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About the StoryThe afterlife isn't what you expected. Explore a strangely modernized and bureaucratic underworld, replete with strip malls, government offices, and science labs, as well as the occasional lake of molten rock.Game Details
Language: English (en)
Current Version: Release 930912 License: Freeware Development System: TADS 2 Baf's Guide ID: 89 IFID: TADS2-77E1FD6393D2E5FD5514E2D1F144921E TUID: 9pirdetlvv55uaob |
Editorial Reviews
Baf's Guide

-- Carl Muckenhoupt
SPAG
What makes PF stand out above the countless other text games currently on the market is its wonderful sense of humor. The game makes some truly awful puns, pokes fun at everyone's notion of what Hell is "supposed" to be, and generally keeps you looking forward to coming back to Hell every time you have to leave the computer.
[...]
I loved the non-linear nature of the game. Although by neccessity certain puzzles have to be solved before other puzzles can be reached, the game is tremendously flexible. You truly feel like you are PLAYING the game, rather than being sent to Location A to get Object B to take to Location C to exchange it for Object D, etc. (Indeed, this free-style type of play is neccessary, since the game's goal is not revealed to you until quite late in the adventure.)
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SynTax
An unusual topic for a game, well thought out and most amusing.
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Member Reviews
| Average Rating: ![]() Number of Reviews: 3 Write a review |
The premise of the game is that you are a recent arrival in Hell and have to figure out what seems to be a way to get to Heaven. It quickly becomes clear, however, that your presence there is not punitive. The afterlife is a large and random bureaucracy, and you are presented with the typical series of interlocking obstacles. I pride myself, wholly without warrant, on being able to solve puzzly games of this type without resorting to hints, and I made substantial progress in this one before turning to the walkthrough. (What eluded me turned out to be what I might blame on a failure of the parser, which is not as generous in its understanding of things as most contemporary efforts. While in a container, the command “search <container>” did not produce the same result as “search <object in container>,” which might not seem that objectionable but for the fact that the object in the container was at the time the only thing, absent myself in said container. I understand that this type of parsing issue tends to put most non-initiates completely off the playing of these game.)
The plot resolves itself into joining a club of like-minded folks, and the game also suggests that a character you encounter has created the very world that you inhabit. None of this is treated with anything other than light satire, of course, a type of humor less stark than that found in the similar Douglas Adams effort Bureaucracy.
At one point you’re required to solve a deduction exercise similar to those found on the former logic section of the GRE (and which I remember learning how to solve as part of my academically gifted class. Why exactly these type of logic puzzles are thought to have any cognitive benefit or psychometric validity remains one of the more puzzling questions of the 20th C.) If you can’t get the puzzle on your own, or lack the patience to set up the grid, you’re also given two multiple choice geometry questions. The mimetic break of these being part of a DMV test in hell wasn’t quite working for me, but it does give you some flavor of the arbitrariness inherent in the puzzles q.v. the brutally hard but more internally consistent puzzles in Curses!, released around the same time.)

You arrive in hell on a boat to discover that it's been improving it's image and applying for environmental disaster contracts to clean up hell so they can compete with heaven. But you don't like heaven or hell; you want adventure!
But adventure requires a series of magical protective amulets, the search for which occupies the bulk of the game.
This game is devilish, with some puzzles that are quite difficult. They are very inventive and fun, however. Perhaps the best sequence of the game is a detour to a haunted house (haunted by you!) where you have to get a silver ring that you can only barely nudge with your ghost fingers, all while being chased by a priest and the media.
This is just about as good as it gets for big, old-school puzzle tests, so if you're a fan of Zork, the Enchanter games, or Curses!, you should definitely check this out.

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Recommended Lists
Perdition's Flames appears in the following Recommended Lists:Games set in hell by verityvirtue
Games in which a major setting is hell, the underworld, Hades or some variation thereof. Omissions likely because I haven't played the game, and, as always, suggestions are welcome.
2020 Alternative Top 100 by Denk
(Created 24-Jul-2020) Philosophy: 1. If a game only has 5-star ratings, it is because the game hasn't received enough ratings. 2. Games with few ratings can still be among the best. 3. Sometimes the average score is the best metric. The...
Games of Infocom quality and length (or better) by MathBrush
These are games that are as long as an Infocom game (i.e. Shade would be too short) and are as good quality (so Colossal Cave Adventure, though fun, is out). By quality, I mean the kind of things accomplished by numerous testers: few...
Polls
The following polls include votes for Perdition's Flames:Games with Difficult Puzzles and a Forgiveness Rating of Tough or Lower by Athe
While searching for games that were difficult, I found many games that had a very unforgiving forgiveness rating, which I don't find very appealing. I do like puzzles, however, so I would be interested in finding games with challenging...
Solved without Hints by joncgoodwin
I'm very interested in hearing truthful accounts of at least somewhat difficult games (or games that don't solve themselves at least) solved completely without recourse to hints, walkthroughs, etc.
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