Reviews by Stian

A lot of science fiction literature makes use of concepts that cannot be appropriately described in the vocabulary of the present, and demands an inductive approach; just go along with it, and it will become more or less clear as the story progresses. Accelerate is bordering on linguistic overload in this sense. Add to that a horde of strange metaphors and you have an “enormous piece of extravagantly confusing art”, to use a quote embedded in the work itself.

While it was occasionally hard to understand the protagonist or the context in a given situation, the story is actually relatively clear: you become indoctrinated into a cult of religious terrorists and attempt to bring forth some kind of revolution. In this, you have no agency. Perhaps you have no choice.

Regarding it as a gesamtkunstwerk, my feelings are varied. Its strongest point is definitely the writing; Accelerate reads like a modern sci-fi classic, only more poetic, though I would have had an easier time accepting it if I had sensed more coherence between the different contexts. As it is, I often felt I found myself in a new situation, not understanding how I got there, which also compromised the connection between the player and the protagonist. The visual presentation was the most lacking element of Accelerate. With a plain interface and simple animations, it brought thoughts of the 1990’s, rather than of the future. The music, on the other hand, was nice and appropriate; most of it I would describe as cyberpunk muzak, although at times it became uncomfortably brutal.

It’s hard to say much about A Rope of Chalk without revealing any spoilers, but it certainly is a masterful implementation of exemplary interactive storytelling. I would hardly call it a game; rather, it is parser fiction proper – a story that would not have been as good if told through any other medium. Framed as a true story edited together by the author from individual statements, it recounts an event that is rather trivial from the outside but had a drastic effect on the characters involved. Throughout the narrative, the interaction lets you experience this event from the perspective of several of these characters, in various states of consciousness. Although essentially puzzleless, navigation eventually becomes a hassle, though in a particularly interesting way. I would not necessarily say that I loved it, but I am mightily impressed.

A particularly well implemented parser game, Entangled is primarily a social realist sci-fi story. The emphasis is on getting to know and understand a typical small town and how it has changed through the years rather than about actually solving puzzles. Actually, in this case there is only a single puzzle: how to get back to your own time. I got the impression that there may be more than one way to achieve this, but it doesn’t seem to matter much. My solution took me to the end in about half an hour.

Exploration is key to understanding the game, but although I felt that I did it quite thoroughly, my final score was only half of the maximum number of points. This probably means I missed out on quite a few details. Regardless, as a story narrated through a parser interface, I regard Entangled as largely successful. Mainly through talking with other characters, who all have a rich set of responses to all sorts of questions, you get a good glimpse of the hopes, dreams and situations of the town’s inhabitants. There were a few things I did not understand, in particular at the very end, but I still quite enjoyed the story.

In any case, the implementation of this game is certainly minimalist. With extremely sparse descriptions and mostly empty rooms, Elsegar I is part frustration and part charm. The puzzles are very straightforward in themselves, though they are made slightly harder through a strict parser constantly having you guess both verbs and nouns. At one point, you even have to repeat an action before it has an effect; this was for me the most difficult point in the game and made me consult the walkthrough. No estimated play time is mentioned; it took me around 25 minutes to finish, albeit with less than a full score.

The writing has quite a few typos, so even if the minimalist approach is an artistic choice, a lot of polish is still needed. As for the story, who knows? The player starts in a peculiar situation, but no answers are given throughout the game. I guess they will come in Elsegar II.

This game contains many elements I had not expected. Suffice to say it makes the story peculiar and interesting. It is nicely imaginative and features a surprising mechanic as well. Puzzlewise, it felt a bit strange, like an ocean of red herrings. The author seems to have created takeable objects for almost every conceivable thing that reasonably could exist in the house, including a full wardrobe and tons of kitchen utensils. After a few turns of “take all” my inventory list felt demotivatingly long.

