Reviews by deathbytroggles
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Gnusto girgol. Gah!, February 2, 2024Considered one of the most difficult games in the Infocom catalogue, Spellbreaker deploys an excellent plot that neatly and satisfyingly wraps up the Enchanter trilogy. Yet, as seems to be in the case in all of his games, Dave Lebling’s puzzle structure maddeningly gets in the way of most of the fun.
Magic is failing in the Zork universe, with spells by even the most powerful sorcerers fizzling out on the regular. During a council meeting to discuss the problem, a shadowy figure (presumably armed with the cleesh spell) turns everyone but you into an amphibian. Unable to chase the figure down but obtaining a magical white cube in the process, you must explore the far reaches of the empire to save your colleagues and magic itself.
By using a spell to investigate its mystical properties, the cube transports you to a void, presumably inside the cube itself. From there you can go various directions to explore a random area (in the real world) in search of additional cubes. Each cube contains its own void and connection to other parts of the world. Delightfully, each area is not its own vacuum; you will need to acquire spells and secular items to help you solve puzzles in other sections. Sometimes you will need to return to the same cube on multiple occasions and multi-step puzzles abound.
This setup is frankly brilliant, giving a sense of realism to the adventure while allowing the player to work on several different puzzles at once. At times you need to draw connections between the worlds to understand how your actions in one area can affect another. In true Zorkian fashion, there is little sense of atmospheric continuity; for example, a slippery field of talking boulders lays near a random treasure vault with no explanation for their existence. While there is a bit less randomness to the map than in Sorcerer, it still feels difficult to be truly immersed in a world where nothing seems to make any sense.
For a while I quite enjoyed myself, landing a couple of eureka moments while solving puzzles. But mixed in with some truly fun brain teasers (including several involving the manipulation of time) are monotonous math problems, random chance exercises, and instant death rooms. One requires you to map out an area while trying to corner another party in order to catch them. This would be fine if there was a pure solution, but the movement of the other party is random and it took me almost a half hour of repetition to catch them despite knowing exactly what to do. There’s a coin-weighing puzzle, which are boring enough in their own right, and a slog when needing to do so via text commands. A copyright protection puzzle also comes at a very key moment about midway through the game, and should you answer incorrectly, you won’t even find out until the very end, requiring you to replay large swaths of the game, including those two obnoxious puzzles just mentioned. At least in Sorcerer, the copyright protection was at the beginning and required some deduction; this one is just mean, given that a simple typo could set you back hours.
And there is so much learning by dying. While a few of these instances can theoretically be avoided with some lucky educated guesses, at least one situation is literally a 50/50 shot. And it’s not as simple as saving, dying instantly, and restoring. It’s puzzling around for a good long while down a dead-end path, eventually learning later through trial and error that you made the wrong random guess (that you don’t even realize is a guess at the time). That’s not an expert level puzzle as the game box suggests. It’s just patently unfair. And let’s not forget to mention the game’s final puzzle; it’s pretty awesome, but also requires dying at least once unless you luckily perform an action that would be considered foolhardy anywhere else.
Some concessions were made by Lebling. The thirst and hunger daemons are gone, which I imagine was tough for him given he brought the latter back for The Lurking Horror. The sleep daemon is here as in the other games, but the dreams are even more pointless than ever. You also acquire an object which can help you carry unlimited inventory. But he couldn’t help himself and threw in several puzzles around water that require you to do some lengthy and dull inventory swapping to avoid ruining some of your possessions.
It’s all a shame, too, as Spellbreaker has so much going for it. Essentially it takes the best parts of the first two games, the atmosphere of Enchanter and the humor of Sorcerer, while expanding upon the fun spell casting system, all culminating in a rewarding conclusion. But the road to get there is inconsistent and annoying. The longer I played, the more grouchy I became, which led me to consulting hints more frequently. I still recommend it to fans of the series; just don’t feel any shame about using help.
Rezrov review. Read. Rejoice!, February 2, 2024Steve Meretzky took over the reins from Marc Blank and Dave Lebling in his second adventure after the wildly popular Planetfall. His style is quite evident here. While telling perhaps a weaker story with a significantly less serious atmosphere than Enchanter, Sorcerer far exceeds it as a sequel thanks to a more user-friendly design and some truly excellent puzzles.
You’ve been promoted in the interim and are more or less the right-hand man of Belboz, the head of the Guild of Enchanters. One morning he goes missing and in your search for him you discover he may be in the thralls of an evil sorcerer. And, unfortunately, that is pretty much the plot. In fact, the only times you can encounter this evil presence yourself is at the beginning if you fall asleep at home (which is never clearly explained) and at the very end.
Upon starting I was immediately annoyed as I was told I was getting thirsty and hungry, my biggest complaint from the first story. But I was soon relieved to discover a magic spell that obviated the need to eat or drink. That this new spell was even necessary was a rather pointlessly cruel joke, but at the same time a humble acknowledgement of a past mistake. The sleep daemon still exists and for the same reason: to get incredibly subtle hints for later in the game. As the game has no time limit, you can sleep just about anywhere when you get tired without worry.
Most of the game takes place in the land where the evil sorcerer hails, and it is extra-Zorkified as decrepit castles and coal mines butt right up against a gnome-run amusement park with a casino and a flume ride. Most locations are vividly portrayed even if as a totality it’s an incoherent mess. As such the map is easy to remember.
The amazing thing about Sorcerer is how fairly it treats the player, a rarity in 1984. There are plenty of walking dead scenarios you can get yourself into, but they’re pretty much either obvious right before or right afterwards. For example, you can drink a potion when you don’t need it, and it’s immediately clear you need to restore. Or you might enter an area that kills you, but the signs were clear that potential danger lied ahead. But beyond that, there is an optional spell that allows you to essentially create a save point, reviving you to that location if you kick the bucket. And the really cool aspect is that not only is the spell there to rescue you, it can also be manipulated to solve a few different puzzles in the game. While the “normal” way to the solve these puzzles may be more satisfying to some, I was happy to be rewarded with what my brain felt was clever in the moment.
Sorcerer rewards the player in many other ways as well. While there are many red herrings, when you attempt to solve puzzles in logical ways and fail you are almost always rewarded with an amusing retort as to why it didn’t work. The side effect of this was that I trusted the game to communicate well and I never went to a walkthrough when I was stuck. In fact, to this point it’s the first Infocom game where I didn’t require at least one hint (outside of A Mind Forever Voyaging, which is generally puzzleless).
And to top it all off, there are some damn fine puzzles. Two double as copyright protection, but you still must use logic to correctly interpret the game’s lore from the written materials. Believe it or not, there’s a maze that is actually really cool, a statement I may never make again. Finally, an unexpected time travel puzzle near the end is extraordinarily satisfying to solve.
There are three endings depending on how you play out the endgame, with the two better endings requiring you having solved previous puzzles. They’re well written, if a little underwhelming from a story perspective, an expected outcome given the utter lack of plot progression throughout the game.
For those who loved Enchanter, Sorcerer may feel like a bit of a letdown as it veers wildly in tone and barely does anything to further the Zorkian lore. Thankfully, the excellent spellcasting system was maintained; so if you’re mostly just in it for the puzzle-solving you’ll be right at home.
Zifmia review. "Oh hi, reader!", January 20, 2024The first game of the second trilogy in the Zork universe, Enchanter tells a much more interesting tale with significantly more rewarding puzzles than its predecessors. Sadly, some questionable design choices and inconsistency make it not as fun to play today.
Rather than being a treasure hunter, you play a young magician whose skills are so pathetic that they’ve been sent under relative anonymity to a castle to defeat the evil Krill, a vastly powerful wizard. You begin the game with four spells, three of which you barely remember, and must learn more in order to prevail. As you find scrolls, you can imprint them into your spell book and use them repeatedly, with the exception of two spells that are so powerful they can only be used once. Only a few puzzles in the game don’t require magic; the rest all rely on you using at least one spell, if even for one part of the task. And your reward for solving each puzzle grants you another spell.
Initially, you can only memorize three spells at a time; after using them you have to rememorize them again if you want to use them. While this obstacle seems pointlessly cruel at first, it makes sense given the general ineptitude of your character and plays a key role in future puzzles where preparation is required before entering a dangerous situation. What is truly fun, though, is all the various ways you can utilize your spells. Some aren’t needed to win the game at all, but can be used in lieu of other spells. Several puzzles have multiple solutions to cater to the inner workings of your brain. They’re also a welcome mix of serious (defend against unnatural death) and silly spells (turn your foe into an amphibian). Better yet, there’s plenty of funny easter eggs if you want to intentionally misuse your spells.
As for the two spells I mentioned that can only be used once; they can be used in several places, but only one is correct, giving you extra pause before you deploy them. While using them incorrectly puts your game in an unwinnable state, it’s not that difficult to tell when you’ve boofed. And even if you don’t realize it, the game is short enough that backtracking isn’t stressful.
Sadly, this wonderful spell system is almost ruined by issues rampant in the early days of gaming. Most unforgivable are the hunger and thirst daemons that clog up most of the fun. While finding water and food is easy and your supply should last you the whole game unless you completely fiddle-fart around, the whole process just gets in the way. You have an inventory limit that’s needlessly wasted on carrying sustenance. Some puzzles have delicate timing, and if you happen to be really thirsty or hungry in that moment it can ruin the process. And mostly it’s just not interesting. There’s also a sleep daemon, though it’s not as cumbersome and leads you to dreams which can provide subtle hints.
I also became frustrated on several occasions with the puzzles. While they are all generally logical (though a bit of a stretch in a couple of cases), and a few are almost insultingly easy, most are poorly clued with no guidance if you’re on the right track. While I don’t expect a cheering audience while solving a puzzle, there are many times I wasn’t sure if my issue was that I was completely off base or if the parser just didn’t like the way I was phrasing something. That’s not to say the parser is poor; many synonyms are implemented and it can handle multi-step commands. But some of the responses are so curt and generic that I assumed I was asking something of the game not possible only to learn that I was oh so close to figuring it out. Thus I had to look up a few hints for what otherwise would have been very satisfying puzzles to solve.
The prose itself is clean and in general evocative, though on occasions it’s sparse and they’re only so many ways to keep me interested in a run-of-the-mill castle. The game certainly could have been haunting, though akin to Zork there’s more focus on whimsy, which is occasionally jarring even when funny. The final game sequence, especially, feels like a bit of a letdown as it’s very quick with little time for the atmosphere to settle in.
Despite my quibbles, Enchanter is definitely worth a play by Infocom fans, especially if you intend to play the other games in the series. Just be prepared to be annoyed at times and have a hint guide handy.
Return of a Legend legend!, September 17, 2023Bob Bates is a legend in the world of text adventures. While his two games for Infocom (Arthur and Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels) are generally not considered among their best, he co-founded Legend Entertainment and had his hands in almost every game, including Eric the Unready, Gateway, The Blackstone Chronicles, and Quandaries. After being co-president of Zynga and working on all sorts of projects, he returned after 20 years to the world of interactive fiction with the delightful Thaumistry: In Charm’s Way. I was one of the kickstarters and even got a couple of lines into the game myself. Naturally, I was quite eager to play. And while it’s a very short game with little freedom, it’s still a joy for those who like wordplay and tongue-in-cheek humor.
You play as Eric Knight, a young inventor who got famous as a teenager thanks to a lab accident that led to a remarkable invention. However, years have gone by without anything else to add to the résumé. With his career on the verge of ruin, he is visited by a bodger, a magical user who is part of a hidden society that subtly tries to affect positive change in the world. A very successful inventor has created a device that can detect magic, which would be the end of the bodgers; you’re enlisted to sneak into a convention to destroy this device.
Thaumistry is excellently coded. I’ve played the game twice now and have detected not a single bug, incongruent response, or guess-the-verb issue that tend to be the hallmark frustrations with text adventures. Your bodger friend gives you a tutorial on magic (while the game gives you a tutorial on playing text adventures), including teaching you a few spells (or charms, as it were), as you learn about their history before being brought to the convention. Of course, the magic-detecting device is under guard and there are investors who would also like to get their hands on it.
The disappointing feature of the game is that it's overly linear. While there is often a few puzzles you can be working on at a given time, each has only one solution. And with few exceptions, every spell you learn throughout the game is only relevant to one puzzle, often obviously so. There are a couple of spells that require some acute thinking, including a two-step puzzle that involves time travel. And most alternative solutions that aren’t accepted are at least recognized and explained away. However, I would have much preferred a system like in Wishbringer, where every puzzle has multiple solutions and more points were awarded for the more clever angle. Speaking of points, this game has 100 of them, and there is no way to win the game without getting all 100, defeating the purpose of the scoring system.
The game also needlessly locks off certain areas until your bodger friend feels you need them, making him seem less like a sidekick than a manipulative dungeon master. More than that, these additional areas (such as the zoo and the financial district) are neither near the convention nor connected to it in anyway, making the exercise feel quite contrived.
While there are no graphics or sound of any kind, a helpful map is one click away so that you don’t need to make one yourself. Though, the map is so small that within twenty minutes of playing you’ll have it memorized anyway. And there is an excellent nested hint system that recognizes where you are in the game and offers gradual hints for available puzzles only.
What ultimately saves the game is–-forgive me-–its charm. Nearly every character and scene exudes whimsy, from the twin sisters who created a literal copy machine to the inventor who values his privacy so much that nobody is allowed to see his product. Perhaps my favorite is a stranger you bump into who is playing with an invisible dog, and you must figure out how to convince the dog that you are a worthy play partner. The game also has the classic Infocom-style digs at pop culture and authority figures without it feeling like Mr. Bates is hitting you over the head with his personal grievances.
While it doesn’t offer much in the way of length or challenge, Thaumistry is an amusing romp that should take even text adventure novices no more than an afternoon or two to complete.
C'Mon n' Ride It, April 7, 2023Vicious Cycles does an excellent job of utilizing a time loop mechanic while struggling to deliver a story that makes the puzzles worthwhile.
Awakening in a subway station, you have about 25 moves to prevent a terrorist attack that blows up a passing train. There are only six "rooms" you can access, some being on the train itself. Nearly every puzzle that brings you closer to your goal requires learning by dying. Not because you learn information via death, but rather you are required to pursue objectives that will take up the full 25 moves. Each success here is quite satisfying, as information learned is generally easy to apply on your next cycle. One puzzle involving a gas mask does not feel intuitive, but otherwise there's nothing terribly frustrating.
Unfortunately, the story is not delivered quite as smoothly. Backstory is more or less dumped in between cycles. While you are given prompts during each info dump, you have no agency to do anything interesting. During the final flashback, you are suddenly given agency to make a change to the past. While the story is interesting, no character has time to grow on you and it was presented too haphazardly to land with me on an emotional level.
My favorite part of the game happens in the background. In one of the train compartments, there is a girl and her younger brother on their way to school, and he really really doesn't want to go. Listening to their conversation is fun, but you can engage the boy and learn more about his relationship and home life. You learn nothing that helps you but it humanizes the world and provides ample motivation to keep going.
Recommended for anyone who enjoys time loops.
In the very depths of Hell, do not demons love one another?, March 17, 2023I played this as a child and never got out of the first area. I figured I was young and impatient and decided to revisit this with additional forbearance and wisdom. I got exactly as far as I did thirty-five years ago before pulling up a walkthrough.
Demon’s Forge is the first game Brian Fargo designed (and self-published!) at the age of 19. Two years later he would start his own company, Interplay, and helped designed some well-received games including the Bard’s Tale series, Tass Times in Tonetown, and Neuromancer. He definitely got better at his craft as time went on.
The plot of Demon’s Forge is hilarious; you were caught murdering four of the king’s guards, so your punishment is to be thrown into the forge which spells certain death. But if you manage to escape, the king will be like, “Impressive, you may go. I didn’t really like those guards anyway.” Along the way you will need to throw everything including the kitchen sink at every problem in hopes that something works.
The first puzzle that most people will never solve (and the one that got me stuck both times) involves accessing a room that is not mentioned in the previous room’s description and can only be found by using a non-directional verb. And it can only be accessed during one specific turn. A very stretched imagination could consider this fair if the verb required was mentioned in the manual or hinted at in the game in any fashion. But, alas. Thankfully, future puzzles are not quite as cruel, but they are also not alone in their moon logic.
To no surprise the parser can’t compete with Infocom’s at the time, but man oh man there are almost no synonyms implemented. There will be several times you are on the right track but you can’t guess the correct verb. Sometimes “use” is the correct choice while most of the time its more specific. Also frustrating is the inability to just look at the room you’re in; if you want to read the sparse description you need to exit and come back (which is not always possible).
There are a few puzzles that are indeed reasonable, though these are mostly near the endgame when you’ve already resorted to a walkthrough. Strangely enough, defeating the demon itself is probably the easiest puzzle in the game.
The graphics are standard for 1981 and similar to what Sierra was putting out with their Hi-Res adventure games at the time. It is generally easy to tell what’s what and in a few areas the pictures enhance the mood.
There is no real reason to play Demon’s Forge outside of curiosity’s sake, though I want to give credit to Fargo for making me laugh a couple of times. At one point you can find a secret room by going north when there’s no actual exit; you enter an empty closet with just one clothing rod and the game yells, “What are you doing in the closet!” But my favorite is when you come across a bunny. It’s in the same room with a wand and a top hat, so I was looking forward to a potential magic trick. Nope!
>Get rabbit
“The rabbit bites you and you die.”
Best instant death ever.
He never would have made it past the rats. He hates rats. , March 17, 2023Playing a tomb raider is a perfect setting for a text adventure, and there’s so many things about this game that Infocom got right. Unfortunately, I just didn’t have a lot of fun while playing.
You wake up in a abandoned encampment off the Nile River; during your expedition to uncover a pyramid and hopefully gain the fortune and glory you’ve always deserved, your paid Islamic crew has left you for dead. Why were you abandoned? Because — as the feelies and the introduction to Infidel so clearly state — you’re a racist, narcissistic jerk. Thankfully, your character’s personality doesn’t come out a lot as the game progresses, but it’s still a disconcerting character to play in the second person.
The game begins as you search for supplies your crew didn’t take off with before taking on the entire expedition yourself. Finding the pyramid is fairly simple and the rest of the game is essentially recognizing booby traps and gathering treasure. A significant portion of the puzzle-solving involves finding and deciphering ASCII hieroglyphics. While it turns out not to be a terribly complicated process, it’s an uneven design choice.
