The Space Under the Window

by Andrew Plotkin profile

Romance
1997

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Reviews and Ratings

5 star:
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4 star:
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3 star:
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2 star:
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Number of Ratings: 97
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- Wallace, February 18, 2024

- Edo, August 17, 2023

- astrella (Australia), August 15, 2023

- Cerfeuil (*Teleports Behind You* Nothing Personnel, Kid), October 11, 2022

- knockupwood, October 16, 2021

- Malasana, July 6, 2021

- arslonga, March 9, 2021

- TheAncientOne, March 7, 2021

- csitrin, February 2, 2021

- JimB, October 15, 2020

- mifga (Brooklyn, NY), October 14, 2020

- smrq, September 27, 2020

- lleon, September 22, 2020

- Jason Lautzenheiser (Navarre, Ohio), September 15, 2020

- Zape, September 14, 2020

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
"Enter Shadow" definitely doesn't work here, September 14, 2020
by deathbytroggles (Minneapolis, MN)

Admittedly I am not a huge fan of poetry, especially free verse. Though if the imagery is evocative I can get lost in it from time to time. Unfortunately, the design of The Space Under the Window, while making for an easy game, results in an unsatisfying poetry reading.

In a sense, this structure of play feels like a precursor to Twine, only one has to guess at the keywords instead of clicking on them. And it's hard to get lost in poetry when the parser doesn't respond to half of what you type. It's very difficulty to predict what keywords will trigger a new path or bring you back to an old one, and also difficult to predict where the story will go. There are no puzzles to elicit satisfaction from all the keyword guessing so it's all a bit underwhelming.

That said, it's an intriguing (and short!) parser experiment from one of IF's greatest authors.

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- Blind Assassin (Illinois, United States), July 12, 2020

- Arrowhead12 (Edmonton, Alberta), June 11, 2020

- AKheon (Finland), August 15, 2019

- Stian, June 17, 2019

- doodlelogic, July 29, 2018

- Dawn Sueoka, June 20, 2018

- DustyCypress (Hong Kong), May 19, 2018

- Nereare (São Paulo, Brazil), April 17, 2018

- Mutagen, April 4, 2018

- Stas, March 29, 2018

- Wanderlust, August 3, 2017

- Cory Roush (Ohio), July 19, 2017

- nosferatu, September 23, 2016

- Kevin Snow, June 12, 2016

- leanbh, April 18, 2016

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Short keyword-driven IF where you change a room description, February 3, 2016

This game was part of an experiment in IF inspired by a challenge to create a work of art with the title "The space under the window". In this game, you see a window, but you can't do anything to it directly. Instead, you type nouns or adjectives you see, and it changes the world to something different, related to that noun or adjective.

I found this game to be pretty short; altogether I think there were less than 40 keywords I could type. Many obvious words were not implemented, but this makes sense for an experimental game.

This kind of concept, whether inspired by this game or not, was further developed by Aisle and then Galatea, both games where the gameplay focuses on typing keywords in a room or a conversation, and text adapts around the words you type. I distinguish this from games like Blue Lacuna, where typing keywords just has you interact with the object.

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- Aryore, December 13, 2015

- Janice M. Eisen (Portland, Oregon), December 6, 2015

- CMG (NYC), September 19, 2015

- hoopla, September 19, 2015

- zylla, May 28, 2015

- Thrax, March 23, 2015

- Sobol (Russia), November 5, 2014

- John Simon (London), February 2, 2014

- lisapaul, January 9, 2014

- profhubert, September 8, 2013

- Christina Nordlander, August 16, 2013

- Artran (Taipei, Taiwan), August 13, 2013

- DJ (Olalla, Washington), May 9, 2013

- Floating Info, April 3, 2013

- Tiberoo, March 26, 2013

- Sdn (UK), December 24, 2012

- Peloquin, June 16, 2012

- Rymbeld (Greensboro, NC), April 30, 2012

- katz (Altadena, California), February 4, 2012

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
No Spoilers, December 20, 2011
by KCJ

By "no spoilers" I mean there is no way to spoil The Space under the Window other than the player merging the mind, spirit, and the body together at the moment of engagement. Hints therefore are safeguarded in action, not in significance. Reading a walkthrough of this game would be redundant. Walking-through the game is the walkthough.

Unusual as it may seem, The Space under the Widow exploits the liquid architecture of the digital computer like Adventure does. While Adventure features cave-crawling and a navigational system composed of both common nouns and cardinal direction, The Space under the Window enlarges the spatial sensory of the common noun while abandoning the cardinal direction. In that way, The Space under the Window turns the physicality of Adventure into the metaphysics of the window. If the player of Adventure travels from room to room with a sense of the natural landscape retained, the player of The Place under the Window traverse from space to space with the sense of the informational structure amplified. As such, information, meaning, and action are brought together.

