Alias 'The Magpie'

McT's Interactive Fiction Reviews

Beautifully, professionally done – superbly implemented. Funny, clever and delicious. I doubt it can be completed in 2 hours, but this is currently the standard bearer in the competition for me. 10/10.
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IF Comprehensive
A rich setting, motivated puzzles, and memorable characters
My introduction to interactive fiction was playing the Infocom games as a kid. They were fun then but a bit dated now, with an emphasis on contrived inventory and set-piece puzzles and less NPC interaction than modern works. “Alias ‘The Magpie'” plays like one of the best games from that era, but with a rich setting, motivated puzzles, and memorable characters. Score: 10
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The Breakfast Review
Something Fresh
Now, this is Something Fresh. We are an imposter -- that is, we are a slippery gentleman thief pretending to be a famous psychiatrist -- and our objective is a scarab, a Cheops of the Fourth Dynasty. What follows is a Wodehousian romp complete with dotty aristocrats, disguises, and wacky hijinks.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. The voice is engaging and the writing knows just how much to say and how much to leave out. The puzzles were just challenging enough, and the gating is effective. The characterisations are comedic just verging on cartoonish, without going into eye-roll territory. It's certainly not deep or thought-provoking in any way, but this damn-well near exactly what I come to IF hoping to find.
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Good Old Days
+ Colourful and very detailed background
+ Wonderfully neurotic characters
+ Clever setup for a nifty chain of events
+ Best use of a cucumber in a video game ever
+ Had me laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes at times
- Some of the puzzles could have used a bit more or better hinting
= Just like playing a Pink Panther movie.
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Patrick Brian Mooney

This was a fun treasure hunt. The multiple levels of deception involved in pretending to be multiple people to various NPCs was also a fun mechanic. The multiple disguises were great, too, and most of the interlocking puzzles were wonderful. The map was elegantly designed and access control handled gracefully. In all of these ways, it feels a lot like The Wizard Sniffer last year, though with a smaller, more restricted field of action and with a larger verb set. But all in all, it's wonderful in some of the same ways. Rating 9/10
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Retro Adventurer
Puzzles a’plenty, and plenty to like about this game
EXAMINE responses are informative and humorous. X CRUMBS reveals, “It looks as though someone has had their cake and trampled on it.” The DUTCH COW is “A fine example of vile Victorian tat, which, in spite of its size, manages to lower the tone of the whole room.” J.J. Guest gets richly creative with his descriptions. To EXAMINE TABLE, we get, “A George III mahogany inlaid double-pedestal extension table featuring a reeded top with rounded corners and matched-swirl mahogany veneers crossbanded with quartered pau ferro and satinwood stringing. Rather fine.” We also have probably the best response to EXAMINE WALL that I’ve ever seen. “Staring at the walls will send you wall-eyed, probably.”
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These Heterogenous Tasks
Writing that works as reward
As far as the environment goes, it does a fine job of cramming in a sense of lavish Victorian decorative excess without overburdening the text. That’s true of the writing in general: it’s ornate without being stodgy, and there’s always something interesting going on with it. It’s not always the most scintillatingly beautiful prose in the world, but it’s always got something that it’s excited about and really wants to show you, and it does have some really good lines. It’s writing that works as reward.

All this went a long way towards holding my interest in a game that has a good-sized map and doesn’t channel you very strongly at the beginning. Also helpful here: the sense of the place being alive. This is very much an inhabited space, and the people inhabiting it are active – not that there’s a hugely complex NPC-movement system or anything, but the density of simple triggered events on your arrival goes a long way.
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