Ratings and Reviews by Sorrel
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Short and simple, but not as sweet as it appears, June 25, 2012Let me start by saying that I've been away from IF for a long while now. I don't think I've touched an IF game for at least a year. So, choosing to play Under the Bed was much like choosing to play my first IF. I picked it because it seemed short, sweet, and simple. And I'm happy to say that I don't regret the choice.
You're a child tasked with one goal and one goal only: to kill the monster hiding under your bed before it has the chance to hurt your newly arrived baby brother. It's an interesting premise with a lot of potential, and while Under the Bed doesn't quite live up to all that potential, it certainly gets a few things right.
The environment is rather under-implemented. There aren't many objects for the player to interact with, and the setting itself is limited to three sparse rooms (not counting the closets). But, given that we are presented with a single, straightforward goal and given until midnight to achieve it, an expansion on the environment may be unnecessary. It's worth noting that the time limit is more than generous, allowing you ample time to make preparations for the monster's arrival.
Now, onto the puzzle itself. Yes, there's only one, and no, it's not particularly difficult or time-consuming. Because there aren't all that many objects to interact with, the only difficulty comes not from collecting and using multiple items, but from deciding how to use the limited resources that are readily at your disposal. My actions were, for the most part, intuitive, though I admit to being a little baffled by one particular step in the preparation process: (Spoiler - click to show)how to prevent the monster from using the closet as an escape route.
I'm fairly sure that I got all the possible endings, which range from absolute failure to absolute success, with a couple of not-quite victories in the middle. While the game starts out cutesy - a little boy trying to protect his brother from what is probably an imaginary monster - its endings reveal a much darker side to the story. On one play-through, I simply waited around for time to run out, and was rewarded with a very jarring ending. While there's nothing outstanding about the writing of the room and item descriptions, the tone of that particular ending was quite gripping and left me wanting to read more of the author's work.
Another thing worth mentioning about Under the Bed is the hint system. It's integrated seamlessly into the game and comes across less like a series of hints and more like a natural part of the story. Even though it becomes apparent quite quickly, I feel obliged to put its description in a spoiler tag, if only because it was so satisfying to discover it on my own. (Spoiler - click to show)The talking duck was a nice touch, both as a way of introducing hints to the player and as a story element. I do wish that the duck's personality and dialogue options were further developed. Once the novelty of the talking stuffed animal wore off, it began to feel more like a gimmick than a character for the player to interact with. But quite frankly, it's adorable.
My biggest complaint with this game is that it just didn't seem to go deep enough. I would have liked to be able to wander through more of the house, interact with the child's parents, and maybe construct a more elaborate trap for the monster. Having more extensive conversation options with the one talking character in the game would have also been nice. As it stands, the game is very linear, has almost no NPC interaction, and won't provide more than 10-minutes worth of entertainment. But, I enjoyed the story, and it certainly reminded me why I got into interactive fiction in the first place. I'd say those 10 minutes of entertainment and the satisfying feeling of vanquishing a monster from under your bed are worth a play-through.
Promising beginning, but puzzle-less and painfully short.., September 25, 2010The first line of Argument placed the PC as “standing in front of a broken mirror just after midnight.” It was a promising first line, brimming with unanswered questions. Already, I was hooked.
Turns out the broken mirror is the result of an argument with the PC’s wife. That took away from the originality I had envisioned at first, but the writing was still good, so I continued on playing. After exploring the first few rooms (which I found to be grossly under implemented), I was hard-pressed to find any puzzles. There were no locked doors, nothing lost, and nothing in need of being found. Except, there was still the matter of the wife who had left in a fit of fury. So, I assumed the puzzles- less beginning was simply a prelude to the action to come. Oh, how I was wrong.
There is nothing to be done beyond the house and there are only two objects that actually serve to advance the story somewhat. I found the objects in logical order, so the ending I received made some sense. Then, I replayed the game and purposefully passed by the first object - (Spoiler - click to show)the receipt -, receiving the same exact ending. Without knowledge of the first object, the ending was logically impossible. So, there is only one ending and the only thing you need to do to get to it is to pick up a single item.
The ending itself is painfully cliché. Yes, it may be true to life, but it’s also true to soap operas. However, the writing is error-free and rather smooth. I’d like to see future games from the author that are longer and better-implemented. Unfortunately, this one was a flop.
A Misguided Sci-fi Adventure Masquerading as an Ethical Dilemma , August 6, 2010I wanted to like this game, I really, really did. It started out well-enough, with a drunken man looking for his lost son. There were elements of raw emotion and philosophy, good writing and okay puzzles. All in all, it promised not to be a bad game. I solved the first puzzle with ease and felt a jolt of anticipation to see the story's continuation. Unfortunately, it went downhill from there.
