Ratings and Reviews by Andrew Schultz

There isn't really one room to escape--there are five, but hey, that leaves a bit more to do, and the room would be pretty crowded otherwise. Maybe it needs extra walls to deal with all the fourth wall stuff you have to deal with--after all, the author is one of the writers for Kingdom of Loathing, an absurdist heavy-texted MMORPG that relies on that sort of thing. People who like that will probably like this. People who like this game will probably like KoL a bit better, since it's more polished over the years--it's the author's job, and this game was not. Still, it was fun enough.

There's a lot of annoying stuff like eating the bottle and not the pills, the right verb for the safe, and a terrible muddle climbing on things (Spoiler - click to show)you need to stack.

Overall, I think this sort of puzzle works well with an existing fanbase and with discretely labeled choices, because a player base can team up and decide what to do (or how to do it most quickly,) and the next person through can just get the benefit of the humor or maybe polish the solution. With just one player, though, it really bogs down, and there's too much to guess at--I found that to be the case on replaying. There was a lot I remembered and couldn't guess the right verb on.

This is a flawed game that people who're willing to sacrifice a bit of play for humor will nonetheless enjoy because it does enough to get laughs. Unfortunately, it falls into different traps than the ones it bemoans in the funny little introduction. Still, I'm glad it's there. Kingdom of Loathing fans will probably enjoy this when they've used up their moves for the day, though. They might want to have a walkthrough handy, too.

If you like cheap yucks, then this author's works are worth looking at. This may be the most complex of his works, featuring different verbs, a timing puzzle and various silly deaths you know are there but you just have to try. NGW features different verbs and actual puzzles. And it's been tested since its initial release, with a few extra jokes thrown in, with "you can't go that way" better supported.

I'm a bit confused as to why I needed to (Spoiler - click to show)enter and leave the nudist colony in order to leave the place called "win" and win, though I'm probably missing a meta-joke, and also this would've been handy to speed things up:

(Spoiler - click to show)does the player mean unlocking with the iron key: it is very likely.

It's a bit too short to give a meaningful rating to, but basically, it's good for a small lazy break when your usual time wasting games aren't cutting it. On playing games like this I feel sure I could do better, then I sit down and realize it's not so easy. I like the riff on clothes in an IF game, and that's enough for the time the player needs to invest (a few minutes.)

Yo Momma jokes were a big hit over ten years ago. Then they got old. RtF brings them back successfully. As a quest for redemption, at where you look to take down Gus, the reigning insult champion at Club Compass, by digging dirt on him. He's got three ugly secrets. Get personal, and you win. You're helped (vaguely) by Joe Mahma, a legend of the art, an in-game hint system that gives about the right amount of nudges, and the ability to move to a room by typing its name.

All this could smooth over a lot of design mistakes, but I didn't find any. The path towards the end of the game is pretty economical--everyone has one purpose, and it's pretty clear whether you need them to do something or you need to push them out of the way. They're based largely on stereotypes here--there're two bouncers, Gus's ditzy girlfriend, Vincent the bully, Gus's posse, a sleazy guy at the bar, and a nerdy guy. We all know the tropes behind these, and the player should have a good general idea what to do. There are a few Lousy Last Points as well, and those quests are fun, too. There're observations about how silly and shallow clubbing can be. You've probably seen a few, but they're fun to revisit in a new context.

In the end, I felt just a bit sorry for Gus, but I guess show business is pretty cutthroat business, especially when it directly involves who gives the best insults.

The only thing I would add is a (Spoiler - click to show)block swearing rule where Yo Momma so threatening, you're worried what she'd do if she heard you, or something--especially considering the game does a great job avoiding swearing. But that's techie talk, and I probably only thought of this because everything else is implemented. I'm glad the game got expanded from speed-if to a full work, because it was satisfying to play and a great reminder that you don't have to be serious to be clever.

