Reviews by Stian

Remedial Witchcraft is a really lovely game with spells and wands and potions and a cat. As a puzzler, it is an easy one, yes, but the puzzles are great too, well conceived and perfectly implemented; they’re generally not obvious from the start, though always solvable through experimentation and a bit of pondering. The protagonist is the most charming character I’ve encountered so far in this year’s IFComp and I really hope I will meet her again in a sequel!

ALICE BLUE may only run in a Linux terminal, but its general design is more akin to such Twine games where some words in the text are highlighted and can be clicked, which in turn changes bits and pieces of the text. In this case, the game, or the story, seems more abstract than most. You navigate memories and are supposed to be able to enter several rooms throughout it. I’m afraid I very rarely am able to enjoy such IF, but was very impressed with the fact that ALICE BLUE was written as a bash script – a very limited programming language – and really well implemented. For a game in a terminal, it looks very good, and it has nice music too!

The Untold Story is somewhat peculiar. With a touch of nature, some wizardry, a bit of classic symbolism and a protagonist dealing with loss, it builds on several familiar tropes, some of which they don’t feel like they belong together at all, not in the way they are mixed here. On top of that, the protagonist is extremely religious (which doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the story as a whole) and several actions are assessed morally out of the blue.

The main problem, however, is that the game is severely underimplemented and quite bug-ridden. It is functional enough to finish, but I had to resort to parser-aware methods (such as dropping an item in one place in order to pick up another item in another place) to progress, and repeatedly got stuck trying to perform an action that was hinted at being possible but the parser wouldn’t allow.

As a light puzzle driven IF, The Untold Story has it’s good parts too. The setting was rather nice, and many of the descriptions were good. In general I would regard it as a very easy game, as the solutions to most puzzles were rather obviously hinted at. If the game receives a significant update that fixes the implementation issues, I would recommend that the hinting be toned down a bit as well. I’m sure it can be turned into a decent game, but it’s just not there yet.

Treasure Hunt in the Amazon is not a great game by today’s standards. It shows that it was originally crafted in 1985, and I suppose it was a relatively decent game back then. The remake is certainly decently implemented and lets you disable all the elements of time and randomness that made the original difficult to finish on a first playthrough. Without such restrictions, however, the game became surprisingly easy; the map is not big, the verbs don’t have to be guessed, the descriptions are sparse, and an automap makes it easy to navigate. In the end it took about 15 minutes to play through. It was nice to play, but rather as a curiosity – a way to experience a classic from the eighties through the comfort of the present.

Surrealism and dreamscapes is something that interactive fiction, a medium where anything that can be expressed in words can be experienced, is particularly suited for. In The Four Eccentrics, you literally dive right into a very peculiar dream. Already the opening landscape, a park filled with globes containing other dreams, sparks the imagination in ways that visual media cannot. From there, the game opens up to a fabulous world of wonders and strangeness.

In a dreamscape such as this, there’s always a danger that navigation becomes an issue of some difficulty; if diamonds are food and words are currency, how do you even begin to guess the verb? The Four Eccentrics handles this very well, and although you can do several unorthodox things in its dream, most of them come rather natural.

In a way, the basics of the story, your mission in the game, is an archetypical one, which makes it easier to find your way forward and finally reach the conclusion. I liked this contrast. Two other surrealistic games I have enjoyed are Shade and Sub Rosa. The Four Eccentrics is very different from either of these, though somewhat closer to the latter. In particular, more things are clear, much thanks to the world being populated by several NPCs to assist you on your way.

To be honest, there is room for plenty of polish for The Four Eccentrics to become a truly enjoyable experience; I’ve seen descriptions coming before they should and others that linger on until the end, objects that are both there and not (but not in a dreamy way), and at least one case of serious disambiguation problems. Still, it was a very enjoyable game, and it certainly has the potential of becoming a classic.

This is essentially a puzzleless IF and reads as a cross between Jack Kerouac and Quentin Tarantino if they were making a Sci-Fi B-movie together, very late at night. Or something like that. The main thing Enceladus has going for it is its humour, crass and absurd and with lots of attitude. As a work of IF, Enceladus wasn’t really my thing, but I would like to acknowledge that it’s quite well written, and I’m sure many will love it.

Island in the Storm feels like a classic game in a brand new interpreter. Classic, not only in the type of story and puzzles, but also in the sense that a lot of the verbs and shortcuts we take for granted are absent. There is no such verb as “move”, and pronouns are generally not understood. As the engine behind it is still in early development, such things are not entirely unexpected and may change in the future. I also met a few bugs during my play, including one which I believe has prevented me from completing the game.

That said, both the game and the interpreter were pleasant to experience.

The interpreter has quite a modern feel to it, with an enjoyable layout and style featuring differently coloured frames around the text. For being in early development, the look of it certainly gives a sense of maturity. Some aspects of the engine feels still a bit rough around the edges though, especially the default responses (such as “The passed out villagers doesn’t sell a drink in the villagers’ cups.”)

The game felt rather old-school in many ways: You can die, and there is no “undo”. It’s not strictly necessary to map it, but it does help with finding your way back. There are dark caves and number puzzles and beaches and keys.

Island in the Storm was not at all as hard as the old games I have tried, however, which was much appreciated. None of the puzzles are absurd or outlandish, but I did have to think and search around for a bit. If it weren’t for the bug, I think I would have been able to get through it in around two hours. I would definitely recommend this game after a bit of polish and bugfixing.

Turandot was actually a choice-IF I could enjoy, and not just because it was really funny. It is very different from a CYOA; here, the choices are as one part of a dialogue; no waiting, no clicking around, just a steady progress, always forward, and always hilarious. Great stuff!

This is a solid, well-polished game with lovely humour and great puzzles. Not mind-blowing, just very good. In the end I found it was rather perfectly balanced, integrating a lovely and fun story with a decent set of rather original puzzles. The flow and timing of Zozzled is particularly impressive, making it clear that this is the work of an experienced author. Of Steph’s earlier games, I have only played Brain Guzzlers from Beyond! which I found too easy, making it more of a story than a game. Zozzled, on the other hand, manages to combine story and game as well as any work of IF I have played. I’m sure it will be featured on many lists of recommended IF in the years to come.

A friendly and fun underwater game with a good spirit, which should be as suitable for children as it was for me. For the half-seasoned adventurer I am it took about 15-20 minutes to complete without hints. The puzzles were all very logical, though the syntax was at times a bit strict.