Some of the puzzles can be solved using basic deduction skills (and satisfyingly so), but if you’re able to read the glyphs the answers are given away. Never mind that it doesn’t make sense for the Egyptians to have written such helpful instructions around the pyramid (and never mind that there would be no booby traps in the first place). But if you’ve solved the language, the puzzles are then a cake walk. This would make sense if the intent was to give the player the option of solving each puzzle the way they found the most fun. But there are a couple of puzzles (including the final one) that definitely cannot be solved by deduction; thus, deciphering the hieroglyphs is required.
There is also a thirst daemon and a finite light source, but thankfully they are very lenient and more present for realism than as a puzzle. There is an inventory restriction as well but it’s also quite reasonable thanks to a knapsack you carry around. Stupidly, the game requires you to take off the sack every single time you need to get something from it, which becomes quite obnoxious after the thirty-fifth time you’ve had to do it.
The writing is average quality. Some room descriptions are quite evocative and you definitely begin to feel like you’ve traveled to the past. But many object descriptions and action responses are terse and lifeless. For example, in one room you find a golden cluster, and when you try to examine it, the game responds with, “There is nothing special about the golden cluster.” Well, sure. But what is a golden cluster? As it turns out, knowing what the game thinks is a cluster is very important to a future puzzle, and only through the process of elimination was I able to figure out what clusters were for.
That being said, compared to most Infocom games Infidel is rather easy and it took me only a couple of days to beat it. I required one hint due to having difficulty conceptualizing what a specific door looked like, but otherwise I found everything else to be pretty straightforward.
My apathy towards the game is in no small part to the character I was playing. There was little joy in helping him towards his goal. Perhaps if he had done some soul-searching as the game progressed, it would have made advancing more exciting. But the ending you’re playing towards is never not obvious and always not motivating (Spoiler - click to show)(I would have much preferred his comeuppance to be a painful life spent without fortune or recognition, rather than death), so the game relies squarely on the puzzles to keep the player going. And the puzzles are only just okay. And so it goes with Infidel.
Educational and Atmospheric, but those Blasted Puzzles!, March 12, 2023On the heels of A Mind Forever Voyaging, Infocom told another story about a nightmare future brought down on us by power and hubris. But rather than a projected future brought along by Reaganomics, this game explores the impacts of Project Trinity, the first detonation of an atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. While the examination of atomic history is impressively accurate and subtly powerful, the game itself gets in the way, with the fallout leaving a pernicious impact on its emotional resonance.
The game begins as you are on vacation in London, taking in the sights of Kensington Gardens. Within the hour, you are witness to and a victim of a nuclear attack that presumably begins World War III. Successfully avoiding the attack entails escaping the gardens through a magic portal into a fantasy world filled with giant mushrooms, incredible but twisted landscapes, and a slew of innocent animals. It is clear fairly quickly that this world is a metaphor for Earth’s atomic history and that your goal is to try to make things right. In order to travel back in time to visit the Trinity test site, you must first visit other atomic sites such as Nagasaki and the Bikini Atoll.
Brian Moriarty (author of Wishbringer and Loom), does an excellent job of portraying the subject matter earnestly and without sanctimony. There is no judgment leveled on any character or any political power. The symbolism in the fantasy world is neither overwrought nor heavy-handed. He even manages to weave in poignant quotes from Lewis Carroll to Walt Whitman to Emily Dickinson that help this world feel less cold and dark.
There’s a very puzzly game to be played to get to all the good parts. In a sense, the decision to include a lot of puzzles helped Trinity from becoming just a political statement. The game’s protagonist isn’t on some mission of glory; he’s just caught in the situation and fumbling through to survive. Unfortunately, there are so many missteps with the puzzles that the game’s poignant moments had to fight for brain space with my endless frustration with the gaming experience.
The first problem, and an expected one in 1986, was that so many puzzles require dying in order to learn what to do. While this can work well in comedy or light-hearted adventures (especially if the deaths are quick), here it just continually disrupts the mood. To be clear, dying is an important and I would say necessary part of Trinity for its core message to come across. But the need for random, non-atomic related deaths (such as running into an angry barrow wight) just isn’t there.
I can’t even count how many walking dead situations I encountered, including a couple that require restarting the game completely and obtaining items that are not exactly out of the way but also not obviously important either. While again this is expected for an 80s game, it still hurts the spirit of the experience to suggest the reason you aren’t able to save the world from atomic destruction is because you didn’t pick up a piece of paper in London right before the bomb dropped.
One ridiculous game mechanic that leads to many deaths and walking dead scenarios is the inventory limit. Yes, carrying a heavy axe in real life would prevent me from carrying much else. But the axe is needed often and unpredictably and so deciding when or where not to take it with you is an impossible guessing game. And it all could have been solved with a simple rucksack. There are some types of game where deciding what to bring with you is a fun, logical puzzle. Trinity is the exact opposite of this type of game.
Finally, I encountered a bug that I couldn’t find reproduced anywhere on the internet. One of the portals to a past atomic site becomes completely unavailable if you do things in an arbitrarily different order. So yet again I had to restart almost the entire game for no good reason.
All of the said, there are still many fun puzzles! If you have the correct items with you and are in the right place at the right time, they are generally entertaining and not overly difficult. The endgame is easily the best part as Moriarty meticulously recreated the Trinity test site and implemented, for the most part, organic puzzles that help you immerse yourself in the timeline. Again, you still have to have a couple of arbitrarily correct items in your possession. And the time limits in this area are a bit cruel. But all in all it was still satisfying, with an ending that has been well debated but completely satisfied my sensibilities.
Despite all of my frustrations, I rated the game as high as I did because of how well Moriarty handled the subject matter. It inspired me to read a lot about the Trinity project as well as the world history of atomic testing, including an enormous seven-part series by Jimmy Maher over at the Digital Antiquarian. I’m glad to have played Trinity. I’m just not sure I could bear doing it again.
Thinking fourth dimensionally!, June 11, 2022"The encounter could create a time paradox. The results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe!...Granted, that's the worst-case scenario." -- Doc Brown, Back to the Future 2
And such is the world logic of All Things Devours. The inventor of a time-travel machine, Natalie Williams comes to the same realization about paradoxes and sets out to destroy the machine. However, she soon realizes that her plans have been taken and she must find them so that the machine can never be made again. And soon the player realizes that time travel is necessary to find those papers, and there's a total span of nine minutes in which to work to avoid the guards, avoid your present self, and avoid creating a paradox for your present self.
Toby Ord crafted an incredibly tight puzzle box that is a delightful gift to unwrap, with Natalie's insight and foresight the present (and the past!). There is a lot of learning by dying as you get to know what Natalie already knows about the facility as well as the game's internal logic about time travel. The logic, as with all time travel stories, breaks down if you think about it too much; however, it is consistent within the story. I took extensive notes while playing, detailing the exact time of each move I made, and then after destroying the universe with another paradox, adjusting actions ever so slightly the next time around. Normally, learning by dying eventually exhausts me, but because every death here taught me something new, I never stopped having fun.
Despite the incredibly tight timeline, there is still a little flexibility with decision-making as well as multiple solutions to several puzzles. Some of those solutions require knowledge it would be impossible for Natalie to know without dying first, though there is a path through the game that is plausible if you care about that sort of thing. My only critique is the final solution only insofar as I thought my alternate solution should have worked!
One of the best uses of time travel I've seen in a game and a treat for those who enjoy a complex puzzle.
A light comedy adventure best suited for children to play with help from another, June 11, 2022To start I want to say I love that the Aurora Public Library created and hosts this game on their website. Just a great opportunity for children to be exposed to interactive fiction in a very welcoming manner.
Escape from the Wizard's Castle is a short and simplistic adventure that holds your hand throughout the game. You play a generic adventurer who discovers a castle that is trapped in time, and to succeed you must solve five spells the wizard cast prior to him inexplicably forgetting how to break them. He wants you to succeed, however, and will provide constant encouragement in the form of terrible puns. There is also a raven who wants you to succeed as well and who can provide strong hints if you're stuck.
The game provides a tutorial on how to navigate a Twine game and the goals are always obvious, making this non-threatening to newcomers. Each room comes with a pleasant hand-drawn art style reminiscent of your typical hidden object game and serve well as a visual aid to the text. While you are frequently picking up everything not nailed down, you never have to manipulate your inventory to solve a puzzle. For example, if you find a key and then come to a locked door, all you need to do is click on the suggested hyperlink to open the door. In fact, the inventory is more of a log of your progress than anything. When you check it, the game lists the items you have and then says, "To look at these items more closely, you'll need to go attempt their puzzles."
The puzzles themselves are separate from the main narrative. When a puzzle is present, the game will prompt you to solve the puzzle by taking you to another screen. These puzzles are the highlight of the game, as they all require either logical reasoning or interpretation of symbolism. The game description warns that small children may need help with some of the puzzles. I can attest that a full grown adult who solved All Things Devours without hints may have also needed help with some of the puzzles. One of the answers was fairly obvious in retrospect (but would be impossible for visually impaired players), and one I still didn't quite understand even after solving it.
The main critique I have for the game is that given the basic story and simple punnery, the audience who would thoroughly enjoy this game is probably limited to elementary school-aged children, while the puzzles seem to be more for a middle-school aged audience. This would be fine if playing with a parent, but I am worried the intended audience would get frustrated at times if playing alone.
Overall, this is a solid effort. I enjoyed a couple of the puzzles, and I smirked a few times at the wizard's running commentary. And even if young players are not enamored by the game, I imagine it could be still inspire them to get into the medium.
Perfect puzzle. Not so perfect implementation., June 10, 2022I was a senior in college when this game was released and played it the moment it dropped. I took copious notes while playing and brought those notes to my classes, occasionally ignoring my professors to hammer out this puzzle. No regrets.
The conceit--building a dungeon worth of death traps as a contract to hire for a perverse king--is brilliant. Despite the dungeon having 16 rooms and there being 17 traps to purchase, there is only one solution to killing off the prisoner; as such, Lock & Key more than any interactive fiction feels like solving a logic grid puzzle from a games magazine. As the prisoner continually foils traps, you must determine what traps are completely worthless versus what traps slow him down (and in the best order they slow him down).
Naturally, there is much "learn by dying" as you take notes on why each traps fails and why. And, unfortunately, every time the prisoner escapes you have to start over from scratch. So every play through involves a tedious resetting of doors and resetting of traps. There are some shortcuts implemented to tackle this and if you are confident in your door layout or some of the trap layout you can create a save file to save you some time. But even while taking advantage of both, I was beginning to resent the game a little before I solved it, which in turn took some of the joy out of the triumph.
If you're a fan of dark, witty humor (which a game like this requires in order to be palatable) Cadre provides plenty with nearly every possible action. It certainly takes a little bit of the edge off the tedium.
Just another guy in another galaxy, June 1, 2022The Elysium Enigma is a competently made game that easily drew me into its world of intergalactic politics and subterfuge and I eagerly rushed through it. Unfortunately, the story and plot turns were unsatisfying and I felt like a spy left out in the cold.
As a diplomat checking in on one of the Empire's remote planets, you are presented with the choice of following your basic orders and bringing the game to a swift and boring ending, or defying your orders and getting your hands into the planet's affairs. Defying your orders essentially leads you to doing text adventure things: talking to others, exploring, picking up everything, and shooting stray dogs. You know, the usual. It becomes quite clear, quite early, the motives of the game's three NPCs. And then the rest of the game is solving fairly rudimentary puzzles to uncover somewhat interesting but nonewhat surprising information.
I certainly had fun pulling back the curtain one puzzle at a time. But ultimately I was left not caring about any of it. The PC is never not incredulous, except when faced with blatant evidence contrary to his beliefs. He is never not classist, even when shown repeatedly the problems of his culture. He doesn't grow in any way no matter what choices you make. So the "winning" ending doesn't feel much different than the default ending. Not only do we not learn much about the PC, we are not given any reason to root for him. In fact, I wound up rooting for everyone else but our hero. There was ample opportunity for deeper NPC interaction and character development that sadly never materialized.
The game plays well, with fair puzzles and a layered hint system. While some of the puzzles are directly related to the story and fit well within the world, others are there for pacing only. For example, an optional puzzle involves having to make a fishing rod to catch a fish to give to a cat to get the cat to move off of a box. I just wanted to throw something at the cat.
If you're looking for a fairly easy and fairly short puzzler, spending a couple of hours with The Elysium Enigma could hit the spot. Just don't expect much more than what you see on the surface.
An uphill fight, May 22, 2022>hint
That's now how life works.
And so sets the mood for A Change in the Weather: dark, dreary, and unforgiving.
I tried this a couple of times in my youth and could not get into it. I think knowing going in that you could lock the game out victory near constantly kept me from immersing myself in the world. I just gave it another shot and I'm glad I did.
The atmosphere really is lovely. Despite the prose being fairly terse, Plotkin does an excellent job heightening the senses. Even the faintest change in the weather is felt and gives the player a sense of urgency I think is necessary for this game to work. And despite given no goal other than exploring, I was plenty motivated to solve each puzzle simply by the nature of rushing against the weather. The fox serves to amplify the setting while also giving the player an extrinsic motivation to keep going.
Losing to the weather and the frequent restarts and restores didn't negatively impact my experience at all. There are only six locations and a limited number of things to interact with, so it never felt like a chore to try things over again. The game's downfall, sadly, is that some of the puzzle solutions don't feel intuitive or logical. While mapping the hill is fairly simple, it's still difficult to get a sense of how exactly the landscape is formed. This ultimately kept me stuck for a long time in the second half. Specifically, (Spoiler - click to show)I never thought to use the boulder to slow down the torrent of water. For one, there is no indication that the boulder can be pushed in a direction, as the default way to push it is the wrong way for no apparent reason. Secondly, I just couldn't picture in my head where the boulder would land and somehow help me. On the other hand, using the sandbags was intuitive. Unfortunately, if you drop even one of the sandbags by the wildflowers (despite the fact that it works just as well there to slow down the torrent), this will prevent the fox from guiding you to where to dig to divert the water. Ultimately, while I was able to essentially reach the finale on my own, I was forced to succumb to a walkthrough to fix some of the details.
So I will offer an unusual recommendation. Play A Change in the Weather to experience the setting and have a walkthrough handy. But only use the walkthrough once the game has you exhausted. The struggle is what makes it beautiful. That's how life works.
Competent but underwhelming sequel, February 26, 2022I fell in love with New Haz and its universe while playing Sherwin's Fallacy of Dawn. The story in Necrotic Drift occurs mostly in a nearby town with an entirely different cast, though frequent references are made to the events in the first game. And while this entry into the series is more focused, I unfortunately found myself missing New Haz and its citizens.
You take control of Jarret Duffy, a D&D and fantasy buff who is in his 20s and aimless (a Sherwin staple). You are introduced to your mostly grade-A lowlife friends and your incredibly patient yet frustrated girlfriend Audrey. She comes dangerously close to being a manic pixie dream girl: kind of quirky, attractive, always available to Jarret despite their numerous breakups and his utter lack of maturation, and her existence here seems mostly to highlight the protagonist. We barely get to know anything about her despite a lot of opportunity. And we are continually told that Jarret is the only guy that has made her happy, even though we are never really shown (or told) why outside of his ability to make her laugh with referential humor. We get to know her a bit better in the epilogue as a person outside of Jarret's world, but it still winds up being framed around his journey.
Drift has a slightly more mature story than its predecessor, though it plays like it was already written (dialogue and all) and then puzzles and conversation trees were shoehorned in anywhere and everywhere. The game is divided into four chapters, and the first three are more or less on rails. There is very little to do outside of talking to other characters and picking from very limited conversation topics. Objects highlighted in room descriptions or the game's pictures are routinely not implemented (e.g. the pictures in your bedroom). And during this time the characters we get to know the best are incredibly disgusting and are then never mentioned again.
So I was inpatient by the time the fourth and final chapter rolled around and we finally got to the game's plot: a seance gone wrong at the mall where you work has dumped a horde of fantasy genre baddies in between you and the exit. Using your fists and your wits, you need to dispose of each creature in succession.
While I love this idea, the execution is really lacking. Jarret and his friends mostly underreact to the Pandora's box around them, showing brief flashes of emotion before just sort of moseying around some more. Ergo, the tension that should be there is non-existent. While Audrey and your friends occasionally chip in with advice or support, it's pretty much the Jarret show as he gets to save Audrey again and again while she gets a bit turned on. The monsters don't interact with each other and generally stay put, allowing you to look around for the obvious key that unlocks their death. For example, you are explicitly told that a wraith can be killed by silver, and in the same room you encounter the wraith, the only object not locked down is made of silver. Puzzles do get a bit better as the game goes on (I especially like the solution to defeating the poltergeist), but by that time my interest had waned. And there's a soft inventory limit that, while not a significant barrier to anything, is difficult to gauge and does nothing to serve the puzzles or the story.
Sherwin certainly made improvements with this game. I didn't discover any bugs while playing. There were no confusing room exits. The parser understands more commands. And puzzles are better clued, if not overclued at times. And I likely would have forgiven the game's faults if I had been entranced by the writing. While Sherwin characters have always been acutely clever (and do a lot of their self-reflection in parentheticals), it gets too much for me even at times. Admittedly, I am not a fantasy genre fan and have never played D&D, so the characters didn't speak to me like the 80's video game buffs in Fallacy of Dawn. But more than that, the characters rarely have genuine moments as they're too busy trying to out-clever one another, and it gets exhausting. That being said, the writing is still above-average. I laughed out loud a few times and enjoyed the turns of phrase. My favorite example is when Jarret describes Audrey as having been in "various states of flabbergastation with me."
The ending and epilogue really push hard for the genuine moments (with some huge text dumps) that were barely present in the main game. But as I wasn't really invested in the characters, I wasn't moved like I was with Fallacy of Dawn or Sherwin's most recent game, Jay Schilling's Edge of Chaos. Your mileage may vary, especially if you are familiar with and enjoy the fantasy genre. Meanwhile, I look forward to playing Cryptozookeeper, the final game in the series.
Walk a mile in another's shoes, March 10, 2021As a white, cisgender, straight male I am in the dominant group in almost every conceivable way and have been the transgression of microaggressions too many times to count. I have had to continually educate myself and be intentional on how my words and actions perpetuate acculturative stress, systemic racism, and impact my relationships with my peers. Fobazi Ettarh does an excellent job of allowing the player to experience this stress in the day to day life as either a gay male or a disabled, black, female.
With either character you choose, you are continually bombarded with realistic microaggressions and are asked to make choices as to how you would respond in that situation. The common theme throughout is how exhausting it is to be around well-intentioned people who are constantly hurting you. Indeed, I have played through this a few times now and have been exhausted every time. And I don’t have to live it.
