Reviews by Joey Jones

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.

Leave Me Alone, like many fingertips games, isn't really a game that is played to be won. I got the 'winning' move on the first playthrough. Rather, it is a game to be explored. In many ways it is similar to What's That Blue Thing Doing Here?, if a little more limited. Each successful response is inventive and paints a vivid moment. It hasn't the breadth of some other one move games, but for what it is, it's good.

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.

Who's Knockin' is a logic puzzle (or set of possible puzzles) with the same form as the (probably apocryphal) Einstein Puzzle, also known as the Zebra Puzzle. It's a fun and challenging puzzle to solve even if you don't have a degree in predicate logic. The trouble is, if you've solved it once, you always know what the answer is. Not so any more!

If Who's Knockin' merely randomised the names of all elements in the puzzle, then you'd always be able to guess the answer just by looking at the form of the clues: if, for instance, the woodworker is always the person that lives in the second house, you could guess it every time just by looking at the clue saying who lives in the second house. What the game engine does is randomly pick one of five possible puzzle structures (all sharing some identically structured clues), and then it randomises the order in which the clues are listed. This essentially means the game can't be 'gamed', you have to figure it out afresh each time.

While it lacks literary qualities and breadth of response, the game more than achieves what it sets out to achieve: a challenging and unique puzzle with every play. And that's not something many games can boast, let alone one move games.

Muggle Studies is essentially a treasure hunt game, with a few puzzles and riddles. Fortunately, it is not just a treasure hunt game: the faithful and imaginative rendering of Hogwarts, and the protagonist's personal journey both pull the game up from its less than auspicious structure.

Muggle Studies, like other works of fan fiction, requires some knowledge of the original works to be fully appreciated. Like many people my age, I grew up reading Harry Potter books with each new one being devoured a day or two after release. A lot of my friends were into Harry Potter fan fiction, but it's never been my cup of tea. That said, the exploring of Hogwarts and the discovery of the world of magic is more compelling in interactive fiction. The use of the second person lends immediacy and intimacy with the environs that is lacking in a typical graphical Harry Potter game where you play out someone else's troubles from the distance of a third person perspective.

Though it is written in the second person, you play as a very concrete individual with their own history; and the weaving in of Alice's personal story through reminiscences and flashbacks adds both another layer of mystery to the story and gives greater emotional depth to the exploration and subsequent discoveries of the game.

If you're a fan of the Harry Potter series then playing the game is a must.

The game is a sort of imagist moment. It feels very static, though it does become apparent why. The writing could be a bit sharper: some of the formulations and grammar seemed a little off. While you can examine things, it doesn't give any extra information that isn't already in the room description. The error messages were weird as well, like it would say that objects weren't there when trying to interact with it one way, but those same objects could be examined. I don't expect much, as it's only flash fiction, and it's exactly through such experiments that one's craft improves.

This is a one-verb implemented story. It's only a game insofar as the act of trying to read the book implicates you in your/the protagonist's continued failure to do so. It's a short vignette and just that. Worth playing for the writing and the moment. I'll not rate it, because it's not trying to be a game of the type that receives ratings. Quantitatively, it's poorer than almost all other games I've played, though qualitatively it's richer than many.

I thought I'd give it a little time before I reviewed Six. Enough time to work out whether it really was worth the five stars I initially gave it. And oh how it is worth it! Just thinking about the game physically fills my heart with joy. As in, I experience a genuine biological sensation of warmth just in the recollection of the game. That's how amazing it is.

In Six you play a girl on her sixth birthday playing a tag/hide-and-seek hybrid game in a park. This nice little premise is unpacked into a deeply immerse experience that positively oozes with infectious charm and the joy of play. And like a game in which you play a game should be, it is so fun! And when it ends, you can play it again with different and interesting permutations. Oh, and there's clever use of sound, cute visuals and all round excellent production values.

If I could give Wade Clark a high five through the internet, I would.

I wanted to like Glik. I enjoy post-apocalyptic settings, and the idea of playing a future archaeologist is appealing. The broad concept was pretty solid. But the execution leaves much to be desired. There's a basic level of competence present that gives the player false hope that the game will reward them, (like the addition of a help menu) but ultimately it fails to deliver.

The player is tasked with looking for their friend who's gone missing (a solid hook), but then is placed at a camp without any clue as to which way their friend might, surrounded by a pretty generic wilderness replete with darkness filled rooms and repetitive meaning-to-be-ominous message.

On top of all this is a highly generic HP+XP 'RPG' system tacked on on top (there were hints of enemies but I didn't meet any). In the end, after lengthy battle with myself and my axe*, I managed to commit suicide. And that's when it got really weird. After opening and exiting the unlit closed 'spirit-realm' container (a cosmic wardrobe?) that I was stuck in post-death, I found myself again in darkness. Having -3 hit points and with no way of telling which way to go, I hit a run-time error and that's when I gave up on Glik.

My advice to the author would be to get rid of the empty RPG-trappings and focus on unpacking the ideas that look so promising in the opening section.


*Apparently, I had an exclusive choice between an axe, hammer or sword. I said 'take all from the chest' and got the first weapon by default.

(Game deserves 1.5 for effort, but I don't currently recommend playing it.)

In A Comedy of Error Messages, you play an avid gamer's loving computer, and it is your task to stop a disastrous blind date from happening. The idea is great and it was mostly well implemented. The puzzles were pretty easy but even so the time limit was very harsh.

The game does a good job of imaginatively realising virtual environments, even if it does lead to some head scratching moments when you consider the metaphysics of what's going on.

As a comedy game it was fairly amusing, especially if you get the references. The humour for the most part relies on an familiarity with internet-culture. A lot of things people generally find funny aren't really funny per se, but are just shorthand for shared experiences. I think my favourite line was (Spoiler - click to show)'The bird looks as if it wants to give you the bird. But it can't, since it's a bird.'

I liked the ability to choose your gender, race and sexuality at the start- and how it affected the shape of the things, even if it was essentially the same plot. I can see how this is an improvement from what I understand to have been the old 'Elfen Maiden' default; when I played the unwanted date played an Orc princess. There were a few moments where this wasn't completely implemented, and the text assumed incorrectly that my master was a man.

I didn't complete the game on the first run through as the time limit ran out. This wasn't because I was particularly stuck, I had a good idea what I should be doing at any given time, but I must have wasted time along the way. I could see the reason for having a time limit but it doesn't gel well with my usual playing style: I like to examine everything and talk to everyone and try to see if things work that I think should work.

The fact that I wasn't as effective at playing a time-based game as I could have been is no real criticism of the game, but I did I think there were game design elements that didn't help. I would certainly have completed the game first off if it weren't for the fact that errors and mistakes increase the turn count. Every time I tried to go up when there wasn't an up, or tried to examine something that I misspelt or the author hadn't implemented, the minutes crept inexorably onwards. In the end, every time I did something that didn't work, or had a look around the room to remind myself of exits, I'd undo immediately afterwards.

But the game was interesting enough to motivate me to finish it and I was pleased it all worked out in the end.