Reviews by OtisTDog

[Update: As the author points out in comments, this review is based on an early release of the game, which has since been substantially revised. Also, I did find the game to be likable overall in its earlier form. Readers are advised to take both of those facts under consideration. I've removed my rating from the game's average.]

Inform 7 makes it easier than ever to code a game. It remains difficult to make a good game.

This is very clearly a first effort. Michael J. Coyne's list of "First-Timer Foibles" remains relevant, and this work earns a CQ (Coyne Quotient) of 6 for items 2, 9, 11, 12, 14 and 15.

It's hard to take this game very seriously on its self-proclaimed merits. The functional plot (i.e. what you experience as a player) seems more concerned with offering guided tours (especially around Ohio) than being a spy thriller. (I will admit that I found this to be something of a saving grace; some interesting facts are presented, which will probably be among the most memorable parts of the play experience.) The game also seems pre-occupied with paying homage to Infocom, Star Wars, Narnia, and various (presumably real) food establishments, to the detriment of its focus and continuity. In fulfilling the PC's mission and/or scoring all points, you will: (Spoiler - click to show)visit a pun-oriented maze; build a bonfire using flint, steel and 69,105 leaves; visit a privately-owned (and ostensibly secret?) space station; fly to Africa to retrieve a MacGuffin from a villain conveniently hanging out in one of the handful of locations there (using a weapon retrieved from the Oval Office, no less!); craft a lightsaber; enjoy a parade of junk food and sweets; visit several architecturally-significant buildings; make use of a divinely-delivered laser; find, wear and use a magical pendant; and do something else worth 2 points that I never figured out. Are you intrigued? If so, read on.

There are many "puzzles" that are pointless. They qualify for the term only because they are things one must do to score points; their impact on the world state with respect to the ostensible plot seems to be zero. These appear to originate solely as artifacts of the process of learning to code, and not as part of an integrated design of puzzle and story. (In fact, the points awarded for following the mission are a small fraction of the intended total.) While anyone new to coding can appreciate the thrill of victory felt when overcoming early technical challenges, such learning exercises are generally not appropriate to include in the final game. The adage "Be ready to kill your darlings." applies. (An aside: My final score was 352 out of a possible 214. There is a scoring bug in which a 10-point award can be repeated indefinitely.)

Certain other "puzzles" are classic examples of poor puzzle design in the vein of mind reading and/or guess-the-verb. The very worst offender here is the command needed to reboot a computer: (Spoiler - click to show)>CONTROL-ALT-DELETE. A close second is the command required to get out of a VR simulation: (Spoiler - click to show)>BLINK RAPIDLY. (Technically, there's something that might be counted as a clue -- by British puzzle fiends only -- for the latter. The VR environment seems totally optional, anyway.)

I note that the >CREDITS list "TBD" as beta tester. Obtaining beta testing is almost universally regarded as a prerequisite for a serious-minded public release, and its lack is keenly felt. I get the strong impression that this game was originally written for private circulation (in large part because it seems to contain a cryptic marriage proposal -- (Spoiler - click to show)"The display says: '01101101 01100001 01110010 01110010 01111001 00100000 01101101 01100101'" [which for the lazy translates into ASCII as "marry me"]). Based on the blurb, it's now intended to serve as publicity for the author's novels set in the same universe.

The fictional world presented borders on absurdist in its outlook. Here is the description of the President of the United States: "President Bridget O’Connor is a wise leader. She was formally the head of the NSA. The President is aware of Quotient’s operations." (Yes, "formally.") And here's that of the Prime Minister (presumably of the UK): "Prime Minister Jason Stevenson is a skilled martial artist in addition to an ingenious political leader." I could not help but interpret items like these as comedy.

All that said, I'm giving this work two stars, which I will note translates roughly as "has some positives but needs improvement." It is exuberant, yes, and silly -- but I still found myself liking it more than not. Your mileage may vary. I wish the author luck, and we can all hope that the recipient of the marriage proposal said yes.