The game has three difficulties and I played it on the default one, which is medium. So, I expected the puzzles not to be overly hard. However, when the difficulty calls itself medium, I expect medium. What I got was painfully easy. But I got over that, since I wasn't really playing this game for the puzzles. I wanted to find out how it ended, because it actually intrigued me. The first few scenes promised the PC wrestling with morality and the ABOUT section warns the player of graphic material. So, I was prepared for some disturbing stuff.
The next scene did get pretty disturbing. However, it was only physically so. Mentally and emotionally, it felt dry. I would have liked to see some more depth in the writing. The player is presented with ethical dilemmas, in which they don't actually have any say. There appears to be only one answer to each dilemma that will move you forward. Light up deals with concepts like free will and memory, violence (in some descriptions, hinted to be of a sexual nature) and social hierarchy. These are serious topics, deserving of serious thought and better implementation. However, it seemed as if the author took up a bigger chunk of philosophy than they were prepared to work with.
The writing had its highs and lows, including some grammatical and spelling errors. The puzzles did not get any harder (even though the ABOUT section promised that they would). There were some glitchy puzzles and descriptions (presumably due to the limitations of ADRIFT). There were also errors that obviously resulted out of plain negligence on the author's part. (Spoiler - click to show)At one point, examining the chains results in a response stating that the chains are not there. However, you are still able to break them. But, I overlooked that at first, because I was still excited to see how the game would progress. Stupid of me.
Things quickly took a very sci-fi turn. What I presumed to be a bleak foray into the world of ethics and morality turned into hack-and-slash other-worldly linearity. The author obviously took some time to develop a back-story for this other world, but I simply did not like it. Too many things were left unsaid and too many issues were not dealt with extensively enough. The game became terribly linear and then, there was an entire episode of pure battle. A battle system complete with health points and a weapon which you had to pick up every time you used it. I must have grit my teeth a few times as I suffered through that particular chapter.
And then came the end - the end which I had been waiting for throughout the whole game... The end by no means lived up to all the build-up leading to it. I found it to be extremely unsatisfactory, even though most of my questions were answered. Overall it was a let-down for me. It was as if the author came up with a great concept for a sci-fi world, but needed a way to work an adventure into it. So, they slapped together a misguided man looking for his son and some surreal, little elements. Light up did not feel complete to me and frankly, I found it to be a waste of my time.
And it indeed it did make a statement... when it was a flash game called Every Day the Same Dream by molleindustria. The events described in this "game" are a blatant copy of the aforementioned flash game. The scenery, the NPCs, the objects - everything is absolutely the same. Except that in the flash game, the player was actually able to interact with the environment. This textual version is painfully sparse and under-implemented. There are tons of bugs - the elevator doors not opening once the player is inside, for one - and poor writing.
I really appreciated the flash game by molleindustria when I played it and I makes me mad to see a copy of the original author's work put up under slightly different trappings. Of course, the author might have gotten permission to rework the game into an IF, but I very much doubt it. Besides, I believe a reworking of the game as an IF has already been done by Luis Gonzalez, who actually credited the idea's original author. I didn't have the patience (due to the many bugs) nor the incentive (since I know how the original game ends) to play through this. So, I might have missed some form of end credits, in which case I apologize. If the author of this game actually had permission to rewrite the flash game as an IF without adding any new elements to it, then I would very much like to see the original author credited in some form.
I honestly didn’t know quite what to make of this IF. You have a few turns to get out of a trench as a soldier fighting in World Was 1. After your number of turns is up, you are brought into another trench which looks and feels exactly the same as the first one. Then, you do it all over again – and again and again… Personally, I could not manage to find a way to end this cycle. I have a strong suspicion that it was not meant to be ended. The vicious cycle if a single soldier’s battle and a metaphor for the entire war is clearly represented in Over the Edge. Even with writing that is only average, Over the Edge manages to carry across a haunting feel. From the actions of the PC’s captain and fellow soldiers to the gray, hopeless atmosphere, Over the Edge rings with something raw and bleak.
There is something to Over the Edge that caused me too feel a building sense of dread and desperation. The repetitive nature of the game - which so often fails in other IF - actually works here. There are a lot of bugs, some of which can be interpreted as intentional gimmicks.
It left me frantically thinking of a way to free the PC from the treacherous cycle and yet, nothing I did worked. Perhaps, it was not meant to work, which would justly serve to highlight the bleakness and inhumanity of war. In any case, I have not managed to finish Over the Edge in any meaningful sense. Its under implemented setting, bugs, and lack of an actual conclusion work against it. And yet, I feel that something that elicited such a strong emotion without using extravagant descriptions and strong puzzles does not deserve a one or a two. But because of all its errors and limitations, it by no means deserves a higher rating. In the end, I still don’t know what to think of Over the Edge. Give it a try and judge for yourselves.
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