Reviews by Harry Coburn

shareware demo incomplete

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Uh-Oh, by Scott Covert

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A shareware nag demo to a game now lost, January 8, 2015
by Harry Coburn (Atlanta, GA)
Related reviews: shareware demo incomplete

Uh-Oh is a Y2K post-apocalyptic game, but that's not really what the game here is about. The game here is a demon to a larger shareware IF game. The demo divides the game up into five phases with 20 turns per phase before being helpfully pushed to the next stage by the demo fairy. Nag screens are sprinkled throughout with full ordering instructions.

It's an interesting way to do a demo. Unfortunately, the site for ordering the game is now offline. Mailing checks to the address in Canada to get a copy of the full game is delightfully old-school but impractical these days. The full game may now be lost to the dustbin of history.

I also felt it was a poor idea to give the player a taste of each phase of the game. Even with only 20 moves, you get enough of a sense of the overall plot to spoil the story without spoiling the puzzles too badly. For puzzlers that's great, but for people more interested in unfolding the story it's not a good way to draw interest.

The only reason to play this now is to see how one author tried to create a shareware demo for an IF game. If the author ever runs across this review, please consider releasing the full game to IFDB.

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