Reviews by Stian

In #VanLife, your task is to enjoy life as much as possible while at the same time being able to do so sustainably. There is not much of a story here, simply a series of choices surrounding spending or saving electricity. Sometimes you are quizzed on Watt usage, and sometimes you pick an inspirational quote of the day. The best thing about it was reading the detailed player statistics at the end.

A truly well written Lovecraft fan fiction, which would fit right into any such anthology I have read. In terms of choices, there does not seem to be many branching narratives that do not end with a quick death; rather, choices are usually either correct or deadly.

This game takes on the classic style fantasy genre head on, albeit with a more adult focus. The writing is remarkably solid, which perhaps is not surprising, seeing as Return to Castle Coris is episode eight of a series. Here, the action takes place underground, further and further into the unknown. It actually reminded me a lot of certain games taking place underground that I played in the past, especially Ultima Underwold and Legend of Grimrock. Such were the feelings evoked by the writing. Unfortunately, however, I found this game incredibly hard; not only are the verbs many and (to me) obscure, but it seems you also have to imagine nouns that are not described, and perform rather random actions that work in specific places while giving no informative response in others. Perhaps it’s a learning curve, going through the episodes chronologically. At least I managed to die spectacularly a few times.

This is a classic style fantasy adventure, seemingly written for young children, but much too hard for me. I picture the boy from Time Bandits as the protagonist, taken from reality and inserted into a fictitious world filled with magic and fraught with danger, but nothing a young boy can't handle.

The reason I did not get very far in two hours is mainly down to the verbs. Perhaps Adrift has a different set of standard verbs than Inform and Tads; a lot of the ones I'm accustomed to were not recognised, and when I finally gave up and had a look at the walkthrough, the solutions surprised me. I was reminded of the challenges Jason Dyer writes about when playing very old games. In these games, you need to forget any expectation you have about which verbs will work and which will not. In a sense, Inform games have made me very comfortable with a certain way of interacting with parsers, and I'm not really equipped with the lateral mindset for something completely different.

As far as I came, I found the story to be quite okay. It's very stereotypical, but also cute in a way. The moments in which it shines are whenever it is obvious that you are a little boy, and a rather obedient one at that. A feature I enjoyed -- which sometimes was necessary, but only occasionally implemented -- was being able to examine elements over a distance. In the end I think I might have enjoyed it more if I had consulted the walkthrough earlier and gotten a bit further, though that would also have been counter to my instincts.

I am fairly familiar with Flatland, but only had a brief glance at Fallen London prior to this game. Flattened London is a truly delightful mash-up of the two. Featuring a consistent, weird, and lovingly created world that shines of respect for its inspirational material, it offers some of the most intriguing exploration. In this world, most everything is strange, but naturally so. It also remains mostly unexplained, but also naturally so.

Both the writing and the puzzles are impeccable, and fit right in, both in the narrative and in the world. Descriptions are just as detailed as they should be, and almost everything has been implemented thoughtfully. Although puzzles are slightly on the easy side, they are fun, and there are enough of them to delight and amuse; most of them can be worked on in parallel. It also seemed pretty clear that there are several ways to solve several of the puzzles, and there are several possible endings. In the end, I managed to reach a particularly enjoyable one in just over two hours. All through this I only stumbled on a few minor issues with the implementation, which is greatly impressive for a game of this size.

In Captivity, you start off as the fair maiden locked in the tower, but in contrast to most fairy tales, the boys trying to rescue you are completely useless. You need to make your own escape. To do so takes you (or at least me) around two hours, most of which are spent searching up and down the castle for various hidden objects. Some of these objects are only there after performing another action first, which means you may need to search everywhere twice or thrice. The problem with such puzzles is that they are not gratifying; what you get from them is merely the relief that you finally can proceed. To be fair, these are not the only puzzles in the game, though the rest are fairly obvious.

As far as fairy tales go, Captivity carefully balances traditional storytelling with a modern perspective, and does this pretty well. There are only sporadic touches of humour here, which makes it all the more effective, though there are not really any astoundingly funny moments either. Its strongest aspect is probably the various colourful characters you can talk to, who are all decently implemented.

The castle is relatively big, so it is no surprise that a lot of rooms are lacking relevant scenery, such as windows, or that things described are not implemented as objects. This, along with a few bugs here and there, do unfortunately hinder the immersion that I find is necessary to enjoy a fairy tale.

BYOD is a very short parser game, with an estimated playthrough of about 10 minutes, but it packs a lot of coolness into that time. Coming complete with an .nfo and an e-zine, this game puts you in the shoes of a humble hacker and lets you save the day. The feelies are fantastic, the hacking is elegant, and the implementation is flawless. Great stuff!

Another piece of puzzleless parser IF, though I’m not sure I understood this one. Then again, perhaps I’m not supposed to. What seems to be wayward in The Wayward Story is the story itself. Alternating between mystical, adventurous places and familiar everyday situations, it certainly lives up to its billing as “surreal / slice of life”. The narrative seems to be the essential thing here, and the writing is pretty good, with a rather unique voice and embroidered descriptions of that which seemingly is deemed important. I’m afraid the story didn’t provide we with much though. However, playing through it took me only 20 minutes, while the estimated playtime is 90 minutes, which means I might just have missed out on large parts of it. On the other hand, I never felt that I left anything significant unexplored. If anyone should tell me that there is much more to it, I may give it another chance, otherwise I’m satisfied, even if not entirely convinced.

Having just finished Ferryman’s Gate, I’m suddenly worried that my use of commas in previous reviews are not entirely up to standards. I will, however, resist the temptation to spend the night going through them, and instead do my best to make sure at least this review is as well punctuated as I can manage.

Several of the elements in this game are fairly stereotypical: an inherited mansion, secret passageways, and a sacred task that only you can take on. Still, as an educational game, Ferryman’s Gate makes good use of them, allowing you to focus on the important things, such as comma rules.

Although somewhat under-implemented, I did enjoy it, and learned something underway, which probably means that its mission is accomplished.

Written entirely in javascript by the author, Happyland is a showcase for a custom parser engine initially inspired by both Infocom games and choose-your-own-adventure books. It has been developed beyond that, however, and sports functionality almost on par with games written in Inform or TADS. Lacking some fairly standard verbs, such as pull and move, your interaction with Happyland is confined to walking, talking, taking and examining, though it also features a neat system for taking and comparing fingerprints.

Considering the importance of asking questions in an investigation like this, character responses are very brief and to the point, which makes for simpler deduction but takes away some of the immersion; you never get much of a deep understanding of the characters. The same goes for descriptions of rooms and objects. As a puzzle, it is quite simple and straightforward; visiting all the locations and talking to all the characters makes it obvious who the murderer is. Nothing is well hidden either, and there are no red herrings to speak of. In the end it took me less than an hour to complete. It was not particularly challenging, but rather enjoyable nonetheless.