While there are a couple of minor visual bugs, play is smooth and each time through takes no longer than twenty minutes. If I could change anything about the game it would be to make some of the microaggressions even more subtle to really hit home how easy it is for well-meaning people to be hurtful. That said, Killing Me Softly effectively does what it wants to do.
I work for a mental health agency and made this a part of a team training exercise; it was well-received and the discussion was quite robust. For those inclined to do the same, please give BIPOC and LGBTQ staff the option of opting-out as it is not their job to relive the pain in their daily lives and educate the dominant group.
And all I got was this lousy Heechee medallion, January 25, 2021Science fiction is at its best when it is used as a tool to explore the human condition. Science fiction games have an extra hurdle of not alienating players by making the sci-fi overly complex; to do so can disengage the player from the story. Gateway mostly succeeds at both before faltering in the final act.
As the story's hero, you play a prospector hoping to gain fame and fortune by going off on solo space missions to collect artifacts from the mysterious Heechee race, whose equipment you are immersed in but barely understand. Half of the game is learning how to use and manipulate the various Heechee tools and machines you come across, and half the game is solving standard fare adventure puzzles. Thankfully, learning the alien technology is often a fairly simple exercise in interpreting basic symbolism or at worst guessing and checking. And for the most part the rest of the puzzles are only moderately challenging. I required only a few hints for the duration.
The game design is identical to all the early Legend games, with the option of playing the game as a straight text adventure or using a graphical point and click interface reminiscent of the frame hell of Geocities websites and requiring the user to choose from a list of every possible verb the game understands rather than the standard eight from LucasArts games of the time. While I can't imagine any sane person strictly using the mouse to play Gateway, the verb list is occasionally helpful for reference and the still pictures are helpful in visualizing puzzles in addition to being gorgeous.
The plot itself is engaging, slowly unraveling while allowing the player to tackle one of several puzzles at any given time. This was a huge relief as sometimes I just needed a break from one puzzle; several times when I came back to a tough one the solution became clear. The alien worlds you visit are for the most part captivating, each with their own technology as well as flora and fauna. The most satisfying areas of the game for me were the puzzles surrounding the beast (with unexpected drama with every step) and the world where you find a stranded prospector (as every puzzle has a moral and immoral solution). I did find one, uh, bug involving a spider that required some finesse. And there is no way to put the game in an unwinnable state unless your only save is during one of the game's few local time limits.
Unfortunately, the end game is a disappointing mess. The sci-fi becomes Inception level confusing without the dramatic appeal, and the puzzles become more obtuse. In particular, the puzzle involving the goblin takes some guess-the-author's-mind wizardry, and the final puzzle involving (Spoiler - click to show)the VR manual is a disappointing whimper. The ending itself sees the player in a passive role and is also lacking a satisfying resolution. Still, I'm quite glad I played Gateway and look forward to playing the sequel.
Rough around the edges, but honest and endearing, November 27, 2020While I do enjoy a good character study where the players talk way above their station (e.g. Mamet Speak), I am more comfortable when the characters just act and talk like run-of-the-mill boring humans. While the writing here isn't always up to par, Lance Nathan creates a sympathetic boring protagonist in Perry and plops him into an electric situation. The entire game takes place at a college party that Perry is entirely uncomfortable with; in that sense, he reminds me a lot of myself. In the following paragraph, Nathan demonstrates his strengths and weaknesses all in one:
How does your roommate know these people? And how does anyone get this drunk? For a moment you pause to wonder if there's a connection, before realizing you really don't care and would rather not think about it. Plenty of time to think about it tomorrow, you tell yourself bitterly, while you're cleaning up.
The first two questions say a lot while saying very little. Our protagonist is likely an introvert. He's usually sober, and likes to have a sense of control over himself and his surroundings. He also has a contentious relationship with his roommate but is not confident enough to confront him. The resentment is growing and will likely simmer for a long time. But then the paragraph just goes on as Perry's thoughts and feelings are dissected (replete with an adverb) and thrown in our laps. We learn nothing new. This happens a few times throughout the story, the author not trusting that the player will pick up on the characterizations.
That said, I'd like to point out another strong introduction to the story's hero, Andy:
Sometimes it could be aggravating; you got mad at him over nothing in eighth grade and the two of you spent a month not speaking to each other, until one day he sat down across from you at lunch again and you started complaining about the meatloaf and everything was back to normal.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I have lived this exact situation and I imagine many others have as well. Nothing quite like shoving resentment down without talking about it and being glad things feel okay for a while.
The story is on rails, which is ideal here. However, occasionally you will read a conversation that happens between characters, then click on a hyperlink to observe something else, and then when you return you get the same text dump you saw before. I encourage the author to brush up on if/then/else for future games in order to avoid this continuity issue.
Despite my concerns, I did enjoy this story. The characters are fun and the ending is bittersweet. I look forward to any future offerings from Nathan.
Historical science-fiction with little science, November 1, 2020A potentially charming paradox experiment where Sir Isaac Newton must restore the timeline when modern folks somehow forget the laws of physics due to Einstein not being able to build on Newton's work.
Unfortunately, there is little interactivity as the game actively encourages you not to explore or talk to anyone, and many rudimentary actions are dismissed as Isaac not being interested. There are also only a couple of novice level puzzles and neither of them have to do with time travel or science; essentially you are just guiding Isaac along the story path until you reach the ending.
It was an interesting choice to use past-tense and third-person, and given the lack of interactivity it worked. I wish more time had been spent on world building. The actual science is given superficial treatment and I learned very little about Newton or his theories.
River crossing puzzle, November 1, 2020This is just your standard river crossing puzzle, and if you've ever solved one before then this shouldn't take you more than about ten minutes. There's one tiny additional puzzle, but there's no red herrings as there's hardly anything to look at other than the cabbage, sheep, and bear you're trying to get across.
In fact, the game's entertainment is pretty much solely from all the ways you can lose. In that regard it's quite charming and I wish there were a dozen more ways to fail. Geng has a way with words and I am looking forward to future offerings from him.
Competently coded, underdeveloped world, November 1, 2020I will play any time travel game, full stop. Knowing that Entangled has eight endings had me jazzed to dive in. Unfortunately, after finding the first ending I had little desire to find the rest.
Entangled is a game with a bunch of neat set pieces with little world view or motivation for them existing. The PC is at first motivated to find his friend across town because his friend's wife is being obnoxious. This is interrupted by the motivation to help a delusional man in the street for no apparent reason. The game literally won't let you find your friend until you get rid of the guy but the PC is given no motivation to do so. The actual reason is to force the player to explore the town and talk to all the characters before finding the time machine, but since I was focused more on the puzzle than the exploration, I didn't get much out of it.
After the PC time travels, the objective becomes more focused, though my motivation did not. Getting back to one's own time is simple enough, but finding the other seven endings presumably is done by further exploration and manipulating the lives of your friends/neighbors across town. But other than finding endings, I found little motivation to do this. I have no reason to care about these characters or their lives, because the only thing I know about the PC is that he hates his friend's wife and the only thing I know about the NPCs are highlights from their biographies.
Take for example Nick, one of the primary NPCs. He runs a tattoo shop and he used to play music.
>ask about tattoos
"I've been doing it for around 30 years now. I think I've learned my art. If you're looking for something. Let me know."
>ask about music
"You like it? It's some stuff that I wrote when I lived in Los Angeles. It's a little dated now. But I think it has a solid beat."
>ask about Los Angeles
"Yeah, I used to live out there. Some crazy times. I played guitar for a few bands, but wrote a hit with this one guy. Axl. Made pay dirt there. He went off and made it big. I took the money and ran."
Wait, so Nick could have been in Guns 'N Roses? That's amazing! Except Nick shows no emotion about it. No wistfulness. No regret. Not even interest. He just casually mentions it as trivia, not expecting that anybody even knows who he's talking about. I presume that if I were to play my cards right, I could in the past convince Nick to not give up guitar and he could make it big. But since he doesn't seem to care, I don't either.
Atmosphere is a problem throughout. Most of the things that happen are just cuckoo bananas but the descriptions are so perfunctory one would think that androids are observing. Early in the game when the delusional guy is ranting about UFOs, most people in town dismiss him or believe he's seeing meteor showers. You can humor him by trying to see what he's seeing.
>x lights
You look up, seeing a streak in the sky for a second. You suppose it's a ufo.
So now the PC thinks that something incredible and life-changing could be happening around them, and they just suppose and move on. Not that I want the author to lay out all of the PC's thoughts out on the table. But there's no sense of wonderment or awe or descriptions to elicit feeling. Everything just is.
All of that said, the game is coded extremely well. It appears the author worked on the game for four years and it was in beta-testing for about eight months, so they did their due diligence. The game responds to most reasonable things you can try and the NPCs respond to a ton of different questions. The game pushes the player gently when needed and the in-game hints are written well. I wouldn't have written such a lengthy review if there still wasn't so much more potential to be unleashed. I really wanted to like Entangled. But when a game's core is about the fate of the lives of humans, more time needs to be spent exploring the humanity.
As someone who has never found card readings appealing or helpful, this was not an experience I could get into. However, I would imagine for those that do that this could be a gratifying experience. Thomson has presented a slick, simple, and beautiful application and I hope there is an audience for this.
Half-baked, October 29, 2020A far out (see what I did there?) story based on a far out (yup, still going there) theory about how our amazing brains became amazing by getting high all the time. I have never had the fortune of getting high, so I'm probably too stupid to review this, but I'll give it a shot.
Heaton does a decent job of making the theory come to life, though in a much more accelerated fashion. It's humorous how quickly our protagonist becomes smart and successful, including proving it by winning a game of mancala. But for me the protagonist never really came to life like the hero in The Edifice. Part of that may be the structure of the game; you can win without any thought at all just by clicking every link. The only choices are during the games of Tic-Tac-Toe (the most basic game ever invented) and mancala. And while I do like the occasional game of mancala, the presentation here was a bit confusing and I won by accident.
But, like I said, I've never been high before.
Infectious!, October 29, 2020While the concept of being a doppelganger for hire is brilliant, what really excited me to play and keep playing this game was the sheer enthusiasm of our protagonist. It's hard not to be infected by their joy for their work and their optimism that their career will take off. Because of this, I made the effort to find every line I text I could even if I sensed it wouldn't change the plot or lead to a different ending.
In fact, I was ready to give this five stars until I couldn't reach one of the four endings as the game kept crashing for me while at the recital heading for ending four. The walkthrough was not helpful in avoiding this bug.
If there is a sequel I will be first in line to play as I'm still rooting hard for our rising doppelganger star!
Has potential, but unplayable, October 27, 2020The content warning for this game indicates "blood and murder" and to my knowledge this only refers to the final score this game will be given during the IFComp due to it being virtually unplayable.
I totally dig the concept as you play a young woman trying to break through as a pop star. You are given base stats in several different skills of a pop star which you can manipulate based on the choices you make. As the game progresses you must improve your ranking by impressing the judges, and presumably, murdering or avoid being murdered. Unfortunately, shortly after the first competition a passage becomes unpassable.
I may come back to this game if it's fixed. What is playable so far is bubble-gum fun and I'm intrigued by the horrors that await.
A goofy and endearing RPG for beginners, October 23, 2020I don't love RPGs as much as I did when I was younger, but can still get roped in if the focus on story outweighs the focus on stats. Tavern Crawler does just that and succeeded in keeping me interested for a couple playthroughs.
You play as a gender neutral hero (with a choice of fighter, mage, or thief) who tags along with a female mage and a male fighter on a quest to slay a dragon and collect a handsome reward. What follows is a charming quest with plenty of plot twists and character development. You can take on many optional quests which can improve your stats but mostly focus on story development and a lot of your time is focused on building or destroying your relationship with your two partners.
Another cool feature is that you can decide to play in a more traditional RPG mode where you can focus on building your stats, but almost every puzzle can also be solved even with poor stats if you make the right choices. Saving and restoring is also easy along the way and there's no way to get stuck. There are multiple endings and every playthrough also has an epilogue that shows you how your actions affected others as well.
Amazing concept with near perfect execution, October 23, 2020What initially appears to be a charming slice-of-life about a six year-old girl helping her dad get ready for a dinner party turns into a old-school puzzlefest with an extraordinary mechanic that I'm embarrassed to admit I needed the in-game hints to even discover. For those that don't mind knowing ahead of time, the mechanic is (Spoiler - click to show) that your bedroom has a dollhouse which is a replica of the actual house, and putting items in and taking them out of their respective rooms changes their relative size in reality. For example (not in the game), if you were to put a toy sword in the dollhouse's kitchen, and then go to the actual kitchen, you'd find a regular sized sword.
The coding for this puzzlefest is damn impressive, as there are so many things you can do that aren't required that the game allows you to do, and even some potential alternate solutions to puzzles are at least acknowledged even if unsuccessful.
I badly wanted to give this five stars, but the more I played the game the more I found myself exhausted. Some of the puzzles enhance the charm of this universe and the way your family reacts (or doesn't react) to some of things you do is great. I actually adore the whole sequence with (Spoiler - click to show) the stegosaurus and the way Dad reacts to it. But there are also several puzzles that seem to be there simply for puzzle's sake, (for example the (Spoiler - click to show)rope/anchor puzzle inside the impossible bottle), and I found myself going to the hints quite often just to get a jumpstart on what to do next. There are also so many items you can carry or manipulate and a lot of them are irrelevant to progressing in the game, so I found myself easily getting overwhelmed and resorting to the hints for that reason as well. For their own sake, the progressive hints were really well done and I rarely needed the final hint to progress; I mainly just needed a nudge on where to focus my efforts.
A must play for puzzle enthusiasts and I would be surprised if The Impossible Bottle doesn't win an XYZZY award or three.
Butterfly in the sky, I can fly twice as high, October 23, 2020A short game that interweaves the magic of literature with a pirate's need to live one more glorious battle. Several historical works are referenced, such as Moby Dick and Peter Pan and the way they are weaved into the story is charming. If you're a fan of pirate fiction then this will likely be more enjoyable, though the concept is meant for everyone.
My only significant criticism is that some of the font choices (especially the ones in cursive) are really hard to read for my tired eyes, which significantly hurt my enjoyment.
I'm glad this wasn't a puzzle, as it would have not fit with the theme for poor Captain Graybeard.
Poor structure, poor writing, October 23, 2020In the game's blurb, the author announces (after begging the player not to quit the game early, which is always a good sign) that, " I am a believer of absurdity, that our actions in the end have no meaninging (sic) in the interacting force between humans and universe." Yet, this author's other entry in the competition was a moralistic game which strongly advocated that our choices make a lot of difference.
Playing through The Place does little to shed a light on the purpose of this story, though the message appears to be to look within for happiness instead of material pleasures. The player listens to a narrator talking about the life of a woman who is somewhat defined by the player's own tastes, as the story is constantly interrupted so that you can answer questions about your own dreams which are then projected onto the female protagonist. I suppose the message here is to ask the player to put their own dreams in perspective, though if that's the case then I'm not sure why the protagonist is given a specific gender.
Regardless, the story is just not written well. In addition to a lack of proofreading, the prose tries way too hard and trips over itself. The most egregious passage may be the following: "She feels the breeze of spring air brushing through the tip of her nose. Her lungs (sic) capacity expands, absorbing that volume of fresh air. Then, slowly decompressing to release the cardon (sic) dioxide, she gets the negative thoughts out of her mind." I am not certain how air can brush through the tip of a nose, and juxtaposing this with a biology textbook kills any mood this passage was going for.
Sci-fi story with racial injustice allegory, October 20, 2020As part of my career I teach (and learn) racial equity and antiracism and was hoping at least one game in this year's competition would address it. Stand Up/Stay Silent addresses it through an allegorical piece that takes place on a future Mars colony. I was reminded a bit of Blade Runner while playing.
I kind of wish this had addressed today's racism and political environment head on, though this could be traumatic for BIPOC players so it was probably wise to make it allegorical. That said, the game simply wasn't long enough to build this cyberpunk setting, and I was often left deciphering terminology instead of being in the moment with these characters.
I appreciate the choices offered throughout the game and the acknowledgment that being antiracist can take many forms in addition to direct protest. I also appreciate it addressing that there is no middle ground; you're either for or against.
A light JRPG parody, October 19, 2020Growing up on JRPGs and being a huge fan of the Dragon Quest series, I was excited when I loaded this one up. For sure it really stretches the bounds of interactive fiction, but here there's no hand-eye coordination necessary and there's plenty of text, so it works.
Quest for the Sword of Justice is a brief send-up of the genre, poking fun at the same things that most everyone has been poking fun at for thirty years now. The jokes still work, especially the more subtle ones you can discover just by examining the most random of things in your environment (like other people's meals!). However, I wish there was more to it and both possible endings annoyed me more than made me laugh, especially since they contradict each other.
If you're a fan of JRPGs you will probably find this amusing for ten minutes. If you've never played one, the jokes probably won't land as well.
Hints at something better, October 18, 2020A competently coded and not unpleasant game that is unfortunately devoid of story and creativity while implementing random combat elements and a pointless maze. There's only illusion to the plot, room descriptions are sparse, characters send you on fetching quests while telling you exactly what you should do, and all the interesting parts of the game are red herrings (for example, (Spoiler - click to show)the Morse code on the radio which I bothered to decode, the additional spells for the cauldron, and the cube which seems like it should have more scientific complexity but doesn't ). Despite this, Elsegar had so much potential!
For the most part, the parser is very kind. Exits are always clear and the game always seemed to understand what I was trying to do. One bizarre moment comes at the beginning, when you're told you can't get off the bed because the door is closed, though nothing in the room description indicates that the door is blocking you from standing up. Otherwise, things are clean and the presentation was crisp. The next game from this author will hopefully be more complex and give the protagonist motivations.
Fun idea with severe parser limitations, October 18, 2020Everything about Tangled Tales screams 1980's text adventure, including the manual which feels like it came directly from Infocom. While on the positive side this brought out a lot of nostalgia, it also came with all the drawbacks of the time. Tangled Tales uses its own parser and is reminiscent of Scott Adams' games, with brief and awkward descriptions. To wit:
"You examine a rusty old wheelbarrow. This is the kind often used to remove garden waste, or drunk [sic] from parties. A rusty old wheelbarrow is open and in a rusty old wheelbarrow is an empty glass container."
Also:
"A bottle of water is open and in a bottle of water is nothing." This despite the fact that the bottle is full of water and you can drink from it!
