Reviews by Pavel Soukenik

Unique, November 3, 2008

Muse is taking place in a French coastal village in 1886 and it tells a story (in the first person, past tense) of a 59-year-old English clergyman encountering a beautiful young German lady. As such, it is a unique title in the world of IF, and the superbly written introductory paragraphs make you feel you are in for a great time.

The protagonist's character permeates the writing so we get his perspective, ideas and feelings. Occasionally though, these do not go deep enough or fail to feel authentic given his age and experience. The writing also captures the Victorian period well (as does the insistence on greetings and introductions). The past tense in the first person fits the story but the author could have adapted the 'library' even more ("My trusty old steamer trunk lay here," you read before the first prompt, where "lay there" would be seamless). The feel is rounded off by well-selected quotations (mostly by Lewis Carroll), although these border on a recommendation for "less is more".

The game is well hinted (although you might feel a bit lost if you are not on the optimal track) but could have used more testing. Specific problems (tiny spoilers ahead) are as follows: (Spoiler - click to show)After two turns when you were unable to do anything but look at her, the main character must not say "I wasn't sure what 'her' referred to." After the boatman tells you "We must go," the response to BOATMAN, WAIT could also have been anticipated and tailored. You can get nonsensical ending if your first two commands happen to be PUSH TRUNK TO BOAT, GET IN BOAT. And in my play-through, Mr Von Goethe did not "recognize" my referring to his daughter by her name even after he told me what her name was.

Since several appear at the very start of the story, this is distracting. Similarly distracting is the choice of the names (John Austin, Von Goethe). The otherwise very nice prose suffers somewhat by the need to include directions; to alleviate this, the direction to the "previous area" is sometimes not repeated in the "current" location. (Spoiler - click to show)(I was once "trapped" in my room: with no exit direction in the description, my short-term memory, the door object missing from inside, and the "out" and "exit" not implemented, I had to try the directions one by one.)

Despite these problems, this is a nice and emotional short story featuring several endings, and it has a unique voice which recreates a specific atmosphere and period. Its only significant flaws are that it should have more depth and breadth so that the ride would last longer.

The first impression can be misleading, May 30, 2008

This is a very rich game of shaping the attitude of a tribe on the verge of war. Your choices create a nice variety of possibilities: who you are, who is the storyteller and which approach in the story you promote. Although the impact of the personality of the storyteller seems minimal, other choices really matter. To promote the attitudes of the tribe, you select highlighted keywords from the telling. This is quite effective although sometimes it was impossible to tell whether it would result in a push in the desired direction. Ocassionally, the keyword triggers an unobtrusive clarification whether you want to point out an aspect A or B by uncovering your internal weighing of the two options.

There are two problems though. The first is an unfortunate design decision: A title that allows the reader to get through the story by typing "wait" is taking a great gamble. The author better make sure the reader has good reasons to care for and understand what is going on. (I got to the storytelling part in about seven turns and waited, skimming, skipping through all of it, lacking a real motivation to actually do something.) The good news is that when (and if) you actually reach the end in this fashion, you will learn that you basically failed because you did not learn how to shape the story. In addition, you are given a nice recap of the background and what happened; a part of this would be so much needed at the beginning to get the player hooked.

The second problem is at the beginning when you choose your occupation and the identity of your companion. Unfortunately, the method used to give the player the option to decide is ill-chosen. [Details with a minor spoiler:] (Spoiler - click to show)You are told there is a "symbol" of your occupation. When you refer to it, you get a library disambiguation message between a medicine bag and a dagger (which had not been mentioned). The same problem appears soon after, when you are introduced to two main characters, one of them being your "love". For a player who does not know she is effectively defining the main character, this creates confusion, especially in what will often be the first turns.

Don't get discouraged by the first impression. This is a deep, meaningful game. You might still find yourself not drawn into the story the first time through, but by the time it ends, you will probably want to give it a second try.

Romance in a Northwest Café, May 9, 2008

A conversation masterpiece, and not just because it is a "conversation only" thing, Best of Three does everything important right: It sets and keeps the atmosphere, provides a superbly characterized and likable protagonist and a life-like NPC as a past romantic interest who is (perhaps intentionally as a clever decision) less likable.

The gameplay is straightforward: You can choose what to say from a menu, change the topics to steer the conversation or just think about things. Occasional physical actions are well infused with significance. (My high expectations were let down only in one case when I wanted to convey a sense of closing the conversation by pocketing the returned pen from the table but the response was the default "Taken.")

Best of Three is not just a conversation, it works as a story. It reveals the background in a way that is not forced, and it serves as a prime example of unobtrusively pacing the conversation and guiding it through the stages the author intended to achieve a meaningful progression and storytelling.

Although I did notice a glitch or two (a topic clarification "the his father") the implementation is very polished to the point where I was confidently typing in "sip cappuccino" just because it felt right. Time advances while you look around or think which limits the leisure feeling and makes the encounter real. I found myself weighing carefully on what to focus my attention next. (Changing topics does not advance time which is good, while trying to think about an irrelevant thing does: this might be converted to an out of world action too.)

Best of Three is a pleasant way to spend an hour or two in a Northwest café (or rather, a "coffee shop") going through your high school relationships.

An interesting experiment, May 6, 2008

De Baron deals not so much with actions as with their justifications and rationalization. This is achieved almost exclusively by conversations which happen in menu-based trees. The action of the story is moving steadily along a linear path with some choices to make along the way. What is both good and bad is the fact that the subsequent in-game discussions cover all the options available, which is very interesting but it makes your particular choices seem less important.

The highest point in the whole story is probably the conversation with the gargoyle because it mixes the parable illustration, self-realization and choosing one's attitude to the central problem. That moment's wonderful mastery is slightly undermined by its placement in the story arch, and by the appearance of a similar dialogue that felt (at least in part) superfluous.

Unfortunately, De Baron suffers from an unnecessary problem: typos, particularly in key scenes, are distracting, and the proofreading by an English native speaker would also weed out some of the other translation problems. A more serious problem concerns the design. Outside of conversations, the standard exploration gameplay feels too obvious and you will often mechanically perform actions ("solve puzzles" would not be accurate) that you know beforehand are going to uncover the next piece of exposition.

One way to fix the problems mentioned would be to make the actions and choices matter at the end of the story, have a native English speaker go through the text, redesign the exploration (sparser exposition, removing or enhancing the puzzles) and cut the Baron scene. The last suggestion is maybe radical but that scene contains a lot of what is already obvious and also duplicates some ideas that were already covered.

The experience I was left with was that of filling in an interesting, thinly disguised psychological test but not receiving the results. It is an interesting exercise none-the-less.