This is another game that I would most likely have skipped if it weren't for the Free IF Playoffs. The moment I see "dating sim" in the description of a game, my interest drops to zero. Still, the intriguing provenance of this game, which was apparently produced by an outsider who has never participated in the online community, was enough to warrant at least loading it up.

With a blithe disregard for the tags on IFDB or other reviews (which I like to read after I've tried a work), I did so. My minimal interest was not increased by the Harry Potter-like feel of the opening chapter. A short time later, the game seemed like it was going to be over before it had even begun. Interest took an uptick when it became clear that what seemed like an end was actually just the beginning.

Here's where we get to the spoilery part, and like other reviewers, I recommend that you play the game before proceeding.

This is a time-loop game, and in terms of story structure it is well done. I agree with Passerine that author E. Jade Lomax has an excellent sense of how to anticipate changes to the player's viewpoint over time in a way that works well, though I felt that it failed to adequately convey how the protagonist must have felt after enough loops to span a normal human lifetime and more. After a period of exploration, one necessarily begins to treat each iteration as a chance to conduct one or two key experiments in how to affect the timeline. (Spoiler - click to show)As a memorable in-game description of science puts it, the player begins the process of "grinding the particles of the world down to answers and making new questions with them." The way that the description of events changes with the growing understanding of the total situation is remarkably smoothly implemented.

It does seem as though the opportunities for significant change are few and far between, but this is something of a necessity in a time loop of such scale. This is Groundhog Day writ large -- a Groundhog Decade or more. The time loop trope seems inherently more powerful in interactive fiction, where the player must guide the protagonist's discoveries and planning instead of being a mere observer, and Lomax explores many interesting ethical questions along the way. To achieve the implicit objective, the PC must become an interloper who lies, steals, commits acts of destruction that likely result in the death of innocents (and certainly result in large-scale destruction of property), and more. (At least, it seemed like that was the case; perhaps there are options to avoid such questionable trade-offs.) Are the "failed" timelines inherently unreal? Do your harmful actions somehow not count in them? Do the ends truly justify the means when trying to "win" the game?

In addition to the big questions, there are smaller ones. For example, a key NPC will more likely than not (Spoiler - click to show)go on a magic-induced rampage at a pivotal event early on, killing several people and possibly the PC. At a "later" point in the game, the player is presented with a choice that effectively asks whether or not to forgive her for something that she hasn't done in this cycle. Are you judging her for who she is in the here-and-now, or what you know she could be under the wrong circumstances? This question isn't new to time travel tropes, but it felt new here, stressing the way that both the player's and protagonist's perspectives shift due to the "outsider" viewpoint being experienced.

The "key scenes only" approach sometimes feels limiting. I would have loved a more fine-grained treatment of the plot -- one that starts to answer the in-game question (Spoiler - click to show)"How much are you changing things, by breathing and walking and sometimes being a little late for breakfast in unrepeatable patterns? How much is just the universe's randomness?" -- but I recognize that the complexity being managed is already quite large. The choice interface seems like an appropriate decision -- it's hard to imagine the same game with a parser. (Hadean Lands is the closest thing to it, but it has no need to implement NPCs.) To be sure, I'm probably underestimating the total complexity -- my own play took several hours but was far from a completist run, since I opted out of every romance thread. (A special hat tip to the author here: I truly appreciated that "none of the above" was an option for the romance subplots.) Since the PC can develop close but non-romantic relationships with various NPCs, it's clear that that the alleged dating sim aspect is driven by the author's diligence in exploring the potential of what RadioactiveCrow's review calls the "human connections" of the situation space.

This game is very good, but I'm going with 3 stars instead of 4 because there are a few places where it slipped a gear (i.e. seemed to be responding to things that had not happened or had happened differently, due to errors in state-tracking). The writing is a bit flat, as well, with a workman-like functional quality that doesn't always do justice to the scenes being portrayed. Relatively small improvements in either of those aspects would have gotten it over the edge. I definitely recommend this game both as an enjoyable play experience and as a rewarding subject of study in the craft of interactive fiction.