Also, extra points for the author including the source with the game. I learned a lot of details from that (beyond the lists of "Yo Mama" insults--one which works, one which doesn't,) and you will, too. It's clear enough that it can double as a hint-book if the in-game hints aren't enough.

When I saw the name of this game, I was pleased it came up early in my IFComp 2011 random play list, whatever it was about. It turned out to be the sort of thing I like. The puzzles made me laugh, even when I felt they didn't quite work. Most do. And this uses some of what makes text adventures unique.

The only plot in the game is to figure how it's messing with you. There's some back-story about the house getting steamrolled to make way for a mall, but that's mostly for expedience. When faced with the actual first room description, I was immediately jolted. It works.

Another room contains a color-related puzzles with potentially dated, but likeable, puzzles, and the final one--where you have to open a door to leave--may have had opportunities for a few more items, or a more complex interaction. Describing what happens would be a spoiler, but once I learned the rules I was slightly disappointed to learn "is this it?"

These are a lot more complaints than I really voiced playing the game. My emotional reactions were "Oh, neat, you do this--or maybe you do this or that--and I see how this clue should've fit in if I were paying attention." Plot may've gotten in the way of the puzzles, here.

I have to admit, I'd be very glad to write a word-puzzle game this good. And I'm doubly impressed someone wrote it in what is not their native language--and wrote it with very few grammatical errors. I hope Ted Paladin is called into action to navigate a maze or somewhere else that's been "done already," in the future. It'll likely be done differently enough to enjoy.

Slightly above the average 3 stars here. With a hat-tip to the cover art for possibly being stairs that go up or down. It's a cool illusion and captures the ambiguity you need to resolve in the first and last puzzle rooms quite well.

I've suffered through a few Ayn Rand books. This game's better than they are, and not just because it's a lot shorter. It makes Stalin a more fun person than the people he repressed, which is rather clever, but unfortunately it stacks the deck.

Gigantomania's broken into four parts. Three require repetition and fawning to the local bureaucrat, and the fourth pretty much ignores what you try to say. It's the best one. There's always a trick to books showing people's lives are tedious without bringing the reader in, and in the case of a game, having to repeat actions to get to the next bit is just crushing.

That's the first half of the game. But then it turns toward being able to sneak around as you get more power--the (Spoiler - click to show)interrogation scene offering some wonderful, revealing ways to lose. But unfortunately anyone who has read why Communism failed will probably know this. And anyone who hasn't may wonder if all this repetition's necessary.

But the final scene is quite simply very clever. It's a chess game, and it's worth playing for that alone. I'd always interpeted "Communist style" chess as something different--the art of only allowing small advantages nobody enjoyed, more like a typical Karpov-style win where you mess up your opponents' pawns and win a tedious eighty-move rook and pawn endgame.

Here the author made the right decision. The interpretation (Spoiler - click to show)of killing all your allies to bring the enemy king near yours for the final evil laugh is wonderful and expedient. I didn't see it right away. It's the best anachronism I've seen in IF (Stalin died in '53, but the game occurred 40 years later.)

If the game could have a running side-story as clever as the last bit for each of its four parts, it would feel a lot less like Kentucky Fried Anti-Communist Tract and more like something special. I'd replay it for sure.

EGH is about a shooting during one advanced student's oral presentation for an Advanced Placement class. And I suppose that if a bunch of AP students also wrote an IF game, they'd probably have ones that get more stars and flow more coherently with this, and have more interesting branches, too. Having been in this sort of high-pressure class, it's hard to forget the concern trolls and gaslighters saying "I thought you were smart, but you couldn't even..." to various people at risk of being demoted to mere honors classes.

They'd probably be factually right, not that it makes them better people--the game manages to be badly formatted, disjointed, and crunchingly linear at the same time. You often have just one direction to move. Menu-based conversations make it hard to ask what you want, especially when the "say nothing" option refuses to vanish, and it gets troubling when you have options to be rude to friends with little cause. What seems to be the "best" one discusses (Spoiler - click to show)starting a society of people who dislike being stressed out. Though I did find the school assembly to be good, wicked, frustrated satire. Everyone in high school "knows" those are useless.

But there's too much melodrama, though--the game didn't really need a shooting to discuss the issues of emotion and connection the author really seems to want to deal with. It's all a lot like stories I remember from creative writing periodicals in college where people either drop out and work at McDonald's, write a letter for five pages before junking it, or grow up exactly as unhappy as their parents.

So EGH is about people having to get everything right to get very good grades, and if not, many people will be disappointed. But conversely, EGH got a whole lot wrong, and that's no reason to look down on the writer, who failed to separate the main character's confusion from his own. He said a lot that needed to be said, and was important for him to say. And say badly. I have no idea how much the author suspects or knows this. Hopefully in a few years he can resolve his problems and not be ashamed of what he's written and recognizing that maturing and understanding doesn't have the high stakes and time pressure of an AP class.

I didn't know what teachers were saying when they gave me a B or C and said I really had something and should keep working. I understand they were not giving the same backhanded compliments and encouragement some more competitive students did, but they had to evaluate work objectively, too.

I have to say the same to this game. I can picture the author/narrator being alternately worried he would wind up saying something too stupid or maddening or disjointed to put things together--imagining more "with-it" people holding it up as proof that person was crazy--before just typing something up a few nights before the contest.

I've read that many other Panks games were real messes. I've even seen people refusing to play his games because they're, well, his. But Ninja's Fate made me curious enough to give the game another look. Based on ratings and comments, this seemed like the safest one, and while it has few positively memorable moments, it's playable, mostly coherent and straightforward. The in-game help is useful and direct. This is no small personal accomplishment in a game built from scratch.

The only problem is that this doesn't translate into much fun for the player. People tell you, as Jesus, what to get, and you get it. JoN is nothing more than a fetch-quest with some RPG elements. You must convert four of six possible disciples(Spoiler - click to show), though you can convert three of them with one fish, and satisfying each one feels like bribery. You start out with a dagger and tunic, then you move up to a spear and helmet and shield. Once you start a fight, it is to the death. Each side has hit points. Hit messages can be grossly inappropriate: "Sweet mercy! You crucified him!" Yet winning is not hard, though you do some iffy things (Spoiler - click to show)like killing Harod and a few centurions--though all those weapons are probably a clue.

JoN shows a certain attention to detail, or a wish to attend to detail. The room and item descriptions show imagination. But then Mary Magdalene is described as a small town and doesn't even take the item she asks for. Also, drop in fig and olive trees you can't climb or examine, or leave a sick boy none of the in-game verbs did much to help. Scattered scrolls, if read, have bible passages galore which are too long to really be interested in, and converted disciples blather interminable platitudes.

It's unfortunate Panks isolated himself and was never really able to ask for or use other people's criticisms by the time he wrote something like this. JoN obviously needs help, but it equally obviously would be worthwhile. Perhaps using an established language, he'd have had time or energy to iron things out better. With a tester or two, he'd have had something more polished.

I know what it feels like to realize I've passed on asking for creative or technical help--especially when learning programming early, by not using or asking for help on a script from someone I disliked--and I remember the reasons I gave to pass it up, and hopefully I've learned somewhat to change course if I get in that trap. It's sadly but memorably ironic that in a game ostensibly about one of the great forgivers, the author did not take advantage of much more earthly graces.

Maybe I'm just rounding up to two stars as a sort of respect for the dead, or for someone more diligent in rejecting criticism than I could be. Or maybe it's a harsh learning experience to see my own mistakes magnified, or it's humbling to see I can empathize or vaguely identify with someone who made such big mistakes, and seeing an honest effort from someone who never really put it together has helps me move on from my own mistakes in the way that a perfect game or even a great tutorial never can.