Ratings and Reviews by Lumin

David Whyld's 'The Reluctant Resurrectee' took second place in the 2007 Spring Thing, and is the sequel to an earlier, smaller work, 'Back to Life...Unfortunately'. While you don't have to play that to enjoy this one, it was plenty of fun in its own right and so I recommend it as well.

When I played the first game I remember thinking how original the puzzles were (as a king who keeps getting resurrected against your will so that you can continue ruling, the goal was to kill yourself in various amusingly inventive ways until you could no longer be brought back), but
even that pales in comparison to the premise behind TRR, which takes 'non-human protagonist' to a whole nother level.

You're...um, unique form makes the traditional means of exploring a bit difficult, so the first order of business is learning some other ways to get around, preferably without dying. Unlike the first game, death is something you want to try and avoid here, though it doesn't end the game or
anything; the ever helpful Chancellor Verenor is still faithfully by your (figurative) side whether you want him there or not.

This time instead of trying to escape your problems by (re)dying, you have no choice but to man up and resolve a host of serious threats facing your kingdom, the reason you were brought back in the first place.

While there are a couple of other areas you can access, the majority of the game takes place at...er, on your desk, and there are a variety of clever puzzles that involve you trying to manipulate everyday objects, collect information and just generally get around. Eventually there's also a way to summon and communicate with a few of your subjects, though this was part of a set of puzzles that I personally found a little difficult. (Then again sometimes my brain just doesn't get puzzles in general.)

However, once I got past that little snag, the ending was plenty satisfying, and nicely paved the way for the sequel.

Coming in third place in the Spring Thing 2007, Christy Henshaw's "Starship Volant: Stowaway" is a short sci-fi adventure about...well, a stowaway on the Starship Volant, as you might have guessed from the title. The structure of the game is a bit different from your average work of
IF, though the characters, plot, and especially the setting all contain elements that might give anyone who's ever seen an episode of Star Trek a sense of deja vu. (To me this is a good thing, but your mileage may vary...)

One of the unusual things about the game is that there are multiple main characters. Five of them, to be exact: the captain, pilot, security officer, ship's doctor, and chief engineer. Each of them are given some time in the spotlight when it comes to resolving the crisis the ship faces,
and each have distinctive personality quirks and a bit of history that makes the whole process more interesting.

Which leads us to the second unusual thing; a prologue was included to let you get to know the different characters by trying them out at your leisure, chat with other crew members, and do a little exploring on the side. The prologue isn't necessary to play the game, but it does give
some backstory, and I highly recommend at least taking enough time for a tour of the ship, since the detail here is an area where the game really shines (and later you may be too busy to enjoy it).

As I said, at a glance the setting is fairly familiar, so while most people won't have have any trouble figuring out what transporters and replicators and the like are for, there are tons of interesting little details scattered around in people's quarters and elsewhere that really help flesh out the game world.

Unfortunately that's about it for the prologue; there are no puzzles, nor anything else you can actually DO there, which can make your first impression of SV:S be that it drags a bit much and starts to get tedious, at least until you skip to the game proper. When I first played I suggested to the author that some sort of goal for that part (such as a simple non-pressing task for each person to perform) would improve the pacing, and after a recent replay I still feel that way.

However once the ACTUAL game begins, things move fast as you are switched from character to character, each with an important job to do. The puzzles themselves could have stood to be more challenging, but I thought the way they were presented was interesting in and of itself; there are a few cases where you do the typical IF thing of searching around and manipulating objects, but most of the time the obstacles you're actually faced with are decisions. The best approach to take with hostile, trigger happy aliens, whether to put moral concerns above the safety of the ship, etc.

I wound up really enjoying this approach, though as I stated the puzzles were a bit too easy for my tastes. The dilemma the ship faced might have been thought-provoking and suspenseful, rather than just mildly interesting if finding the right solutions had taken more work, with tougher consequences for screwing up.

Though of course the above paragraph all comes down to taste, and anyway I suspect that my REAL complaint is that I enjoyed the game and wanted more. Sadly, SV:S is rather brief (especially for a Spring Thing entry) and it seems like just when the plot starts heating up, it fastforwards to the end.

On the bright side, the epilogue left me with the impression that a sequel is in the works, and the setting itself could easily support a nearly infinite number of bite-sized, increasingly improbable adventures for the crew, just like a certain TV show...

Maybe I'm just a sucker for mindscrew plots and hand drawn art and ominous music in an IF game. Made with the unregistered version of ADRIFT 4 (which severely restricted the number of objects, locations, etc.) and by a first time author to boot, I was absolutely not expecting this to be as entertaining and well made as it was.

This game contains some really nice writing, the intro draws you right in, and there is just so much trippy, surreal imagery here that I'm not sure how a previous reviewer arrived at a comparison to 'an episode of Buffy'. Just about every location is so unsettling, disjointed, and...well, nightmarish, as the title implies, that I was literally half expecting a cop out 'but it was aaaaalll just a dream' at any point. As it is, nothing seemed fully explained, but there is a lot of plot to sort through and the ending points at a sequel.

I did run into a problem with a segment that made use of the much-maligned ADRIFT combat system, definitely the weakest point of the game and a disruption to the pacing that took me out of the story (and cost the author a star), but in the end I still can't help but love this game for all the things it does right and how unique it is, and if Jubell really is working on a sequel, I'll be the first in line to play it.