Bronze

by Emily Short profile

Part of fractured fairy tales
Fantasy
2006

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Number of Reviews: 26
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
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.

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Great for beginners, smooth, and adaptive, April 1, 2023
by Cygnus (Australia)

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.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
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!

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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.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Incredible atmosphere and storytelling, December 5, 2020
by Wynter (London, UK)

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.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Another home run from Emily Short, October 5, 2020
by bradleyswissman (Virginia, US)

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!

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Points for best NPC: The Castle, April 30, 2020
by Rovarsson (Belgium)
Related reviews: Fantasy

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.

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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
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.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
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.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
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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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Interesting interpretation of beauty and the beast, February 18, 2016
by Solana (Hong Kong)

Bronze is my first IF game and I think as a complete newbie to IF Bronze is really easy to handle and provides really good instructions/hints to guide me throughout the game. I really like the spooky environment and as the game go on the creepiness got yet not too much to scare me off.

I did not have a high expectation of the game however and I don't think it's that much of a surprise either, maybe because there's too many remakes of Beauty and the Beast already that it's pretty much guessable of what will happen.

Another thing I don't really fancy is the number of rooms it has. There's just way too many rooms and while it's useful in the sense to allow me to get the feel of the game and how to move around, there are many rooms that are just not needed and the huge amount of rooms confuses me a lot especially in the end when I want to get back to a specific room which its name is too complicated to remember and I must search through a big paragraph of rooms I've went through in order to find the name of that specific annoying room. I do think adding a few rooms without big purpose is fine as that's what tends to happen in the real world as well and adds to the challenge, but this is just way, way, way too much useless rooms.

The names are also very confusing.

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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Nearly perfect introduction to IF for brand-new beginners, November 19, 2015

This was one of the first IF games I ever played, and after playing several others I was impressed with the implementation of the hint system in this delightful game. I say it was 'nearly perfect' because I feel it was a little too hard for me in the second half even with the generated hints (which occasionally didn't actually make sense to the problem at hand) and I had to resort to the walkthrough that the author posted. Thanks for posting a walkthrough! I loved the writing and I was happy to hear the end of the story even if I ultimately had to admit defeat to the puzzles.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Finely crafted recounting of a well-known fairytale, January 19, 2015

You are Beauty in this retelling of the classic story. Something is amiss in the Beast's castle when you return after an absence, and your actions on exploring the castle (and discovering it as player of course) lead to a potential resolution of the Beast's condition.

The game is extremely well crafted. The writing is relatively sparse yet evocative. The puzzles are clearly set up, with logical and mostly satisfying solutions. While some solutions seemed more straightforward than others, in all cases they were "fair": none of the elements necessary for the answer were hidden. The "goto" command was convenient (although the punctuation did occasionally seem to go awry when moving through the castle) and the "think about" hint system was intellectually pleasing, tapping in to the narrator's thoughts to become hints.

In the end, however, I have to agree with other reviewers that I felt somewhat let down by the final resolution of the story. The mechanics of the retelling of the story are cleverly thought out and satisfying (Spoiler - click to show)(summoning via bells, contracts), but my investment in the outcome was not repaid by its emotional impact. This is of course a personal reaction. I found the ending of the author's Mask of Pytho much more satisfying - maybe I'm an incurable romantic although that's not how I normally think I approach IF.

Access to the source code is a nice touch. The author clearly likes bells and I enjoyed her work here. Recommended.

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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Wonderful game, January 8, 2013

An extremely dark take on the traditional story. Loved the atmosphere created and it is one of the few games where I haven't wanted to skip over parts of the writing. Well done! You had me hooked!

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A more mature fairy tale, December 23, 2012
by Andromache (Hawaii)

I'm revisiting this game after a hiatus from interactive fiction and it is still a good story. Beauty and the Beast is my favorite fairy tale, so when I saw this was inspired by it, I had to play it. The first screen drew me in and gave me a clue right away that this heroine, while just as determined and sensible as the Beauty of the fairy tale, was not necessarily pining for her family or even that devoted to them. Much like Metamorphoses, there are multiple endings which allow for roleplay of the protagonist in some very unconventional ways.

As the story unfolds, one begins to see that none of the characters are true to the source material, but they do retain their roles. That is, what they do is the same; their personalities are not. It's a study in contradiction, where there's a jaded, flawed, and yet somehow likeable Beast and a Beauty that's caring but also a tad vengeful. This newest version of the game sees more polish to the vignettes of their backstories, with some downright hilarious lines and touching moments. (Spoiler - click to show)Like how the Beast says not all the women who died before they were married were his victims. Quite amusing in context. And when Beauty and Beast meet again after their week apart and you can tell the Beast is truly moved and honestly hadn't expected to ever see her again. Or his thoughts about Beauty later in the game, and her own affection for him.

