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>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction
In my head, I've started this review a dozen different ways and discarded them all. The unused versions were rejected for being too caustic, too angry, or too harsh. During this current attempt, I will try to keep a leash on these energies, though they're chomping at the bit (if I may mix my animal metaphors.) I want for these reviews to be helpful, not hurtful, and I want to keep my criticisms constructive. In that spirit, I offer a couple of changes that could (and should) be made to make Skyranch a playable game:
The game should be reprogrammed until it meets a minimum level of coding quality... To detail all, or even many, of the ways in which Skyranch fails to meet this standard would take more time than I want to devote to this game...
The prose should be rewritten until it consists of correct English sentences. The current writing in the game is pretty abysmal...
Until these two basic conditions are met, Skyranch won't even be worth discussing, let alone playing.
This game is extraordinarily hard to run. I ended up poking around in the code and reading past reviews to get an idea of this game.
You are in a future with a robot that is a copy of Floyd from Planetfall. You are investigating an office complex.
A huge part of the code is taken up by a long, involved fight, describing how you or your opponent kick each other's trash.