The Case of Samuel Gregor

>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

TCOSG calls itself "An Existential Adventure" and throws in a Kafka quote at the end, but I have to say I didn't see the existentialism in it... It certainly brings forth a certain meaninglessness, but not in a good way. It does seem to attempt to take us into the subjective world of one individual, but the execution is so muddled and confusing that instead of inhabiting a point-of-view, I ended up on the outside of both the fiction and the interactivity, poking the game as if it were an anthill...

In fact, between its writing, its coding, and its puzzles, the experience of playing this game is less existential than it is absurd. Absurdist IF can be great if it's done intentionally. That's not what happened here.