Ratings and Reviews by Andy Devil

Some games put you in the role of a shining knight, rescuing princesses and kingdoms, defeating evil forces and powerful monsters. And in some games you're just a dirty, smelling rat. The latter is the case in You've got a Stew going by Ryan Veeder.

On your quest for ingredients to put in the namesake stew, you explore a small set of tunnels and openings to the surface. There are a few NPCs that can be interacted with, but conversation isn't too important or interesting. (Spoiler - click to show)I was trying my best to woo Fran, the female rat, but to no avail. There are some funny custom responses, but also some meta-references I could have done without. Puzzles are solvable though I would have wished for a less mono-dimensional way of solving some of them. (Spoiler - click to show)(e.g. the one with the girl.) Even after trying quite a few things I couldn't get the optional sixth point.

I like happy little games like this one, motivating the player by being humourous and giving him a concrete goal and solveable, logical puzzles.
In the case of You've got a Stew going, the game is very playable though on the short side and amongst aforementioned details lacking some more items to use, so I give it a pretty good

5/10

Last Resort by Jim Aikin is a large, ambitious mystery/fantasy game.

The player controls a teenage girl (unfortunately we don't learn much about her other than she's rather superficial and shallow) who, as we soon learn, is heading towards a rather grim destiny in the course of the day. To escape your predicament you have to perfectly solve a large number of puzzles which I would easily label INSANELY DIFFICULT. Herein lies the main problem of this game.

The player's puzzle-solving ambitions are hampered both by invisible timers and dead ends, which is an absolute no-go in a game of Last Resort's magnitude! The inclusion of puzzles which can only be solved in a short window of time completely contradicts with the game's non-linear approach to gameplay. Twice I progressed through a larger part of the game, only to be stumped with finding me in an unwinnable situation. (I gave up afterwards, as would most people.)

It is really a shame this game is held back by this ball and chain, because the writing and general approach are quite good. The game's events are somewhat unrealistic, but to a degree that can easily be forgiven. (Spoiler - click to show)An example: Would you really let the girl you are going to sacrifice later in the day wander around freely? On the other hand a more interesting main character would likely put the player over the edge of trying to complete the frustrating puzzles. (In such situations, the game Portal always comes to my mind.)

To summarize, brave players might find quite some fun in this monstrous game. It's a trip best aided by the complex hint system. (I asked the permission of the author to post the password - the usage of one should never be necessary in the first place! - here.) (Spoiler - click to show)Password: Gertrude Stein

4/10

Gardening for Beginners by Juhana Leinonen is a short speed-IF game describing the misadventures of a budding gardener.

What is supposed to be a peaceful and upbeat day of work quickly turns into a nightmare as the player is beset by the horrors of nature.

I can recommend this game as a choice to suggest to text adventure newbies, as it is uncomplicated, easy to play and funny to boot.

Personally I would add an option to name your fish to add some more personal involvement to the game. In fact the enclosed framework of the game world even would allow for a game allowing the player whatever he wants to do (e.g. drink the poison, or eat the fish).

Anyway, quite a fun little title to play.

5/10

Conrad Knopf's South America Trek is an educational game from the dark ages of interactive fiction. Originally published as shareware in a series of similar titles, the author expected you to dish out 30$ for the registered version.

I pity you if you did.

South America Trek sends the player (who is sometimes adressed directly by the impersonal "narrator" for some reason) on a whacky journey through South America to learn geography and stuff.

The first major problem of this game that meets the player's eye is the size of this game. South America is a terrifyingly huge game environment with confusing (and sometimes illogical) path structure, yet manages to be undetailed and plain boring. Drawing a map, whether you use your computer or go old-school with pen & paper, is both a must and a chore. Items must be gathered (they happen to be just lying around, of course) and exchanged in illogical trades (e.g. bauxite for a torch) in order to be able to progress to new areas, which, of course, are just as boring and unimaginative (not to mention unimaginable - by the way, don't plan on "examining" anything in this game, it's not implemented) as the previous ones.