Choice games are not my usual cup of tea, but I have taken the opportunity to play several of them as part of the Free IF Playoffs. As many other reviewers have noted, this ostensibly choice-based work offers surprisingly few choices. Although the reading experience requires quite a few clicks -- a design choice that works very well given its format and the PC's characterization, as noted in Rovarsson's review -- not very many control a decision that affects the PC's actions. I, too, counted a "handful" of these (five or so) over the course of the work, an average of less than one per chapter. The number of story-significant choices seems even fewer.

The writing is very good at the small scale, though CMG's pointed critique of the overall structure is accurate. I would add that what I thought was one of the story's major strengths, its pacing through the first six chapters, is abruptly abandoned around the midpoint, and the remainder of the story feels rushed by comparison. This does much to undermine the contemplative mood that prevails in the first half.

Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed my encounter with this work. It could easily stand on its own as a straight-up novella. I found myself quite absorbed by the Lovecraftian feel of the opening act and the various intriguing references to real-world utopian literature. I was not prepared for the sudden shift of tropes to H. G. Wells territory when the protagonist (Spoiler - click to show)discovers that the "gateway" built into the Astrolith is a time portal, but it did change the significance of the story in interesting ways. (Spoiler - click to show)I was particularly stricken by the portrayal of the modern era as a utopian dream come true by the story's villain. That was clever misdirection.

I did like the Windrift interface more than that presented by the average choice engine. Perhaps its biggest drawback is that it lacks an "undo" feature. It would have been nice to be able to go back and explore the other ending that I didn't pick, but since it will require another entire "playthrough" I probably won't be doing it any time soon. The story is interesting enough that there's a good chance I'll circle back around to it sometime in the future, though, especially after reading some of the novels that it cites.

This work feels much more like a "hacking game" than what would typically be called interactive fiction. The game has a graphical user interface, and the only text entry to be done by the player takes the form of multi-digit numbers. A sort of limited choice-like player input is also accepted via button-clicking to initiate or respond to messages from NPCs. The fact that all significant narrative events are depicted via text arguably places it somewhere at the outskirts of the form. It doesn't feel quite out-of-bounds to qualify as IF to me; your mileage may vary.

The world of the game is a strange one, a kind of alternate 1980s much like our own but in which (Spoiler - click to show)early breakthroughs in computer science had developed truly self-aware AIs. The most far-fetched component of the plot is the idea that such a program could run on a 16-bit home computer.

As other reviewers have noted, the author goes to great lengths to capture the feel of the BBS era despite having no firsthand familiarity with it, even accurately portraying the sounds of the dialup sequence for 1200/2400 baud modems. This work may have some value just as a kind of "living history" display, making it easier for those who grew up with the internet to appreciate its technological roots.

The overall plot is relatively constrained. The early parts of gameplay have a richness to the NPC userbase that rapidly falls off as the main plot gets going. Gameplay options are expanded over time as new programs become available, but their implementation is limited to the need to run them at certain times; fundamental gameplay is not altered. The pacing is rather too quick for my taste after the first act, robbing a significant twist of much of its intended impact. Based on the order in which some messages were received, I may have gone through key events in an unanticipated sequence, so again your mileage may vary.

Despite these significant flaws, I admire the work done on the interface and did find it to be an enjoyable short play experience.

Note that although this game is tagged as "queer" on IFDB, that seems to have no relation to gameplay. Although an interpersonal relationship is an important part of the plot, it is handled in an entirely abstract and non-sexual way.

Although choice-based games aren't my usual fare, this work by Victor Gijsbers was loads of fun to play. In turns humorous and serious, grandiose and self-deprecating, the writing quality has an incisive cleverness and ribald wit that strongly reminds me of Shakespeare. (Admittedly, most of my study of Shakespeare was compulsory, but to my high school English teacher's credit, he made us genuinely appreciate the good parts.)

