Ratings and Reviews by jakomo

A cruel game that takes delight in being unfair, the Wall Street stock exchange was founded in 1792.

Is this the vicious skewering of the capitalist economy you've been waiting for? If that vicous skewering of the capitalist economy includes two youtube videos about monkeys, then YES!

It's Clickhole. Fans will already know what to expect. Or not expect. Non-fans need to know: the entire Clickventures series is surreal, off-the-wall, and brilliantly funny. "It's Your First Day On Wall Street" hits the mark. It is shorter than most, but the videos are a new (and delightful) development.

Highly impressive. A Study In Steampunk's title may be slightly misleading (steampunk stories usually take place in our world's past, rather than a fantasy analogue of it), but that is the only mis-step in an epic-length rollicking ride filled with devious spy-craft, grisly crime, intriguing magic, and high adventure round every corner.

It's clearly influenced by Sherlock Holmes, Jules Verne, Fu Manchu, but the story is very original and filled with unexpected curve-balls, characters are very well developed, and of course the world-building works beautifully.

Options are frequent and plentiful, and cleverly they are written as "thought bubbles" for the player character (a doctor and war-veteran in service of the crown). Often, the choice you are making is not the action you will perform, but rather *why* you are performing it.

A Study In Steampunk not only sits alongside the best Choice Of Games releases (Choice of Robots, Slammed!, Hollywood Visionary etc) but surpasses them, through the power of literary quality and technical innovations (it has a save game feature, for example).

This formerly commercial text adventure game really goes to great efforts to ensure its accessible to its target audience (of schoolkids). You will be subtly nudged, quietly coerced and gently goaded towards the correct commands to proceed. There are almost no red herrings, explorable areas are tightly constrained, and there is no death. If that's not enough, invisiclues and maps are also available.

It's a shame, then, that the story cannot quite live up to this excellence of execution. A fascinating setting, where Newtonian mechanics has become a religion, is squandered in service of a dull villain-steals-a-macguffin plot. Your character, a low-level clock mechanic, gives chase, explores the Steampunk city, solves some puzzles along the way, that's it. It's rote Harry Potter level stuff. It's the first part of the aborted "Klockwerk" series, which will never see the light of day since the company shut down, so it has to do the grunt-work of introducing people, places and concepts, without any of the pay-off, thanks to its cliff-hanger ending.