South America Trek is a game you don't want to play. Reading random facts (and sometimes blatant lies - sloths are NOT dangerous, for one) about places and countries in South America in interactive fiction form while having to navigate through an atrocious and insanely huge maze path system, constantly going in circles from orientation loss and backtracking to trade items, is as far removed from having fun as I can possibly imagine. To top it off, there's pretentious in-game advertising for the author's other works. I hope there's a video game designer hell somewhere...

The best thing about this game: The word "fuck" was implemented. In an educational game for children. LOL

On a personal note, writing this review has been dragging on for quite some time because the game was just so unplayable, and then I found out the hard way you can die with no undo option, so just this once, I didn't finish this game 100% (but I got close enough).

Oh, and it's a DOS game. Good luck if you want to save your game, I couldn't...

1/10, absolute atrocity

Tears of a Tough Man by Bruce Humphrey is a short mystery murder memento game in which you are meant to restore your main characters's memory by wandering around and triggering his recollection by doing various things. What might sound interesting is held back dramatically by writer's inexperience and ineptitude.

In a forum post, the author stated that he planned to implement multiple features missing from the final version but couldn't (for some reason) - it shows. (Spoiler - click to show)(e.g. multiple endings) Grammar and spelling errors, whilst not overabundant, distract. Some of the puzzles are made unneededly tedious by poor syntax and logic. The in-game environment feels unnaturally constructed to the point of being ridiculous. Likewise, quest-important items just happen to be lying around in your path. The ending (Spoiler - click to show)(if you'd like to try this out, the point you're likely to miss is "x stains") does not really reveal or conclude anything.

To sum things up, Tears of a Tough Man is an author's debut work that does show some promise but in its ineptness cannot be salvaged even by mending and polishing.

2/10

PS: like I mentioned in a comment on my last review (that probably didn't get read too much) comments on my reviewing style would be much appreciated.

George is an extremely short game set in a zoo. Apparently it was part of a hoax, which explains its duration and abrubt, unfinished end.

The plot involves two friends (or lovers), who appear to be drugged up and ready to embark on a dangerous mission (which is a combination always good for netting one a Darwin award). The game text breaks the fourth wall in one or two places, referring to the non-existent full version.

If this was but the beginning of an author's debut game, George would be a promising venture, but in its existing form this game is not worth the time it takes to download it.

2/10

Delightful Wallpaper by Andrew Plotkin is a fantasy/mystery puzzle game that is as much removed from being fun as possible. The minimalist, fragmental story does not provide much of an incentive to figure out maze puzzles so hard they put diamond (which is as we all know the hardest metal known the man!) to shame.

The interactivity is very limited in this game. I found myself trying to pick up objects time and again, only to be foiled by the protagonist's (who initially comes across as some kind of gentleman burglar) smug unwillingness to "manipulate gross material substance". Using your inventory in this game is mostly limited to your trusty (telepathically controlled, then?) notepad, which, of course, only serves you baffle you even more how to progress in the ever-changing maze scenery. Moving around your protagonist opens and closes pathways and doors (generously, no map is provided. Hint system? Nope.), inevitably sending you around in circles and engendering frustration-induced headaches. The difficulty in wrapping your mind around a multitude of sometimes-connected rooms is painfully juxtaposed with how utterly uninteresting it is being a nameless character exploring an empty house of immovable objects with no real goal or mission in the first place!

In fact, there is really not much needed to be said about Delightful Wallpaper. (Spoiler - click to show)By the way, the wallpaper - you guessed it - serves no purpose in the story whatsoever. The ending is brief and does not reveal any additional information that would justify wasting your time on a game that should be used only for testing interactive fiction auto-solving programmes.

Good coding? Definitely.
Fun to play? Not at all. Not at all.

No rating due to the fact that after one third of the game I got helplessly stuck, but couldn't be bothered to put too much effort into progressing on my own and instead finished the game by following the walkthrough.

Version 1 of the review that used the wrong interpreter (only play this with Adrift 4):
(Spoiler - click to show)You know you have a good game on your hands when you can't solve it following a walkthrough word by word.