In terms of mechanics, the travel system is awesome. I wish all games had it. Puzzles were well-clued and felt natural. The room counter in the status line was handy. And the system of magic and servitude was explained clearly and worked for me.

What I like about both Bronze and Metamorphoses is the obvious attention to detail in world-building, characterization, and background. I get the sense that these characters are real to the author and while there's a nagging sense of only scratching the surface, what players do see still manages to have a strong impact emotionally. These people have distinct voices in the narrative and because no one is purely good or evil, there's a satisfying depth to them not found in the conventional fairy tale.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
In the best traditions of the adventure game genre., November 30, 2012

The story of Bronze is a twist on the well-known fairy tale of Beauty & the Beast. You are "Beauty" and have returned to the castle. But all is not well.
There's a castle of 54 rooms to explore, and by examining rooms, objects and consulting books you slowly piece together the story of what's happened to the Beast, and figure out what to do about it.
It really captured the feeling of exploration which makes the genre so great. Ms.Short's writing is really top notch, and the puzzles are logical and well-thought out.

Bronze is especially recommended for beginners: a special GO TO command let's you instantly walk to any room you've been before, there's a novice mode, and the built-in hint system is very helpful: it reminds you what your goal is and what items are of interest at the moment. You can THINK ABOUT an item to get a clue about what you can do with it, however, if there's something else you need to do first it doesn't give you the clue (yet). A lot better than a blunt walkthrough.

About the only negative thing I can say about it is that it did crash a lot while using Windows Frotz 1.07. I recommend using Gargoyle to play it.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Amazing, touching game, April 23, 2012

This is my first Emily Short game, but most certainly not my last. Having grown up with zork and the like, I had a certain point of view about IF -- fun, challenging, occaisionally witty. Emily definitely widened my horizons by delivering an IF game where the author cared as much about the 'Fiction' as she did about the 'Interactive.' Extremely well written story unfolds as you progress thru the game, making your quest meaningful and personal. In game hints have the perfect amount of reveal, without spoiling it all. Not only an easily mappable world, but once you've been somewhere, you can get back with one command. Also works for finding objects you have already seen. This completely bypasses the crazy, time-consuming travel back and forth between rooms, allowing the quest and the story to take precedence. I highly, HIGHLY recommend.

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0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
EXCELLENT, February 27, 2012

this is by far one of the best games I have ever played. It made me think, and re-evaluate what I knew of this classic fairy tale. I spent a lot of time going back and forth (which is so easy in this one!) trying to solve all of the puzzles, searching for clues, it's genius! I simply couldn't put it down.

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7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
An excellent piece of work.... but somehow unsatisfying., January 4, 2012

After hearing so much about Bronze, I was expecting a very satisfying and pleasurable experience. This was not the case for me. I played the game through over the course of an afternoon and, although I did enjoy exploring the map and working through the puzzles, I found myself disappointed at the end. I came away feeling like the entire experience was rather hollow and somewhat forced. The game is user-friendly enough, and it's definitely a great beginner's game in many ways. But the execution of the plot feels a little rushed and the meta-puzzle felt anticlimactic. It was as if, even as I did my own exploring, I was being spoon-fed the story without getting to discover it on my own.

Beauty and the Beast is a beautiful love story, but in this version of the tale, I felt that the protagonist's relationship with the Beast lacked very much warmth or deep love. (I do realize this is a "fractured" fairy tale, but generally this refers to a certain amount of humor, whereas this game felt merely jaded to me). I found myself annoyed with the Beast and his continual "voice" in the PC's head, reminding her of his lecherous past and interjecting comments about her current locations. This was especially irritating since (Spoiler - click to show)he was unconscious and, therefore, unavailable for any actual conversation through basically the entire game.

I'm certain many will disagree with my review, but this was my personal experience. Maybe my expectations were too high. Now, with all that said, I want to state in all technical aspects this game is quite exceptional. Emily Short's writing is WONDERFUL (If she ever becomes a novelist, I'll be the first in line!), the map is easy to navigate, and the game is very forgiving and offers many hints.


P.S.
A word to the wise: beware of red herrings. (Spoiler - click to show)I wasted tons of time exploring the possibilities of the items on the shelf in the Black Gallery, only to find out there was only one useful item in the entire batch. ARRGH!