Characters portrayed this well, in the context of a story this absorbing, make it easy to forget that you're "playing" this "game." The main character was not one with which I identified much, but it didn't matter; it gave the work the flavor of attending a play put on by actors so adept at reading the audience that they were adjusting the performance to heighten the drama and the comedy. I laughed out loud many times -- especially at the jokes portrayed via the presented options -- and lingered at several points to contemplate various items of philosophy espoused by the figures on the stage.

I don't think I agree with the style of morality advocated by the protagonist and princess, but to be sure they are hardly depicted as virtuous! I rather wonder whether the ending (Spoiler - click to show)prefigures bliss or tragedy for the main characters. Regardless, this is an extremely well-done bit of writing and a thoroughly enjoyable and recommended experience.

Parental advisory (in case you missed the author's warning): It does get NC-17-esque in its content at some points, so it's not well-suited for kids.

Chlorophyll is an almost rock-solid young adult science fiction "light puzzler" that emphasizes the relative importance of writing skill over coding skill when it comes to creating memorable and intriguing IF. Even though it generally sticks to the most basic verbs and object types, it is a thoroughly enjoyable work that adroitly blends story and puzzle in a carefully-crafted balance. The result is a rare treat to experience as a player.

This the second piece that I've played from author Steph Cherrywell, following her better-known Zozzled. To me, this work is far superior to the celebrated 2019 award-winner. What Chlorophyll has in spades that its successor lacks is a fine-tuned thematic unity, which is essential to creating a compelling and engaging play experience.

The setting is rooted in the idea that, somewhere in the universe, vegetation has developed mobility and sentience, then subsequently evolved into a humanoid form. The player character is such a humanoid, but other than the green skin and attendant consequences with respect to metabolism, she is portrayed as a pretty typical pre-teen. This is possible because the culture of the plant people, who are called Xylloids, is more or less indistinguishable from the modern Western lifestyle.

Does this sound like a failure of the imagination on the part of the author? It is not -- very clearly the sci-fi aspect is just window-dressing for the narrative half of the game, which is an adventure story caught in that awkward stage of being halfway grown into a coming-of-age story. See Emily Short's review for more on this; the more substantive craft here pretty much escaped me since I wasn't the target audience. Nonetheless, the adventure story hooked me easily and got me to engage with the game half of the story.

It's there, in the game part, that the sci-fi premise shines. Who wants light puzzles and hunger puzzles in games today? Cherrywell's inspiration to combine the two as a natural consequence of the premise is nothing short of genius in my view, showing off a Plotkin-like ability to reinvigorate old tropes. As the review by Sam Kabo Ashwell notes, this novelty does not overstay its welcome, and its retirement from the player's list of concerns is very skillfully combined with a significant story beat. (This is an example of the highest-quality craft in that it was perfectly invisible to me as a player. It's only in retrospect and after having it pointed out that I am admiring this brilliant touch.)

Cherrywell's instincts with respect to exposition and characterization are laudable, as well. As others have noted, these are delivered on a steady drip-feed that rewards the mundane exploration required to find and take the measure of the puzzles. There's not a text dump in sight, and although another reviewer found the introductory sequence to be too long, I gauge it to be just about right for a beginner player -- enough turns to experiment with basic verbs like >EXAMINE and >INVENTORY without devolving into >Z.Z.Z. I particularly liked the way that the base comes into view and then is briefly out of view again -- a tiny touch that injects an element of dynamism into a scene serving primarily to characterize the protagonist's mother. (That characterization is a building block needed to enable the incipient crisis to create any tension at all, and I am again admiring in retrospect how deftly Cherrywell juggles competing needs in this sequence.)

None of the other reviewers seem to have noted that there are two winning paths through the game: one "bad" (i.e. rule-breaking) and one "good" (i.e. rule-following). The game is scoreless and has only one significant ending, so it doesn't really matter which path one takes. (The situation is such that the required rule-breaking is justified, in any case.)

