Reviews by Kake
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A decent enough idea, but the execution just didn't work for me, November 25, 2007Jane is a puzzleless, story-driven piece with multiple narrators. It takes maybe about 10 minutes to play.
The subject matter of this game is domestic violence (not a spoiler — the author tells you this up-front); this makes it slightly tricky to criticise, since it feels a bit like criticising a charity for the wording of its mailshots. The author's heart is clearly in the right place, and the text certainly isn't badly written, but I never really felt drawn in to the story. It also didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.
I'd have liked to have seen a bit more individuality in the characters; they just felt like stereotypes to me. I think the message would have been more powerful if there had been something to the characters beyond their specific roles in this specific narrative.
GRUNK PANTS ON FIRE!, November 23, 2007Aw, this is brilliant! Excellent attention to detail, and an awful lot of fun. It's well worth playing around and trying silly things that have no chance of advancing the game, just because the responses are so funny (e.g. try taking your pants off in company). Besides that, the implementation's solid, the puzzles make sense, Grunk and the pig both have a lot of character, and the ending is quite uplifting.
A game that really rubbed me up the wrong way, November 23, 2007I gave this game three stars after I first played it, intending to come back to it after reading a few reviews and giving it a few more plays, to see if I thought it really deserved four or whether I should stick with three. Unfortunately, additional attempts at play made me so frustrated that I almost ended up dropping my rating down to two. Even though I knew exactly what I needed to do to complete the first part, I ran out of time and died four times trying to get the timing to work; doubly frustrating as I'd managed it straight away the first time around, when I'd spent a lot more time wandering around the ship then. Resorting to the walkthrough, I found that the problem was caused by my having a mistaken mental picture of certain items.
Throughout the game, I didn't think the puzzles were particularly well-signalled; what I mean by that is that while they weren't difficult in the sense of needing a great amount of intellect, they were difficult in the sense of the circumstances around them not being very clearly explained. I also felt that the huge info-dump of made-up creation myth in the second part of the game was very off-putting.
Basically, I'm still annoyed with this game, and I'd be unlikely to recommend it to anyone else, particularly someone new to IF. I did like the fact that there were multiple solutions to some of the puzzles though.
Quite, quite nonstandard; won't appeal to everyone, but I liked it, November 21, 2007I didn't think I was going to like this game when I started playing it, but now I'm extremely glad I gave it a go. I played it over again as soon as I'd finished it the first time, and enjoyed it as much if not more on the second go-round.
A number of reviewers have mentioned the sketchiness of the implementation, and some have suggested this may have been a purposeful choice, or at least one explainable within the world by the narrator having been in an understandable hurry. Now, given the backstory of the game, I have absolutely no problem with most nouns and actions being unimplemented; the problem I had was that when I got a reply from Inform, rather than from my narrator, it was jarring. Something as simple as a comment in the narrator's voice, rather than letting it fall through to the default parser response, would have alleviated this - just something that kept me immersed in the world.
Also, I didn't find the implementation sketchy so much as inconsistent. In some places, examining things brought the reward of another section of the story; in others, it was just pointless and frustrating. I think if the responses stayed in the narrator's voice throughout, it would make players more likely to examine things, rather than just mechanically work through the in-game-provided walkthrough.
And clearly this author can write! One excellent example, after you see the narrator do something that a human would never, ever do: "It hurts, but it also feels like someone is stroking your hair." (Actually, that doesn't look so great in isolation. It's better in context, but I don't want to give spoilers.) Also - "slickening"? Best portmanteau ever.
I thought the ending was disappointing. The random, nonstandard prompts were interesting, but the actual ending (well, endings - two are possible, but both have the same flaw) was generic to the point of meaninglessness. (And yes, I did notice the cues that explained who both the people in the final scene were.)
I want to make it clear that I did like Deadline Enchanter, and I do think it's worth playing; I wouldn't go on about the flaws at such great length if I didn't like it. There were typos, but I actually didn't care, for once. I just really want to have been able to give it five stars, but the inconsistent implementation and the disappointing ending meant I couldn't.
Very polished and user-friendly... until the last scene!, November 21, 2007This single-room game is a good old-fashioned mystery story, in which you, as a groom in the service of a Victorian gentleman, hunt through your employer's study to discover the truth behind the death of your sweetheart.
I'm not usually all that good at puzzles, but I found most of these easy yet satisfying, right up to the very end where I found myself utterly baffled — not by what I should try next, which it turns out I had right, but by how on earth I could persuade the parser to let me try it. Given the number of other reviews that have mentioned this problem, I have no doubt the author will fix this up in the next release, so I've not taken any stars off for it. I would, however, advise waiting for the next version if you don't want your immersion in the story to be interrupted by a bout of frustration right at the most exciting part.
The rest of the game was very polished. I couldn't find a single unimplemented noun; some descriptions were shared between nouns, for example the bookshelves and the books, but this is perfectly sensible and absolutely fine. (I know some people don't care about this kind of thing, but I feel a little bit more writing effort put into the parts of the scenery that people are likely to look at really makes a difference to whether a game feels solid or fragile, and I don't trust fragile games to have fair puzzles/solutions.)
Similarly, I liked the fact that it was possible to discover details of events prior to the start of the game that, while irrelevant if your goal is only to get to the ending, added colour and interest to the whole story.
My main disappointment was that what I would have seen as the optimal ending seems not to be implemented.
Well-executed, just not my thing, November 16, 2007This isn't really a game, and as the author says in the ABOUT, it isn't really a story either: "All I can call it is a Thing." There is very little interactivity; your agency basically consists of what order to look at things in, and your conversational choices make pretty much no difference to the story. There are reasons for this, particularly as regards the conversations, but I did find it a bit frustrating sometimes, as if I was being made to type meaningless strings of characters before being rewarded with the next section of story.
The writing and characterisation are both very good, and Rameses does seem to be very well-regarded, but it just didn't do it for me.
A single joke, but a good one, November 14, 2007A very, very brief playing experience, but it did make me laugh. (Though the laugh was about 50% groan.)
It's all about the NPC, November 14, 2007Excellently sarcastic NPC, and quite a reasonable backstory for such a short game. It's hard to believe this was actually speed IF.
An in-joke, but suitable for a wide audience, November 10, 2007Being Andrew Plotkin probably makes a good deal more sense if you've watched Being John Malkovich; so if you haven't seen it, you may well enjoy the game a lot less than I did. I'd definitely recommend watching the film first, if possible, since a fair bit of the amusement I got from the game came from remembering similar scenes in the film. I don't think playing the game first will make you enjoy the film any less, though; and I don't think it counts as a spoiler to note that it's certainly not a direct transplant from screen to, er, screen — and the ending is quite different.
The most fun I've ever had with a mop, November 10, 2007Great, fun little game. The premise is that you're a chef in a newly-opened restaurant, but you're facing a few problems tonight; all your staff have called in sick, supply problems and technical issues are conspiring against you, and a hugely influential food critic is coming to dinner.
I really enjoyed playing this, especially once I realised that (despite the well-managed sense of urgency) I wasn't going to be forced to start over just for taking a while to figure out any of the puzzles. I also liked the fact that a fair few of the "silly" things I tried when I was stuck gave me amusing responses.
I couldn't find a way to put the game in an unwinnable position, and the bugs noted in the competition release seem to have been fixed in the latest one (apart from a couple of output bugs that don't affect gameplay at all). Very few typos, if any.
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