Ratings and Reviews by Bernie

In this game, you wake up as a zombie and look for things to eat. A promising premise, to be sure, but this game was a submission to a one-hour comp and thus is very short. There's one room and three objects, and although the premise is amusing, there's not enough in the game to make it entertaining.

On my quest to play old text adventure games to discover lost gems, I have played several very frustrating games. This game was one of the less-frustrating C64 games that I have found so far. The game has a large vocabulary (by ancient IF standards) and has a parser that allows prepositions. The parser does still manage to be frustrating occasionally, but is much less so than most of its counterparts.

In this game, you are enjoined to spend the night in a supposedly haunted mansion. You arrive with your camera to take pictures of evidence of the haunting. The game has a large but logical map and is full of puzzles, mostly of the locked door variety. Although many of the puzzles were readily solvable, a few were obscure enough to send me scuttling to the internet to google a walkthrough (which I have added to the listing for the game). The game also suffers from a bit of logical trouble. For example, you are given an axe at one point in the game, but can only break one particular door. Thus, the player is forced to run around trying the axe against every available obstacle. Likewise, one puzzle is clearly one of balancing an object on a scale, but there seems to be no clue about what the correct object should be, forcing the player to run through the inventory trying objects. The game has a move limit (presented as a time limit) and does have a few instances of instant and unclued death.

That said, the game is more fair than many other old C64 games. Although there is little to recommend it to players other than the nostalgia of playing an old C64 game, it is one of the better games to turn to for a nostalgic game that won't make you tear your hair out in pure frustration.

This game is completely story-less; it's a series of clever logic puzzles. I *LOVE* logic puzzles, especially tricky ones. In fact, a few of these had me tearing my hair out and I can't remember the last time I've had so much fun.

The goal of each puzzle is clearly stated in bold-type at the beginning of each puzzle, and stated again upon using the command "look". So, for example, the goal of the first puzzle is to get all the characters to ring a gong on the same turn. There are four characters in each puzzle (Een, Twee, Drie, and Vier). The trick to the game is that upon typing a command, Een will execute that command immediately, Twee will execute that command on the second turn, Drie on the third turn, and Vier on the fourth turn (hence the clever title of the game). There are 8 total puzzles in the game, and it is possible to move between puzzles if you become stuck. Unfortunately, I encountered a fatal error in the seventh puzzle and had to exit the game. However, I enjoyed the other 6 puzzles enough to award the game 4 stars.

For any like-minded puzzle-lovers out there who enjoy a bit of logic with their morning coffee, this game is highly recommended. The concept is original and a few of the puzzles are quite challenging. After solving each puzzle, the game tells you how many turns you took to solve the puzzle and the fewest number of turns in which the puzzle can be solved, which gives the game a modicum of replayability for anyone who wants the challenge of finding the optimal solution. The end of each game also offers the opportunity to display the actions you took so you can record your solution for later analysis. A hint for anyone playing it: Glulxe has a scrollback feature that is accessed from a button at the top of the screen. It's highly useful for discovering which actions are cued up for each character.

This is a simple classic '3 lies and a truth' logic puzzle. Unfortunately, the clues and solution are stagnant rather than changing with each restart of the game, so the game is only playable once. Also, the game is completely winnable by accident which obviates the puzzle, and thereby the single bit of fun the game can provide. Indeed, upon my first play, I accidentally won without even realizing that there was a puzzle in the game.

This game was an entry into the Chicken Comp. Naturally, it features a chicken. Unfortunately, the only other thing it seems to contain is an uncrossable road and zooming cars. With only three implemented objects and almost no implemented verbs, I couldn't find anything to do. If there is a point to the game, I couldn't find it.