Ratings and Reviews by Simon Deimel

This is a quite short game which does not take much time. The story is okay, there are some puzzles and an ending, and a solution to prevent getting stuck.

The story presents the player being stuck in a subway section, unable to escape from that place. The player has to deal with various items. The puzzles appeared a bit arbitrary to me -- I sometimes failed to see the causality of them -- I solved one puzzle and then something happened, and I did not necessarily find it related to my previous actions. So it was not always easy to find out what to do next, and I had to consult the walkthrough sometimes to find sense in what was going on. The aim is a bit unusual, one would expect that the player is supposed to escape from the tube station, and in the end he might succeed, but it is not explicitly made the purpose of the game. A player will maybe find the actual aim a bit unspectacular to feel motivated.

I can recommend this game anyway, it is surely a nice diversion, as long as you don't expect a masterpiece.

Probably no other beginning of a noncommercial game is as well known as the opening paragraph of FOR A CHANGE. It gets right to the point: that is what happened, that is what you have to do, and for some reason you have something.

The game comes up with a world that is different from what we know. To show how different it is, the language makes use of unusual words for common things -- the player gets hold of a dictionary soon and can consult it about the unusual expressions.

The atmosphere reminds me of graphical adventures like Myst or Riven -- even without using graphical elements FOR A CHANGE succeeds in depicting a surreal world. Exploration is one part of it, even if the player gets to know what has to be achieved in the first paragraph. There is no reason explained why the player has to do it, but you get the feeling that it makes perfect sense. There are not too many locations, not too many objects, but they are parts of a comprising puzzle and have to be put together.

The game is puzzle-orientated. Some of the puzzles are cleverly made up, some let me stumble over unusual expressions. But that was probably my own fault. I clearly recommend this game: although there is not much characterization of the player, the puzzles will be a worthy challenge.

First things first: for a speedIF this game is astonishingly rich. There are only two locations, but many items that are implemented, some of them with nice descriptions. The story concept is also nice and motivates the player. Also good: after a while it is clearly stated what has to be achieved to win the game.

But then it becomes incredibly hard to deal with the different objects; I had to take a long look at the walkthrough. It is almost impossible to find the solution: exact timing is necessary to make progress, and if the right moment is missed, the game can easily be brought into an unwinnable state without any information about it. There are hardly any hints given which object has to be used at which time. Some aspects can only be found by guessing them. The difficulty level is increased dramatically.

So, playing this without a walkthrough is almost a waste of time in my view; it is a pity that the author has not revised this game with an otherwise fine premise and added more hints to make it more accessible.

Sure, the game is probably a satire, presented in a language that can be found in chatrooms populated by some troglodytes. The author makes the joke of including remarks that are only meant for himself and "accidently" displayed in the game; calling the players stupid behind their back; making errors that are obviously deliberately included.

I got the point, and I did not find it very funny; nevertheless I continued playing, just to see what would happen. After short time I encountered problems which were probably not intended by the author: ambiguity errors, property mismatches, finally error messages that were not the work of the author but obviously coding errors, because I got stuck in a room and the exit was no longer accessable. That's when I had enough.

Honestly, the language makes playing this one a bothersome chore, so I would have appreciated to finish it within some minutes. Which turned out to be impossible.