Consequentially, words become empty vases, glittering glasses, and objects to be manipulated. In that regard, it can be said that The Space under the Window is at the same time traditional in its invocation of Adventure and innovative in its deprivation of the significance of cave-crawling.

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- trojo (Huntsville, Alabama, USA), December 2, 2011

- dacharya64, September 4, 2011

- Corwin71, July 10, 2011

- Shchekotiki, June 23, 2011

- Venya (Olalla, WA, US), May 4, 2011

- baywoof, April 25, 2011

- RedHatter (Vista, California), March 22, 2011

- Felix Pleșoianu (Bucharest, Romania), March 19, 2011

- JohnW (Brno, Czech Republic), March 16, 2011

- dryman, February 4, 2011

- Stickz (Atlanta, Georgia), December 14, 2010

- The Year Is Yesterday (California), November 30, 2010

- Nusco (Bologna, Italy), May 27, 2010

- Mr. Patient (Saint Paul, Minn.), May 26, 2010

- Azazel, April 8, 2010

- Ioannis D., February 6, 2010

- futureman44203 (Ocala, Florida), November 27, 2009

- lupusrex (Seattle, WA), October 4, 2009

- Pope Richard Corey (Colorado), June 26, 2009

- Mark V. (Madrid, Spain), June 2, 2009

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Essentially Interactive Poetry, April 27, 2009
by Michael R. Bacon (New Mexico)

One of my favorite sandbox gameplay interactive fictions. Rather than presenting a strong plot or developing fleshed-out characters, The Space Under the Window is an interactive free-verse poem with many different endings as well as paths to those endings. It is very rewarding to play repeatedly, even if one spends less than ten minutes exploring the possibilities.

I only wish it were more fully implemented, allowing more keywords to cause revisions to the narrative.

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- Shigosei, January 20, 2009

- kba (berlin), December 23, 2008

- ensoul, November 15, 2008

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Quirky & Mysterious, November 5, 2008
by WriterBob (Richmond Hill, Ontario)

"The Space Under the Window," is a unique piece of Interactive Fiction. It stretches the definition of IF to its very limits.

Is it interactive? Well, yes, it is, but unlike traditional IF in that you do not control the character with actions. The flow of the narrative is triggered by single word input, a word that is already in the narrative on the screen.

Is it fiction? Traditionally fiction is plot oriented, although I am sure there are enough English majors who would argue that there are character driven works. Still, what is lacking in "The Space Under the Window," is a sense of motivation for the central character. What *is* the goal? This is an experimental piece of fiction.

This work is unsettling and surreal. The sense of time seems to fluctuate as certain commands seem to trigger going back in time to previous moments. That is what this piece is, a collection of moments strung together where the player is left to wonder what it was he (used in this context, "he" is meant to be a generic genderless pronoun, which English is sorely lacking) just experienced.

This is a game that is difficult to love, but easy to appreciate for the skill with which it was crafted.

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- Nathan (Utah), October 26, 2008

- Genjar (Finland), August 31, 2008

- tylluan (Vermont), August 26, 2008

- Nathaniel Kirby (Pennsylvania), July 17, 2008

- Mike Ciul (Philadelphia), June 4, 2008

- mrsambarlow, April 5, 2008

- Hans Möller (Sweden), April 5, 2008

- zer, March 3, 2008

- jfpbookworm (Hamburg, New York), February 25, 2008

- Juhana, January 27, 2008

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Short and Sweet, January 26, 2008
by Ziixxxitria (California)

I was pleasantly surprised with the interesting way the player interacts with the scene. It's very short, but I was able to replay it at least a dozen times without being any less amused. It is definitely worth trying.

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- Wendymoon, January 13, 2008

- RichCheng (Warwickshire, UK), December 19, 2007

- Miron (Berlin, Germany), December 11, 2007

- VK, December 1, 2007

- MattArnold (Ann Arbor, Michigan), November 24, 2007

- Leland Paul (Swarthmore, PA), November 19, 2007

- Stephen Bond (Leuven, Belgium), October 26, 2007

- Brian Campbell, October 21, 2007

- Mister Hunter, October 21, 2007

Baf's Guide


Highly unusual. Rather than entering commands, you choose words from the text presented, and the text alters in various ways depending on what words you choose. (Example: when the text is "The table is open, so you climb down inside. The table is set for two.", and you type "table," the text becomes "The table is open, so you climb down inside. The table is set for two. An empty vase, white glass, stands beside a single lit candle.") You can interact with the game, to some extent, though it's rarely predictable, when you choose a word, exactly how the interaction will go. Some of the more interesting effects involve light--choosing certain words either limits or enhances what you see, and affects how you interact with the game in various ways. If you're especially goal-oriented, this might be frustrating, since it's difficult to steer the narrative toward any particular conclusion, but watching the story go where it does can be rewarding. There are lots of different endings, and not many of them are upbeat.

-- Duncan Stevens

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