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4seconds.txt
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Four Seconds

by Jason Reigstad

Horror, Science Fiction
1999

(based on 1 rating)
1 review

About the Story

"Tria leans back against the table and says, "I've heard that in the last few seconds you don't see your life pass before your eyes, but the world that you've built from what you've accomplished. This is how you know your heaven...or your hell."" [-- blurb from Competition '99]


Game Details


Awards

15th Place - 5th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (1999)

Editorial Reviews

Baf's Guide


An intriguing beginning--you're exploring a destroyed lab and trying to piece together what went wrong with the experiment in question--but the rest of the game, in which you probe the mind of one of the scientists to figure out what happened, is let down by poor implementation. The story has a nice pace to it--at least, it does until the bugs take over.

-- Duncan Stevens

SynTax
While 4 Seconds is an intriguing idea worthy of 50's science fiction, the story is rather tenuously held together around this mind reading vehicle and would probably have worked better without the psychic sleuth altogether. Trig has sold himself a bit short on this one as the whole thing is let down by poor implementation and testing.
-- Nick Edmunds
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>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

It is very, very buggy, and heavily burdened with grammar and spelling errors as well. If you don't use the walkthrough, you will find lots of bugs. In fact, there are even a few bugs in the walkthrough itself. If you type "info" or "about" in the game, you'll find an apology from the author for the bugginess of the game. This is something for which I have zero patience. If you know your game is buggy, fix it. Fix it before you ask people to play it. Don't waste my time.
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Member Reviews

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Number of Reviews: 1
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A compelling science fiction mystery with spotty implementation, August 24, 2016

This game is sort of like Babel without beta testing. You play a psychic detective walking through a destroyed lab, and you have to relive a man's memories to determine what happened.

The memories are really interesting, and the general story is very good. However, as others have noted, you eventually reach a place where the implementation is completely spotty and the walkthrough is your only help.

Recommended, with a walkthrough, for fans of intense science fiction.

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This is version 5 of this page, edited by Paul O'Brian on 6 May 2022 at 10:56pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page