Ratings and Reviews by Bernie

As my quest to continue uncovering forgotten IF gems continues, I discover that I must sift through lots of gravel. Sadly, this game falls into the "gravel" category. You begin the game without any purpose or guidance. Even after 20 minutes of playing, I could not discern a goal to the game. The parser doesn't recognize "look at" or "examine", or almost any verb other than "take" and "look". Throw in a few typos and overly verbose snarky responses from the parser and you have a game that is not worth picking up.

This is an old commercial IF game and is easily one of the most cruel IF games of all time. Many of the puzzles are desperately unfair. After spending about 20 minutes freezing to death in the blizzard, I finally opened a walkthrough and discovered the following first two moves: E, DIG (to find a garlic),

Dig? Why? There's absolutely no reason to dig. Nothing in the description indicates a reason to dig, let alone a reason why you might come up with garlic as a result of the digging. Numerous evil puzzles abound in the game. You will die repeatedly while attempting to solve them. Repeatedly.

So why 3 stars then? Because the game's cruelty is almost fair. The puzzles are so difficult to solve that you begin trying *anything* you can think of. And, yes, that will reasonably include digging in random locations. In fact, if I had been able to save my game using my emulator, I would have spent more time playing this game. It's the type of game that inspires true ambivalence: you hate the puzzles, but love them when you solve them. And despite the sinister nature of many of the puzzles, the game is fun to play and most of the puzzles are fun to solve.

The game is long. Even playing all the way through with a walkthrough in hand took me over 30 minutes. (Okay, I didn't make it all the way through even with the walkthrough. I took one extra action at one point that made the game unwinnable. Have I mentioned that the game is cruel?) Solving it completely may take you a year or a lifetime. But you'll gain eternal bragging rights and the assurance that your intellect is truly superior.

This game is clearly meant to be the introduction of a larger game. However, there is no "Housekey, Part 2", and Part 1 contains nothing to make it worth playing. You are instructed from the beginning that you left your key outside and need to retrieve it. However, there is no barrier to getting outside, so the game can be ended almost immediately. Additionally, there are only three rooms in the house, and most of the objects in the rooms are indicated as "unimportant". The game feels like someone's first IF programming experiment. Although it is able to be finished, the under-implementation of the game leaves it unrecommended.