This game isn't perfect. I agree with reviewer Tristano that the climax was a bit too abrupt, especially after the apparently false foreshadowing of (Spoiler - click to show)the Polithea action figure armor vest accessory and the option for a "tough" leafcut at the salon. A better action sequence for it would have been an improvement to me, but again I don't think I was the target audience. There were also some minor bugs, most notably (Spoiler - click to show)a >USE verb that is non-functional and text spacing issues of the type that Inform 7 is prone to create, and some other small issues, e.g. a lack of exit descriptions in places and a critical path puzzle solution that requires a command that smacks of the era of two-word parsers. (Spoiler - click to show)(For replacing the fuse in the underwater area, it's only necessary to (Spoiler - click to show)>UNSNAG FUSE after having brought it along in the tunnel roller.) These flaws are vastly outweighed by the overall execution. There are also a couple of bits of adult-oriented humor, but these are done well in that they are likely to go over the heads of small kids and to be only half-understood by savvier older kids. If you have concerns about these, then avoid (Spoiler - click to show)the encrypted file on the mother's computer and the engineer's calendar in the engine control room, but they are no worse than PG-13.

I recently waxed poetic about Alias, 'The Magpie' as an avatar of the subconscious Infocom ideal. This game is also an exceptionally good expression of that style, and I agree with Mathbrush that Chlorophyll would have made an excellent addition to their beginner line. Works like this are strategically important for introducing younger generations to interactive fiction, and this work is certainly going into my file of games to recommend to newcomers.

Just as a side note: I give rankings based more on a power law than a bell curve, and 4 stars means truly excellent on my scale. If you are considering playing this work and are in the mood for something in the sci-fi YA zone, I definitely recommend that you try it.

As the title promises, this game begins with the player character about to engage in a sword duel. As soon becomes clear, the word "duel" is perhaps the wrong choice, because the PC is vastly outmatched by the opponent, known as The Countess. I came close to quitting at this point, because the work presents itself as a "one move" game. However, within a handful of cycles it is revealed that the PC has certain abilities that make it possible to evade certain death.

This game serves up thin slices of rich world-building with its vivid and evocative prose. The universe vaguely resembles ours with notable exceptions. First, everyone seems to be a hermaphrodite in the vein of Ursula K. LeGuin's 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness. Second, magic of some sort is real, in that the protagonist is able to perform impossible feats such as (Spoiler - click to show)flying to the moon. Third, the PC has the extraordinary capacity to move about in time as well as space, which is the core mechanic by which the story progresses.

Despite a limited range of locations and significant actions, this piece presents many contemplative and memorable moments to the player, and also many interesting experiments to the would-be author. In particular, a variety of NPC conversation styles are implemented, including a unique menu-driven interface with options phrased around question words (e.g. who, what, when, etc.) and a stripped-down enter-the-topic prompt that I found to be a remarkably smooth improvement over ASK/TELL. A very large number of endings are possible, too, giving it some replay value, which is welcome in a game this short.

Regrettably, the story is at certain points needlessly transgressive, apparently for no purpose other than shock value. It's rather a shame, because it limits my ability to recommend this otherwise exceptional work. Even though it is not suitable for young adults, it's well within bounds as fare for grown-ups, so if you're comfortable with NC-17 movies, you probably won't blink at this. For a more widely recommendable work by the same author, see Toby's Nose.

I admit: Everything about this game's packaging and presentation turned me off. The cartoon scroll, the Harry Potter font, the word "Junior" in the title -- all of it screamed "edutainment for kids" to me. I saw that it had picked up a XYZZY in 2018 for Best Puzzles, but I didn't give that much credence. I figured the voting crowd had a soft spot for kids that year or something -- a lot of math people seem to like IF, after all.

I am pleased to say that I was wholly, categorically wrong about this work by Mike Spivey. While it is a game rooted in math, it's math of the most basic sort, with nothing beyond late grade school level required. The crux of the game is purely logic-based and more closely resembles assembly language programming than anything else.

