External Links


Play Online
Play this game in your Web browser.
Download the Album
Contains Fingertips - Something Grabbed Ahold of My Hand.zblorb
This is a pseudo-format used to represent download adviser records that apply to multiple formats. (Compressed with ZIP. Free Unzip tools are available for most systems at www.info-zip.org.)

Have you played this game?

You can rate this game, record that you've played it, or put it on your wish list after you log in.

Playlists and Wishlists

RSS Feeds

New member reviews
Updates to external links
All updates to this page

Fingertips: Something Grabbed Ahold of My Hand

by Melvin Rangasamy

Episode 30 of Apollo 18 Tribute Album
Prison Drama
2012

Web Site

(based on 5 ratings)
2 reviews

About the Story

You have been imprisoned but your crime can't have been that bad, as they're giving you a chance to escape- if you're smart enough!

A one move parole board for Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album.


Game Details

Tags

- View the most common tags (What's a tag?)

(Log in to add your own tags)
Tags you added are shown below with checkmarks. To remove one of your tags, simply un-check it.

Enter new tags here (use commas to separate tags):

Member Reviews

5 star:
(0)
4 star:
(1)
3 star:
(0)
2 star:
(4)
1 star:
(0)
Average Rating:
Number of Reviews: 2
Write a review


4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A number theory one move game set in jail, February 13, 2016

As a mathematician, I was excited by a one move game set in jail (a frequent location for logic puzzles) with a strong number theory puzzle.

I immediately pulled out my number theory techniques, trying to remember the difference in the tau function between powers of primes and other numbers.

Then I found the solution, and I was embarassed.

It was a fun ten minutes.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | View comments (1) - Add comment 

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
One-move mathematical puzzle, March 20, 2013
by Edward Lacey (Oxford, England)

Although Fingertips: Something Grabbed Ahold of My Hand takes its title and a minor detail of its plot from a song by They Might Be Giants, it's really an adaptation of a problem in recreational mathematics. (I hadn't seen the problem before, but a Web search implies it may be quite well known.)

As the game opens, the protagonist is confined "in a prison that has 32767 cells" and told that some prisoners will be selected for release by a procedure that depends on the cells' numbering. (Reducing this procedure to a mathematical criterion is half the puzzle, so I won't summarise further.) The character is lucky enough to have a free choice of cells, and the player's single move is to select one.

Given that this plot is transparently a pretext for the puzzle, it would be unreasonable to expect much characterisation. It's therefore to this game's credit that it incorporates the comic figure of "The 'Guv" where the puzzle requires only a faceless guard or official. The writing is amusing and entertaingly self-aware about the absurdity of the situation it describes.

I found the puzzle interesting, but unfortunately I don't think it's well-served by the one-move format that was required for Fingertips games in the Apollo 18 series. Once the player understands the question, finding one cell that will result in the protagonist's release is little challenge. Successful endings differ only in a small randomised detail, so there's little in-game incentive for the player to seek out multiple solutions, still less to find or justify a general rule for which cells are safe.

The game also isn't helped by some technical issues that may have been beyond the author's control. Claiming the nonexistent cell zero receives an appropriate response, but other out-of-range answers aren't understood correctly, presumably due to limits on Z-Machine variables. The parser rarely understands numbers entered as words, and although numerals are always understood they lead to an odd reference to "picking a number at random".

Despite being unambitious and a little buggy, Something Grabbed Ahold of My Hand is suited to the Fingertips role of providing a brief diversion between longer games, and it's worth playing in its own right if you're interested in mathematical puzzles.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | View comments (1) - Add comment 

Fingertips: Something Grabbed Ahold of My Hand on IFDB

Recommended Lists

Fingertips: Something Grabbed Ahold of My Hand appears in the following Recommended Lists:

Apollo 18+20 by Teaspoon
Interactive fiction games, with one game per track on the album Apollo 18 by They Might Be Giants. The regular tracks are generally short games. The Fingertips tracks are one-move games (however the authors interpreted that). The games...




This is version 9 of this page, edited by Zape on 4 May 2021 at 10:42pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page