Reviews by Jim Kaplan

Play it if: you're looking (with all due respect to the author) for the kind of example game not to show beginners to IF, or if you have a strong sado-masochistic streak.

Don't play it if: you want to play a game with any real level of thought or creative input.

I'm going to go ahead and disagree with the author: this is very much not the kind of game to show IF beginners, and here's why.

First, the game has little to entertain beginners enough to get them interested in more IF. The descriptive text is Spartan at best (the room description consisting of a list of objects, for instance), and there is no story or atmosphere besides a basic need to get out of a room.

Second, there's no fair challenge in the game. Most of the "puzzles" require either a brute-force approach to opening containers and trying keys out in differenet locks, or guess-the-verb minigames. Neither of these are a genuine test of intellect, and as a result neither are rewarding; any prospective IF player is likely to feel frustrated with this work.

Finally, the game's underlying logic is almost non-existent. One has to wonder what kind of asylum would put its patients in a room chock-full of keys or hire staff who ruin your plans for escape on the basis of a clock's alarm. The corners of the desk are sanded off to prevent you from hurting yourself, and yet the room contains (Spoiler - click to show)a fragile glass object, a heavy hammer, and a chisel capable of penetrating a wall, among other things! Not to mention the time limit - (Spoiler - click to show)if there are no doors described in the room, how do the asylum staff get in to "ruin your plans"? Dearie me. An unintentionally hilarious coding error - and one that could have been fixed with a marginally thorough beta-test - is the error message that pops up whenever the player tries to off himself (the kind of response games of this caliber inspire in me, I'm afraid). The "remove player from play" error, in case you were wondering...which is odd considering that the author successfully wrote in a defeat condition!

Hopefully the author's subsequent work will have more in the way of invested effort.

P.S. Perhaps the most bizarre thing about this game is that the author voted for it in a list of Best Short Games. I don't mean to sound...well, mean, but...really?

Play this game if: you like your IF short and simple, or you want to play through one of the more memorable set-pieces in the genre.

Don't play this game if: you're easily put off by linear and nearly puzzle-free gameplay.

The Act of Misdirection opens with a wonderful scene in which the player must perform a magic act without knowing the choreography beforehand. Fortunately, the protagonist does know, which puts the player in the interesting position of being one step ahead of the audience (as the narrative voice provides clues to the tricks) and one step behind the protagonist. The writing is very strong here, and the game effectively builds the player's sense of entertainment and anticipation as the player does the same thing to the in-game audience. It's thrilling stuff, the kind of set-piece which would make for an excellent Inform tutorial.

The rest of the game pales a little in comparison. This is not to denigrate Harrison's achievements: from a purely technical standpoint there's still a fair amount to appreciate, such as some solid NPC interactions and a setting that has the population density of character and detail just right. But the writing and atmosphere just don't harmonize with these aspects of the game the way they do in the first act (no wordplay intended?).

Beyond the opening scene, the writing is probably the chief attraction. Harrison isn't afraid to use some flowery prose, but more importantly establishes a good couple of narrative voices. (Spoiler - click to show)The contrast between the narrator's voice for the magic act and the rest of the game is a good touch, with the dramatic and confident narration in the beginning emphasizing Meldellevo's power and skill, and the following imagined diatribes from Sally highlighting how insecure a character Sarah really is. This adds somewhat to the Faustian conflict at play. The settings are easy to picture as a result of the good descriptive text, rendering progress that much more comfortable, and some tense moments have genuine punch. (Spoiler - click to show)Consider the excellent use of the single-sentence paragraph at the climax of the magic routine, as well as the "normal" ending's final sentence. There are, however, some rough patches - syntax and word usage errors not due to technical issues. They aren't really numerous enough to destroy your enjoyment of the game or anything, but together with a sense that a premise this creative could have supported a bigger story, they add to the feeling of the whole package as a little unpolished.

This is also one of the more linear stories I've encountered in IF - as the author notes, it's impossible to put the game into an unwinnable state. However, the alternate ending - and yes, there is one - relies on a sufficiently unfair puzzle that getting it is more of an exercise for a second playthrough than a genuine opportunity for the first-time player. It also means that the nearly puzzle-less environment consists largely of "guess the verb" mini-games, though these aren't particularly unfair.

