Cacophony

by Owen Parish

Surreal
2009

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Number of Reviews: 3
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Disappointing, August 14, 2009

I had high hopes for Cacophony, based on the intriguing and well written prologue. Unfortunately, these hopes were soon dashed. Interaction with the game is frustrating, not because of "bugs" persay, but because you can only interact with people and things in a very limited fashion. In many cases I tried doing things to objects or conversing/interacting with people, getting more and more frustrated as each attempt was refused, until I found the correct solution either by randomness or by consulting the walkthrough. I found the NPCs especially frustrating; if you had been able to converse with them, they could have nudged you in the proper direction - but instead when I tried "ask Mr Green about [insert subject here]", for example, I always got the response "He seems to look at you for a moment." Also very frustrating was that (Spoiler - click to show)the poster says "You can talk to me", yet when I try talking to it, I am told that it's only an inanimate object. Perhaps an attempt on the author's part to show the PC sliding into insanity, but it ends up a frustrating red herring.
In regards to the setting, it seems as if the author is attempting to present a surreal world that may or may not be partly the PC's imagination, but it never quite worked for me. The talking objects and such always seemed more out of place than actually surreal.
I also would have liked more backstory on why I am in this surreal state and why the PC (Spoiler - click to show)feels suicidal but none is given. Perhaps one of the other endings would have provided this; according to the walkthroughs, the ending I achieved was the quickest/easiest one.
On the positive side, there were occasional bits of compelling writing, and the notepad puzzle is very clever (though really could have been clued a bit better).

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