One has to give credit to Spivey for his design skills here. The simple setup quickly hooked me with its engaging "commentary" from the evaluating professors, and quite a lot of effort was put into showing the ropes to the disoriented new player in a seamless manner that is embedded in the fiction. Once I began to catch on to how the game is played, I was well-hooked by the combination of new "spell" rewards and acerbic commentary on erosion of academia in the game world -- an aspect by which the art reflects life in modern times.

The most impressive thing about the design is how smoothly the difficulty curve escalates, with appropriate variation in the challenge level as new capabilities are unlocked. This is just great game design, and it does an excellent job of leading the player ever onward to greater and greater challenges. In a concession to IF Comp's design criteria, the player is able to end the game at any time, with the most natural exit points being after having passed the exam either by majority or unanimous vote of the three-person evaluation committee. This also acts as a courtesy to the player, leaving those who aren't inherent point maximizers able to walk away with a feeling of accomplishment.

I'd recommend this game to anyone who likes a mental challenge, and I'd very much recommend this game as an introduction to IF for the type of person who enjoys the puzzles that one would find in Games magazine or the like. It makes an easy stepping stone to other games like Suveh Nux or any of the many games that adopt the Enchanter spell system.

Every so often I come across a work that plays so well that I think to myself: "This is the kind of game that Infocom secretly dreamed of producing."

To be sure, it really wasn't possible to produce a work like Alias, 'The Magpie' in Infocom's time. For starters, the game file is several times larger than would have been viable back then -- with the Glulx executable taking up just shy of 1.6MB, it wouldn't have fit on a standard 3.5-inch "floppy" for PCs, let alone on any of the various 8-bit micros in use during the mid-80s. That's not to mention that the Glulx virtual machine and Inform 7 are both light years beyond their historical counterparts (the Z-Machine and ZIL, respectively). However, I'm convinced that a text-based play experience like this one is the half-conceived ideal that lurked in the back of the mind of everyone working in the games group there, as well as the mind of every player of their products. It is, as Christopher Huang puts it: "damn-well near exactly what I come to IF hoping to find."

I'm having trouble expressing my appreciation for what author J. J. Guest has achieved with this piece in a manner that doesn't repeat observations from other reviews. Shall I extoll its high-quality writing (mentioned by 5 others), how polished and well-implemented it is as a program (4 others), its exceedingly fair puzzle design (4 others), or how just plain funny it is (4 others)? How it's like being in a Pink Panther movie (3 others) or a Wodehouse novel (3 others), or how it made me laugh out loud (3 others)? This game is truly remarkable! It's a perfect example of what parser games can be when done well: cleverly-conceived, nearly flawless in execution, engaging, entertaining, player-friendly as can be, threaded throughout with restrained but deft humor, and featuring a puzzle structure that emerges unobtrusively from the situation presented and is responsive to real-world logic. So much thought and work has gone into the kinds of small touches in writing and programming that are practically invisible unless one is watching carefully for them, but which collectively (and expertly) snare your attention and draw you in to become part of the story instead of a mere observer of it. I've heard it said that the mark of a true master is that they make what they do look easy; Guest does that here on a nearly constant basis, and this work places him firmly among the ranks of the New Implementors in my mind.

In particular, I agree with the praise from Ade McT, Sam Kabo Ashwell and others regarding the implementation of NPCs. NPCs are hard, and these are superbly done. Their actions and conversations react to the environment and situational history in myriad ways that together do a much better job than average of presenting them as other actual characters in the story, and which grant the setting a "sense of the place being alive," as Ashwell expressed.

If you know someone who doesn't "get" interactive fiction, this work would be an excellent introduction to the format, assuming that the newcomer likes witty writing and slightly absurdist situational comedy bordering on slapstick. This work is a welcome addition to my "great first game to recommend" list.

There are a few places where the implementation is not quite as polished, and even (to my surprise), a genuine bug or two. (Spoiler - click to show)(The only one that leaps to mind is an error when interacting with Leghorn; the game reported that he had left, but he still appeared in the room description after that... though it didn't seem possible to interact with him.) These are so surprising by contrast that they become the exceptions that prove the rule -- in a work as sincere as this one, such minor imperfections serve only to accentuate its excellence everywhere else.

