Ratings and Reviews by Joey Jones

The best part of the game is the fun riff it has with casual gaming themes like achievements, meters and bars for all sorts of things. There are great jokes here. I recommend playing the game for a half dozen turns and just look at the status bar.

The game itself is difficult in unsatisfying ways: it's often thinly implemented and it requires arbitrarily trying out commands from a long list of possible commands. Despite it being an escape-the-room game, the set up fails to give any particular motivation or direction for doing so.

The only npc exists only to annoy you, in which it is fairly successful, and what with its constant jabbering and the swarm of useless info on the status bar and humongous text dumps all over the place, the game feels very claustrophobic and cluttered. Which you'd think would be good for an escape-the-room game, but as the whole thing is so unmotivated, the clutter doesn't serve any narrative or thematic purpose. It's just sort of painful.

That all said, the creative use of the status bar throughout is inspired, and it's possible that there's a compelling game underneath all the clutter. Maybe it would appeal more to those well steeped in the conventions of escape-the-room games.

You've got to give the author some credit for taking part and producing a game for the amazing Apollo 18 tribute album. Without noble folk stepping forward and taking on responsibilities, all the game slots wouldn't have been taken. He gets an honorary star for that. Unfortunately, Hypnotist of Ladies isn't a very good game. In fact, in terms of implementation or lack thereof, Hypnotist of Ladies reaches almost MST3K-worthy depths.

I quote:(Spoiler - click to show)
>talk to ladies
The ladies beam in heartfelt appreciation and eagerly await your next move....which is to hypnotise them.

[Your score has just gone up by one point.]

>hypnotise ladies
That's not a verb I recognise.

On the bright side, it's not very long, and if you also play every single other Apollo 18 game you'll have a wonderful sense of achievement.

I finished Nautilisia in no time at all really. It's an achingly self-aware little romp through someone's dream world. The puzzles are just simple pacing devices and the story is almost nonexistent, what motivates the player to completion is the quality of the writing, which remains consistently witty throughout, and the extra little 'amusing' things that reward light experimentation.

The parser is a promise that is often broken. It offers you a chance to try anything. It bristles with possibility. Every game has a relationship with this promise, and most go something like this: You can try anything! Oh great, I'll try '[this]!', That's not a verb I recognise. The path of the text adventurer is one fraught with great disappointment, but also great excitement and glee when one's wishes are understood. And the more our wishes are understood, the more we trust the game and invest in its story.

What's The Blue doesn't have a consistent story, but rather dozens and dozens of different stories. With its breadth it comes a long way to fulfilling the promise of the parser. It isn't as complete as the multi-authored pick up the phone booth and aisle, but given that there is only one of Ruth it is impressive.