Reviews by Simon Deimel

The beginning looks promising, an apartment that is simulated in detail, a way to the working place and the work. The descriptions are nice, and this is announced as a test version, so two stars (with leniency).
The things mentioned in the room description are not implemented. It does not seem to have any consequences whether the player gets dressed or appears at work without his clothes. The mapping does not work once you leave the path between home and work (it is quite confusing). And I did not find an obvious clue what to do at work.
I hope the author will continue this.
Note: this rating relates to the test version.

This is a nice little game with good prose. The graphic elements are dispensible; the author is able to present good writing and I would have preferred further descriptions of the animals over the display of pictures. The game is principally a CYOA-game, although there are commands to be chosen by clicking on the hyperlinks; it was written as a conventional text adventure, and the command line has been removed. This is a technique which is possible with the Quest editor. (I see that Quest does not have the best reputation among programmers. I think it is not bad in itself though, it just requires some additional work.)
The story is short, but a nice diversion.

Generally including graphic elements is not a bad thing. The player is enabled to visualize the locations, which can be of advantage. But such elements should be used with care. I am not sure about the common conventions, but using material of external sources is not really creative in my opinion. Displaying a (principally copyrighted) picture of an alien taken from a Predator movie is a different thing than describing an alien inspired by those movies. A game should be new, original, and not put together by parts that already exist in other places (and were somebody else's creation).
The game in the current version contains severe bugs and is subsequently unplayable. A weapon is there, taking it results in a description how it feels holding it, but it is not moved to the inventory, so cannot be used in the next room. There is another room that cannot be entered: an error message appears. So in the end the game obviously cannot be finished.

This short game is not comparable with the masterpieces of interactive fiction, but I have seen worse. The commands seem a bit arbitrary, because things that should normally be understood don't work. (Spoiler - click to show)I had a code on the paper, but reading it did not work... instead unlocking something was enabled without any further actions. It was not obvious that I did not even have to do something with the code. I think it is due to the structure of the development system -- the writer probably tested his own game by clicking the command panels instead of checking the parser, so the use of the command line has been neglected. Many objects lack a description, they are just "nothing out of the ordinary". There could have been more effort to describe the story world, or in this case the story room.
Furthermore there could have been more of a story. I was not satisfied with the ending, I wished to know why I had been trapped there. But I think this is a general subject of escape-the-room-games: They cast a player into a situation and the story is not important. So not a real disadvantage.

The game has a crazy quilt environment, a common device in surreal settings. Different rooms are patched to each other. It may contribute to a surreal atmosphere, but here it makes navigating the rooms and scenes more difficult. Talking about scenes: they are integrated into static room descriptions, so will happen every single time when the room is entered. That is something which I can live with, maybe even done on purpose. But then the room descriptions (and described scenes) reveal objects again and again when the room is entered, even if the object has been taken or moved into another room, but the thing is not actually there anymore. That is annoying. Which brings us to the next point: The room descriptions contain things and most of them are not implemented as objects, so dealing with them is met with a reply that this object is not existent. Which is frustrating and makes the player wonder if there is a reason to try any interaction.
The basic idea of the game may be fine -- I suppose it deals with a mental landscape of memories -- but the technical side leaves a lot to be desired.

Despite its brevity the game includes some relatively easy puzzles and conveys a nice story. The objects are limited, so it is not too difficult to figure out how to use them. The basic idea is not new, but the peaceful ending is heart-warming. Recommendable for everyone.

A nice story. In the end it is a bit exaggerated, but part of it is surely true. It reminds me of the days when I posted my own music into forums and about half of the comments were made by users promoting their music instead of commenting on mine.
The structure is fine, it develops gradually until finally the reader feels urged to do what he or she is not supposed to do, just out of curiousness. It shows that the average computer nerd will be able to identify with the motives that occur in the story.

Es handelt sich hier um eine verzweigte und über einen großen Zeitraum erstreckende Kurzgeschichte, die einige momentane Entscheidungen fordert und daraufhin auf unterschiedliche Weise fortgesetzt werden kann. Sie zeigt, wie die Entscheidungen das Leben unterschiedlich beeinflussen und zu verschiedensten Ergebnissen führen. Die Sprache ist ordentlich. Der Inhalt wirkt durch die Zeitsprünge eher abstrakt und ich hatte teilweise etwas Mühe, dem Verlauf zu folgen, trotz seiner Kürze. Dennoch eine ordentliche Präsentation.
I also recommend this story for people who want to learn or train the German language, as the writing has some literal quality.

I remember something similar that ran on my old Amstrad machine, a public domain version. You could place cells and simulate their culture, based on a mathematic algorithm. Depending on the original pattern that you created, interesting geometries would come to life.
This is basically quite the same process. I regard this as a great example of what is possible with Inform. There is hardly any interactivity, so it is really just a demonstration and not a game. It could have been expanded or some pieces of information added.

A story with an abstract dystopian background. Some passages reminded me of the classics (Orwell, Huxley), others were rather interactive poetry. All in all a solid piece of work with a high replay value, because many choices are not part of a "foldback scheme" which lets a player make a decision and returns to a predesigned path after a number of paragraphs; here the choices result in actually different stories which end at some point, and the reader is motivated to start over.