Ratings and Reviews by Tobias V. I. Langhoff

This sprawling game is the result of nine authors making one game each, and then smacking them together (with magic), creating somewhat disparate pieces of an island adventure that reminded me of continually swapping out the five CDs of Riven in the late 90s.

The result is in many ways an old school (with bells and whistles) puzzlefest, one of the few modern games that has made me feel like I'm in a vast, confusing Zork-like world where there's lots of lore that seems made up mostly to have fun. And that's great! I've missed that.

The fact that each area is a separate game feels a little unnecessary from a player's point of view (although it obviously made it much easier for the writers) - it's rarely used to enhance the player experience, although the parts that do are cool. It does cause a few awkward inconsistencies, general verbs that work in one are but not another, but these are few and far between. Items are mostly confined to one area, and the player drops them when moving between areas and picks them back up when they return, which works fine, but seems a bit contrived since some items span all areas, cluing the player in on the fact that they're supposed to bring that item from one area to another, a clue that is never spelled out (you'll need to check your inventory to know what was brought over).

(Disclaimer: I was a beta tester on this game.)

This is probably my favorite interactive fiction experience of all time. As a game, it's very abstruse, but the presentation and conceit invites you to come back to it again and again until you peel off the layers.

This is a very short and enclosed game, without a clear goal at first. After a bit of milling around, you'll realize how to progress through the game as you start receiving tasks to do; this worked very well, even with the later complications that crop up.

After a while, the tasks get stranger and more specific, and as this happened, I ended up progressing by trial and error. For such a compact and otherwise well-realized game, it's strange that it doesn't respond to the specific items/tasks on your list, and so it veers a bit much into "guess the verb around the general vicinity of items referred to in the tasks" territory for me. (For example, when I was asked to (Spoiler - click to show)"unclog the shower drain", the way I eventually managed to trigger that step was with "take shower", and I also had major problems with removing the package from the kitchen storage.)

Despite that, the game works almost all of the time. The story is interesting and vague, and although I felt it became a bit too silly by the end, it's a very good example of a creeping feeling of dread that really only IF can give you.