Reviews by Andromache

This is a tiny game that is worth playing as a diversion, but nothing really stands out to me as far as writing or atmosphere. Things are described sparsely and in broad strokes. There isn't too much to go on in terms of scenery or characterization. The prose is functional, however, and puzzles are mostly clued well. I did have some trouble with one of them (Spoiler - click to show)the puzzle box, but aside from that bump in the road, the game moved along pretty smoothly. I would definitely recommend that people play this game. Just don't expect too much depth.

I started this game some years ago but never finished it. I must have gotten stuck early on. But I remembered the mystery of what I did see of the story and decided I wanted to finish it and see the whole thing. Honestly, I'm a bit confused about the meaning - what was real and what illusion.

The city was well-realized and I especially liked how descriptions change as the character becomes familiar with the place and the novelty of grandeur wears off.

Some of the sarcastic conversation options had me laughing with joy. Very witty. It's even possible to lie, and I had the character do both a time or three.

Then, later in the game, you really feel like a tourist yourself when you see all the mistakes you made. (Spoiler - click to show)The sign in the dorm. I'll probably have to replay and try different options with the benefit of hindsight one day.

Figuring out who was good and bad was interesting as well. One is led to think one thing and then in the course of talking to characters, you start seeing factions, those who are trying not to get in trouble with either side, and by the end, perspective changes again. (Spoiler - click to show)By the end, I absolutely hated Malik and wanted to kill him. Is there a way to save Simon?

There are shades of Lord of the Rings in the story, where one is forever changed by contact with a specific item and the resulting trauma.

(Spoiler - click to show)My favorite NPC was the tech guy. He didn't look like much, but very sharp. Managed to feel amiable even as he was performing minor surgery.

There were some things I didn't like.

The text-only option does not have a built-in help system.

I got stuck mid-game trying to figure out how to move the story along. (Spoiler - click to show)The Gnostic Temple puzzle. The solution turned out to be something I should have known but for some reason I hadn't tried. The clue was given only once, and if you missed it, too bad. No way to get it back short of restoring a game, if you were lucky to have one before that point. There may be a "transcript" option for this game but I'm not sure. I never use that feature. Managed to find the solution online and had no more problems, though I wish I hadn't had to resort to that.

There are some odd wrinkles in the conversations and items. (Spoiler - click to show)Specificly, housekeeping versus sweet-making robots, verbene alcohol or the plant, and an allusion to food making you ill even if you didn't actually eat it. I think that ruins the flow of the narrative and spoils the experience of the game a little.

The ending is kind of confusing. I'm still trying to piece together what happened. And I don't feel altogether comfortable with things I'm forced to do. Though I'm happy I was able to restore order.

I'm not really a fan of conversation-based games because I tend to feel like I'm not doing anything productive. For me, conversations are fun to read but not so nice to play. Harder to synthesize information gleaned from talking to people. Unfortunately, there was too much of it here. Too much repetition.

Yet, for all this negativity and frustration, the game was written so well; the world was fascinating; and the initial discovery of the city and change in the protagonist by the end made for a memorable, thought-provoking experience. And if literature doesn't make one think and feel deeply, what was the point?

I dithered about trying this based on the reviews already here, but it's really not as difficult as some say. Yes, I had to restart a few times. Maybe the parser was a little annoying at times if you didn't break up actions sufficiently. Sure, some tasks are timed. But these things turned out to not be frustrating enough to quit playing. I made it to the end once already, and am in the course of playing again to try to solve one puzzle I'm stuck on.

The thing is, the timing is not really cruel. You have more than adequate time to get the job done. Should the game end prematurely, you learn over the course of playing what things will be required in the future and can plan better. Easy enough to save after completing each task as well. And I found the puzzles to be plausible and pretty consistent. (Spoiler - click to show)I got a Jedi mind trick reference. That had me laughing aloud, since I love Star Wars.

Many of the places are there just for realism and you don't really have to do anything with them. I liked the atmosphere they added to the setting.

So why not give this a higher rating? Well, the prose was not always to my taste. The timed nature of the game marred the fun of examining and exploring. Looking at things yielded bland descriptions, sometimes the same as the room description. Some actions you think you should do based on game happenings actually are dead ends. And perhaps worst of all, I just don't care much about the player character or his predicament. Perhaps you're not meant to. The sterile feel of the environment invokes memories of books like 1984 or The Giver, which is creepy in a psychological way.

The game is gentle enough not to anger me, and many of my objections are just aesthetic and subjective, but still enough to make a short diversion a bit tedious to have to repeat more than a few times.

There were times during Cabal that I laughed aloud, and the irony of the player character investigating conspiracy theories while being the very thing he was hunting was not lost on me. I appreciated that I was able to enjoy the narrative and not get bogged down by puzzles. Honestly, I wouldn't even call them puzzles. They have the veneer of puzzles, but solutions are clear and obvious if you pay attention to the writing and you're basically told what to do. (Spoiler - click to show)The twisty maze was familiar and evoked prior memories of torment. It was fitting it was part of the new Archive somehow. And the elevator puzzle, the only true one, was actually pretty intuitive after a few rounds of getting slapped. Heh. The ending didn't surprise me much. (Spoiler - click to show)You're clued early on that the player character is a bit strange, maybe not all there. The narrative is well done, and despite personally not liking the PC much, the story was short enough and the game easy enough that I was able to finish it with little effort. Parsing was excellent. No errors about not understanding what I wanted, even if the game is conversation-based for the most part. I even got the game and author references, though not the politics. Being someone who favors modern IF and IF as art form and narrative, I had a hard time getting into the mindset of the player character.

