I.A.G. Alpha

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Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 3 Write a review

Brilliant meta game, November 23, 2018
I.A.G. Alpha was my favorite game from IFComp 2018, and I played all of them. An English translation of a work originally written in Russian, I.A.G. Alpha appears to be an unfinished game about a guy working at a post-Soviet research institute. Its opening text consists of a note from the author explaining that he never finished writing the game but decided to release what he had written anyway. On the second screen there are comments like "TODO: finish the scene on the roof" and "TODO: comment out the debugger." And, sure enough, there's a DEBUGGER command in the upper right corner that lets you peek into parts of the game's source code. After a few scenes the author stops the action once again, this time to say that he thinks the introductory text is too long, to detail what his original plan for the game was, and then to explain more about why he never finished it.

You play a little further, and you eventually come to realize that the "unfinished" aspect of the game you are purportedly playing is entirely intentional - in fact, it's a setup for the real game to pull what I think is the most genius meta move I've ever seen. I really don't want to spoil it by giving it away, but it's so simple and yet so fundamental. And that's what makes it work so well.

An absolutely brilliant game.

A brilliant choice game with a meta narrative and text input, February 3, 2019
This is a well-done IFComp 2018 game.

It runs in ITCH and is primarily choice-based. The conceit is that the author wanted to develop a big, fun sci-fi fi puzzle game, but didn't succeed.

Instead, he leaves the frame of his unfinished game alone, and adds author commentary. As the game progresses, the protagonist has more and more power to affect the game itself.

The styling is excellent, with several beautiful images and switches between different interfaces. The music is lovely and appropriate.

This is a game made with love, and it shows.

Twisty Turney Little Game, November 3, 2019
Being relatively new to the world of IF, I have been working my way through the XYZZY 2018 Award winners. I figured starting with a "best of the best" list was probably a good way to give the genre the best possible opportunity. So far, I.A.G. Alpha has been my favorite.

I.A.G. Alpha was a hoot to play, from start to finish, and kept me guessing right up until the end. It was on the lighter side in terms of "wordiness" and, with getting tripped up by a puzzle or two at the end, only took about 2 hours to play through.

The writing is good, where it exists, but like the author points out in the description, the game is unfinished... wink, wink. The puzzles range from pretty easy to moderately challenging. One non-spoiler hint I'll leave you with: utilize the save functionality, particularly as you progress into the latter part of the game.

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