Reviews by Kara Goldfinch
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One of the best, June 15, 2021I've not played many games that had me laughing out loud, but this was one of them. I do wonder if Buster Hudson is a Terry Pratchett fan as many of the jokes reminded me of the Discworld books.
My favourite character by far was Sir Leonhart because of all the ridiculous stuff he does.
I'm not the best at puzzle solving, but I managed to complete it without needing many hints. I checked the Club Floyd transcript a couple of times during play. Once to see if I had encountered a bug, but turns out I was just sniffing slightly the wrong thing. The other time I felt I was wandering round in circles not sure where to go next.
I only realised the game even has built-in hints when I read what lies behind the spoiler tags in reviews on here after finishing it. I might replay it just to see what they're like.
The limited set of commands is a brilliant idea, and made perfect sense since you're a pig. I would argue that it made puzzles a bit more easier to solve as well because there could be no cases of guess the verb.
Speaking of puzzles, my favourite is the (Spoiler - click to show)vending machine. I thought I was going to be there for days trying to work out how to get leonhart to press the right switches, least of all figuring out myself what it all meant. I'm not a fan of complex contraption puzzles in IF. But no, all I needed to do was get the gallant knight to do what he does best. Smash! Fantastic.
I loved the twist, and the message. I don't want to say much about it, other than that it could have been poorly handled, but it wasn't.
It's been a couple of weeks since I played it, so I've probably forgotten what else I wanted to say. So all I will say is stop reading my waffle and go and play it. :)
What did I just play?, May 16, 2021I sat there for a few minutes in silence after finishing this game. I needed to digest what I had just experienced, and I had tears in my eyes.
I've not played many pieces of IF that effected me this profoundly.
I'll bet the non-spoilery things out of the way first, but then there'll be massive spoilers.
I love the set up, that it's played as though you're actually controlling a robot that's been dropped off at the site to salvage anything that's been left behind, and that the output reflects this with it being in 1st person present. I imagine that must've been a pain to get right. I remember when I first tried playing it back when it was originally released that some of the prompts like the one for quitting were a bit messed up.
I also love that the usual save, restore and undo commands are described as being an experimental time folding system.
I don't think it's too spoilery to say that there's more going on than just a treasure hunt. For years I thought it was going to be a murder mystery, but no, I was extremely wrong.
And here is where I'll get into spoilers, although if you've read other reviews you'd probably know what it's about already.
(Spoiler - click to show)You find technology that allows people to experience simulations created for it like they're lucid dreams. It's like the ultimate VR system, and one's still loaded up. It's a program that lets you experience what it was like being a young female slave called Lynda on the plantation you have been instructed to search.
Now, I'm a white woman. So I don't think it's my place to comment on if the scenes in this part of the game were sensitively portrayed. So I will just talk about how it personally made me feel.
I was horrified even though I sort of knew what to expect. I also felt completely helpless even though it was just a game. The robot I was controlling was being brutally punished and forced to work in the fields, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I assume that if this was real, I would be sat all comfortable in an office somewhere miles away, watching this robot telling me exactly what was being done to them, and exactly how they felt now they had a sense of self, rather than just being a box of microchips. And I had put them in this situation.
All i could do was give them commands. My main goal was finding a way out of the simulation, so I thought instructing them to perform a shutdown would stop it. But no, the robot begged me to tell them to cancel. When I did, they said something like "Thanks, Master Goldfinch". that did me in.
How I kept playing the game from there is a mystery to me. By then, I was in bits over a fictional robot who thought I was their master that I just wrote "I am not your master" into the parser and hit enter, but the game just thought I wanted to check my inventory. I wanted the robot to be free but all I could do was carry on giving them orders.
So I set about trying to free Linda, which I didn't manage. I went the wrong way while trying to find how to escape and ran into the master. What happened to her them was despicable.
Now back into the present the robot still was sentient and aware of what they had experienced, and was begging for freedom, so I told them to drop everything and leave. I wouldn't have cared if NASC hadn't let me off.
Then it was finally over. I just typed quit after reading the credits and whatnot and just sat there.
The reason I have only given it 4 stars is that some locations didn't change their descriptions to reflect what the robot had experienced, which broke the emersion slightly. I'd much rather give it 4.5 stars but that's not an option.
So all that long ramble to say that it's a must play, but make sure you are emotionally prepared for it, if you even can be.
Beautiful writing, May 12, 2021My favourite kind of IF as I think I've said before on here are games where I feel emersed in the game world, and, on the whole, this is one of those games.
The writing is exquisite. For the most part I could ignore that I was typing in commands and listening to my screen reader jabbering away. I could imagine that I was there, looking for this spring, albeit being very inept at outdoor survival. I wouldn't have a clue what to do in that situation.
My lack of skills had me resorting to the hints, only to discover that more often than not I was almost there and just needed that little nudge in the write direction.
Then of course there's Bob. I've tried playing Spring a few times before, but never spent too much time with him. During this playthrough I spent nearly the whole in-game day in his company. He was wonderful to be with. The only thing I will say is that (Spoiler - click to show)he would have dealt with the wasp nest in his shed for me. There's no way I'd be going near it for anything. I felt that mortified that my disastrous attempt of getting rid of it burn his shed to the ground I restarted from the beginning. Sorry Bob.
The guidebook is a brilliant touch. I loved learning about the wildlife I encountered.
I would've given the game 5 stars if it wasn't for a couple of things. One is the (Spoiler - click to show)eucalyptus. The game doesn't mention any growing in the environment and I thought they only grew in Australia. Nothing appeared in the hints menu for that puzzle, so I had to resort to the walkthrough to find out that it was the pika's job to get it for me. There's nothing to indicate that it was fetching eucalyptus from anywhere.
The other thing is that (Spoiler - click to show)While reading the walkthrough, it mentioned about taking the egg from the nest. Maybe this was a throwback to Zork, but this was a game set in the US not the Great Underground Empire, so I felt uncomfortable taking the poor dipper's egg, so I didn't. Leave eggs where they are, people.
So to sum up this long ramble, go and play it, if only just for the writing and Bob. It's a treasure.
A must play, October 26, 2020This is my first review here. I've been playing IF for about 20 years, so I thought it's about time I wrote one, even though I'm not the best at writing these things. Anyway here goes nothing.
Worlds Apart is without doubt one of the best interactive fiction games I've played.
It's taken me several false starts over the years to get into it. I seemed to have been ready to discover more of it's secrets the more I learnt about myself, and last week I felt it's time to finish the whole game.
I'm so glad I did.
It's rare in iF I think to find a game like this with so much detail. Every location is vividly described to the point where I felt like I was there. There's so much to experience and explore. I feel like I've only scratched the surface even though I've completed it. To me,the only games like it are Blue lacuna and Hadean Lands.
The beautifully described environment would be nothing without a good story, and it is fantastic. You start off knowing nothing, and you piece it together as you progress through the game. Again I feel like I only know half of it. To say more would spoil it.
The puzzles are not hard. Saying that, I did have a few nudges from the hints as I sometimes felt like i was wandering around not sure what to do next. There's also a couple of guess the verb moments, as well as searching, looking inside and maybe even a 'reach'. But it came out in 1999 so I can forgive it for that.
Many people have written reviews already, about The Amazing NPCs that respond to pretty much everything in the game world, how all of your senses are implemented, etc, It truly is a work of art.
I feel like playing through it again, this time making notes so I can experience more
all that to say go and play it. You'll be glad you did.
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