Overall, this is a story with strong promise - and even as a diamond in the rough (emphasizing the "diamond"), it's worth your time. Were Ms Harrison to expand this into a larger narrative - which I would argue, is a worthwhile pursuit - I'd suggest maintaining (where possible) the information asymmetry between player and protagonist, as well as getting one (or maybe one more) friendly eye to proofread and test-play.

Good job!

Play it if: you have a thing for fairy tales, ancient Greek philosophy, non-linear puzzle-solving, or general weirdness.

Don't play it if: you want truly difficult puzzles or a backstory that completely wins your heart.

Metamorphoses has many of the traits I like the most about Emily Short's best work: a fascination with the past, a fairy-tale atmosphere, and innovative game mechanics - traits which can be found to various extents in works like Galatea, Savoir-Faire, and Bronze.

In this game, it is the mechanics which come to the foreground, with your ability to resize objects as well as change their chemical composition. It's absurdly tempting to lose sight of the game altogether and just spend time looking for different configurations you can achieve with random objects in the setting.

True to form, the puzzles in this story have multiple solutions - courtesy of the above-mentioned game mechanics - and while this substantially reduces the overall difficulty of the game in some ways, it in no way detracts from the fun. In fact, a couple of puzzles may even be harder, since you are forced to consider the uses of not only the normal objects in your inventory, but also the potential objects. In this sense the game is nothing short of mind-expanding in terms of how interactive fiction can model worlds.

The rest of the game, while solid, is more textbook. As you solve puzzles you learn more and more of the protagonist's backstory and understand something of her role in this world. It's good stuff and quite intriguing, but by itself it won't really hook you or haunt you afterwards. Which is fine - a game can't be everything at once - but it does mean that you'll be more likely to find the game itself impressive than the story.

Nevertheless, this is a work that is definitely worth your time: a quirky setting, an interesting story, fun non-linear puzzles, and most of all some fascinating game mechanics.

P.S. Personally, I was curious as to whether or not living objects could be modified. Shame that I couldn't find an animal or something to try it out on...

Play this game if: You have a fondness for witty banter and a craving for short and easy games.

Don't play this game if: Just play the darn thing.

Something akin to a slice out of a fantasy/soap/comedy webcomic, A Day for Fresh Sushi is short, simple, and fun.

The main reason you'd want to play this - other than as a basic introduction to IF - is of course the fish, the feeding of whom is the objective of the game. It's an objective you may want to put off, though, because the fish's commentary on what you're doing in the meantime is hilarious enough that you may find yourself just trying to get him to react more.

Certainly not the kind of game one plays for a challenge,(Spoiler - click to show)since after all you can win in three turns, A Day for Fresh Sushi is instead an entertaining five-minute distraction.

Play it if: you have a sense of humor.

Don't play it if: you're under the impression that your time is too precious to bother with a game that isn't long, complex, or challenging.

I don't think a game has made me laugh that hard in ages!

There's only so much one can say about a game like this, because it has a very specific, fairly spoiler-iffic aim in mind. Discussing difficulty, the command system, and technical innovation would have no point. Suffice to say that it accomplishes its goal. It has some significant replay value: it's only on a second playthrough, observing the seemingly mundane yet rather precise way in which everything is described and reported, that you realize how tight the writing really is.

This is my first experience with Adam Cadre's work, and on the strength of this one alone I'm going to go check out some of his other stuff.

Play the game if: you like your IF compact, your challenges fair, and a little bit of narrative color around your puzzles.

Don't play the game if: you want a genuinely tough game, strong emotional investment, or a setting that provokes a sense of wonder or discovery.

The Weapon is probably a good introductory game for those who are new to IF. The one-room geography won't tax your memory, the straightforward command system won't offend your linguistic sensibilities, and neither the game itself nor the puzzles are particularly brutal or unfair.

