Number of Reviews: 13
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4 people found the following review helpful:
Great - wish it were longer, July 1, 2017I found this by chance - I don't really do a whole lot of IF, but I happened to be looking at the list of "Cruel works" on IFWiki, and figured I'd try one out to see how hard they can be. This one happened to be listed under "A" and time travel is cool, so I figured I may as well.
I really enjoyed it. There isn't any hand-holding, and half the fun is running around and learning how to interact with things. A spreadsheet definitely feels like it's mandatory, especially for challenge mode, but in both cases I realized in retrospect that my optimizations left me with plenty of time, so it's probably fine to just try to keep it all in your head. Because the game is so short, and because there's an undo command, losing isn't frustrating at all, just part of the process.
The puzzle is tough, but at the same time I feel that the mechanics could have been exploited to a much greater degree. Even for the challenge mode, the time travel mechanic is only needed once. While I was playing and realizing how many doors the game had, I was thinking ahead about the sorts of optimizations I'd need to make in order to have 3 or even 4 copies of myself running around, but it's never required since most doors can't actually be opened.
It took me about an hour and a half to solve the normal mode, and about another hour to do the challenge mode. I think the challenge mode is the definitive version of the game, since there are a couple of substantial changes which really force the player to think about what they're doing. I'm not sure if it's because I was playing challenge mode or if I just did something differently, but I believe that the challenge mode even gives a different ending. Definitely worth solving for anyone who enjoyed the base version.
I know that this is pretty old, but I would love to see a sequel which extends the amount of time the player has, but also expands the play area.