Ratings and Reviews by Max Fog

This is an old 1988 basic game ported to Z-machine. It has a simple plot of you trying to … Well, it wasn’t entirely clear from what I played. You have to save your crew from contamination? It has some good puzzles, such as the videogame one. However, as it does resemble a Scott Adams game, there are many parsing issues, and backspace doesn’t work, instead outputting what I assume is a space. Which confused me, but it didn’t affect me largely enough at all.

There was parsing problems, such as what seems to me as no way to turn on and off things. I tried TURN ON FLASHLIGHT, which responded “What’s the use of turning that?” So I tried ACTIVATE FLASHLIGHT. It didn’t understand. So I attempted TURN ON LIGHT, which responded again with “What’s the use of turning that?” Then I tried TURN FLASHLIGHT. Same thing. Then, finally I tried TURN HHH, and I was still given “What’s the use of turning that?” Which was confusing, since every other verb I tried it would go something like “What in space is on flashlight?” If I typed X ON FLASHLIGHT.

As well as this, a fountain and pond that are the main attraction and take up the most space in a room description are not implemented at all, yet some benches which take up half a sentence yet are vital to the game are implemented.

I did spend a lot of time trying to talk to something that was not implemented, and then I got it after about 15 different failed attempts.

Overall, there were some problems. Many directly listed objects weren’t implemented, and I couldn’t get very far into the game. If the game changes halfway through, I couldn’t get there because I spent so long walking around and trying different things.

The game’s flow is interesting and yet captivating, picking between single-choices with massive texts of screen before them, and ones with objects and a lot of choices. Especially the clothes drawer. I liked the clothes drawer. It really made me feel like the word was really new to this world: didn’t know which parts to focus on and remember, instead remembering the things we take for granted - the vital stuff - and forgetting or undescribing the stuff humans find special. I found that clever.

The world’s on some things really were fascinating, such as the images (considering it is text), and I think the concept and delivery was great. However, the end bit with the outro (from the comments on OS to the end) dragged on a little too long, which could have been intended, but didn’t feel it.

Glad I played it though.