Ratings and Reviews by madducks

"A Night at the Museum Forever" by Chris Angelini, Forth Place finisher in the TADS division of the 1995 ifcomp, is the stereotype of an early amateur IF work. The entire premise is an excuse for the central puzzle; we find out that you are a professional "troubleshooter" hired by a corporation to recover a diamond ring in an otherwise ransacked museum which apparently can travel through time. There is no attempt to make us care about or understand why the diamond ring is there or why it would be so valuable, all of which is pointless since the solution to the puzzle renders the goal nonsensical. The implementation is paper-thin and the few puzzles are immediately obvious.

The minimal narrative frame is only given lip-service, and in fact at one point the fourth-wall came crashing down in front of me as I tried to examine the time machine and was told that "Its [sic] far beyond your ability to comprehend. Of course, as is typical of these adventure games, that isn't going to stop you from using it, now is it?" The introduction has a list of mysteries that never get answered or mentioned again. Additionally, the entire game has an unmentioned time-limit framed as a hunger puzzle, to which there is no solution. Even though this game is short, I completed it in half an hour, I recommend that all but the most die-hard completionists skip this one.

"The One That Got Away" by Leon Lin, third place winner of the TADS division of the first annual IFcomp, is a quirky little game. What seems to start as an extremely naturalistic fishing simulator turns out to contain an exaggerated love story with a large number of unbelievable elements. The game never takes itself too seriously, but a lot of the humorous elements just seemed a little too gonzo for the relatively restrained tone of a fishing game (such as when I fished a VAX out of the lake). The few puzzles present seem mere tokens, as if they are just expected for the medium, and are so obvious they almost do not count. The game does keep a score, but makes no point of announcing acquired points as they are gained and the end just unceremoniously lists the points without giving rank to the accomplishment. I wonder if there just was not enough precedent in 1995 for a puzzleless, slice-of-life story game. It is worth noting that Andrew Plotkin’s “A Change in the Weather” was an entrant in the same year’s competition. The writing is mostly competent, with some mistakes, and some out-right confusing lines, such as:

The only sign of the hand of man [...]
The line starts like a race horse threatened with milk wagon.
This world-famous fishing hole is this state's best kept secret.

But I do not mean to imply that the game is bad. For a subject of which I have absolutely no interest, I found it charming, well-implemented, and an extremely short diversion (replaying with no extraneous moves, I completed the game in 24 turns). Modern players may find it a bit shallow and dated, but I found that “The One” was very playable for its age and recommend at least trying it if you are looking for a short diversion.

The fifth sentence of the introduction of “On Optimism” by Tim Lane begins ‘A tear rolled from my eyes’ and we soon find that the protagonist's tears are rolling onto the laminated love letters of his ex. It seems she is no longer writing him back and so, before the first prompt is presented to the player, he decides to kill himself with migraine medicine and alcohol. Textually speaking, the tears do not stop from this point until the ending prompt. I stopped counting the seemingly endless repetitions, but the following is pretty emblematic:

"And there I wept as though my tears had never flown, I added to the waters around me through the pumps we call eyes."

The whole game is written in first person, past tense, and that probably works better than being told in second person that “you are crying” or that you hate the ex of your ex. Aesthetically, this was the game’s only good decision.

This is important because for me, at least, “On Optimism” fails entirely for aesthetic reasons. I found few overt typing or spelling errors (though plenty of clumsy phrasing, mismatching numbers and tense problems), I encountered only one bug, near the end of the game, which does not effect your ability to complete it, and in fact most people probably wouldn’t notice or encounter during a normal play-through. So in many regards it would appear that Mr. Lane did all the right things: he had beta testers, he clearly spent some time putting everything together and making things work.

But it does not work. The PC is practically a cipher except for the fact that he feels quite sorry for himself and he seems to at once worship his former girlfriend as perfect, while in the same scene he is examining physical embodiments of her flaws and lamenting them (despite this she is hardly characterized any better or with more specificity). There is no indication that the protagonist is intentionally written this way to make a point or illustrate a real character, or that the work intends to be anything more than an emotive description of a breakup. I would not recommend playing this one.

I really liked this one. It had flaws typical of a lot of speed-IF... minimal implementation, extremely linear progression and some under-clued actions, but the vivacious writing and bitter narrator add a lot of flavor. The game, a morbid and angry reflection of a break-up set at some unidentified point in the future after mars has been colonized, is full of black humor. The text makes it clear pretty early on that the actions are being narrated by someone other than the PC, which leads to some interesting moments, such as when you input

> examine you

to examine the narrator. The game is perhaps excessively verbose, but the quality of the writing keeps the extended passages from becoming too tedious. By the end of the game though I was pretty tired of the unrelenting resentment of the narrator.

Overall it's worth playing, it is extremely short and the pastiche of exaggerated tones and genres make a surprisingly rich texture, even if the end result is a bit jarring. If nothing else, the quotes preceding the game a worth are brief chuckle.