A Fable

Baf's Guide

A peculiar little psychodrama in which you wander dreamlike through the protagonist's thoughts and memories. Written, oddly enough, in the third person. Not very interactive, with only three objects and one puzzle. Some events are embedded in room descriptions, the sure sign of someone not quite grasping how the development system works. This game was floating around - first on BBS's, then on the net - for ten years before the author found out and issued a disclaimer. Apparently, it was written as demo code for AGT, and was never intended for public release.

-- Carl Muckenhoupt

SPAG
Apart from a few foggy areas each location (there are apparently only fifteen so the game is mercifully short) is a one or two paragraph scene reminiscent in style, but without the content, of some of Kafka's shortest works. They are apparently unrelated to each other, except that each seems as pointless and pretentious as the other. In most of these locations there is one item which you can manipulate, but to what end I could not say.
-- Julian Arnold
See the full review

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

Edit Tags

Cancel

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):

Delete Tags

Cancel

5 star: (0) 4 star: (0) 3 star: (1) 2 star: (1) 1 star: (5)

Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 1 Write a review

The game has a crazy quilt environment, a common device in surreal settings. Different rooms are patched to each other. It may contribute to a surreal atmosphere, but here it makes navigating the rooms and scenes more difficult. Talking about scenes: they are integrated into static room descriptions, so will happen every single time when the room is entered. That is something which I can live with, maybe even done on purpose. But then the room descriptions (and described scenes) reveal objects again and again when the room is entered, even if the object has been taken or moved into another room, but the thing is not actually there anymore. That is annoying. Which brings us to the next point: The room descriptions contain things and most of them are not implemented as objects, so dealing with them is met with a reply that this object is not existent. Which is frustrating and makes the player wonder if there is a reason to try any interaction.
The basic idea of the game may be fine -- I suppose it deals with a mental landscape of memories -- but the technical side leaves a lot to be desired.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  

More Options

Promote this user

Demote this user

Plonk this user

Flag spoilers

Flag as inappropriate

Direct link

View my user filters

Explain these options

 | Add a comment 

Polls