Ratings and Reviews by Simon Deimel

Checking this I had the impression of reading a short story instead of playing a game, and a second playthrough with different choices just confirmed this impression: the selections did not change much and the story would return to the predetermined course soon. So in the end there is not much interactivity, and not much replay value.
The writing is okay though, despite some typos and inconsistency of the tense (most of the story is written in past tense, but some paragraphs or single sentences are written in present tense without discernable motive). The writer should have proof-read and revised the text thoroughly. Nevertheless I want to acknowledge the content of the story. I suppose it is the authors first work and it is well worth a try in my view.

It is a fun story about a scientist trying to make up some inventions. The inventions and the way how to (randomly) find them is entertaining enough. Unfortunately there is no handling of choices which already have been made, so they can be repeated over and over again; it would have been better to take them away from the list of choices after they have been chosen, because the gameplay gets confusing when the player decides to chose them for a second time and the result is just the same.
(Spoiler - click to show)The occurence of time travels does not explain this, because this aspect aims at different parts of the story.
A negative thing is that I did not find an ending... or maybe I missed it?
The basic premise is not bad though, and maybe this could be improved in a later version one day.

Basically this was probably a programming exercise, so it is centered around some common tropes such as obtaining keys of different colors and unlocking corresponding doors. It is just what an author does to check out the mechanics of an engine (I did the same and later expanded the results).

It is short and I cannot say that it is really bad. The solutions can quite easily be found and I did not encounter too annoying moments that made me give up. There is a good will behind it, it contains a story (more or less) and it is finishable. Of course there could have been more to this and it cannot be compared with the masterpieces of interactive fiction, but for a first try it is okay.

All in all a very good game with a tight story, probably influenced by the Matrix movies. Considering the short time in which it was assembled we can overlook missing implementations and little inaccuracies (there should not be the possibility to drop a tattoo, for instance). Regarding the fact that Quest was used for creating this game, I instantly tried the "use a on/with b" command when I did not find the required synthax, and mostly it turned out to be what the program was waiting for (as opposed to Inform, Quest contains "use" as a standard verb). For instance, in a certain situation I was unable to put one thing into a container, but instead could use it on the latter; or I could not enter a certain device, but use it instead.

The game contains two endings and I discovered the bad one first -- the game then mentions that there is a better ending and suggests further investigation, so replay is encouraged.

The puzzles are quite logic and once you get accustomed to the "use a on/with b" command, you can easily make progress. I recommend this game to everyone who likes a short science fiction story and does not back off from the mechanics (which sometimes may appear unusual to many gamers).