The story resembles an escape scenario. You play something of a Hannibal Lecter figure, a criminal genius who is being brought in to investigate an alien artifact of great power.

What I like about this is that most of the puzzles have two layers: your objective is to learn about and activate the artifact, but you must do so in a way that will not alert your captors. This adds significant pizzazz and an extra challenge to what would otherwise be fairly light puzzles (though they're not straightforward).

The puzzles generally take the form of just requiring you to be observant: you'll need to consider the possible uses of pretty much everything in the room in order to progress. I must admit to having a soft spot for escape scenarios (having been brought up on Doctor Who), so this kind of challenge - improvising ways to evade your captors - is one of my favorites.

If The Weapon has any weakness, it's that it deserved to be part of a larger narrative. The backstory, while not uninteresting, can never come to life because it's more or less superfluous, and so comes across as a tweaked version of the backstory to Ender's Game. While the characterization and setting are well-written, certain events lose emotional impact because it's been too soon since we were introduced to the context. It's a shame because, without being specific, this isn't really the kind of game that begs for a sequel, and it seems doubtful that we'll see much more of this world.

Nevertheless, it's an enjoyable distraction that probably won't take you more than a couple of hours to complete, and for a distraction, it's rather well-written. The puzzles are genuinely engaging as the player needs to make a genuine effort to understand the particulars of how the story's technologies work (Spoiler - click to show)(as with trying to mask the transmission or read information on the viewscreen without Cheryl noticing).

Overall, if you have an evening when you have nothing to do and just want to relax, The Weapon would easily give you something fun to do - the equivalent of watching a light movie or re-reading an old book.

Play the game if: you simply want to enjoy a competent and in some places innovative work of interactive fiction without getting bogged down in complex intellectual challenges.

Don't play the game if: you want to be dazzled with narrative brilliance, or if you want more out of IF than good prose and atmosphere.

Shade is a work of interactive fiction that could easily have doubled as a script for The Twilight Zone. In fact, certain very apt comparisons could be made to (Spoiler - click to show)Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", a film adaptation of which was shown on The Twilight Zone.

The bare mechanics of Shade work rather well. In fact, the very question of "difficulty" doesn't even seem to exist in this game. Plotkin's writing is sharp enough that when the rules begin to change, the differences will leap out at you even though they're rather subtle - details such as (Spoiler - click to show)The protagonist's vacuum suddenly being full of sand, or the apartment's plant changing species.

The apartment setting is implemented with convenience in mind, the game allowing for multiple locations in a single-room setting without forcing the player to resort to constant commands of "enter" and "exit". My favorite games in IF focus on synchronizing the kind of decision-making underlying in-game actions with the player's own mind. Such games, and in this case Shade, impart a sense of intuitive control and completeness that can help the game transcend itself in the Turing-esque sense that IF has always striven to accomplish.

There is only so much one can discuss in the story itself without referring to heavy spoilers. The fact that there even exist heavy spoilers is in and of itself something of a spoiler, which poses something of a problem. Nevertheless, for the sake of completeness, the attempt must be made.

An undeniable strength of the story is the atmosphere. The one-room setting achieved the right balance of comprehensibility and potential to explore; the pacing of your introductory searches around the room is good enough to introduce all the important elements at play and keep them in your mind at all times.

Perhaps because I've seen this particular brand of story before, Shade's actual narrative doesn't come across as particularly fresh or new for me. This is likely more a subjective nitpick than an objective criticism, but there you go. What might be called the second act (Spoiler - click to show)(specifically, the process of turning all of your apartment to sand) was for me a rather laborious process of carrying out the obvious, even though I understood more or less where this story was going to end. Even before getting to this stage I'd more or less guessed the ending - showing that while subtle details will leap out at you, there's an added risk of too much foreshadowing.

The result was that I wasn't as gripped by Shade as I might have been - the two moments of genuine excitement being the realization of what was actually going on (turning out to be something I'd seen before), and the epilogue of sorts, which is written rather well.

Still, this is, if not a great work, at least a very good one; the implementation of the setting, the comfortable command system, and the prose are by themselves enough to make this game worth your time.