Reviews by Cody Gaisser

Don't Push The Mailbox 2 And Aisle is an homage to a game called Pick Up The Phone Booth And Aisle (itself an homage to the joke game Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die and the one-turn game Aisle); it is also the sequel to Don't Push The Mailbox (itself an homage to Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die).

The original joke of Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die was good, but not so hilarious as to warrant endless sequels, parodies, and homages. Its humor was mostly in its simplicity, and that simplicity is lost even in the best of the imitators (Pick Up The Phone Booth And Aisle).

Don't Push The Mailbox 2 is just way too many degrees separated from the original joke.

Don't Push The Mailbox is an homage to the joke game Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die. Mailbox is more complex than Phone Booth, with more things to do and more ways to lose; but it lacks the simple absurdity of the game it imitates.

Pick Up The Phone Booth And Cry is a parody of Pick Up The Phone Booth And Dye, which itself is a parody of Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die (a very simplistic joke game). Pretty much all the humor has been bled out by this point.

This is a parody of Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die, which itself was a simplistic joke game. The puzzle is slightly (and I do mean slightly) more complex here, and there's an added pun; but the personality of the original is missing.

This is an expanded version of Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die. There's more to do, but I couldn't figure out what to do to solve it... Or whether it was possible to solve it. Is that the joke? I dunno.

What if the simple two-joke game Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die worked like the one-turn multi-ending game Aisle? What if, instead of being under-implemented like the original, it was overly-implemented instead and every conceivable command the player could enter led to some sort of weird ending? That's what this is.

I'm going to go against the popular opinion that this game is vastly superior to Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die. I'm going to say that the original joke worked better because it was so simple, and the lolrandom chaos added to this "remake" just makes the game waste more of the player's time. Both of these Phone Booth games are amusing in their way, but neither is as good as Aisle.

9:05 is a game with a deceptively simple premise: You're asleep. The phone rings, waking you up. It's time to get cleaned up and go, and fast.

A single play-through is very short, so it's a breeze to reach the game's multiple endings (there are at least four).

There are some rough edges (the parser responds oddly sometimes when it doesn't understand the player's commands), but these issues didn't get in the way of my good time.

9:05 is well-written, with some amusing twists. Start the game with realistic expectations - it's not some masterpiece of literature, it's a funny little text game. By those standards, I consider it well worth playing a few times to see what it has to offer.

The premise of Aisle is simple:

You're standing in the pasta aisle of a grocery store. You've got one turn. What will you do with your one chance, and what will it reveal about you?

The parser understands numerous commands, and recognizes each with a distinct ending. Some endings are happy, some are sad, some are funny, some are disturbing.

Aisle is a very short story that can be played through repeatedly in rapid succession, with all sorts of contradictory conclusions reached. It's very well done, amusing, and probably worth the small time investment if this sort of game seems interesting to you.

Lost Pig is possibly the most beloved text adventure around. Grunk is possibly the most endearing protagonist in interactive fiction. The game is perfect for beginners, but still enjoyable to experienced players. Lost Pig is short, fun, humorous, unpretentious, and relatively easy to solve without being too obvious. What are you waiting for? Play it!

I don't know that I have much to add that hasn't been said before about Shade:

*It's more of an interactive short story than an adventure game.
*It's reminiscent of The Twilight Zone.
*It's generally well written.
*Your mileage may vary with the ending.
*It's sometimes hard to tell what you're expected to do next, even when you're holding a checklist.
*(Spoiler - click to show)SAND!!!

Essentially it's good and worth the short time it takes to play, but also potentially frustrating depending on what you expect from interactive fiction/text adventures.