Ratings and Reviews by RJ Kowalski

More than the sum of its parts. Maybe that's unfair - the parts are good - but what I particularly liked here is how the narrative development gradually builds things up from a low-key romp through expansive, nicely modeled hospital hallways into a properly suspenseful conclusion. Gathering the eight signatures gets the player to explore thoroughly and familiarize themselves with the rooms they can access at first, and there's plenty of background detail without it feeling superfluous. None of the puzzles are illogical and at their best they require some of that enterprising teen-fiction-paperback creativity.

None of the NPCs get truly deep characterization, but they don't need it at all. They fit neatly enough into well-trodden narrative tropes that the player gets a good idea of who to trust, who might be useful, and who represents a puzzle. The execution of the climax is excellent. A familiarity with the layout of the hospital and a careful eye for detail pay serious dividends.

There's no real parser fiddliness except for the service elevator, which I think I just didn't understand completely.

Around about halfway into the game, I found myself thinking something like 'gee, the tone of this one reminds me of something else I've played, in a good way. I wonder..."

Then I took a closer look at the box.

Still, it's not remotely derivative; moreso, it's pleasantly reminiscent of some of the best, eeriest magical realism in games that have come before. It just works nicely.

In terms of structure, the three-fold parallel approach fits well and avoids any headaches; it's very merciful and allows the player to focus on puzzling. And goodness, the puzzling. These expect you to think on your feet, notice and examine everything, make some logical leaps, take breaks and backtrack, and think laterally. The parser is generally your friend throughout. Where this design approach doesn't work so well is in the intro 'action' scene and to a lesser extent in the finale; when the player is put under real or apparent time pressure I feel that things should be more closely cued.

It's a long ride but it's very satisfying to finish. I deliberately haven't said much about the story; I think it complements the puzzles and keeps the player attached, but of course many questions are left unanswered.

Everything in this game feels robust. Efficient use is made of relatively concise descriptions to create immersion; good liminal space vibes. There are 'useless' rooms but not so many as to get overly confusing, the puzzles are all logical, we get small hints of characterization from the protagonist but that's clearly not the focus.

There's definitely several points where I feel more X blurbs could have been implemented - starting with the working bits of the gate at the beginning. Then again, I'm a stickler for background detail being examinable. There's one puzzle that in my opinion was unfair - (Spoiler - click to show)sitting on the bench. It didn't need better signalling, but more than one verb should have worked there.

It's not a giant game but it does a good job of translating a real location into an immersive experience and fitting some relevant, logical puzzles into that location.

I found myself liking this one more than I expected - it took a moment to grasp the core mechanic in the second part of the game but once I did, I was delighted. The first part of the game has some parser/background fiddliness but it's nothing world-ending.

(Spoiler - click to show)The acting scenes thread a fine line between having everything cued to the player, leaving no room for experimentation, and leaving the player lost. The in-world conceit for not having a script works, a script definitely would have killed the fun. I did find that there wasn't much dramatic payoff to the 'right' choices. Not exactly a ratings win, I should think.

In the end I was left with a strong desire to experience more of these characters and this setting, and that's a great achievement.

But not much more. There's nothing really wrong here, everything works as expected, it shows off how to accomplish many basic design tasks with PunyInform, but the experience is very short and without many frills. It's a 38kb game after all.

Ultimately, at many points while playing this title I had to keep in mind the fact that it was written in less than eighteen hours, and with Inform 6 to boot. By those standards I think it's a fun, mostly structurally solid exploration of what you can really do in such a brief time.

You're on an abandoned ocean liner, stuck in an iceberg, and need to formulate an escape. Doing this will require a thorough exploration of your surroundings, a disregard for personal property, and at least one cruel prank. I'm reminded of some classic 80s works, not least of all when it comes to the central feature of the game - two hundred cabins with randomly-generated contents.

Description, where present, is evocative and well-done. The brief writing time means that there are several parser difficulties but none proved too difficult; in some cases only one verb will work but it's the most obvious one, which I don't even consider a problem. There are a few item disambiguation issues but again, none showstopping. Searching two hundred cabins sounds incredibly tedious, but it's not so bad. What *is* regrettable is several cases of unmentioned items in room descriptions; nothing requires guessing but it can take unreasonable leaps of logic to figure out what to examine to find these things.

(Spoiler - click to show)The clothing necessary for one puzzle is found in the first four or five suitcases you find, and the gas cylinder you need for the balloon is found in whichever room the clown was staying in; it's a very reasonable implementation.

There are three, arguably four real puzzles, and all are logical without too much fiddling; the sparseness of the game makes the cues fairly obvious but not unenjoyable.