One major problem with Turbo Chest Hair Massacre (the version marked 8 Oct) is that a certain item completely takes over the “it” pronoun, something I obviously kept forgetting about every two minutes. I encountered a few other bugs too, though nothing big. Overall, the game is quite well implemented, and the story is good, though I think the playing would actually be more enjoyable with slightly fewer pairs of socks in the inventory.

When given the choice, I strongly prefer to play IF in a local interpreter rather than a web browser. It’s faster, uses less memory, and I can adjust the fonts to my liking. In the case of Shadow Operative, the author was quite insistent that I play the web version. So I tried it, and I’m glad I did.

Visually, the interface of the web version is really nice. The colours and fonts are somewhat similar to the Alien Night theme at intfiction.org, which, combined with the good looking cover art in the top right corner, sets the mood nicely. For further mood enhancement, there is also music, though it was impractical for me to listen to it while playing. The window is divided into three columns: the leftmost lists accepted verbs and available exits, the right column shows the inventory beneath the cover art, and in the middle we find the command window which works exactly as I’m used to from Lectrote.

Of particular note is that relevant nouns in the output are links. This makes it possible to play the game using only the mouse; I tried it a bit, but for me, typing was faster. The downside to this is that playing it in an interpreter would have been quite a frustrating experience, as most nouns are not links, and therefore not implemented at all. I’m not entirely sure this is the case; I tried a few non-link nouns and they were not recognised. Another consequence of this is that the play experience becomes extremely streamlined, the exploration limited, and the puzzles really easy with such a small noun space. As such, the challenge was next to none and I was able to finish it in less than an hour.

Still, the writing is decent enough to make Shadow Operative engaging for that time. The cyberpunk elements are stereotypical – including VR cyberspace, biohacking, and touches of Japanese culture – as is your eventual mission, but in a rather cute, nostalgic way. There is also a brilliant twist in the story that took me by surprise.

Linus Åkesson, the author of this game, is the creator of the Dialog authoring system and his three games seem to have been made in tandem with its development. Being fundamentally different in terms of both premise, story and interaction, they each play to different strengths of Dialog. This time, the author presents us with a real puzzlefest, and it is as delightful as they come.

Taking on the role as a six year old girl you start the game tidying up your toys, but it soon turns into a clever, whimsical and imaginative journey through your house in order to make everything ready for dinner. Storywise, The Impossible Bottle certainly alludes to Alice’s adventures in wonderland; it is equally surrealistic (though admittedly far less trippy). And like the books about Alice, Åkesson’s story also contains hidden layers of depth that are gradually uncovered during play. Despite a few instances of parser strangeness, the implementation is mostly brilliant, and the writing, though sparse, is perfectly suited to the protagonist and her world.

It took me just over two hours to finish The Impossible Bottle, and I loved every minute of it!

Puzzleless and for the most part smoothly implemented, Academic Pursuits uses the parser format to tell a story in a clever way. While not essentially humoristic, the gradual discovery of new information – conveyed by the thoughts and feelings of the protagonist in the process of unpacking – has twists and turns that made me smile. It’s all well written and I really appreciated this way of storytelling.

This is a game where I found myself resorting to hints. Not because the puzzles are particularly difficult, but because the parser was frustrating, to the point where it was not fun any more, and I just wanted to finish it. In addition to guess-the-verb-issues on every corner, most of the progress is being done with “ask/tell person about something”, which in the end resulting in me adopting a brute-force approach, asking and telling everyone about everything in turn. On top of that, I also ran into several cases of runtime errors – nothing game breaking, but certainly adding to the frustration.

I would like to point out, however, that I loved the premise, the characters, and the writing of Deelzebub, and I sincerely wish I had played a more polished version of it.

Short, funny and easy, Vampire Ltd. offers 15 minutes of delightful IF escapism, to a world where vampires suck. The writing is lovely; though not particularly unique it’s certainly a good foray into the humoristic style that characterises a lot of popular IF. Although the puzzles are straighforward, they are mostly well implemented, fun and fits the story well. The lack of other entries on IDFB indicates that this may be the author’s first IF, and if so it’s certainly a solid first effort.