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0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Loved it, September 5, 2011
by Deboriole (San Diego, CA)
Related reviews: Fairy tale

I loved this game. The navigation system is brilliant. I wish all games had exit options in the upper right corner! The story was great; literally out of a storybook. The hint system was also very helpful because it gave just the right amount of nudging. I thought this game was beautifully crafted and entertaining throughout.

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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
Not just A Fairy Tale, April 13, 2010
by tggdan3 (Michigan)

I'll be honest- when I first saw this game, I wasn't too excited about it. It seemed like it would be some kind of Beauty and the Beast knockoff about love and conversation with NPCs more than the cave crawl I've come to love.

I was wrong. Very wrong.

Emily Short has taken many IF tropes and made them wonderful again. The dark maze is here, with a twist (Spoiler - click to show) you can listen to find your way around , you have the abandonitus of being in this huge castle alone, and there are puzzles to solve, keys to find, areas to unlock. It may not have been in the Zork universe, but I had all the excitement I had when I first played Zork I some 20 years ago.

What's more, she makes things so EASY for you, at least as far as annoying actions. Doors are automatically unlocked if you have the key, and opened. None of those annoying "that door is closed" messages. You can "go to" a specific room, or "find" a specific item, going back to where it was. When lost in the maze, you can be reminded what direction you came FROM, and when using the GO TO command, it tells you what directions and rooms you passed getting to your location. These little things really make the game more fun, as it avoids the tedium of moving back from room to room. If only Zork I had that...

Anyway, if, like me, you were wary of the game because of the title and premise- don't be. It's a fun puzzle game with plenty of flashbacks to provide a deep and well written story.

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2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
A fairytale retelling not to be missed, April 1, 2010
by Danielle (The Wild West)

I'm one of those readers who LOVES to see the traditional European fairytales (Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Rapunzel et al) retold. I've read nearly all of Donna Jo Napoli's retellings, and I seek out more retellings in that vein everytime I hit the library.

BRONZE is a retelling of "Beauty and the Beast." Besides being a superb example of IF as a game, it has a great original backstory that weaves through the original story, one that adds an extra layer of intrigue to the original setup.

Add to that original backstory Short's evocative writing, and you've got yourself a winner.

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2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
My first IF game, September 17, 2009
by PomPrint (Scotland)

I have given this a five star rating on my very limited knowledge of IF, so this might change in the future. This having been said, I am very impressed with the creation of an atmosphere from the descriptions of locations, objects etc. (don't wish to give too much away here). The 'game' is very playable in that I never found myself at a loose end, with just enough clues to keep it interesting.

I hope that my next IF encounter will be just as good.

This is to be recommended to all noobies like me!

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0 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
A Dive into The Story, December 14, 2008

PLaying bronze is like diving into a book. As you play, you start to understand your character and her feelings. It's a beautiful story with smooth gameplay. Definitely worth playing!

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
Interesting take on a well-known fairytale, November 9, 2007
by Kake (London, England)
Related reviews: Emily Short, ****

Bronze is a very user-friendly and fairly entertaining take on Beauty and the Beast. I was never once frustrated by syntax or by tedious tasks, and I really enjoyed the way that the backstory was revealed as my wanderings through the castle triggered memories and reflections of the time my character had spent there before the events of the game.

You may find that you need to draw a map, though the layout's not incredibly complicated. (You can't really get lost, thanks to the very useful "go to" syntax, which will take you back to any room you've already visited, but I found that the map helped me keep track of where I had and hadn't explored.)

The only thing I didn't like was that with at least one of the multiple endings, I felt that I'd been "cut off" from continuing, simply because of the order that I solved the final puzzles in.

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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
My Introduction to the Pleasures of Interactive Fiction, October 19, 2007
by Ron Newcomb (Seattle)

This is the first I-F I have ever played to completion, and the one to make me take notice of the form. In Bronze, you are Beauty, of the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, and after a week-long "vacation" to visit your old family, you return to the castle to find something amiss.

This game is intended for those of us new to interactive fiction. Puzzles have multiple solutions, multiple puzzles are open to the player at once, no time limits, hints are built-in, even the most basic I-F commands can be listed for those completely new to I-F, the writing is solid, the difficulty is on the easier side, and exploration produces a strong sense of place while maintaining the fairy tale's soft lucidness. And, commands new to the form, such as GO TO, remove a lot of the tedium of the old-school games.

I strongly recommend Bronze to those friends and family who may enjoy a textual video game, but whom would have little patience with the intentionally frustrating and pedantic I-Fs of old.

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