External Links


Story File
Requires a Z-Code interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.

Have you played this game?

You can rate this game, record that you've played it, or put it on your wish list after you log in.

Playlists and Wishlists

RSS Feeds

New member reviews
Updates to external links
All updates to this page

9Lives

by Bill Balistreri, Hal Hinderliter, Sean Klabough, Luke Michalski, and Morgan Sokol

2013

(based on 19 ratings)
4 reviews

About the Story

This IF was created as an assignment for ENG 437: Project Management, taught by Prof. Stuart Moulthrop at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.


Game Details


Awards

30th Place - 19th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2013)

Tags

- View the most common tags (What's a tag?)

(Log in to add your own tags)
Tags you added are shown below with checkmarks. To remove one of your tags, simply un-check it.

Enter new tags here (use commas to separate tags):

Member Reviews

5 star:
(0)
4 star:
(0)
3 star:
(0)
2 star:
(5)
1 star:
(14)
Average Rating:
Number of Reviews: 4
Write a review


3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Lots of flaws..., October 12, 2013

This game feels like a first game that hasn't been beta-tested by anyone else than the authors. There's a lot of guess-the-verbs situations ((Spoiler - click to show)one being that >swim doesn't do anything, you instead have to >swim to boat ; as a consequence, that guess-the-verb problem made me unable to get something else than the "good ending" - I had to go out of my way and look at the walkthrough to get the bad ending!); lots of objects in the descriptions aren't implemented; some objects appear in the description even when you have removed them (classic beginner flaw, I'm afraid...); a few bugs ((Spoiler - click to show) In the medieval setting: >give flag to statue : "i'm only interested in money", the pirate says (?!)), a few typos (lone periods at the beginning of lines, missing extra line breaks between descriptions and prompts).

The "game" part of it isn't that great either; it's really short, the story pretty much unfolds by itself, and you just have to perform a few obvious actions from time to time; all those actions are basically a binary choice ("do you do what is good or this other stuff that is clearly bad?"), and it's "be good several times to win". Oh and the last scene seems really incoherent ((Spoiler - click to show)So the Illuminati give you lots of money but also tell you how to screw them over??)

Anyway, this game didn't work for me on a lot of levels: too short, too many bugs, too linear.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A buggy small game about six different lives, August 1, 2017
by MathBrush
Related reviews: 15-30 minutes

This game is a sort of metaphysical ladder.

You have different choices to do the right or wrong thing. Doing the right thing reincarnates you as something 'greater', and the wrong thing makes you lower.

The game is so buggy, though, that it is very hard to go 'down'.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Not my cup of tea, November 18, 2013
by streever (America)

I have to say, I really didn't enjoy this story. The "choices" were simply too obvious--do the right thing morally to progress.

The writing felt clunky, and the games premise felt a bit too on the nose.

The basic mechanical concept was interesting, and I could see that mechanic being useful/interesting elsewhere, but in a simple morality tale of self-sacrifice, it felt a little pushy.

I don't disagree with the premise or the actions you undertake, but they seemed so self-evident to me as to be meaningless.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Missing the story, October 4, 2013
by ifwizz (Berlin, Germany)

There is no story but some singular scenes cemented together by diffuse reincarnation.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 




This is version 3 of this page, edited by genericgeekgirl on 1 October 2013 at 9:02pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page