Undertow

Baf's Guide

A small murder mystery, very imitative of Infocom's mysteries, set on an expensive little boat in the middle of the ocean. Lots of irrelevant detail for the player to sift through. The characters are a bit buggy and disappointingly mechanical for a character-based genre. The whole game has a time limit. It is possible to win without figuring everything out, which gives the game some replayability.

-- Carl Muckenhoupt

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A short-to-mid length murder mystery on a yacht, February 3, 2016
This game was entered in the first IFComp ever, taking 4th place in the TADS division. This was the first year that Stephen Granade had ever written a game, and he is one of my favorite authors.

This game doesn't show the polish of his later games, but it is relatively sturdy. You are on a yacht, and a large variety of time events happen around you, like Deadline. You find locked compartments and safes, you see people walking around, a murder happens (!), you are given a series of commands to fulfill, and then you must discover and stop the murderer before even worse can happen.

The NPCs are the focus of the game, yet they are sparsely implemented. They have one-line responses to most comments, and don't react as much to items that they should react to (although this can be a hint).

Overall, good for fans of murder mysteries. Granada's technical ability and panache for storyline are already evident, but the puzzles and NPC interaction are not yet up to his later standard.

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