The game itself is rather easy, as it's mostly a series of fetching quests for fairy tale characters, reminiscent of King's Quest only some of the stories have changed slightly, being more crass. I did smirk a few times, my favorite twist being the reimagining of the Three Billy Goats Gruff tale. However, because the parser was quite limited with its syntax I got frustrated early and went to the walkthrough. To my dismay, the walkthrough also had its issues, as abbreviations used there were not always accepted by the parser, and a couple of times the compass directions were wrong. Also, my fairytale kingdom for an undo verb!
The low-res graphics were the highlight.
Erased...from existence, October 18, 2020There have been many games in the history of IF that have utilized the journal as a storytelling device, and many of those have had the player discover the journal pages out of order to add intrigue. In Passages, the entire story is reading a journal out of order, with the raison d'etre being a distortion of the space time continuum.
The time and space mechanics take a backseat here to the relationship described in the journal, primarily all of the author's regrets with regard to said relationship. It's a cool concept and I think it was structured fairly well. However, I think it would have made more of an impact if we had seen more journal entries from happier times to give the despair more weight. Mainly, I wish the protagonist wasn't such an insufferable twit; I had no emotions to spare for this person. To be fair, the PC reminds me of myself when I was fifteen, so your mileage may vary.
Snickers are best served cold, October 18, 2020Two feelings kept swirling around me while playing A Rope of Chalk. The first was jealousy, regularly wishing that my brain could come with a concept such as this; the second was gratitude, as this is only the second game by Veeder I have played and no doubt there is plenty of fun in my future.
Veeder does his best Kurosawa impersonation here, letting us experience the events of a sidewalk chalk competition from the perspective of the four students who helped put it on. It starts out as a quaint slice-of-life and slowly becomes a multi-layered, avant-garde tour-de-force. While there were times I was confused as to what was happening, Veeder anticipated this and installs a character whose purpose is to guide you as much as you need to not only advance in the story but to interpret your surroundings. You also have the choice to ignore this character if you'd like to interpret the story for yourself. And then when the story ends we pan back to the director's office to search for development notes and other delightful minutiae.
In my one playthrough I found no flaws, and the game continuously rewards observation and exploration (and knowledge of 2012 American politics!). So take your time and bask in this world for an hour or so.
Landmark Twine horror, October 17, 2020There are many types of games that can be made with Twine, but seemingly the most common and to this reviewer's opinion the most frustrating is the game on rails that pretends it's not on rails. The last thing I want to do after spending an hour playing a game is to replay it with all the different choices and discover that other than some flavor text, nothing has changed.
Babyface never pretends that it is a game or that the player has any agency. It's simply a short horror story that uses Twine to enhance the player experience by using inventive visuals, frequent changes in pacing, and opportune music and sound effects. I'm reminded of House of Leaves, a landmark horror novel that used vivid stylings with text to immerse the reader. Similarly, first person perspective here works as we're just along for the ride.
While the story itself is derivative of horror I've read in the past, and there are some loose threads at the end I wish had been tidied up, I was nevertheless engrossed and experienced the tension the author was going for. Good horror is incredibly difficult and I'm excited if Mark Sample continues with this genre.
A horror game without tension, October 17, 2020The Shadow in the Snow is a short Twine adventure that uses as many IF tropes as possible, including the broken down car on the side of the road, the spooky forest, and the spooky hotel. Using tropes is not necessarily a bad thing, but there are no surprises with this story and thus the tension is minimal.
Beyond the story, there are also several issues with the game design. While the game allows you to ostensibly tackle the exploration and puzzle in any order, there is actually only one path to victory despite it being unintuitive (and rather random) that the actual path is correct. Additionally, you can lock yourself out of victory without realizing it, though the game is short enough for it to be only a minor annoyance.
The writing style also doesn't work well for this type of game. Despite the fact that you are given choices to make for the PC, it is written in the first person, which detaches one's self from the choices. There's also a lack of rhythm to the writing, with many short paragraphs, excessive ellipses, and a lack of sensory descriptions to the surroundings. An awkward simile is one example:
"The back window has been smashed out as if a large beast had leaped through it."
Honestly, I have no idea what that looks like or if windows smash differently if large beasts, small beasts, or table lamps have propelled through them.
This is the first game I have played by Andrew Brown. Looking back at their previous games, many reviews cite the lack of editing and beta-testing, and this game appears to have the same concerns.
Heartbreaking, October 15, 2020My son is autistic. He's bright, kind, and empathetic. Most days go fairly well for him now. But some days he has big emotions and his coping skills he's learned in order to deal with uncertainty go out the window. Right now he's young enough that we can always be there for him and let him work through it. And I have the fear that when he gets older, and he's in the real world, we won't be able to protect him from people who want to take advantage of him.
This brief Twine experience from Ann Hugo brought all those fears to the surface while doing so in an honest, compassionate manner. The story is on rails, but the choices given effectively convey the lack of agency autistic people feel when under stress. Every time I was trying to champion a choice that I wanted Theo to make, the story came back with "You Couldn't Have Done That," and I nodded my head as my heart broke a little.
Superb use of the medium and a gift to the IF community.
Delightfully surreal CYOA, October 15, 2020What the Bus? is pure CYOA (about trying to catch the right bus to get to work) in that there are no puzzles to solve and no parser quirks. You just go through every potential story path until you find all the endings. When I was a child, I would use my fingers or paper clips to hold my place at different plot branches so I wouldn't have to start from the beginning. Joyce doesn't quite make things that simple, but the presence of an "Undo" button is incredibly welcome and makes this much more palatable.
Growing up and living in the suburbs, I have never been on a subway in my life, and only a few city buses. So I can only imagine the frustration that led to this story. Still, the snark is delivered well without drowning in it, so I was motivated to find every ending. And the choice to go surreal with many of the endings was also a treat. I don't think I would play this again, but I was grinning the entire time I played it.
Comp release is bug-filled, October 15, 2020The authors note that they completed this game in thirty days; it appears there was not enough beta-testing done, as within ten minutes I found a game crashing bug that purged my save point. Looking at other reviews, it appears I am not the only one. I stopped playing after that.
Prior to that, I found the premise somewhat intriguing. You essentially need to solve a long puzzle to escape a dinosaur park when your prehistoric friends get released. It's light-hearted and goofy. But for me it was hard to follow due to the grammar. In one choice early on, you are allowed to "Ask if you can pet the Ankylosaurus again," even though to this point in the story you have never seen a dinosaur nor has the ankylosaurus been mentioned. In a later point in the story you are hopping between boats, Frogger-style, and it's hard to keep track of which boats the game is referring to as in the text they're often just referred to as "the boat," despite there being several around you.
It sounds like those who have managed to finish the game have enjoyed the process of solving it, so hopefully if there is a future release it will be more accessible.
Trippy, October 14, 2020The author notes that this was a short story turned into a linear game, and I very much would like to read it; or rather, I would like a slightly larger version of this short story.
It’s a peculiar, intriguing world we find ourselves in. I wish I knew more about this place, and the people in it, and why our protagonist feels the way they do about the people in their sphere. I love short stories in that they often don’t exhaust themselves with pointless details while also leaving the reader with a sense of wonder. In this case, I felt I was wondering too much.
There's a monster at the end of this puzzle book!, October 14, 2020Ever since I was a child I have loved puzzle books, especially ones with a lot of tiny, random puzzles. I'll happily solve one cryptogram, but six pages of cryptograms -- no thank you! Sage Sanctum Scramble is basically one of those comfortable puzzle books come to life, with a cute plot about destroying a monster using keywords you find by solving puzzles.
One's satisfaction with this game will likely be directly correlated with whether the puzzles within hit that sweet spot of not too difficult and not too easy. For me they did just that. One nice (and necessary!) feature is that you only need to solve around 30 puzzles to beat the monster; I solved 31 and had ten more that stumped me. Not having to check the back of the book for the answers to win the game made it a satisfying experience.
The game has some personality and I wish it had even more. There's a risk, I suppose, of getting too cute and detracting from the puzzles. But the highlight for me was when it shamelessly acknowledges that there is a slightly American bent to the game. To wit: (Spoiler - click to show) "GREY is for people who want colours. I want colors."
Great for its intended audience, October 10, 2020Deck building games have never quite been my cup of tea. Generally I get really into them for a brief time, but after a while I tend to get frustrated by the randomness. And while I'm unlikely to return to play due to my own proclivities, Tragic is quite competently built and I enjoyed myself for the two hours I gave it.
There's a larger story outside the deck game itself, as you play an actual marauder who is transported into the 21st century and finds themselves at a live tournament where this deck game is played. The hijinks that follow are expected, but amusing all the same. The heart of adventure is the card game, where you play while a dungeon master of sorts narrates your exploits. Within the card game are also mini-games and oases where you can win/lose/buy weapons/armor/cards, etc.
The presentation is slick and the tutorial did a great job of teaching me the ropes. There are also several modes of play depending on how much story you want and how difficult you want it to be. I do wish there was more than one save slot, but that's a small concern.
Definitely worthy of play by those who enjoy this type of game.
Confusing, October 10, 2020A very brief story about a stutterer trying to find their voice through a therapy retreat.
Despite its brevity, this conversation is hard to follow. It appears as if the player character is the therapist, though the conversation feels distant enough that I was detached from both the PC and NPC. The topic is important and the journey could be potentially moving, but the dialogue does not feel realistic. Both characters have a similar voice (aside from the stuttering of the NPC) and there are few interjections from the author for any atmosphere; it's just endless dialogue without any breaks, and sometimes it's hard to remember who is speaking. Their communication feels rehearsed, as if they're trying to emphasize the pathos of the story without letting it come out naturally.
The ending is pretty cool, both story-wise and stylistically. It might be worth the few minutes of play just to see it.
I'm a genie in a piggy bank baby, October 9, 2020One of many 2020 IFcomp Twine games that is on rails, High Jinnks rises above due to being generally delightful.
For me, watching a jinni toy with humans is not generally my cup of tea; I prefer my games that take place in the real world to be ground in that reality without magic or mysticism. But gosh darn if it I didn't grin a dozen times while playing this one, probably because there's a heart and soul to these characters I wasn't expecting. The plot itself is forgettable, but the repartee between the jinni and your scrawny human friend is relentless. Sometimes the conversation feels a bit too cavalier and I don't truly buy the motivations of the humans in the story, but all in all it was a good time.
One thing Chamberlain excels at is using the hidden text feature in Twine to great effect. While I wasn't always enamored with the story choices, clicking on the hidden text was a regular treat.
Unfortunately, I did find one endless Twine loop near the end of the game that forced me to restart.
A visceral experience, October 9, 2020I suspect that this piece could be retraumatizing for some, so please note that this is an uncensored portrayal of violence, both emotional and physical.
I have to admit that when I first loaded up this story I was convinced I was going to hate it, and it didn't help that there's a few glaring spelling mistakes in the first few minutes. The prose was also jarring at first, not so much because of the profanity (apropos of the situation), but because of the often aggressively stilted manner in which the victim's thoughts are voiced. Punctuation is also inconsistent, with missing periods (sometimes) and random capitalization or lack thereof; intentional or not, it helped elicit the raw emotions the authors were trying to convey.
Beyond the words themselves, I'm impressed with how well I was drawn into this character and being in the moment with her. While I've never been kidnapped, I have been held at gunpoint, and reading this brought back a loud whisper of the terror I felt that day. The pacing is effective and the choices feel raw and honest.
One more comment on the game structure below the spoiler:
(Spoiler - click to show)I am quite grateful that the only possible endings appear to be positive (relatively speaking). I don't think I could have coped otherwise.
Incomplete, October 7, 2020A very short Twine morality play about having responsibility as a CEO to do the right thing for your employees and the world.
Ima does some visually arresting things with Twine graphics that I hadn't seen before, and I found them to be mostly effective in communicating the mood the game is going for. Unfortunately, the game still needs a ton of work. There were spelling mistakes on nearly every page as well as issues with grammar that made some passages hard to understand. I also encountered one apparent bug where a macro text-type doesn't load.
This review is based on the competition release. I could see raising my rating if the bugs and spelling were fixed as it has some cool things going for it. That said, the moral the game conveys about corporate greed is fairly basic and there's not enough time within the span of this game to give the topic justice.
A time travel game for beginners, October 7, 2020I love me a good time travel game and this one is fairly straightforward. There’s a loose backstory about saving the world from cultists, and you must travel within the same small radius (eight to nine rooms) via four different seasons. Puzzles are similar to that in First Things First in that changes you make in one season affect change in others. An in-game map was quite welcome.
The game can adequately be described as terse. There’s no flowery prose or a developing plot or anything heart-wrenching at stake. Most puzzles are intuitive, even if silly (I’m looking at you cow). While the game doesn’t get in the way of the puzzles, it doesn’t enhance them either. And since I had little investment in the results, I resorted to hints several times when I got stuck. Most puzzles have multiple solutions, with a couple locking you out of certain endings. There are eight endings, though mostly slight variations on another. While I don't see myself playing this again, I had a good time.
I have to give mention to an absolutely amazing tour de force of double-entendres that had me grinning from ear to ear. Below the spoiler:
(Spoiler - click to show)After placing a stop sign in the ground to keep the chicken from crossing the road and then examining the chicken: The chicken is standing stock-still, waiting for some kind of sign.
Ambitious , October 6, 2020The Cave has you, a generic adventurer, exploring a generic cave, accumulating statistics and inventory with no easily discernible goal. I reached an ending mostly by clicking on options until I escaped. There are ten rooms, and I explored all of them, leaving possibly a couple of puzzles unfinished.
I think it's important to note something written in the walkthrough to help players make sense of the game:
Under the hood, this game is an alternative way to generate the basic character ability scores for your favorite roleplaying game. Your choices purchase increases in those scores according to a point buy system. In this case, it builds a character according to your preferred actions and reactions to situations. Once you've expended your pool of points, you'll find your way out.
While this is indeed an interesting way to play a game, I am not sure why this isn't told to the player up front. Otherwise, it feels unnecessarily random.
The prose is rough. Nearly every room tells you that you’ve somehow found an “even deeper darkness” and I was beginning to wonder how many levels of darkness existed. The author tries too hard to be cheeky in a game that doesn’t seem to call for it. When you pick up a club, you are told “it’s pretty heavy and probably packs a wallop. It probably can’t pack a suitcase or a lunch.” And when you reach into a puddle you find it “much colder and deeper than you expected. You know people like that. Colder and deeper than expected.” It’s one of many examples of the author alluding to some inner turmoil the adventurer is trying to overcome, except we never really get to know anything about them.
Additionally, puzzles exist but take no real deduction. At one point a choice is given to “push the stone button,” even though the room description never mentions a button. At another point you have the choice to pick a lock; click that and you magically find a bone nearby to pick it.
The background music is alright and there are some cool text effects in spots. I like the ambition from this first-time author and hope future efforts tighten the writing and improve the puzzle structure.
Unique IF experience, October 5, 2020An interesting experience in interactive fiction, using a device I don't think I've ever seen in this arena. To say any more would spoil everything, so the rest of the review is hidden. However, I will say that this game is probably aggravating--if not impossible-- to play for the visually impaired.
(Spoiler - click to show)I played this on my phone and never noticed the motorcycle slowly moving across the top of my screen. If I had, that would have likely clued me into how to progress through the game. Originally I thought the game was unplayable, and that it was missing choices that would help me avoid constant death. I still figured it out on my own; on around my tenth playthrough I noticed I got different results depending on how quickly I clicked the "Move On" button. After that things were really straightforward and I was able to achieve victory in about two minutes.
I'm not convinced this is a story-telling device I would like to see more of with interactive fiction. Like a good book, I enjoy getting lost in whatever I'm playing; having to rely on timing and reflexes takes me away from that. One of the reasons is that to advance in this game, you have figure out which moments you have to be quick on the draw, and unless you're a speed-reader, you have no choice but to learn by dying.
The story itself is standard spy-fare and since you wind up just chasing a McGuffin it's not terribly rewarding.
Classic parser based horror, October 5, 2020In 2019 Winters released The House on Sycamore Lane, which screamed potential but was riddled with spelling, grammar, and guess the verb issues. With his sophomore effort, Alone, he has improved considerably and put forth a solid parser game that is a worthy entry in the apocalyptic horror genre.
Alone quickly establishes that you are a survivor, working solo and avoiding infected people at all costs. But a visit to a convenience store to get some gas changes all that. The gas pump is locked, and what follows is a long string of puzzles to get access to additional areas that hopefully have something you can get your hands on to cut the dang lock off. While partaking in the puzzlefest, you slowly learn what's happened in this neck of the woods Babel-style, reading journal entries and stumbling across horrific scenes.
I did not need to resort to a walkthrough at any point as the puzzles are generally straightforward. There are no red herrings, and all items you can pick up or manipulate have fairly clear uses. That's not to say the puzzles were insulting; they just didn't take leaps of logic or require a stroke of brilliance to uncover, which was definitely refreshing.
Another thing that Winters improved upon with this game was that he never tells the player how they should feel. He just lets the setting tell itself. Even the alternate ending (the less favorable one) is not given judgment by the author.
The reason I didn't rate this game higher is that the atmosphere didn't grab me as much as I would have liked. Room descriptions are sparse. Rarely do we get any details other than the objects we need to manipulate. Smells and sounds are not described very often. And with one pretty great exception (Spoiler - click to show)(the timed sequence with injecting Adrian), there's never a sense of dread or urgency, which there should be fairly regularly in a horror game.
I very much look forward to Winters' next effort.
Conscience is a thousand swords, October 4, 2020I grew up on choose-your-own-adventure stories, and one thing that often frustrated me was that the random decisions came with no deduction, resulting in little reward for the good endings or anguish at the bad endings. In rare cases, there was a story where only one good ending existed. I much prefer this style, as it helps me feel invested in each decision. Tristan Jacobs follows that style here with (s)wordsmyth.
The setup here is intriguing, what with the sidekick that is a very chatty sword (don't worry, it makes sense!). On your way to revenge your master you encounter various adversaries from Japanese mythology (and at least one from Roman mythology). Each encounter presents with a decision-tree that often takes three to six correct choices in order to pass (with occasionally some minor room for midstream correction). For the most part, I found the correct choices to make sense and they fit the moral of the story well.
Generously, if you fail at any point in the game, you are brought back to the beginning of the section to try again. Unfortunately, this still requires quite a bit of clicking to advance the story and my wrist was literally sore by the end. Now, part of that is on me as for one scenario I think I managed to pick all ten bad endings before finally choosing the correct branch.
