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skyranch.exe
MS-DOS Application
skyranch.txt
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Skyranch

by Jack Driscoll

Space Exploration
1999

About the Story

"A future that's not post-apocalyptic!" [--blurb from Competition '99]


Game Details

Off-Site Reviews

SPAG
The thing is, it's often extremely amusing to place yourself in a literary world where the author is not a superb writer of English. (The Walter Miller Home Page, or Fat Chicks In Party Hats website, for instance.) Driscoll's game offers this style of appeal. His description for the robot that follows you around ("Lloyd 2.0") ends with the robot telling you, "I will love you always." This apparently sincere expression of emotion in a sea of poor spelling and incorrectly used homonyms is *funny*.
-- Robb Sherwin
See the full review

>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

In my head, I've started this review a dozen different ways and discarded them all. The unused versions were rejected for being too caustic, too angry, or too harsh. During this current attempt, I will try to keep a leash on these energies, though they're chomping at the bit (if I may mix my animal metaphors.) I want for these reviews to be helpful, not hurtful, and I want to keep my criticisms constructive. In that spirit, I offer a couple of changes that could (and should) be made to make Skyranch a playable game:

The game should be reprogrammed until it meets a minimum level of coding quality... To detail all, or even many, of the ways in which Skyranch fails to meet this standard would take more time than I want to devote to this game...

The prose should be rewritten until it consists of correct English sentences. The current writing in the game is pretty abysmal...

Until these two basic conditions are met, Skyranch won't even be worth discussing, let alone playing.
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Page Update History

  v.5: 06-May-2022 22:50 - Paul O'Brian (Current Version) - Edit Page - Normal View
Changed external review links
v.4: 22-Sep-2013 12:08 - Edward Lacey
Changed external review links
v.3: 02-May-2008 17:49 - Paul O'Brian
Changed external review links
v.2: 27-Feb-2008 22:03 - David Welbourn
Changed description
v.1: 16-Oct-2007 01:50 - IFDB
Created page