As those who follow my reviews know, I am unusually stingy with my star ratings. It takes a *lot* to rank as a five-star game in my book -- it means that the work is the best in its category or otherwise qualifies as a landmark in the form. Despite its minor flaws, I have no reservation granting a five-star rating to Alias, 'The Magpie' which is surely destined to be considered a classic for many years to come.

It has been many years since I played the first installment of the Earth and Sky series. That episode seemed to do perfectly well as a standalone entity. Although certain mysteries were left open at the end of episode 1, it is, after all, consciously modeled after comic books, which are usually designed to be satisfying as single installments while leaving various plot elements unresolved.

For comic books, the desire to sell interested readers another issue is a clear motivation for this style of story-telling. For freely distributed labors of love, the style's purpose is less clear. Given that the original did not seem to require any continuation in order to accomplish its narrative goals, I wondered why author Paul O'Brian went on to create two sequels. Having finally played all the last installment, it's apparent that the story arc of the three epsiodes was planned out from the start as a single, integrated whole. There is evidence for this both large and small. A cryptic note found in the opening scene of the first episode makes perfect sense in the context of knowledge gained in episodes 2 and 3, for example, and the flow of pacing and action works much better for the two sequels when they are considered together instead of individually.

I agree with Mr. Patient's review that this work was not quite as satisfying of a conclusion to the series as I had hoped for, and for the same reason that this work feels incomplete. The perfunctory puzzle structure is so lightweight that it often serves only to slow down the action; it's certainly not meaty enough to satisfy someone who wants real puzzles. It almost seems as though O'Brian was trying to reconcile fundamentally incompatible objectives by including them at all, i.e. trying to balance the basically puzzle-free style of the first episode with the more traditional style of the second. A part of me wonders how the story would play if it had been created as a single large game instead of three shorter works -- such a structure certainly would have granted license for an obstruction-free ending sequence in which the story is carried to its dramatic conclusion, while still satisfying puzzle-seekers with part two's exploration of the planetoid. (It would probably also have been too large for IF Comp, so in that case it may never have been made at all.)

Looking over the awards-and-honors data on the series, I find it very interesting that episodes 2 and 3 each took first place in their respective IF Comps, while the first episode managed only 8th place. In part, this seems to be a function of weaker competition -- many leading lights of the IF world sat out both the 8th and 10th IF Comps. However, it's also clear that O'Brian's skill as a programmer and system designer improved noticeably over the course of the three episodes' development, and this third installment was a genuine achievement in the Inform 6 era. As other reviewers note, it is essentially bug-free, and O'Brian put in plentiful good work to support the technical innovation of being able to freely switch between the sibling protagonists. (Spoiler - click to show)(Regarding bugs: I did note a very minor one during the fight with the "simian hunters" -- after "freeing" one of them, the text produced while freeing the other seemed to assume that the first still needed to be freed and repeated the actions.) Perhaps surprisingly from a modern perspective, the second installment (which I found to be the weakest as a standalone episode while playing it last year) received the most enthusiastic community response, being nominated in six categories and winning Best Use of Medium. The third installment received more muted treatment, garnering only two nominations and no wins. I'm not sure what to make of this, other than to note that the second installment is the most traditionally puzzle-oriented of the three -- perhaps it's primarily an artifact of the old school bias that puzzles are a central measure (even the central measure) of quality in a work of IF.

I originally rated the game as three stars, but I'm upping that to four stars in recognition of this episode's context within the series as a whole. I do think that the trilogy achieves something notable by popularizing fast-paced action sequences and excelling in its design of player affordances for the type of story that it tells. I would recommend it to anyone as a decent introduction to IF suitable for older children (or just the young at heart). I would recommend to players starting the series that they plan to enjoy all three episodes in quick succession over a few evenings -- it's easy to forget details that are occasionally relevant to dialog in later installments.