This is exactly the case with Robert Street's "adventure" game Take One, clearly the work of someone who didn't even try to make a playable game.

The basic idea of directing an actress on a movie set, while not an uninteresting idea, is implemented absolutely poorly. Take One is not even able to keep the perspective straight! Whilst the protagonist of the game is "Indianette Jones" (a stereotypical dumb blonde, by the way), described in the third person, commands like "inventory" result in a confusing "Myself is carrying..." output. So who are you actually playing?!

Let's talk about the biggest failure of Take One, the parser. There are bad parsers, there are really bad parsers, and then there's this game. I don't want to "spoil" your "fun" (in case you decide to subjugate yourself to the torture of trying out this piece of fiction yourself), but let me just say that if a million monkeys on a million typewriters were forced to write a playable interactive fiction game, it wouldn't take them all eternity to come up with a much better result than Robert Street. Even the basic fundamentals of internal logic are broken (the game "magically" forgetting about the direction you came from and therefore trapping you, needing to refer to unseen objects in order to progress, etc...). One might theorize that like Nintendo Hard old-school video games the broken controls attempt to make the game (rather unfairly) harder, but it's much more probable the author just didn't have a clue what he was doing.

To cut a long story short, don't play it. Don't touch it. Don't even point at it.

1/10

PS: I have a bit of a problem with reviewing a game I couldn't play to the end. In this case even the walkthrough didn't help me, but of course if anybody knows how to get to the end I will revise my review.

Version 2:

Take One by Robert Street is a very short, very linear game. In fact, even with the walkthrough, you will likely have a hard time beating it if you don't follow it to the word. A pretty unrealistic time counter (even trivialities and failed actions use up time, for example) limits the exploring you will do in this game and pretty much ensures you have to play it again and again to figure it out. Aside from this bad design decision, the syntax is quite picky, which is guaranteed to hamper your abilities of puzzle-solving. Due to its short length, with some patience the game should be beatable though.

Compared even to the bad gameplay, the story of Take One isn't a beautiful and unique snowflake either. The premise tells you that you are a film director in command of a Indiana Jones-referencing character, yet the perspective is just like in any other interactive fiction game. Crystals, supernatural beings and the likes are used in pretty stereotypical manner and there isn't even an attempt to make the story or setting different from something that was thought up in five minutes. A particular odd writing quirk is that the stereotypical dumb blonde protagonist is insulted by the movie director (which is you!) in both the very beginning and end of the game, yet there isn't the slightest justification for it anywhere in the game text!

Bottom line: Another "play and forget" game. 2/10

Playing Games is a short fantasy game about an trial of initiation in a semi-secret club. Not much information about the setting is revealed, which is a shame since the writing is quite competent.

There are few puzzles (one of them a little harder - it got me stuck - though in hindsight it was rather obvious), mostly searching the areas carefully does the trick of progressing you further into the game. One puzzle is optional, though its content left me quite baffled. (Spoiler - click to show)(the holly wreath which makes you disappear for completely unknown reasons) In fact, some events that happen in the game are of magical nature, which is one point the description of the setting is unfortunately lacking. In a lesser game, I wouldn't mind, but here I was wishing for greater enlightenment. (Spoiler - click to show)An interesting point is that the initiation ritual was designed to be unsolvable by its in-game creators, but a mysterious NPC helps the player - this is something I really wanted to be explained more.

One thing that makes Playing Games special is the implementation of a "Meong"-like maze minigame (without the "dying" part), which is fortunately auto-solvable (I didn't have the patience to finish the final stage).

In conclusion, Playing Games is a quite playable effort, I would have wished for a bigger, less streamlined game and especially a more detailed setting.

4/10

Two-turn (minimum) speed IF game based on the theme "chicken". Some bad coding and grammar mistakes, but it seems a little bit more effort was devoted to this very short game than usual for speed IF standards, e.g. it is possible to ask the chicken about relevant topics, also endings are randomized.

Not much to see here, as is to be expected. Play and forget...

2/10 (which converts to 1/5)