The graphics are easy on the eyes, and I quite enjoyed the noise the text scroll made, reminiscent of Japanese RPGs from the 80's (Dragon Quest comes to mind).
I was not as invested in the characters as I would have hoped. The player character is explored very little, and I was hoping to find the sword more charming. Still, very solid game design and cool idea.
Warm and comforting. , October 4, 2020A linear, very short story about a woman missing being home and the women in her life who support her. Becci does some really cool things with Twine on the graphical end of things; the imagery is gorgeous. The story is not particularly deep, but it's heartfelt and something many people I'm sure can relate to. I almost want to try some congee!
Totes McGotes!, October 3, 2020What a delightful little story. This has the charm of Birdland without the depth. And it also has goats, and you can’t go wrong with goats. The color scheme and text is very easy on the eyes, and the prose is whimsical. There are four paths and they can all be found in about ten minutes. I can’t say I’ll ever come back to this but it was a charming interlude during the 2020 IFComp.
Not So Twisty Passages, Yet All Alike, October 3, 2020I grew up on BASIC and Commodore 64 games, so all my appropriate nostalgia cylinders were firing. Unfortunately, this game is so incredibly basic I’m unable to find the appeal. In fact, this was the type of game when I was a kid that I loathed, what with only binary choices and extremely vague descriptions. I have to believe this is intentionally terrible, a meta joke as it were. For example, you can get the exact same option twice in a row and get different results for the same choice, making one believe the strategy guide included is indeed part of the joke.
I played this longer than I normally would have given the author. Bravo to Montfort for taking the effort to program in an ancient language.
A Beautiful Partnership, October 3, 2020Finding that there’s a new game by Robb Sherwin is like opening up the first present on Christmas morning. Discovering that he didn’t code it is like knowing you’re not going to find a sweater inside.
Sherwin’s writing, as usual, is sardonic and full of referential humor aimed at children of the 80’s (despite being set in a future that frequently references the hellscape that is 2020), with not-so-subtle regular doses of liberal ideology from the PC. If that’s not your thing then there’s probably not a lot for you here. That’s not to say the game is about any of those things, but its strength lies in the writing. I chortled at least a half-dozen times and I enjoyed exhausting all conceivable actions in every area just to keep reading (and then replaying with the list of amusing things to try).
The game is designed to keep you moving, with the puzzles being perfunctory and the conversation prompts inserted for pacing. The game wants you to get to know the characters, easily unravel the investigation, and find the jokes. Sousa’s coding is excellent. The game understands tons of variations on things you are trying to do while also often correcting your own spelling mistakes like a Google search. And even if you find yourself stuck, there are gradual in-game hints. I had to reference them once (Spoiler - click to show)(for the snake puzzle) during the one time in the game where you must help the PC deduce the solution even if you, the player, already instinctively know the answer.
While Jay Schilling feels similar to most Sherwin characters, the highlight here is the parrot and dog that follow you around for half the game. I won’t spoil anything other than to say they are used for puzzles while also becoming the games’ pathos.
Nineteen years ago Sousa and Sherwin paired up for No Time To Squeal early in their respective IF careers. While that game had its highlights, it was a bit of an awkward and confusing mess. Jay Schilling’s Edge of Chaos is consistently delightful from beginning to end.
You're breaking my heart. You're shaking my confidence. , October 1, 2020I was really looking forward to playing Vespers after reading reviews that it had similarities to Anchorhead, though I was left underwhelmed. I'm bummed, too, since Vespers has so many good things going for it.
The setting is damn near perfect. Playing a monk during the plague, watching everyone decompensate and die around him, is ripe for vivid imagery and tension. At times the game reaches that pinnacle. There are many subtle changes to the environment that occur as everything collapses, and in general, reexamining things on a regular basis is horrifying and rewarding. I also appreciate that while time moves forward with plot triggers, they are not always obvious at the time, which helped keep me in the moment. In this way Vespers succeeds as a successor to Anchorhead.
For me, though, just about everything else here is a misstep. The most egregious is that the game frequently does not remember things you have already done. I counted at least four instances on my first playthrough where the descriptions given do not match what is actually happening. For example, (Spoiler - click to show)if you ask Lucca about the flagstone while he's locked in the calefactory, he responds as if he's still in Matteo's room. Also, if you examine the bell after Matteo dies, the game responds as if he's still alive. While it's not expected that an author catch every single random thing a player can try, this happens more often in Vespers than just about any well-received game I've played, and it took me out of the moment every time.
The horror also didn't hit the right beats for me. Part of that is everything goes sour perhaps a little too quickly, so while I'm still digesting one horror, the next one is thrown at me before I have time to relax. By the end I was a bit numb to it all. I think part of that is also I didn't have time to really get to know any of the other monks, and with the exception of Drogo, they all kind of seemed the same to me. I wasn't invested in any of their fates, so when terrible things happened, I just shrugged it off.
I'm lukewarm on the multiple endings based on the moral choices you make. Vespers avoids the pitfalls of Tapestry, in that you aren't force fed choices and nothings feels overly moralistic. On the other hand, it's hard to tell (unless you do something truly horrific) that you're even making moral choices most of the time. Adventurers tend to just take the easiest path, and to not find out until the end that there was a harder but more rewarding path feels like the game played me a bit. Wishbringer and Counterfeit Monkey offer a more satisfying alternative by telling you at the outset that most every puzzle has both an easy and a hard solution, and neither of them are right or wrong. Just different.
I'm a broken record at this point, but in a serious dramatic piece, I much prefer there be one story with one ending. Replaying Vespers by making more despicable choices feels very icky, as it's no longer a character I'm playing at this point but rather me deciding to do despicable things.
I did enjoy my first run-through and it was the right amount of difficult. But with all the problems I have no desire to see it through again.
A decent parody that had me wishing for more, September 23, 2020This is probably the toughest review I've written so far as I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Turandot. I should note this is the first ChoiceScript game I've finished and it's not my preferred style of play.
I was immediately turned off by the game's first section, where we intimately are introduced to Calaf's misogyny. Gijsbers tries to play it for laughs, as the entire game is kind of a parody of the opera, which was terribly sexist. While I smirked at times, I just don't find sexism ripe for comedy.
Things definitely improve once we meet Turandot, as she is a revulsed by Calaf as anyone should be and has an appealing flare for the dramatic. Her running commentary as she sends Calaf through the trials to win her over is witty and endearing. I was less taken by her change of heart, as Calaf's self-actualization feels out of nowhere, though I have to admit I was rooting for him by the end. And the ending turns the game on its head one more time, making us once again reevaluate everything we thought of our characters and I was left feeling a bit dizzy (not to mention confused for Calaf's friend).
Ultimately, I gave this three stars because Gijsbers is an excellent writer and I was compelled for most of the ride. But I was left quite unsatisfied. Perhaps if this had been written as satire, with more focus on the historic racism of Orientalist operas, I would have appreciated it more. Instead it felt to me like a few different sketch comedies thrown together, full of some laughs but with an inconsistent theme.
I should also acknowledge the quite overt references (so overt that it would be hard to call them Easter Eggs) to several famous IF works sprinkled throughout, though I'm not sure why they are here. It reminds me of how out of place it felt to get an XYZZY response while playing Babel. Though I imagine I will never again find quite as satisfying a result to clicking "Show Stats."
Will not forget, September 21, 2020One of the more emotional interactive fiction pieces I've played. The intro hits hard and the rest attempts to show us various snapshots of Fred's battle with Alzheimer's. The characters are drawn quite well; between my grandmother and my job I've been around many family systems going through the same thing and it all felt very real to me. Granade also does some interesting things with Twine that emphasize Fred's confusion.
I can't help but wonder if this could have been more powerful as a parser game. Take the scene where Fred (Spoiler - click to show)gets his wife some Tylenol. If I had more input than clicking hyperlinks I think an already heartbreaking scene would have ruined me. It would have forced me to take a more active role in fighting the unwinnable fight. As played it feels more like turning pages of a story.
The story jumps around quite a bit. For me it was a bit jarring and I think I would have enjoyed something more linear. But now I'm picking nits. Huge props to Granade for tackling this with earnestness and grace.
Grab some popcorn, September 20, 2020Theatre was one the first modern IF games I played on the heels of Babel. I was immediately pulled in by the same plot device that Finley borrowed, what with the journal pages lying around to provide chilling backstory. I was also pleased that for the most part the puzzles are straightforward and the only way to put the game in an unwinnable state is doing something obviously stupid. For a while I had this one rated four stars.
I revisited this one again today and decided to lower my rating. I still enjoyed myself and finished it rather quickly, but several aspects turned me off this time around:
-- The reason you're stuck in the theatre is because you're in a "slum" and a "bad neighborhood" and a "thug" is waiving a knife at you for some reason. All of these words are steeped in racism. I'm sure that wasn't Wyber's intent and I used those same words regularly twenty years ago. And sometimes old things we like become painfully dated for similar reasons.
-- Other have mentioned this, but the writing is definitely uneven. There are some highlights for sure. Wyber never tells the player how to feel, which makes my heart sing, especially in the horror genre. And there are some good touches with the occasional sound or shadow that creeps around. But then there will periods of less subtlety, such as when you move some things around and, "You suddenly realise there was a body under the pile!"
-- The central Lovecraftian theme is intriguing, but other horror tropes are just thrown in that don't seem to fit and are never explained, such as (Spoiler - click to show)the possessed mannequins and the random cobra in a locker. Also, at one point a skeleton is said to be the source of a horrible smell. Decaying bones would not give off an odor.
-- Wyber breaks the fourth wall a few times to comment on his own writing, which doesn't help maintain the sense of dread one expects in horror.
Despite these criticisms I still am very fond of Theatre and am grateful that it led me to trying out Anchorhead. It's a solid entry in the Lovecraft genre and worth playing if you like that type of game.
If you're stressed, it's fine puzzling we suggest!, September 19, 2020For most adventure games historically, puzzles have been overwhelmingly frustrating and preposterous. The better efforts have tried to reduce contrivance or at least reduce the difficulty, but for the most part I don't think players enjoy them, at least for their own sake. For every puzzle that is satisfying, often several negate that feeling. Adam Cadre once said something along the lines of that most games are far better to have been played than to be playing. I often find myself agreeing.
One way to sidestep this problem is to make the puzzles the reason for the game and another way is to make them so goofy as to disarm the player. Guest succeeds on both accounts.
I immediately appreciated playing this because your adversary, Mr. Booby, is barely functional and if you decide you want to do something, you can do it without resorting to trickery. Booby's reactions to your subversion are the highlights for sure, my favorite being his calling for the local constable despite being thousands of feet up in the air.
Unfortunately there are a couple of puzzles that didn't quite land. The first was (Spoiler - click to show)figuring out how to clear the trombone; using violence still doesn't seem intuitive to me. The second puzzle was (Spoiler - click to show)saving Aunt Gertie. I was trying to make a parachute, not realizing that the answer would be as simple as "make parachute." I was trying to thread the needle first and wondering why the game didn't understand all my attempts and starting the process of sewing. I greatly appreciate the simplicity of the puzzle, but just wish the game would have guided me there when I was on the right track.
Thankfully, the game includes gradual hints for every puzzle and I accessed them guilt-free. In the end the goofiness won me over and I count this among the games I enjoyed playing while playing.
Love Story, September 17, 2020In high school I was in an abusive relationship; the song "Push" by Matchbox20 resonated with me so much that it became and still remains one of my favorite songs. Is it a great song? I don't know. I only know that it stirs within me something raw and profound.
I feel the same way with Spider and Web when it comes to "The Puzzle." I've been playing adventure games and puzzle games non-stop since I first played King's Quest in 1985 and there is no other puzzle that makes me feel this way. In my first playthrough twenty years ago, it gave me chills. I played it again this week, knowing the answer, and that familiar wave came over me again. I am in love with this puzzle. I want to marry it and have brilliant puzzle babies.
I could try to break down why it gives me all the feels. Perhaps it's the gradual buildup that is extremely well-clued but never obviously so. Perhaps it's the oneupmanship over the interrogator. Perhaps it's the extraordinary gift of getting to play back the entire game in your mind up to that point with the knowledge bestowed upon realizing the answer. Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter. No logical argument will sway my adoration nor my reverence.
For those who are fortunate enough to read this review and have the opportunity to play Spider and Web for the first time, for all that is good and holy do not resort to a walkthrough. If you must, use the Invisiclues linked to on the main page. And be patient with yourself. Let the game play you.
Please don't mistake my adulation for belief in perfection. There are parts I'm not a huge fan of. The gadgets could come with more of a tutorial, especially since our spy is an expert with them. And the end puzzle itself doesn't really fit in with the theme of the rest, leading to a whimper of a conclusion. But our loves don't need aspire to perfection. They just have to sing to us in a way that will touch our hearts and stay there forever.
"Enter Shadow" definitely doesn't work here, September 14, 2020Admittedly I am not a huge fan of poetry, especially free verse. Though if the imagery is evocative I can get lost in it from time to time. Unfortunately, the design of The Space Under the Window, while making for an easy game, results in an unsatisfying poetry reading.
In a sense, this structure of play feels like a precursor to Twine, only one has to guess at the keywords instead of clicking on them. And it's hard to get lost in poetry when the parser doesn't respond to half of what you type. It's very difficulty to predict what keywords will trigger a new path or bring you back to an old one, and also difficult to predict where the story will go. There are no puzzles to elicit satisfaction from all the keyword guessing so it's all a bit underwhelming.
That said, it's an intriguing (and short!) parser experiment from one of IF's greatest authors.
Important theme, yet derivative game design, September 11, 2020While the premise of looking through someone else’s phone is intriguing and the backstory you discover is important, I was nevertheless not terribly impressed with A Normal Lost Phone despite all of the awards it was nominated for.
The entire game is just manipulating a cell phone UI and this is implemented fairly well. However, the puzzle design is tedious, essentially boiling down to figuring out passwords based on contrived clues dropped by other people in texts and e-mails. While the passwords served their main purpose (pacing and story reveal), they were neither interesting enough nor easy enough (in a couple of cases) to give them a pass.
The highlight of the game, however, is the focus on LGBT and abuse issues. To that end the game does a really nice job of introducing them in an empathetic and digestible fashion. Nothing about the plot or the character interactions feels trite or exaggerated, and the teenager writings feel mostly real.
The game only takes a couple of hours or so and the background music is pleasant, unobtrusive. However, unless you really are looking for a basic education on LGBT matters, the story is too short and disjointed. In my case, I learned nothing new from playing and I wasn’t terribly moved by this character.
There once was a review from Nantucket, September 11, 2020Limerick Heist, a simple game
Of filching jeweled Fabergé
Rhymes are this one's claim to fame
And ease of play
Puzzles are a bit obtuse
Replays you will be contending
In hopes that you can right deduce
A many ending
Charm, for sure, is ever present
A smirk did find me several times
But like reviews that are unpleasant
Too many rhymes
You spin me right round, September 9, 2020With a Kafkaesque dystopia the author must be very careful that while the world is constantly spinning around the protagonist that the viewer in addition to being misdirected doesn't feel cheated. For the most part Finley does his job here.
I played this twenty years ago and played it again just recently (because I had honestly forgotten most of it) and was swept away both times. I have generally enjoyed frequent plot twists as long as they're fun (e.g. Wild Things) and don't negate everything that came before (e.g. The Game). Multiple times while playing Kaged I thought to myself "Hey, this isn't logical" (Spoiler - click to show) like when the guard was conveniently asleep knowing that in this government that would be dangerous), or the code on the matchbook for no reason and then it would be revealed later that I was correct and the inconsistency was intentional. I also felt like many of the plot twists were foreshadowed so that I didn't feel cheated at the end. (Spoiler - click to show)My favorite was being told that the Commissar had front-row seats to the execution, very cheeky. I also figured out the final twist with about five minutes of play time left (Spoiler - click to show) because of all the cameras which was a brilliant move by Finley. Throughout the game I felt empowered and thrilled by the chase, until right near the end where I felt powerless but compelled to press on. The parallels between the story and my experience as a player were often step for step.
My only critique of the structure was the ability to die at several different points along the way. While I understand that seemed necessary to conceal the ending, it feels like in retrospect that those ways of ending the story do indeed negate the final ending.
Many have commented that the puzzles are poorly clued. I frequently use walkthroughs while playing and I didn't have to resort to one here. And I felt many of the puzzles were heavily clued (Spoiler - click to show)(the armband one especially, and even how to help the boy) but your mileage may vary. However, there is one structural issue (Spoiler - click to show) being allowed to access the 10th floor before helping the boy that killed the plot flow a bit early on.
Finley's writing is, as always, a treat and despite the game's flaws I was happy to be along for the ride.
Some places are like people: some shine and some don't, September 7, 2020When I played Night Guard / Morning Star last year I noted that I was captivated by the writing and atmosphere and turned off by the multitude of endings. I feel similarly after playing Dalmady's Cactus Blue Motel and I'll dive further into the reasons why.
The general conceit of interactive fiction is that you are the primary character. The playing character may be a cipher, such as in Zork, or a specific character, such as Maria Elena here. Regardless, you are making decisions for that person.
In a pure puzzler, the author hopes to engage the player in the game's objective. In a comedy, the author hopes to make the player laugh, and character development may or may not be necessary. Drama, I suspect, is the hardest genre for IF authors, as they must make the player care about the characters, unwaveringly, for the entire game. The CYOA format highlights this difficult task, as there are no real puzzles to distract the player.
Dalmady succeeds, as usual, in building a fun atmosphere with compelling characters. A mystical desert motel where time is squishy is ripe for intrigue. But the game's format, unfortunately, usurps the development of Maria Elena. Eight endings are written for Maria Elena and the decisions that impact those endings are based on how you interact with her two friends, Lex and Becky, throughout the game. There are no puzzles and nothing to deduce, so all of the game's real choices are impacted by Maria Elena herself.
For my first playthrough, I made choices for Maria Elena by projecting my desires for her character. Subsequent playthroughs to find different endings required me to project different desires onto her. This requires me, essentially, to divorce myself from how I feel about our protagonist. I am no longer rooting for her, but rooting for myself to find different endings. Dalmady sidesteps the awkwardness a bit by making these choices not impact the course of the plot or even much of the game's dialogue; however, this in turn has the side effect of the eight endings feeling somewhat arbitrary (not to mention a chore to find via repetitive restarts), and Maria Elena's relationships wind up seeming so fragile that a couple of fairly innocuous comments drastically changes the course of their lives.
In the end, the focus on these three characters and their fates detracted from the game's best character, the motel. Such is the bane of CYOA: the focus dedicated to plot branches necessarily gives everything else less importance.
