Shrapnel

by Adam Cadre profile

Horror, Surreal, Time Travel, Historical
2000

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5 star:
(34)
4 star:
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3 star:
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2 star:
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Number of Ratings: 165
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- Caleb Wilson (Illinois), May 22, 2014

- Lorxus, March 8, 2014

- Ismarus, February 13, 2014

- francisthe3rd (Horseheads, NY), January 23, 2014

- RichCheng (Warwickshire, UK), January 12, 2014

- streever (America), November 23, 2013

- John Simon (London), October 31, 2013

- Simon Deimel (Germany), October 7, 2013

- Zeofar, August 30, 2013

- Artran (Taipei, Taiwan), August 13, 2013

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A lopsided puzzle-box, July 10, 2013
by Jim Kaplan (Jim Kaplan has a room called the location. The location of Jim Kaplan is variable.)
Related reviews: adam cadre

Play it if: you have a thing for mindscrew tales and want a short, essentially puzzleless story.

Don't play it if: you're looking for a story that's truly elegant and powerful, because the cool ideas here are not delivered in a very consistent way.

I think I'm noticing a trend with my reaction to Adam Cadre's work. I'm impressed by the technical stuff, the subversive elements blow my mind, and the actual stories leave me cold. The exception is Varicella, whose story I do find quite engaging. But other than that my favorite of his would still have to be 9:05, which numbers among the least technically skilled of his works but is also perhaps the most elegant, with the entire story structure focused on the singular aim of delivering the punchline.

Shrapnel fits fairly neatly into how I think I perceive his work. The ideas are interesting, the subversion of traditional IF devices such as ressurection is excellent, and the story leaves me a bit too confused to describe.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I understand what happened/happens/willen haven been able to have be happening...but it's not really delivered correctly. It's reminiscent of that much-awaited blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises. To spare (admittedly unlikely) spoiler pain, I'll just say that a certain amount of backstory is revealed at precisely the wrong time for it to have any emotional impact, and it undermines much of the third act as a result.

The thing is, the last-minute reveal works well when it's a simple thing that crystallizes everything that came before. But there's nothing simple about the explanation for Shrapnel, and the player doesn't even find out through piecemeal investigation. It's just a fairly long-winded, multi-turn exposition-fest...admittedly something to which science fiction can fall prey, but even mediocre science fiction tends to know how to get the tiresome recitation of knowledge out of the way at the beginning of the story.

I don't want to give the impression that I hated Shrapnel; I quite liked it, really, not least for its initial setup and the execution of that core idea (not to mention the very end, which is quite memorable). But it is a bit of a jumble, really, and could have benefited from a bit more tinkering with the structure.

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2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Scary, but at a price, July 8, 2013

This game (if you can call it a game, you can't really play it) is really only good at one thing. It's not a fun way to pass time. It's not an interesting story to play through. What it's good at is sending you on a ride. The storyline (or lack thereof) tosses you around in every which direction without warning, which is confusing (and not quite as fun), but it ends up working to startle you more often than not.

That being said, I still wish that there WAS a storyline. As stated above, it's confusing and not really as fun as it can be. I love text-based horror, but I really wish there was a plot. While you do get a bit of a sense of what's going on as you advance through the game, it still takes quite a while to get used to. I'm also not a fan of the fact that the game sort of takes the player hostage. What I mean is that you don't get very much say in what's going on. For the most part, you just press 'space' over and over again as it advances through the story. Even when you die and it says "would you like to 'QUIT' 'RESTART' or 'RESTORE?", you can press whatever you want and it will come up as "restart".

I like that Shrapnel went out on a limb and tried something new, but sometimes you should just stick to what works.

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- Satupeka, June 24, 2013

- DJ (Olalla, Washington), May 9, 2013

- Floating Info, April 3, 2013

- Stewjar (USA), January 29, 2013

- Sdn (UK), December 24, 2012

- Edward Lacey (Oxford, England), December 16, 2012

- bluevelvetwings, October 5, 2012

- AADA7A, September 21, 2012

- stadtgorilla (Munich, Germany), August 30, 2012

- kala (Finland), May 25, 2012

- Joey Jones (UK), May 15, 2012

- Dannii (Australia), April 23, 2012

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Get confused!, March 27, 2012

It exists two kinds of confusing games. Either you gets confused and irritated or you gets confused and compelled to continue playing to knew that is happening. This game is the essence of the positive confused. You don't understand anything of that is happening and you like it.

It might be an idea to compare Shrapnel to the authors other famous puzzleless and confusing game Photopia. Photopia has an good ending/explanation but I think Shrapnels is even better. And another thing that is to Shrapnels benefit is its very short length. Photopia starts getting irritating in the later parts. But Shrapnel is already over before you starts getting impatient for an explanation.

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