Reviews by Sobol
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Weird in a good way, October 6, 2016Black Rock City gave me the same relaxed feeling as did Beautiful Dreamer by S. Woodson.
The PC doesn't have any clear goals, they just have some time to spend at Burning Man festival before a dust storm hits. There are no right or wrong choices, no pressure; you explore different branches of the game, learn things about the bizarre city and its inhabitants, feel free to try even ill-advised actions like (Spoiler - click to show)jumping from a flying carpet.
The game has 2^6=64 endings and a considerable variety of possible actions across the branches; in addition to standard adventure verbs like "examine", "talk to" and "kiss", sometimes you can choose "believe", "sass", "admire", etc.
The joy of discovery, April 10, 2016Currently the biggest, most complex and most polished game by the author, Superluminal Vagrant Twin is a space trading simulator - an old and noble genre including such classics as Elite, but tragically underrepresented in IF until now. There's a huge universe waiting for you to explore with lots of different planets to visit, people to meet, goods to buy and sell, side quests to complete.
You can rush through the main plot fairly quickly, but there are many other things to discover (even after getting all the achievements) - which I naturally won't spoil here. And, of course, rushing through this game would be completely missing the point, because the best part of it is not making the money but savoring the wonderful descriptions - terse and colorful, poetic without being pretentious; closing your eyes and trying to visualize all the various worlds you travel to (Spoiler - click to show) (there were 53 of them in the beta version I played).
My favorite character was the deep space explorer on Splinter. I instantly imagined Ursula K. Le Guin.
Nothing much, but still entertaining, March 27, 2016Far less known than its namesake from the same SpeedIF competition, this easy one-puzzle game may still prove a pleasant bite-sized diversion. The way the PC moves through the game world is of a particular interest; and "ASCII" of the title plays here a somewhat bigger role than in the game by J. Robinson Wheeler.
After figuring out how to win, for an additional challenge, try to win in as few moves as possible. I managed to find a solution in 42 moves; I wonder if there's a shorter one.
Never thought I'll visit the island Bouyan in IF, February 23, 2016A curious mix of Russian folklore and American humor. Being a Russian, I was delighted to see familiar fairytale motives and phrases like "speedily a tale is spun, with much less speed a deed is done" (скоро сказка сказывается, да не скоро дело делается), "are you here to shirk a task or to find one?" (дела пытаешь аль от дела лытаешь?), "three times nine" (тридевять), etc.
The game is rather old-school - even for 1998. The world is sparingly implemented, there are some minor guess-the-verb moments - but it's funny and light-hearted, the puzzles aren't hard, there are multiple solutions (be sure to check the AMUSING section), and the "good" ending really has a naïve fairytale charm (while the "evil" ending - the one where you (Spoiler - click to show)side with Katschei the Deathless - is, um...). There's a big maze in the game - but you won't need mapping it.
P. S. I was able to kiss almost everyone from the bear to Baba Yaga without anybody protesting. Well, I suppose being a prince has its benefits.
Live fast. Die young, December 8, 2015A peculiar and amusing approach to the Twiny Jam constraints.
The game has a relatively substantial story set in a vivid futuristic world - but tries to tell it in as few words as possible. Believe it or not, it has 11 different endings (see: time cave structure).
Like all games by this author, it's well-planned and well-written - but, first and foremost, it's just fun. You always wanted to be a member of a jetbike gang, didn't you?
Worth the (extremely short) time it takes to play it.
A mood piece, really, December 7, 2015Ka is a puzzle game; as the other reviewers pointed out, its overall aesthetics are quite close to some works by Andrew Plotkin.
And the puzzles are good. The last one felt particularly satisfying: "Oh my, a riddle. What the answer could be? Is it some common and well-known thing? Something specific to Ancient Egypt?.." - and then it dawned on me. (Spoiler - click to show)Kudos to the monster for not eating me up after the first wrong guess - like the Greek Sphinx used to do.
But the best thing about playing Ka is not the puzzle-solving, but the mood - and in this aspect, I think, it sometimes even out-Plotkins Plotkin. The familiar feeling of solemn loneliness, being surrounded by indifferent mechanisms, the calm and melancholy dream-like atmosphere - are mixed with a strong sense of transition, of leaving everything behind, untying all the bonds, abandoning your past and your earthly possessions which don't matter anymore; standing on a threshold of some new spiritual life.
We don't get to see this new life of the protagonist: that's left to our imagination. But we get a wonderful finale, in which, for one move only, the soul gets to interact with non-mechanical characters - and is no more alone. A short glimpse of divinity; making it longer would have marred the experience.
There are many interesting details along the way. The rhymed sestains are well-written and in the general vein of spells from the real Egyptian funerary texts; and typing >WEST in this game always feels special because of the symbolic significance of the West in Egyptian religion.
Clever and captivating, November 30, 2014Weird City Interloper is a fairly small conversation-based game.
Perhaps "conversation-based" is an understatement: there is literally nothing but conversation here. No conventional IF narrator telling you what is there, and how it looks like, and what is happening: only the direct speech of the NPCs. No "examine", or "inventory", or "go north": all you can do is talk.
And yet there is wonderful scenery in the game, and eventful journeys through the strange and colorful city of Zendon, and exciting adventures. Playing it reminded me of Elizabethan drama: no stage sets in the theater, almost no stage directions in the text; and then somebody says something like "But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, / Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill" - and you get the picture.
Above all, the game has vivid and memorable NPCs. I think even Gun Mute, another work by Pacian with a magnificent NPC cast, in this respect pales before Weird City Interloper. Each one of the fantastical and amusing characters would be enough to make a whole game centered on them. You could write an entertaining game about Lissa Ratdaughter, our trusty streetwise guide - and I would definitely play such a game, because I found Lissa interesting. You could write a nice game about Zook Spiralhouse, an innkeeper (who also happens to be a gigantic snail), charming in her grandmotherly way. And here there are not one or two, but a dozen of them - funny, mysterious, grotesque, different, each with their own unique voice and world-view.
There are no difficult puzzles (I don't think anyone can get truly stuck in this game, even without hints from (Spoiler - click to show)the rat queen) - just exploring, going through different topics of conversation, discovering things about the city and yourself; "lawnmowering", if you wish to call it such. But I never thought "lawnmowering" could be so enjoyable.
A miniature masterpiece, November 20, 2014Half-humorous, half-sad, half-fiction, half-autobiography, half-silly, half-serious, half-trivial, half-profound; hard to categorize, hard to point what exactly makes this little game so good. Sincerity, perhaps.
A must-play for those interested in LGBT themes in IF (and especially for teens considering coming out to their parents), Coming Out Simulator 2014 also touches a lot of other topics: art as a mode of communication, truth and lies... The author's approach to interactivity is quite clever; the characters do remember everything you say, and the game cunningly traps you in more and more awkward situations.
Nice idea, too short, November 20, 2014The Gostak taken to the extreme; still, it isn't terribly hard to get the gist and win in a few minutes. I think the "AAAAAAAAA" in the title stands for "Adventure"; if so, I wish this adventure was longer and had more puzzles.
An accurate simulation of being Sisyphus in Hades, November 17, 2014Which means there's no escape from your monotonous labor and the game is an unwinnable annoying waste of time.
True art moves people, and so did this tiny joke game at IFComp 2006: some judges were amused, many irritated. I see no reason to play it nowadays, though.
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