When looking at the reviews so far for this game I am, frankly, surprised and appalled. A plurality of folks (probably well-meaning folks, but you never know) gave it only one star. Please bear with me as I dissect how very wrong they are.
I know we can't strictly rate games by their time period but one has to give credit to Rob Noyes to not falling into the traps that were common for the time.
Instant Death Rooms: None to be found. In fact, you are given fair (one might even say explicit) warning of any possible deaths. Zarf would have no choice but to give this game a merciful rating, a rarity in 1996.
Crimes Against Mimesis: None to be found. There is no need to explain why a phone booth is in a nondescript New England town in 1996, as phone booths were still fairly common. Even the haunting message from the operator one hears upon victory (is it victory?) is a testament to the harsh realities of telecommunication in the nineties.
Unrealistic Inventory Restrictions: None to be found. In fact, much like today's games that aren't as obsessed with inventory, you are strongly discouraged here from carrying anything!
Guess The Verb: I found at least one synonym for the game-winning action, and the most obvious verb is used anyway. One might argue that the puzzle itself is a leap of logic, but honestly, who hasn't wanted to do that to a phone booth?
Confusing Maps: Wait, so when I go southwest from the castle entrance to the antechamber, I have to go north to get back to the castle entrance? I don't know either, man. What I can tell you is that you won't have to worry about a map. Just you, a phone booth, and your wits.
Absurd Length: Noyes really anticipated the player of 2020. Who hasn't played Curses! or The Muldoon Legacy and died a little inside from the monotony (and a little on the outside from banging one's head into the monitor)? No such worries here. You can play this entire game and still have time to take your dog for a walk or remember to feed your children.
I could go on, but needless to say if you haven't given Noyes' timeless classic a try then you've probably lived too complicated a life.
Live! Die! Repeat!, September 6, 2020One of the challenges of Twine games is to be more than just an interactive text dump or CYOA. There's nothing wrong with those formats, of course, but I was bred on Infocom and crave deductive reasoning in my text adventures. Black Sheep provides plenty of that and is three-fourths of a great game.
While playing I was reminded of The Longest Journey. Other than some of the sci-fi elements there's not a lot in common between the games, but I couldn't shake the feeling I had that I was in the same world. And believe me that's high praise. This game pulled me in from the start, and when I discovered that I was in a time loop I was extra giddy. Learn-by-dying is a well worn trope for sure, but its beauty is that it grants the player freedom to explore without the anxiety of making (permanent) mistakes. Other tropes played for full effect are the buddy cop (in this case an android) whose dead-pan delivery is quite amusing as well as the monolithic coldness of the bad guys.
Most of the tasks involve fairly logical inventory puzzles, though a couple are a bit obtuse and in one case I had to resort to a walkthrough without guilt. There are also several red herrings that gave the game more depth without being unfair. Otherwise you need to deduce the mystery by essentially combining clues together from your notebook. This is not always satisfying, because as I progressed through the game I deduced the mystery before the character did and before I could go ahead and solve it I had to figure out which clues to combine to get her to realize it.
My only other critique is the ending, which felt rushed. To that point the writing had been rather tight and I was hoping for an epic climax or a satisfying denouement, of which there were neither. Still, a very solid first game by the authors and I hope to see more from them.
Gabriel Knight's Nightmare, September 3, 2020An absolute delightful treasure romp in the vein of Hollywood Hijinx (only with loads more charm), Sugarlawn had me simultaneously hooked yet a tad frustrated.
I do love a logical treasure hunt and a game show might be the most realistic modern raison d'etre for taking everything not nailed down. And because it's a game show it's clear from the beginning that replays will yield better results; thus, I was prepared for obsessive map-making and note-taking which I thoroughly enjoyed. What frustrated me is the nature of optimization puzzles. For a while I enjoyed finding shortcuts to improve my score, but after a while the diminishing returns were more exhausting than invigorating. For example, one way to improve optimization throughout your treasure hunt is to pick up or drop multiple items at the same time, which to me is more of a trick of the parser than a realistic strategy. So after four or five meticulous runs through the game I felt sated, despite several puzzles not yet being solved, because I knew even if I solved them I would never have the patience for peak optimization.
Despite this I wholeheartedly recommend playing it at least once, if for nothing but the fourth-wall breaking whimsy. It's always clear while playing that you're on camera (this fact is used for puzzle-design as well), and it's frequently played for laughs. If you regret a decision and type undo, a voice calls, "All right, we’ll just record over the last thing you did.” And I've always had a soft spot for New Orleans culture and history, and so I got to bathe in that to my heart's content.
And no one can talk to a horse of course, September 1, 2020I have to admit I was unfamiliar with this aspect of Scottish folklore and I am glad I was able to learn about it through interactive fiction. The author here has a solid grasp of the prose and was able to immerse me in the fate of the horse and the child. Though while I found this to be quite interesting, that’s the strongest emotion I felt while playing. There wasn’t enough knowledge of the characters for much pathos, and the branches of each choice were so narrow they didn’t feel like choices until the very end.
Fine game but not particularly memorable, December 7, 2019A potentially decent game for beginners as the story and settings are simple and charming and puzzles are straightforward. Unfortunately, the prose is isn’t as elegant as it could be and there’s a few missteps that break the storytelling. The first comes right at the beginning. To wit:
“...your car is to the south where a straight road with no traffic passes the store in an east-west direction…”
>x car
You can’t see any such thing.
Yes, it was simple enough to go south and then examine my car, but I started out annoyed and gave up on anything being too detailed.
The most glaring issue comes in the ending, when you read a letter from Old Jim, where it begins with “Hi there (your name).” Either this was a bizarre design choice or the author forgot to prompt the player to ever enter their name while playing.
Fallacy of Denver, December 5, 2019I was looking forward to this game, hoping to learn something about one of the all-time great IF authors. Unfortunately, the only thing that I learned was that he got married and he invited some friends. I learned a bit about the author, including his aversion to Uber, but I would have rather just a read a story about his trip than playing this game. Perhaps it was the fairly banal descriptions of people and places. Perhaps it was the complete lack of puzzles while being force fed commands to type to advance the story. Perhaps it was all the spelling mistakes. But the entire exercise felt like a chore.
Potential to be a good horror game, December 4, 2019From the start it is obvious this is going to be a fairly standard, beginner IF. Room descriptions are sparse, what to do is almost always obvious. Still, I was hoping that it would be a fun ride. Unfortunately, there was not nearly enough beta-testing. Spelling and grammar mistakes abound. At one point you’re told if you have the right tool you can pry some nails and yet the game doesn’t understand the verb "pry." There are several other unimplemented synonyms. The game’s worst sin, however, is that this is supposed to be suspenseful yet you are frequently told how you should be feeling (e.g. “you are on edge”). As always, show, don’t tell.
This has the skeleton of a well-designed entry into the horror genre. The backstory is interesting and several of the puzzles are fun. But first it needs a rewrite.
Slices of life from different pies you have to eat together, December 3, 2019A beautiful Twine game by veteran Astrid Dalmady, this nevertheless left me a bit cold. It’s funny how an art exhibition is practically an IF trope, and it was ripe for the Twine treatment. And while the use of medium is top notch, my feelings are mixed on the story. The prose is certainly evocative, though a bit melodramatic for my tastes and to the point where I find myself not sympathizing with our protagonist.
I quite enjoyed the first ending I came across where (Spoiler - click to show)Leonara becomes the artist, enough to try the game again. However, each ending I came across was less satisfying and made the story feel broken (I mean, really, (Spoiler - click to show)killing my mom is an option?). I enjoy multiple endings in a comedy or adventure game; but in a serious dramatic piece, I say tell the story you want to tell. Being able to change the PC’s morals on a whim feels gross when the stakes are this high.
Several Roads Not Taken, December 1, 2019I’m an old fuddy duddy for sure so I definitely wasn’t digging a game that entails almost entirely watching users chat on-line using text-speak, even if the setting of on-line poetry forums was intriguing. The game has an odd way of scoring: the poetry forum ranks you based on your character’s ability to write poetry; however, you the player are scored on how you treat others in the forum. I would have loved to have been given a chance to create some poetry of my own, but I was relegated to choosing my demeanor and letting the talking heads play it out. For the most part you don’t actually see any poetry, just usernames talking about hypothetical poetry they enjoyed writing together.
That said, this game is pretty fun technically as it uses various screen prompts to check for viruses and allow you to download files. And the true ending (the one I received on my first playthrough) was a neat, sentimental twist. However, I had little desire to find all nine endings, primarily because I found a game crashing bug on my third playthrough which didn’t motivate me to keep clicking on all the possibilities.
The Eyes Don't Have It, November 30, 2019I will say that the conversation tree game is much better suited for Twine than your standard parser, as all you have to do is click rather than type “1” or “2” or whatever a hundred times. But I’ve never really cared for the genre, and I’m not sure what this story about relationships is getting at. There’s from what I can tell just a few endings, none of them terribly enlightening. The unique thing about this game is that the image on the screen is the NPC’s eyes and they shift in tone depending on how you respond, but the game is so short and so devoid of substance that there’s not much impact.
Should have gone out for gouda, November 29, 2019Being trapped in a vortex with evil cheese is one of those settings that pretty much only works in IF and I give the author props for the silly idea. Unfortunately the game is one rather tedious long puzzle that combines all of the worst types of short puzzles together, to wit: a riddle; waiting around until something happens; and of course combining abstract concepts of the on-line world with hastily made explosives(!).
I also wish the angry cheese had more variety; it mocks everything you do, but in exactly the same way at every moment. I only played for about fifteen minutes before resorting to the walkthrough so I could finish.
The endgame was cute, though I was left feeling hungry.
Great Game Age? Art Gem!, July 9, 2019If you enjoyed Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail Of It--specifically the Shopping Bizarre--then Shuffling Around is an absolute must play.
I've always been fairly good at anagramming but found it mostly dull. But Schultz did just such an impressive job at turning it into a funny, engaging game with clever puzzles and endearing characters. And even if you're not good at anagramming, there are an unbelievable amount of gadgets you can use to give yourself different types of hints depending on your weaknesses that allow you to play at the exact pace you want. On top of that, if you get truly stuck you can just ask the game for more direct hints if you want to avoid going to an anagram solver on-line.
Like the Shopping Bizarre in Nord & Bert, you must often solve random anagrams lying around to get objects for your inventory to use on puzzles later. And while some of the puzzles are really straightforward (e.g. anagramming a bunch of items in a kitchen to make yourself some food), there are some rather genius multi-step puzzles, my favorite being the one to defeat the archenemy in the sortie.
But beyond just the puzzles, Schultz spent on what I can only imagine was an ungodly amount of time writing copious descriptions of rooms and objects that use clever anagrams for no other reason than to show off, and it was wonderful. Admittedly some of the anagrams are forced and make the writing a bit stilted in places, but in this world it was welcome.
There's not much of a story and it's mostly a disjointed puzzlefest, but considering each anagram I solved was like pushing a dopamine button, I was glad to be a rat in this maze.
A little Tex Murphy, a little Sam & Max, June 30, 2019I've always been a sucker for hardboiled detective stories, especially when they are self-aware. Detectiveland is a straight send up of the genre written in a Twine-like parser that only requires navigation of hyperlinks (including an extensive inventory). Everything is here: the embittered detective, sleazy law enforcement, speakeasies, powerful dames, and cheesy dialogue. The graphics and music also fit the mood, though I turned off the music after a while due to its repetition. The fourth wall is frequently broken and I smirked a good dozen times while playing. I also appreciate that the narrator has more modern sensibilities when it comes to feminism and race issues.
The puzzles are not bad considering the format; even though it's easy, one can't just mindlessly click through the game. I especially enjoyed the one in the Italian restaurant. And while the game can't be made unwinnable, what most would consider to be the best ending (out of three) does require extra foresight and can be put out of reach if you're careless.
I wanted to like this even more than I did. Every aspect is above-average and well-polished. While it was neither funny enough nor dramatic enough to be among my favorites, I would recommend it to anyone who likes the genre.
A delicious little game served hot with lots of ketchup, June 22, 2019The first Twine game I played was a fantastic introduction to the system. About twenty years ago I played Will the Real Marjorie Hopkirk Please Stand Up?, a game about trying to find 100 ways to kill 100 clones. I was enthralled by the premise and disappointed it was a demo with only five solutions. So I was thrilled to finally get to play something similar that was less intimidating and more lighthearted.
I really appreciated that no significant knowledge of vampire literature is necessary as Corfman provides ample hints along the way if you're stuck. Some puzzles can be solved in multiple ways. And there's also plenty to look at and tinker with that explores the character outside of just her night shift job.
The structure isn't perfect; some playthroughs get repetitive (which was one of my criticisms of Galatea) and some paths of victory can be found by luck, though the game's brevity (and levity!) help alleviate these concerns. None of the puzzles are particularly difficult, but some are clever, and it never felt like I was mindlessly clicking on hypertext.
What shot my rating up to five stars was the game's three epilogues that provide the player with silly information about vampire stories, 16 more ways to kill a vampire (no puzzling required), and a Rashomon style section to view all your playthroughs via the eyes of one of the McDonald's employees. Corfman's writing is so delightful that I eagerly read everything and have now played this twice since its release.
Very strong writing overcomes very poor implementation, June 17, 2019Fallacy of Dawn won the XYZZY award for best writing; if you play for five minutes and don't immediately agree, then save yourself some headaches as this game might be the buggiest to ever win an award. If you do enjoy the writing, then you're in for a treat that is Sherwin's fascinating and demented brain space.
One's enjoyment is also enhanced if you're familiar with much of the 80's and 90's video game references sprinkled throughout, but it's not necessary. I literally spent thirty minutes in the arcade and the movie store reading titles of various games just to read Sherwin's descriptions. I then spent time Googling games I hadn't heard of.
Beyond that Sherwin is excellent at developing characters. The character of Delarion Yar is sympathetic and funny. Your best friend's name is Porn yet he's somehow endearing. And your girlfriend Clara is a rare well-written female in the cyberpunk genre. Each NPC is given similar treatment; even the bad guys are given distinct personalities.
I also appreciated the gameplay; you must earn enough money to afford a surgery that will help you regain your abilities as a hacker and there are many different opportunities (both legal and illegal) to do so and they can be done in any order. Moreover, much like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, most puzzles can be solved by either fighting or wits. The latter solution tends to be more entertaining, but the former is a nice alternative.
An extra fair warning about the game's bugs and technical issues. While I encountered nothing that crashed the Hugo engine or put the game in an unwinnable state, there are so many instances where the game doesn't understand common verbs depending on the game state. There's multiple locations where room exits aren't indicated at all or there are exits described that don't exist. Some actions can be repeated that shouldn't. And there are so many unimplemented objects. This becomes frustrating because Sherwin's writing deserves the "examine everything" approach by the player, yet it's impossible to tell what will come back with "that thing isn't here" responses. I should add that the game's graphics, while a bit grainy and a bit sparse, definitely add to the atmosphere.
The ending is satisfying if a bit abrupt; I felt like I had more to explore in the town of New Haz (and I did; there were at least four puzzles I never solved). But as I couldn't stop grinning throughout my entire play, Fallacy of Dawn still goes down as one of my favorite games.
No statue has ever been erected to a critic, June 7, 2019Galatea is an impressive piece of coding. Around the turn of the century there were many games that tried to create incredibly in-depth characters that would respond to anything, not to mention Scribblenauts, which tried to allow for a near infinite amount of actions. Of all in this genre I've tried, Galatea is the most successful at being interesting; yet, the shine wears off quickly and I stopped caring quicker than I thought possible.
Short is a superb writer, and her ability to write engaging dialogue with a statue still makes me jealous. The perspective she creates is infinitely interesting and I wanted to find as many conversation topics as possible to just hear more of what Galatea had to say.
Unfortunately, the game quickly turns into an exercise of trying to find as many endings as possible (of which there are 70). While I enjoyed this premise in Aisle, I find it tiresome here as finding various endings requires repeating some dialogue options multiple times while purposefully trying to manipulate Galatea's emotional state. At times it felt gross, and it didn't help that the PC is mostly an unsympathetic snob.
I believe I would have enjoyed this much more if Short had allowed the player to focus more on exploring Galatea's mind without worrying about triggering the next ending. In that case it could have been an extraordinary character study. As it stands it felt too much like I was playing with a gimmicky toy. Still, I would recommend everybody play this, if even for a brief time, just to experience the high concept.
Baby You're a Rich Man, June 5, 2019Mike Sousa and Robb Sherwin as a pairing makes sense, as the former's strength is coding and the latter's strength is writing. So I was pretty stoked when I first played this. But instead of combining their strengths, it appears this was developed like a McCartney/Lennon song where they just jam two separate numbers together and hope it works.
The first half of the game is clearly all or mostly Sousa. It feels very similar to At Wit's End, with fun slice of life situations set up in a Rashomon fashion; yet the stilted writing has a difficult time evoking pathos in situations that clearly demand it. The second half of the game is clearly all or mostly Sherwin, as it's trippy and confusing but well-written enough to keep you going. Ultimately, though, it felt like I was playing two completely different games and both left me unsatisfied. And while I do enjoy the occasional allegory, Sherwin is clearly better at writing tautegorical characters and dialogue.
It's relatively short and if you like the authors it's probably worth a play to see if it trips your trigger. But there's a reason why of the games that finished in the Top 10 of the 2001 IF competition, No Time to Squeal has the lowest ratings (despite finishing fourth); it definitely grabs your attention, but the whole is much lower than the sum of its parts.
One of the better games made in BASIC, June 2, 2019One of the first graphical adventures I played, Castle Adventure was literally written by a 14 year-old in his mother’s basement using nothing but BASIC for the game and ASCII characters for the graphics. Given the tools used and the year it was made, it was quite an impressive achievement.
You control an ASCII clover, moving around using the arrow keys. Commands are of the two-word variety, and most tasks you can complete just by running into things. At its heart this is a treasure hunting game, with the goal naturally to pilfer as much as you can from the castle without getting yourself killed and finding the key to unlock the gate that for some reason locked behind you.
I’m still impressed at not only the amount but also the variety of puzzles implemented using ASCII graphics. They’re not complex puzzles by any means; it never gets more difficult than bringing item A to point B, or making sure you have item A before you go into room B. But it’s refreshing to know you can’t just rampage your way through the castle. There’s even plenty of tension, as demons, bats, and other creatures guard treasures and you either must run away from them or attack them using limited available weaponry. There is at least one walking dead situation, though the game is short enough that it’s not terribly annoying. And while the original version had plenty of bugs (and some glaring spelling errors), and playing this on a new PC is impossible (even with DosBox you have to fine tune the game’s speed perfectly to avoid battles from being an exercise in learning the “restart” function) you can find ports and remakes that will do just fine, including one version that's point'n'click.
Ultimately, Castle Adventure is not a great game and other than the sweet nectar of nostalgia there’s not much worth recommending. Though much like a younger me in awe playing around with a rotary phone, this could be briefly entertaining for someone who’s never played a game programmed in BASIC. But man, major props to Kevin Bales. Keypunch Software even stole–-literally stole–-his game and sold it under the name Golden Wombat for a while.
The IF time-travel game that most resembles Day of the Tentacle, May 31, 2019It continues to surprise me that apparently so relatively few people have played First Things First. It seemingly has everything most players want: a good writer and coder (Wheeler), a fun premise (time travel mechanics), and lots of old-school (but fair) puzzles. It's not overly long or overly cruel. It even starts out like Curses! with some putzing around the house. It's about the most perfect game I've ever played.
The time travel mechanic is just lovely. You get to move between five different time periods over a fifty year period and tinker with things in each time period and see the ripple effects. Puzzles involve messing around with nature and seeing what happens, messing with your house and seeing what happens, messing with the bank and seeing what happens, and finally messing with people and seeing what happens.
There are two separate endings to your messing with the universe. The first one is more of a neutral ending and I was able to complete this path without a walkthrough and I'm a walkthrough kind of guy. The second one is much tougher and has more walking dead situations, but also much more rewarding. And if you just save on the regular, you should never have to replay too many portions as long as you keep going through the time machine and checking your work.
A must-play for those who enjoyed A Mind Forever Voyaging but wanted more agency, or for those who enjoyed LucasArts' Day of the Tentacle but wanted a more serious plot, or for those who just like any time travel game they can get their hands on.
An initial rush of excitement, but can't sustain itself (literally), May 30, 2019Shrapnel is impossible to describe without spoilers, so just know that if you like Cadre's writing or like gimmicks (and don't mind low interactivity) you should just play it. It takes about fifteen minutes.
Now, some spoilers:
(Spoiler - click to show)This could have been great. After being eaten by dogs and regenerating and seeing your own corpse, I thought I was in for a game of a lifetime. Sadly, like the game itself, the plot just collapses in on itself. The scenes are too short and too confusing to illuminate the characters. I've played it four or five times, and while I really enjoy the themes and the writing, I just find it terribly unsatisfying. Perhaps the part that disappoints me the most is when we meet the time traveler from the future who tries to explain things but just adds to the confusion.
Shade was released the same year, and while there are definite similarities, I thought Plotkin's work had a tighter narrative and felt more immersive.
All that said, the gimmick thrills me enough to give it four stars. Still, one of the weaker offerings from Cadre.
Generational, May 27, 2019I just finished Photopia for the second time, almost twenty years after my first playthrough. I worried that time or perspective would change my opinion, and while that did indeed happen, it remains a treasure I will still recommend to anyone who delves into the world of interactive fiction.
When I first played I was about 20 years old and was mostly moved by the big dramatic moments. Like others have mentioned, time has led me to find these somewhat manipulative, lacking depth. The character of Alley in particular doesn't move me any longer, though I reject that she is a Mary-Sue. We don't see her flaws, though I believe this is because we only see her through the eyes of others who have no reason to highlight her flaws. On this playthrough then I was moved by the characters around Alley, her parents especially (perhaps being the parent of a daughter now helps that). The best parts of Photopia are the ones that don't move the story, where you learn more about everyone through the conversation system or by examining the world around you. The only part I actively disliked was the scene from Alley's suitor, who is nothing but a trope here.
Beyond the characters, I am still amazed at the technical skills on display. The dynamic maps during the bedtime story sections are amazing. Cadre also does a wonderful job of pushing the player through the game at the perfect pace in order to tell his story. While this could have worked as static fiction, I believe the medium improves immersion.
Even with its now recognizable flaws, I remain very fond of this work and will hopefully play it with my children when they are old enough.
Loose threads, May 25, 2019Tapestry was one of those games that was pretty revolutionary when it was released. Replaying parts of one's life wasn't a new concept by any means, but the storytelling device was ripe for the interactive-fiction treatment. As such it wooed me at the time, but replaying it all these years later I mostly just see the flaws.
The first problem I have with the game is that the story and all the player's goals are spelled out entirely in the prologue. It's a somewhat interactive text dump, but for the most part it successfully removes all wonder from the playing experience. You are shown key moments from your life you can replay, you are told how you can replay them and how you can reach the three distinct endings. What follows is essentially the video game equivalent of cutscenes: lots of exposition without much interaction. Yes, there are a couple of puzzles, but they're rudimentary and you have to more or less repeat the puzzles on each playthrough which is quite tedious.
The second problem I have with the game is the simplicity of the moral choices. The first one involves deciding whether or not to go to the hospital to watch your mother die or save a small family business from going under. Perhaps somewhere at sometime a real human has had to face such a decision, but it didn't move me; all I could think about was that my jerk of a coworker Mike couldn't cover for me while I went to the hospital. The second moral choice involves euthanizing your wife or trying to prolong it with a new drug treatment; the moral debate over euthanasia aside (and why are there only two options here?), all I could think about was how silly it was that the player and his wife seemed to never have once had a discussion about this before the player is forced to make the choice.
The overall theme of fate and guilt is a good one, and Ravipinto's writing and coding are solid. But the design of the game and the moral choices left me cold and I found it hard to care about the characters or their fates.
Juuuuust a bit outside, May 22, 2019I really wanted to love this game. Thrown into the middle of an at-bat during the American League Championship Series, it has one of the better hooks I've seen, and I honestly would have played an entire baseball game coded by Sousa. Ultimately, however, this game can't decide what it wants to be and it left me deeply frustrated.
The first third of the game is well above average, as the first several sections are tense and well-paced. It has the feel of spy movie with exotic locations and contrived danger. But then came the barn.
Even if I could look past that a complex, multi-step puzzle feels entirely out of place in this otherwise frenetic game, the way it's coded is aggravating. At one point you must pour liquids into containers using a funnel, and you have to individually unscrew each cap, insert the funnel, pour the liquid, remove the funnel, screw on the cap, and repeat. And that's just one example of how the game needlessly complicates basic tasks. None of the puzzles are terribly difficult; they all make sense within context and the game will often push you in the right direction if you're on the right track. But there's...just...so...many...steps. Heaven forbid you have to restore back to an earlier point and redo the entire barn puzzle (yeah, that happened).
There's also some sloppy coding. Sometimes doors are described as closed when they're open. There's a door entrance that's apparently its own room, but only while going in one direction. And some fairly obvious synonyms are not programmed. But in other ways it's coded really well. With one or two exceptions, the game will let you know if you try to save in an unwinnable state.
I honestly feel bad being the only person so far giving this game less than three stars. There's a lot to like here, which is why I finished it despite my frustrations. But At Wit's End left me feeling as much.
Is this real or is it a game? What's the difference?, May 21, 2019Dating simulators are inherently unsatisfying, in part due to the nature of choose-your-own-adventures. It's hard for the author to tell any kind of cohesive narrative as choices are often so disparate that the endings all require the reader to rewrite the protagonist in their heads to fit that particular branch. And even if one accepts that the player character is a cipher for your personal choices, this only works for one playthrough (assuming you like any of the choices). After that, one is tempted to just read the other branches for completionist sake, which devolves into tedium.
Add all of the above problems onto a dating simulator is even more problematic, as in real life, successful dates are so much more complex than decisions; my wife was drawn to me because of my looks, my sense of humor, and that I accidentally had sunscreen showing on my face when we first met. While I had some agency in all of that, I honestly wasn't trying that hard. I just was who I was. So dating simulators have a difficult time with immersion even for a second. It all just feels like playing with dolls without the ability to use my imagination.
Chris Cornell definitely gets this. Save The Date explores these themes over what makes a story immersive and satisfying. The player is tempted to play this like any dating simulator and constantly struggles against the author who pushes back.
I want to like this more than I did. Given how thoughtful Cornell is about the theme and style of the game, I wish the writing was more lush. There's a lot of stilted dialogue and a lot of clicking past short sentences, which is one of the primary problems with actual dating simulators. But mostly I was annoyed by the ending, as I found it ultimately negating my experience playing the game rather than enriching it.
Others have felt differently, so play it if you enjoy metafiction.
Finally, a bank (and game) you can trust!, May 18, 2019While it would be hard to argue objectively that Bureaucracy is the best Infocom title, I believe it is the funniest and ergo my favorite. Hell, even before you play the game there's several laugh-out-loud moments just perusing the feelies, my favorite being the triplicate credit card application that is different on every page.
On start-up, you're asked to fill out personal information (to identify the character you'll be playing) and you'll be ridiculed (and your information will be misrepresented anyway, bureaucracy and all that). By this point if you're not hooked you probably won't be.
What ensues is comic madness, and unless you are a very good puzzle-solver, it will lean towards madness. As your blood pressure rises while playing the game, so does the character’s. There’s a blood pressure gauge in the status bar that goes up for every mistake you make. And yes, you can have a heart attack and die if it gets too high.
I did need a few hints to win this one, but even I was amazed at my persistence with some of the puzzles. The game’s tightly developed plot and brazen humor kept me away from the hint book several times. While there are a couple of instances where the game seems unfair, with one walking dead situation, if you persist you will be duly rewarded with the genius that was Douglas Adams.
Ian Finley changed my (gaming) life, May 13, 2019In 1999 I discovered the IF Archive and the first game I played was not Babel. It was Heist, by Andy Phillips. While I was terrible at it, I was impressed by the parser since the last new text adventure I had played was Bureaucracy. The second game I decided to try was Babel, and I was simply blown away.
The standard criticisms thrown Babel's way are fair. The game uses not one but two sci-fi clichés (amnesia and a doomed Arctic research station). Most of the story is told via flashbacks. The puzzles are mostly perfunctory. The ending is predictable. None of this mattered to me twenty years ago. And I played it again last year and it didn't really matter to me this time either.
Finley is a great writer and accomplished two things here. He was able to develop several multi-dimensional characters (via the flashbacks) and pace the reveals well enough (hence, the perfunctory puzzles) to increase their intrigue. And he also created a tense atmosphere that had me on the edge of my seat as a college freshman. While on my recent playthrough I wasn't quite so moved, I was entertained and once again impressed with the game's breadth and technical strengths.
While it's true that flashbacks are not the strongest storytelling technique, and while it's true that unlocking a bunch of doors is not the strongest use of puzzles , Finley masterfully weaves both facets of his game together, engaging the player in both goals and necessitating the player use one aspect to inform the other. Additionally, the game is so well coded that it's great as an introduction to interactive fiction.
Babel is not my favorite game ever, but probably the one for which I am most fond as it led me to this wonderful community. I even paid to register my game and get the feelies. It's too bad they appear to have been lost to the ether.
"I'd rather be smart than be an actor." -- Pinocchio, May 11, 2019I normally am a sucker for anything involving time travel and paradoxes and I tend to prefer linear gameplay. Jon Ingold is also one of my favorite authors. So All Roads should be right up my alley. I judged the 2001 IF competition and remember giving this one a score of "6" and then being surprised it took first place and won a whole slew of XYZZY awards. I decided to play it again recently to see if time would change my mind, but I left once again feeling underwhelmed.
At first, I thought I was bothered that the shifts and paradoxes were so fast and furious that I didn't have time to get a grip on the characters or their motivations. But Shrapnel and Shade are both similar in this regard and it didn't bother me there.
But looking at Jim Kaplan's review, I think he nailed it: Ingold does not trust the player here. If you spend too much time experimenting in any particular area, the game practically force feeds you what you should type, getting you to the ending as fast as possible. I play interactive fiction because I find satisfaction in being involved in the story, even if minimally, and here I felt like a puppet on a string.
That said, it's short enough that everyone should give it a try to see if it's up their alley.
Inspired great games, but offers few terrifying vistas of reality, May 11, 2019One of Infocom’s most overrated titles, The Lurking Horror is essentially the company’s only foray into the horror genre. Unfortunately, it feels more like a Lebling Zorkian dungeon crawl than an atmospheric mystery. While there are some creepy parts to this college campus caper, it is mostly a disjointed puzzlefest with a smattering of Cthulhu mythos.
Admittedly, I played both Theatre and Anchorhead first, which had the advantage of better development systems. With that in mind, I'll give the simple NPCs here a pass. But the things that annoy me the most about this game have nothing to do with technical restrictions. There's a hunger daemon, which is the slider puzzle of text adventures. There are several illogical walking dead situations. And while I can deal with inventory restrictions (oh how I miss thee, bottomless trenchcoat), even here I felt like I could reasonably carry more than the player character.
Ultimately I would have forgiven all this if I had been immersed in a scary story. But I found the writing mediocre and the ending abrupt and unsatisfying.
Better than the original in nearly every way but I couldn't enjoy it, May 11, 2019While a technical improvement in every area over the first game in the series, including graphics, sound, and breadth, I just couldn’t put my heart into Spellcasting 201.
You continue to play the noble Ernie, this time returning for your sophomore year at Sorcerer University. You have been accepted into the “cool” fraternity and must survive initiation week. While your frat mates spend the entire week trying to ensure your demise, there is something more sinister occurring behind the scenes of the university that has farther-reaching consequences than your self-esteem. Of course you must save the day, save your reputation, and save several girls from chastity!
It would appear that your adventure is less linear this time around, as there are many more locations to visit and few are inaccessible at any given time. But unfortunately, there are so many rigidly timed puzzles that you really have no choice as to where you’re heading. If you don’t follow the strict outline, you will end up restoring your adventure several dozen times. And that’s just by the end of the first day. This choice of design is a shame as it detracts not only from continuity, but the ubiquitous humor that Meretzky sprinkles about campus. There’s really no time to enjoy the colorful world around you as you’re always having to rush to beat the clock.
If you don’t mind that style of gameplay, then you should love this game. I felt alienated.
Legend Entertainment's first game and a decent launch title. , May 11, 2019When Infocom disbanded, Steve Meretzky was hired by up-and-coming Legend Entertainment to continue text adventures and compete with Sierra in the adventure game industry. While Legend’s first offering wasn’t entirely polished, and did not have very good sound support, Meretzky certainly did his job to jump start the company and this series.
Legend did their best to try and appeal to all types of adventurers with their new engine. The game has dozens of still graphics, which can be turned on or off. You can also have different status screens available, such as a map, or nothing at all as if you were playing an old text adventure. That said, the graphics are grainy in this offering, and many of the status screens are either unnecessary or clunky.
But where Spellcasting shines is the wit and design of its author. Resembling one of his older offerings, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, you have the option of playing in naughty or nice mode. There is no nudity, but the sexual undertones and jokes certainly crank up under ‘naughty.’
You play Ernie Eaglebeak, an aspiring magician who has escaped your abusive home to attend Sorcerer University. And to get all the girls! The game is fairly linear, though there are many time-limited puzzles, albeit easy ones. A majority of the puzzles therein revolve around wordplay (a la Nord & Bert), a major attraction for myself.
Overall, this is an average offering from a company that wound up releasing many excellent games during the 90’s. If you are a fan of Steve Meretzky or language puzzles, or just want to see where Legend started, you’ll probably like this game.
Exciting English exercises, entertaining enigmas. Expect ennui expunged. Enjoy!, May 10, 2019Like Infocom's Nord & Bert, Montfort created an essentially plot free game for Americans with a love for wordplay. Also similar to its predecessor, there is a built-in hint system that will ensure you don't get stuck.
While I adore Ad Verbum, its best puzzle is easily the first one you're likely to encounter, that being the compass rose rooms. The descriptions and responses to valiant attempts to escape these rooms are some of the wittiest I've seen in interactive fiction. I was delighted when trying to leave the south room when (Spoiler - click to show)"skedaddle" worked. I also rather enjoyed the library room. Like others have mentioned, I was disappointed that several puzzles have very little to do with classic wordplay (and aren't terribly interesting), and the Latin pig understands less than he should.
A fun time waster particularly if you enjoyed the old BASIC games, May 10, 2019A brilliant minimalist RPG that hearkens back to 80’s games made in BASIC only with the polish and creativity of today’s designers.
I have a soft spot for games that are light on exposition and throw you into a scene. The opening here has you in a dark room with the ability to build a fire, your other goals unknown. From there the most complex the game gets visually is an overworld map using ASCII characters. Despite this the story develops at a near perfect pace with ample doses of hope and horror. To say more would be pointless, other than it’s accessible to anyone and isn’t terribly difficult if you’re patient. I’ve also played it through three times because it’s that damn good (there's also more than one ending depending on your strategy).
I've only played the iOS port by Amir Rajan which I hear is a bit more polished and fleshed out.
Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here. A good problem!, May 9, 2019I've always enjoyed games that take place in space, especially on failing space vessels (e.g. Mission Critical, Seedship). I fell immediately for Fail-Safe's hook, which entails playing the role of mission control talking to the lone survivor on a failing space vessel.
Ingold does an incredible job at building a tense atmosphere based entirely on conversation. His decision to disable most basic interactive fiction commands (save, restore, inventory, etc.) was perfect in keeping the player locked into the moment. It wouldn't work in a longer game, but given the brevity here it was the right move.
The only thing that pulled me out of the game a bit was that mission control had some jargon that mission control would know but were not obvious to me, making a couple of things less clear. However, the decision to have (Spoiler - click to show)an unreliable narrator is pulled off very well. It's a huge risk for sure, as it can seem like pulling the rug out, a cheap trick as it were. However, there are a few clues sprinkled in that I didn't pick up on that in hindsight I should have. All I could do was tip my cap to the author and replay.
Definitely worth a look if you're in the mood for something short and immersive.
A light and humorous treasure hunt. , May 8, 2019Hollywood Hijinx is one of Infocom’s unsung gems. Your rich aunt has just passed on, and you were the favorite nephew chosen to inherit the large fortune. However, she needs to know if you are clever enough to be worthy of holding the family finances. She has given you twelve hours to explore her mansion and find the ten “treasures,” or leftover props from her husband’s popular B-movies.
The twelve-hour time limit would normally annoy me, but in my first playthrough I just relaxed, created an intricately detailed map, and explored each room leisurely. I ran out of time (and even made the game unwinnable by messing with some props), but once I learned what to do it was a blast to run through it one more time.
