts.