Reviews by tggdan3

This game is particularly short. You are a parrot watching a conversation between the prince (from cinderella), and the stepmother/stepsisters. The fairy tale is assumed well known to the reader.

Like some of Short's other games, there are no puzzles per se, and the game is mostly about saying things and getting reactions from NPCs. This is done in a cute way here, considering you're a parrot and can't do much else.

However, the game includes at least two endings that I've found, which shows that even a parrot can find ways to affect the world around him.

The writing is cute, and the game is short. I'd say definately worth a play. As far as re-plays, you'll want to replay at least once to get the ending you didn't get last time.

Game? Is there a game here? There's a map which is much too big, considering there is nothing to do in most rooms. You go, find a paddle, and then go beat a child with it.

Presumably, the child has done something. Beating him is not enough, you need to take him into a special room and strap him to a restraint system first.

But beating him twice is abuse.

There is an old man you can talk to, one "full of wisdom", but all he responds to is "ask man about paddle", to which he quotes the game's tagline.

I get it, the author is in favor of paddling. I don't know if IF is the right way to get this opinion across. Rendition was a more thorough experiment into beating someone, and at least seemed to provide a motive, other than that children need to be beaten.

Don't bother with this. Unless you feel like you want to beat a child, I guess.

There are two ways to take Galtea- like there are two ways to take most IF nowadays: as a game, and as an experiment.

As a game, this offers very little. You try to come up with things to ask Galatea, and she will respond, and you can ask her more, or tell her things.

As an experinment in NPCs, this goes very deeply, and offers a lot for a writer of IF to learn when programming his own NPCs.

There is very little to do except to speak to the statue, and the statue (as far as I've seen), doesn't speak to you on her own, except for before you speak to her, kind of as a hint that this is what you're supposed to do. The author provides a good RECAP command to help you learn what topic you've covered and if there is more to cover on the subject.

The NPC is tragic, and you can't help but feel for her- which is the point, I suppose. It gives a lot to live up to in form of an individual NPC, and it's something anyone thinking of writing IF should play, if only for inspiration, and anyone interested in IF as an art form should definately look at. People who prefer games over story might be disappointed.

The game has no plot to speak of, which is fine. The puzzles are similar to Nord and Bert, where you use wordplay to obtain items, and to exit rooms.

Some of the rooms are obvious, such as the room where everything begins with S only allows commands and nouns that start with S. Which makes it difficult when you're trying to find ways to go north.

The parser is pretty smart, however, the nature of the parser forces you to think so far outside the box it might become frustrating. (Spoiler - click to show) Especially when you try "walk where west was" to go east and get no response. . Some puzzles are straightforward, like knowing more dinosaur types (Spoiler - click to show) Though I think "anything"saur will work, since it accepted "boobasaur" . I found what I believe to be a glitch that made the game unwinnable concerning the sofa (Spoiler - click to show) I was apparantly not supposed to be able to remove it from the upstairs room without the verbosifier, but I did, and the verbosifier wouldn't work in the other room .

All in all the game is great and different enough from standard IF games that it will keep you occupied beyond the "take all" nonsense. The included hints don't give the answer completely away, but do tell you what you need to know. Interesting is the fact that in some rooms "save/restore/undo/quit" don't work, but that's in the nature of the way the author redesigned the parser for each room.

Gives a lot for an aspiring player or writer to live up to!

Your job is to torture abdul, a terrorist from "the east". This is basically an attempt to come up with all the humiliating things you can do to a man, and do it 3 times to 3 different body parts. (IE- piss on his nose or hit his left eye).

I get it- it's supposed to bother you by showing how much you can hurt this guy.

The "game" seems empty. You have to do each humilitating action 3 times. (Hit him 3 times in 3 different places. Then slap him 3 times in 3 places) so it gets rather redundant. As you do so, the terroist becomes more removed from reality. Once you've done enough, you may leave.

The style is horrific, but there isn't much meat or plot involved either. It's just snuff- you torture a guy in a variety of different ways. Maybe if you could garner more information from him, or there was more of a point to the torture- or you could offer "kind" interrogation techniques or more conversation this would be "worth it", but as it sits, it should be listed under "abuse pornograpy" more than social experiment.

Okay, I tried to like this game. The writing was good, and the concept seemed simple enough- but I just couldn't quite get into it.

I got annoyed right off the bat by some poor implementation. When you enter a room, a key falls down in a crack in some floorboards. Your heart sinks as you wonder how you're going to get it back.

But you can't refer to the key, crack, floorboards, or floor in any meaningful way. Can't examine them, look at them, etc. Is that key not important, or is this under-implemented.

Then I find a map I'm looking for in a glass demijohn.

>HIT DEMOJOHN WITH WRENCH
The demijohn is made of something like industrial-grade chemistry glass. You kick it and hurt your foot.

I found this odd considering that HIT [something] and HIT [something] WITH [something] must be specifically programmed seperately.

The writing was good and I wanted to get into it, but I found myself frustrated by these. (Granted, I didn't expect breaking the demijohn to work, but kicking it and hitting it with an object should definately be seperate). The other reviews on here make me think it gets better, but these two things happened right away, and I played this twice and tried to like it, but couldn't.

Okay, it's hard to say much without giving away the story but...

First of all, you are in a small area similar to Zork's white house. And you get killed. Then you restart and get killed a different way. And so forth.

One of my big complaints in this one is the lack of interactivity. There are 4 or 5 rooms you just wander around in until some plot happens. The big gimmick here is the way the game interprets things (Spoiler - click to show) Such as forcing you to RESTART when given the quit or restart options on death

I am a big fan of Cadre's other games, to the point where I am now seeking out his other works to play them. This one didn't strike me, however. There was a lot of info dump at the end, and little interactivity.

What was interesting was the choice of medium. For the style of story he was writing, he had 2 choices: IF, or Short Film (in a memento style). The use of IF was daring here, and he is definately one to experiment with his IF styles, and for that I give him credit. This one, I just didn't feel. Even photopia, with its limited choices, gave the illusion of freedom, and I-0 seemed way open, with multiple branches to the ending. With this one, most of the game was pressing the space bar to advance the text, and that wasn't what I was looking for with the IF.

Still, if you're a fan of the story- the story itself is fairly interesting.

This is my 3rd Cadre game after Photopia and I-0. Loved them. I liked this, but the game is fairly short, so there isn't a lot to love. What there is, however, is gold.

Once again, he uses his ingenious writing to distract you from some of the simple things that PCs take for granted. (Spoiler - click to show) He tricked me again! I fell for it with the angel in photopia, and now again with this PC .

The game itself seems fairly straightforward, shower, get dressed, eat, go to work. It only takes a couple of minutes. Then the joke happens. Definately worth the 2nd playthrough to look for "evidence" of the reveal.

I would rate it higher if there was more to do, but as it is, it is fun and interesting.

This game was really fun- kind of in the vein of Janitor in spirit, but not in method of play.

You are a commoner in a Dungeons and Dragons parodied universe. You have to clean up Mordenkains Magnificant Mansion (or at least a parody of it), with your Bag of Devouring (I mean- sack of gobbling).

It's cute- all the D&D references, and a couple of simpson refrences (such as embiggen and debigulating).

It's a speed IF, and as such has some parser issues, which is to be expected. I was most upset by what appears to be a time limit- you can bump into the wizard, who then judges your progress, scores you, and ends the game. Dodging the wizard can get you a few more turns. Personally, I would rather you tell the wizard when you're done cleaning, but that might be part of the game.

It was a good parody game, fairly clever, especially given the short coding time. Worth a playthrough if you're a D&D geek like me. If not, you might not get that much out of this game.

Okay, I kind of blasted another game for being adware, but this one was way funnier.

First of all, it makes no secret of the fact that it's adware, and no attempt to be a real game. Instead, it just places coca-cola references all over other people's games, such as Adventure, or A Bear's Night out.

The games are basically demo versions of other games, using the coke machine to go between them. More of a joke or parody than adware.

The game is a litte under-implemented, not understanding cola as coca-cola, and fill bottle with coke doesn't work, you need to fill bottle while you are near coke.

The game is kind of long for what it is- but cute nonetheless. You don't want it to be too long, condsidering it's one big joke, and i'm not sure it it's techinically parody as far as the authors of other games are concerned. Something to pass the time, but nothing to get hung up about.