Hijinx captures the flavor of the times and the B-movie industry wonderfully, and is funny throughout. Normally I'm one to resort to a walkthrough pretty quickly, but for some reason I found the puzzles here fairly straightforward with only a couple of mind-benders. Regardless of whether or not you find the puzzles challenging or easy breezy, if you’re just looking for a good time and a few good laughs, this game is great.
Funniest game I've ever played, May 6, 2019Rated by many the best adventure game of 1993 and it’s pretty obvious to see why. You are the infamous Eric the Unready. You have been assigned to save the princess from her evil stepmother. Unbeknownst to you, you were assigned because you are the most ill-equipped knight in the land.
As with the early Legend games that used a text parser, you can play the game with or without graphics. The graphics are gorgeous for the time, and being a comedy they do well to serve the humor. The music is pleasant if too repetitive.
It’s more of a parody than a game. To the skilled adventurer, this should take less than a couple of weeks to win. The puzzles are not all that well-developed, and can even be annoying at times. But it is without a doubt the funniest game I have ever played. Bob Bates spoofs everything from Star Trek to Saturday Night Live to Zork and has a grand ole time with medieval culture. There is something here for everyone. I haven’t played the game since 2000, however, so it’s possible the jokes have become dated.
A solid courtroom drama with some unfortunate parser issues. , May 4, 2019Yes, there were good text adventures during the 80’s not made by Infocom. This is one fine example.
You play Perry Mason, of course, and must defend your client who has been charged with murder. The first part of the game is rather pointless, where you check out the crime scene looking for clues. The illustrations were poorly-drawn (and were in four colors, no less), which made this part of the game more or less save and restore until you got it right. The Apple II had slightly better graphics, while the Commodore was much better. However, the MSX version is gorgeous, with actual pre-rendered photos. If you can play that version somehow, do so.
But the game really shines during cross-examination. There are about five or six key witnesses that both you and the prosecuting attorney will question. When your adversary is up, you must object to improper lines of questioning to aid your case. When you’re up, you must probe each witness to elicit facts that puts holes in the D.A.’s case and exonerates your client. Logic truly dictates the outcome, and the ability of the game to remember past actions in determining the verdict was fairly impressive for the time.
The parser is rather limited, but with enough trial and error, Perry can get his point across. However, the game’s most frustrating element has the D.A. objecting to your line of questioning. This would be fine if the D.A. objected to improper questions. However, he also objects to “guess the verb” issues. In other words, even if you are on the right track, the D.A. will object to your question if the game doesn’t understand your verbiage. The result is the judge getting ticked off and your case going down the tubes.
But for those with a little patience, the game can be very rewarding when you make progress. There are at least three different endings, possibly more, ranging from life in prison for your client to complete acquittal. It’s a shame that there aren’t more games based from the courtroom, as the drama and fascination created by the justice system (or, perhaps more accurately, television shows about the justice system) translates well onto the PC. Perry Mason, while good, is merely a drop in the bucket of that potential.
Horribly cruel, but worth playing for the story. , May 4, 2019Thomas M. Disch, prolific science fiction writer and reviewer, wrote a game in 1986 that infuriated me as a child. At the time, I felt the game was too difficult, though I liked the premise behind it. So about ten years later, I picked the game back up. It infuriated me. Amnesia just may be the most difficult text adventure ever put on the market. And by difficult I don’t mean that you have to battle mazes and guess what verb the author wants you to use. The game is just damn hard.
As the title suggests, you wake up in a Manhattan hotel room with absolutely no clue as to your identity, or anyone else’s identity for that matter. Overused premise as it is, Disch works it to perfection. Almost immediately you feel as though people are after you. Naturally, you have no idea why.
It’s easy enough getting out of the hotel alive, but here comes the hard part: You’re homeless. You have almost no money. No job. No identification. No food. Half of the game is simply survival, and it’s about as easy as surviving on the streets in reality (or harder, really, considering how quickly I died). Unfortunately for our true homeless citizens, they have no access to a hint book or a restore function.
The game was only marginally easier when I was twenty-one than when I was ten. I was very happy to survive my first day on the streets without dying. I even made some progress towards figuring out my identity. But after dying a few dozen times, I gave in and downloaded a walkthrough; and I have no regrets in doing so. The game remains fair throughout, but I don’t believe I could have ever won it on my own.
Despite the insane difficulty, I have a strong affection for the game. Disch’s prose is beautiful. I wish more writers worked with programmers in developing games, because this one is worth going through the walkthrough just to read his descriptions of New York. Moreover, every single intersection in Manhattan is implemented. Every intersection. Granted, not every one has descriptions of warehouses and storefronts, but every landmark is there, as well as most parks and the entire subway system. A subway system that you’ll have to use extensively to make it anywhere in the game. Finally, the story is fairly intriguing if you ever get to see the end of it. One drawback is that the plot elements are all too often drawn out between various deaths and thus the suspense is hurt a bit.
There are a few programming mistakes, but in a game this enormous, they can be forgiven. So can the sheer difficulty, but only in this current age of walkthrough heaven. If you thought Bureaucracy was boring because it was too easy, then this game should be right up your alley. Otherwise, download a walkthrough and enjoy yourself, watching how a game can shine when writer and programmer join forces.
I finished the trilogy and all I got was this lousy grue, May 3, 2019An ambitious final entry into the original trilogy that is a pleasure to read but a veritable nightmare to play, Zork III’s value now is mostly for posterity.
Unlike the treasure hunting of the first two games, Zork III has you on a more heroic mission not surprisingly involving coming face to face with a dark foe of Frobozz. This is ultimately more satisfying than just collecting antiquities, and with high-level prose that provides a chilling atmosphere, it could have been a memorable adventure. However, the puzzles are incredibly hard with most of them being patently unfair. There’s even a non-obvious way to lock yourself out of victory, which was annoying as *$@! then and is intolerable now. And with even less character interaction and humor than earlier in the series, it really breaks the game for me.
That said, if you want to play the game for completionist’s sake, have a walkthrough handy so you can enjoy the ride.
Second verse, better than the first, May 3, 2019The second installment in this landmark text series is a definite improvement over the original, though still has some maddening features that would never be tolerated today.
Rather than just collecting treasures, your goal is to face the evil wizard. Thus, the story has more inherent conflict and gives it more weight. The map is also more manageable, with no mazes (though there are some tricky room exits). Some of the puzzles are very clever, my favorites being the carousel room and the bank vault. Unfortunately, one requires familiarity with baseball, which isn’t fun for non-American players.
Probably my favorite of the three entries, though still not terribly satisfying with minimal plot and some obtuse puzzles.
I'm grateful for Zork and never want to play it again, May 3, 2019Yes, Zork was the most important computer game of the early 1980’s. Perhaps even more important than King’s Quest. "You are standing in an open field, west of a white house," is quite possibly the most well-known line in adventure game history. It laid the foundation for many wonderful things to come. And it was an incredibly impressive, engaging adventure when it was released. But other than nostalgia, it has little going for it after all these years.
A simple treasure hunting expedition can actually be a welcome relief from more story-based games, but Zork breaks so many conventional rules of modern game play that most fans of current interactive fiction would rip it to shreds were it released today. First, there’s the pointless maze (of twisty little passages, all alike). Then there’s the random enemy encounters and random battle elements. There are several ways to lock one’s self from victory without even realizing it, and a few puzzles are so poorly clued (or not clued at all) that it doesn’t matter anyway. And all that onto a time limit (due to a finite light source, at least early on), and you have one maddening game.
To be fair, the atmosphere still holds up well after all these years. The parser is impressively strong. And a few of the puzzles are rather ingenious. But I don’t have patience any longer for the aforementioned annoyances. Zork used to be a giant, but so many others have piled on top of its shoulders that it has weakened considerably. Still, I would recommend this to those who do have an interest in seeing how computer gaming first exploded in the market.
A fairly easy but fun adventure where every puzzle has multiple solutions. , May 2, 2019Touted as an adventure game for beginners by Infocom and Wishbringer certainly fits the bill. I played this text adventure when I was fourteen and required no hints for the duration. But this romp is still enjoyable for people of all ages and abilities.
You play a postman with a directive from your boss to deliver a package to an old lady who lives at the north edge of town, and by 5 o’clock or you’re fired! Delivering the package is easy enough, but what’s in the package, as you later discover, triggers a series of events that unveils the dark secrets of your town, spilling it in darkness and terror. Of course, the fate of the town rests in your hands, but you must first discover what the hell is going on.
The wishbringer itself is a magick (sic) stone that can cast several spells if one is carrying the proper items. While the spells can help the beginner get out of some sticky situations, solving the puzzles without the aid of the stone yields better results (and more points!). The experienced gamer will likely never need the stone, but it does provide replay value.
As per usual with Infocom adventures the writing is top-notch and plenty of humor finds it way into the normally creepy ambiance. While Wishbringer offers no surprises, it should be a pleasant and rewarding experience for most players.
Infocom at its finest., May 1, 2019Lauded by critics and mostly ignored by the public, A Mind Forever Voyaging is more of a story than a game, being essentially puzzleless. But man, what a story. Taking place in the year 2031, America is doing poorly and some crackpot scientists have developed a sentient computer named PRISM. Its purpose: to enter a simulation of the future to see if popular conservative Senator Richard Ryder’s plan for renewed national purpose will lead to prosperity. You are PRISM.
If you can set aside the ridiculous notion that a simulation of the future would ever come close to being accurate (hell, we can’t even predict next weekend’s weather with certainty), then you should enjoy this entertaining look into Steve Meretzky’s political vision of a possible future. While your goal is to record evidence of what’s going down in the years to come (from banal activities like eating a meal in a restaurant to more charged activities like meeting with government officials), the real purpose and joy of the game is to simply explore. The town of Rockvil, South Dakota is vividly imagined and detailed, and one could complete the game without visiting 90% of what the town has to offer. And while the story’s progression is fairly predictable, it consistently remains a poignant and touching story of self-exploration throughout and boasts one of the best endings out there.
My only criticisms are that things can be a little repetitive at times and the NPCs are not as developed as I prefer (especially your simulated wife). But in the grand scheme these are mere trifle. More of an experience to be enjoyed than completed, A Mind Forever Voyaging should be at the top of any gamer’s list of classics to try.
Hello cruel world, I don't want to join this circus, April 30, 2019Jeff O’Neill’s first game with Infocom pits the player in a circus mystery involving a kidnapping and a cast of crazy characters. O’Neill certainly brings forth his vision of the shady underbelly of circus life, and there are several puzzles apropos to the atmosphere (e.g. getting across a tightrope, taming some lions, etc.). However, the mystery itself is highly convoluted and not all that interesting.
It becomes very difficult, even early, to determine exactly what’s going on, and several puzzles related to the mystery are barely clued and can be solved with only limited understanding of the situation at hand. Worse yet, there are bugs that require practically restarting the game. Despite several sprinkles of humor and ingenuity, Ballyhoo is simply too frustrating and not worthy of play unless you must complete your Infocom collection.
If you love perd wuzzles, then yule love this!, April 29, 2019Have you ever wanted to get a nice juicy steak, but all you had was a stake? Have you ever wanted to literally kill two birds with one stone? Or have you come across a pretty girl and it made you long for a gritty pearl? Then you should definitely help out Nord and Bert, because they truly can’t make hails or teds of it. Wait, um…
My favorite language based game until Counterfeit Monkey was released, Nord & Bert has you playing with homonyms, spoonerisms, idioms, and other plays on our language and culture in order to help save the town of Punster from total chaos. There’s a story, but it’s there to serve the puzzles. Just dig in and get your lexicon dirty.
The game designers smartly realized that most gamers would not be intimately familiar with every phrase, idiom, and slang the game is riddled with; thus, an in-game hint system is a welcome sight. Despite the occasional frustration that ignorance creates while playing, the game can be funny and very satisfying when you do advance on your own intellect. Nord & Bert is a must-play for those who love word puzzles. Hardcore adventurers may want to look elsewhere. Naturally, non-native English speakers would struggle here, as well as at times non-Americans.
Richard Basehart, Yay!, April 28, 2019One of the few games that has made me legit laugh out loud, Detective was the perfect game to get the MSTK3 treatment. It was a seriously earnest mystery written by a 12-year old Matt Barringer and he made nearly every possible mistake one could make--instant death rooms, unimplemented objects, doors that only go one-way, etc.--but since there are really no puzzles, the game can be won in a short time.
Normally I’m not a fan of punching down. But for the most part the mocking done by Servo, Crow, and the gang is light-hearted and it helped me play a game I never would have touched otherwise. That Barringer retroactively gave his blessing for this also helps. I have never seen a full episode of MSTK3, but I still very much enjoyed myself. And I’ve come back to this a few times whenever I need a laugh.
Whatever you do, don't undo!, April 28, 2019A parody of Aisle and IF in general, several well-known authors teamed up to write this hilarious send-up.
Rob Noyes created a silly, pointless game called Pick up the Phone Booth and Die, which is exactly as complicated as the title implies. Its stupid charm made it more famous than should have been possible, though being released in 1996 no doubt helped. Here you are faced with the same phone booth, only instead of having two possible endings, you again have over 100 possible endings in the same vein of Aisle.
Only play if you are a veteran of interactive fiction (meaning you have played at least ten games, including the aforementioned two this game parodies); otherwise, many of the jokes will go over your head. I replay this every five years or so and it amuses me without fail, including several laugh out loud moments.
Literally the game that introduced me to gnocchi, so four stars for that!, April 28, 2019Perhaps the first serious game that would automatically end after one move. The premise is quite simple as you play an ordinary man in an ordinary supermarket who has stopped in the pasta aisle next to a woman who is also shopping. There are exactly 136 possible moves you can make that produce 136 separate endings. There is neither a puzzle nor a plot, and one would be hard pressed to say this is even a character study, as some of the endings’ portrayal of your character’s history contradict each other.
I do wish there was something more here to unravel, but as it stands this is quite a pleasant diversion thanks to the imagination and quality writing of Sam Barlow. More importantly, Aisle inspired many future authors in experimenting with the genre, including a few entertaining games that mimic this one.
I still come back and play Aisle about every five years. There's just something about the protagonist's world view that makes me smile.
If you're blue and don't know where to go to, try out this game!, April 28, 2019Taco Fiction has one of the more intriguing openers I’ve ever played. You are a petty thief in need of some cash, and the opening prompt gives you specific directions on how you’re going to rob the taco joint next door. If the protagonist were the violent sort this could be off-putting, but the game lets you know he has no interest in hurting anyone.
What follows is an unexpectedly light, mostly comical (but at times tense!) mystery that takes you in bizarre and unexpected directions. The NPCs are delightful and respond appropriately to what you do with your gun. The puzzles are also light, well-clued, and set the appropriate pacing. My only main criticism is the endgame, which feels a bit rushed and unsatisfying. I felt like the game was just starting to explore the characters and setting and then it was over. At least there are a couple of endings available depending on your motivations for the character at the end.
Delightful and annoying, just like a cat, April 28, 2019When I first discovered interactive fiction in the late 90’s and learned that the public now had tools to develop their own games, my first story idea was to design a game where the player controlled a cat. I gave up on the idea when I realized I had a hard time coming up with a good story with good puzzles that made sense.
Levi makes a valiant attempt here. Your initial goal is to simply get some damn food, and this was the part of the game I enjoyed the most. For the most part, the puzzles here fit within the scope of a feline’s abilities if requiring more foresight than they usually have. However, the final two thirds of the game (Spoiler - click to show)where you must foil a stronger enemy and save your provider’s life more than stretches the limits of what a cat is able (and willing, in some cases) to do. Thus, the game feels at times like a generic puzzlefest with a cat built into the game, rather than the other way around.
I wound up using the in-game hints and a walkthrough for a good portion of this because a couple of the puzzles required some leaps of logic (Spoiler - click to show)(particularly one involving setting a trap) and some reasonable alternative solutions were neither implemented nor acknowledged. I was also annoyed by the map, wherein you are frequently doing things like moving north to go northeast, then west to go back southwest whence you came.
The writing is solid and there are several delightful responses to things you can try in your feline body. I just wish it had focused even more on the typical life of a cat.
20th Anniversary Edition well worth the price, April 28, 2019My introduction to H.P. Lovecraft, and frankly, well-written horror, Anchorhead remains one of my favorite games ever made twenty years later. While the free version stands on its own, the 20th anniversary edition is well worth the ten dollar price tag if you liked the original or are a fan of thriller/horror games.
You play the role of apprehensive wife who has uprooted her life after her husband inherited a spooky house in a spooky New England town. Naturally, as you explore the house and the town, you begin to unravel horrors better left uncovered; except your husband’s life is at stake and so the motivation to press on remains ever present. Gentry does a superb job of encouraging the player to go at their own pace as key events have to be triggered by solving key puzzles. This allows his masterful atmospheric writing to draw the player into his world (not surprisingly as it won Best Setting at the XYZZY awards). I have played this a few times now, and each time I have felt on the edge of my seat despite knowing what’s coming. Even reading through old newspaper clippings or library books intensifies the mood here. The writing is that good.
In fact, there is a sequence about halfway through the game (Spoiler - click to show) (well/mob/church) when things start to get real that was sort of a coming of age moment for me in interactive fiction. It remains one of my favorite areas of any video game, graphic or otherwise.
My only real criticism of Anchorhead is the puzzles. In the 20th Anniversary Edition, Gentry cleaned up several puzzles that were done hastily. The wine cellar puzzle is infinitely more interesting now, and your acquisition of keys seems to be more organic. But there are still too many puzzles that seem to present only for puzzles' sake (Spoiler - click to show)(including one near the end with a broom), and some that practically require you to die in order to learn what you need to do (Spoiler - click to show)(the lighthouse puzzle comes to mind). The game is also cruel at times, allowing you to progress in an unwinnable state because you didn’t find an out-of-the-way object you didn’t even know you were supposed to look for (Spoiler - click to show)(a needle in a haystack, as it were). Thankfully, the nature of a horror game means you’ll be saving often, and even the worst walking dead situation doesn’t require to restore back too far. Still, when atmosphere is king, these types of issues can pull the player out of the game. I admit I used a walkthrough near the end of the game, not because the puzzles were too hard, but rather because I was too engrossed in the story to want to solve them.
It would be hard to introduce someone to the world of interactive fiction without recommending Anchorhead. While it’s not easy, the game’s parser and design are so user-friendly (thank you trench coat and key-ring!) that it rarely becomes frustrating to play. As of this writing Anchorhead is considered the 2nd highest rated text adventure of all-time, and most of those ratings came before the new edition which enhances the playing experience while also adding some appropriately horrifying graphics.
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