Reviews by Stian

A rather cute fan- and fantasy fiction featuring Isaac Newton as its protagonist, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants is a short story in parser format rather than a game. As the playing time was less than 10 minutes, the experience never achieved a deep level of immersion or engagement, but the writing was solid enough to carry it through. The story itself was friendly and somewhat imaginative, but lacked the depth and/or length to make it properly interesting. While parser commands are used to progress, puzzles are just about absent, and exploring is explicitly discouraged in room descriptions.

A smart – and particularly well written – puzzler that needs quite a bit of polish on the implementation in order to be truly enjoyable. Described nouns can not be seen, worthy synonyms are not understood and objections are being made to using objects in objectively reasonable ways.

As Karella is an experienced author, it came as no surprise that the narration is solid and professional, with a unique language suited to the strong characters and humoristic premise. The puzzles were properly reasonable, apart from being very strict in terms of how to properly formulate the required actions.

A puzzle-heavy game that in its current state is unfortunately severely under-implemented. Around half of mentioned nouns could not be referred to, and many actions gave peculiar unintended responses. With polish, however, Seasonal Apocalypse Disorder could turn in to a fine piece of IF. The world building is particularly interesting, inspired by several fantasy tropes but adhering to none. The strangeness here reminds me a bit of the Myst series; it is not similar, but rather similarly strange. Probably due to the particular ending I managed to reach after just under two hours of play, some of the world remained unexplored and some questions remained unanswered.

The puzzles are generally good, though hampered by some confusion resulting from the lacking implementation. As expected from reading the description, you travel through time in order to affect the future through your actions. This, the authors have managed to construct quite well. Neither of the puzzles I solved were anywhere near far fetched, but it still felt like a good challenge.

If the game gets a proper update, I might be tempted to play it again and try to reach a different ending.

A lovely homage to certain classic works of IF, Desolation certainly lives up to its title, putting the player in a desperate situation with only one way forward. The pacing is excellent, feeding the feeling of running away from danger in desolate surroundings, emphasised by suitable bursts of real-time delays in the narration.

The puzzles are not too complicated, especially for those who have played the games Desolation pays tribute to, but delightful to tackle nonetheless. My only real criticism is of the ending, which came very suddenly and felt premature, like the ambitions had been cut short by a deadline. I’m hoping for a continuation.

An especially funny historical comedy, despite the notable absence of pigs. The writing is mostly superb throughout and manages to make the village idiot protagonist genuinely likeable.

The puzzles were suitably clever, with some rather unique ones; it took me quite some time feeling lost in the middle of the game until I figured out that I needed to be creative with the verbs. In the end I finished the game in about 90 minutes and learned several new words on the way.

Having, as one should, duly enjoyed ‘Alias’ The Magpie, I was very excited to see this sequel turn up. To my further enjoyment, it turns out this sequel is almost just as good! Not that there is anything particularly wrong with it; I just wish it was longer and slightly more challenging, matching the length and difficulty of the original. Completing The Magpie Takes the Train took me 45 minutes.

Perhaps due to having played more IF than (most?) other humans, Rushton has managed to perfectly adopt the style of ‘Alias’ for this game. The language, the humor and the puzzles could all as easily have emerged from J. J. Guest, and are just as delightful.

Despite it never mentioning Lovecraft, the feeling I got from playing Ascension of Limbs is very much Lovecraftian, more so than from many works that are outright fan fiction. Some of the paths the game allows you to choose are pretty gruesome, though always in the service of a higher… something. Other paths still imply this something, although more peripheral.

To accommodate the approach of an antique store proprietor simulation, the list of verbs have been strictly limited as have the possible nouns you can refer to. Considering the mechanics of the simulation this is certainly reasonable, although it feels visually a bit messy to constantly have the full lists repeated after each command. A two-column format would have been an improvement. Other than that, the parser system has been very well adapted to this type of game. You easily get the hang of it, while doing it well is a certain challenge.

Playing Ascension of Limbs provides a curious feeling actually. The very visible game mechanics and the objective voice of the narrator explaining how your store is doing are coupled with horror elements that get more and more central to the game as you progress. You can serve the dark forces, but the level of abstraction lets you get away with it, emotionally; it’s an emotionally peculiar game.

I did two playthroughs with two different endings in about one hour, though I only managed a fraction of the achievements either time.

For being the first game of the author, The Eleusinian Miseries is remarkably well done. The implementation is more or less as flawless as they come (at least in the face of a deadline), and I found nothing here to remark on.

Being first and foremost a historical-farcical puzzle game, it seems to be heavily inspired by the excellent Lost Pig and The Wizard Sniffer (this one also features a pig!) and provides them with good company. The approach to humor is similar, although here it feels at times a bit too verbose. Most of the 90 minutes I spent playing The Eleusinian Miseries were spent reading, rather than thinking how to solve puzzles. While the puzzles do a good job of retaining the humoristic style, they are not particularly challenging.

The strongest aspect of Jay Schilling’s Edge of Chaos is the storytelling, narrating a crazy and imaginative story with a language very much suited to it. To be frank, neither were perfectly up my alley, but it is of consistent and solid quality.

The puzzles are not that interesting, however. The game is completely linear and the solution to the obstacles are for the most part so obvious that they feel more like small nuisances. There are a few exceptions to this – some clever constructions, but also one that I found far fetched and impossible to guess without reading through all the hints for it. The hint system was very thoughtfully implemented though, with clues in order of specificity. My final playtime was 80 minutes.

A nice bonus were the images: lovely drawings of several characters that show up the first time you look at them.

Alone gives you the role of the protagonist in a zombie apocalypse, and does it well. For the most part, the immersion is quite successful. It's a no-nonsense horror game -- not particularly brutal, but the mood is pleasantly scary. The writing is pretty straightforward and well balanced, neither original nor too cliché, but perfectly effective.

I quite enjoyed Winters' previous entry, The House on Sycamore Lane, and Alone is a worthy follow-up. What I particularly liked about both games are how the puzzles are perfectly integrated in the story; they are all reasonable and natural obstacles for the protagonist. While never really difficult, the puzzles are still challenging enough to make you feel clever for solving them. Finishing the game took me 65 minutes, and I'm pretty sure I got the optimal ending -- a perfect length for such a game.