Bronze

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A mid-length retelling of Beauty and the Beast with musical magic, January 17, 2024

This mid-length game is a story-focused Zorkian type game, where you explore the Beast's castle, trying to understand his history and take action.

The game features a magical system focused on (Spoiler - click to show)bells. Different bells have different properties, which you must decipher by experimentation and by searching records.

The game is a more cynical version of the fairy tale (or more world-weary).

This game is intended to be accesible to beginners, with a tutorial mode and ways to access hints. I found the game frustrating when I tried to treat it as an open, nonlinear game. When I did what the game told me to do, it was much more enjoyable.

Great for beginners, smooth, and adaptive, April 1, 2023

Bronze is an interactive fiction following a similar story of beauty and the beast, but wildly different. With mechanics and fantastical backstory, this game is world-built in the best ways. It’s got an expansive yet still navigable structure, with in-built hints (that is quite literally the best thing an IF can have).

It’s almost romance, but also it’s fantasy and a story of revenge. There is no way to die, and there’s so much optional character backstory you can see. It’s a story full of magic. It is focused on one goal, with all the optional content limited to the main storyline, so there’s no real side-quests, only little bits of information you can look up which aren’t necessary.

It has multiple endings as well, and they’re all easily accessible. I’d definitely recommend this one for beginners.

Well-designed mechanics, March 2, 2023

I felt that being able to find something and the directions on the status bar made the gameplay a lot more enjoyable and much less frustrating, given the vast number of rooms to explore. These two features should be standard practice for complex or multi-room IF games. One of most well-designed IF games I’ve played to date and I’m glad to have stumbled upon this. Interesting storyline as well!

Great for beginners... or those who want a compelling, quick game, December 1, 2022

I really enjoyed the ease of this game-- not necessarily easy to solve, but easy to play casually. I did not need to make maps or take notes-- everything is there for you if you just "think" about it or "look up" in various references. The story is compelling as well.

Incredible atmosphere and storytelling, December 5, 2020

I had played and enjoyed text adventure games before *Bronze*, but this was the first that I truly loved.

Based on the fairytale of Beauty and the Beast (not one I am very familiar with), this game is long enough to keep you busy for a while, with puzzles which are neither too simple nor infuriatingly difficult. But its greatest strengths are the atmosphere that it evokes, through the description of the castle and the objects in it - rich and Gothic, sometimes macabre - and the incredible storytelling: not just in the present day, but a whole history which leaves its traces in the castle, and which can be pieced together through paintings, objects, rooms and books. *Bronze* reminded me somewhat of Angela Carter's book *The Bloody Chamber*, a collection of modern retellings of fairytales with a dark but beautifully-described atmosphere.

An illuminating post on Short's blog explained how the story developed, leading to its various endings (CONTAINS SPOILERS: https://emshort.blog/2006/12/31/the-making-of-bronze/) - I never succeeded in finding one of these.

The 'go to' function is very much appreciated, and there is a tutorial mode for new players of IF. But the atmosphere and storytelling should appeal to players at all levels.

Another home run from Emily Short, October 5, 2020

Emily Short does more than justice to the medium of interactive fiction and lives up to her reputation as one of the best IF authors in this relatively short IF. In Bronze, Emily takes a fairytale well-known to western audiences and refines it, building up layers and layers of storytelling, worldbuilding, and fantasy. We are all familiar with the story of Beauty and the Beast, but Short spurns the Disney retelling and takes us down darker, more fanciful paths. Short has set up this story as part map, part puzzle - objects that you interact with unlock different parts of the map and progress the quest, which is (Spoiler - click to show)to solve the mystery of the Beast and his enchanted servants.

Of particular note are Short's masterful descriptive map skills. Even though Short ends up building a relatively large (55-room) map, you never got lost, partially thanks to the easy-to-follow descriptions as well as the in-game compass and "go to" commands. She populates each room with just enough to keep you interested and engaged without overwhelming the reader, which is an extremely difficult thing to balance. The "go to" command is particularly helpful late in the game, and maintains the pace steadily without getting bogged down with a fully-explored map. That pacing is another mark of a master IF storyteller - too often I play a game that expands its playable area too much and feels more like a chore than a leisure activity.

Even though Bronze is simply a fractured fairytale, it endures as one of my favorite IF for its ease of play and its rewarding lightbulb moments. It never feels patronizingly easy or frustratingly difficult, and it is fully playable in a few hundred turns. That, to me, is a winner. All of my kudos to Emily Short!

Points for best NPC: The Castle, April 30, 2020

In this retelling of the classic, wellknown fairy-tale, you play Beauty. However, you (the player) are not Beauty. Through memories triggered by various rooms, objects, pieces of furniture, it's clear that she has lived a life of her own, in this castle with its Lord, and outside it in her village.

She does not find Beast after coming home from a visit to her family, so she has to search the entire Castle.

And this is where the game shines. This Castle is so detailed, so well implemented and so vividly described, I felt like I was looking over Beauty's shoulder every step of her search. Your discovery of the different wings and rooms of this Castle is paced to perfection. The various puzzles hold you long enough to get accustomed to a certain part of the setting, until you find the solution and another part opens up. This has the effect that in the end, I felt like I had experienced much more space than is actually in the map.

For other of the many qualities of this game, I direct you to other reviews. The Castle was what I wanted to highlight most.

IF to remember, February 25, 2020

I'll remember this game for a long time. An enchanting twist to the well-known story that leaves you reminiscing about the couple when you finish. Full of fun puzzles and friendly to newbies.

Perfect Introduction To IF, March 18, 2017

In my opinion, this game is perfect. Based on my limited experience with IF, I'd say this game definitely succeeds at introducing beginners to the "traditional" exploration and puzzle IF genre.

The map is sizable enough to keep the player curious but not so expansive as to overwhelm. The teleportation-style navigation feature keeps the beginner from getting bored with the "legwork" of bringing items to and fro to complete tasks and the "think about" hint feature doesn't let the player stay lost long enough to give up.

Having only played the game through once (so far) I don't have experience with the multiple possible endings, but after finishing the game I did skim the "making of" page on the author's site (which is full of spoilers), and I gained an increased respect for the amount of thought that went into the complete and polished game that I played.

I recommend this game especially to beginners, but if you're a veteran player of IF and you haven't played this game yet, give it a try.

A great story for beginners, February 5, 2017

Bronze is a great starting place for those getting into IF. It has a generous hint system and puzzles that are just the right difficulty (for me, anyway!). Though it has some parallels to Beauty and the Beast, it is it's own story and not romantic, if that's a concern. I would recommend printing a map or drawing a map to keep track of all of the locations. I didn't visit all of the possible rooms (the ones unlabeled on the PDF map), so I assume there is an alternate, perhaps more favorable, path. Next, I plan on having my middle school students work through this story as an intro to IF!

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