I would not replay this game. It was well-implemented, characters were stock and more plot device, but while I am enough of an IF gamer that I understood what was meant by story-based versus puzzle-based, I am not enough of an insider to appreciate the inspiration for this game and what it's poking fun at. The tie-ins with real-world conspiracy organizations helped to understand the story, but if there are any Freemasons, etc, they probably shouldn't play this. I know of RAIF, RGIF, etc, but I think this game appeals only to a small group of IF authors/players. Perhaps I could have rated the game higher if I were part of the "Cabal." :)

This is not a true review. More like impressions after partial game completion.

The thing I liked most about the game was the unconventional narrative voice. I found violet laugh-out-loud amusing. I also really felt the affection and exasperated mockery she has for the player character and the ex-girlfriend. I felt genuine remorse and sorrow at the things the player character has to sacrifice to get the writing done.

However, and maybe I am just dense, but when I tried to solve puzzles in normal-seeming ways, I had trouble getting the game to understand what I wanted. And while the puzzles do make sense for the setting and story, I didn't find them very intuitive. I've had to constantly look up hints and that's just not what I play IF for. The player character isn't very likeable, either. Neither is Violet in some ways, since she seems to expect you to know something won't work when as a player, part of puzzle-solving is doing things to see what happens. She's the only narrator who ever made me feel bad about quitting the game, though.

Maybe I'm taking the game too seriously, but I couldn't handle the things I had to make the character do. I wouldn't want to do such things to myself and while initially, I was drawn into the game, with all the stops and starts because of the puzzles, the mood was broken and I began instead to focus on just how depressing and pathetic the character felt.

Ultimately, I won't finish this game. The writing was great, but there are other games to try that are probably less frustrating and more immersive.

The premise of this game looked interesting. I certainly wanted to know what happened to the player character's family. So I began playing, and soon discovered what I've taken for granted playing modern IF - intuitive command entry. It should be noted that I did not grow up with text adventures. I have no nostalgia for tedious gameplay, timed puzzles, and constant restoration. My intro to IF were games like Photopia, The Moonlit Tower, and Glowgrass. All excellent works, I might add.

I will say now that I have not finished this game and do not intend to. It is just too frustrating a prospect since I was already banging my head against a wall before even making it past the first puzzle. I did eventually solve it when I realized it was timed and I'd seen what to avoid, but it was a lot of trial and error. I do not consider that a worthy expenditure of effort or time. Every step forward presented a new problem for which I couldn't think of a ready solution without experimentation, and continuing in that vein to reach an end that might not be worth it is just not my idea of fun.

I don't like writing negative reviews. I wanted to enjoy this more. But the genre, choppy parsing and puzzles that I did not find intuitive combined to finally have me giving up on the game.

I've never been very good at working out symbolic meanings. I think I'm supposed to take something away from this, but it eludes me. (Spoiler - click to show)I have impressions of someone going mad from dehydration and possibly drug use, but the ending feels like I'm supposed to be grasping something that I'm not.

There were some parts of the game where I struggled with what to do. (Spoiler - click to show)The only thing that gave me any clue was that if something was intact, it must be destroyed. However, I had tremendous fun wrecking everything, and the writing during that part of the game had me laughing out loud. The to-do list, changes in room description, and the plant showing the state of dehydration were nice touches and enhanced the bleakness of the atmosphere.

This is a fun diversion and mostly intuitive. Not difficult at all for anyone familiar with IF conventions. It's worth playing just for the amusing and ironic writing.

I'm a bit conflicted on this game. I loved the exploration but am frustrated by a couple puzzles I never found the solutions to. The writing was too vague to get more than fleeting impressions, and even though I did complete the game, I'm still not sure if my impressions are correct. If they are, I have to say I don't like the player character much, which probably influences my feeling of dissatisfaction. On top of that, I'm left with questions concerning the character's backstory that don't have answers that I've found in-game. (Spoiler - click to show)I realize the character doesn't remember specifics, and using masks as devices for recall was a neat idea. But by the end of the game, the character should be able to fill in gaps, and I don't see that happening. Also, the issue with his child's deformed foot and the crutch, which figures prominently but not sure what happened to the child. Was he killed in combat? Was he killed by the player character?

Due to the sketchiness and ambiguous writing, puzzles don't feel precisely natural. Ostensibly, the character knows what everything is and how to use them, and the puzzles feel like they are just put there for something to do. (Spoiler - click to show)No real reason why the masks would be scattered around the property, or that there'd only be one glove in the shed.

Mechanically, I thought the game played well. Writing was good also. But ultimately, my frustration with the extra puzzles and unclear storytelling leave an unfavorable impression.

I'm revisiting this game after a hiatus from interactive fiction and it is still a good story. Beauty and the Beast is my favorite fairy tale, so when I saw this was inspired by it, I had to play it. The first screen drew me in and gave me a clue right away that this heroine, while just as determined and sensible as the Beauty of the fairy tale, was not necessarily pining for her family or even that devoted to them. Much like Metamorphoses, there are multiple endings which allow for roleplay of the protagonist in some very unconventional ways.

As the story unfolds, one begins to see that none of the characters are true to the source material, but they do retain their roles. That is, what they do is the same; their personalities are not. It's a study in contradiction, where there's a jaded, flawed, and yet somehow likeable Beast and a Beauty that's caring but also a tad vengeful. This newest version of the game sees more polish to the vignettes of their backstories, with some downright hilarious lines and touching moments. (Spoiler - click to show)Like how the Beast says not all the women who died before they were married were his victims. Quite amusing in context. And when Beauty and Beast meet again after their week apart and you can tell the Beast is truly moved and honestly hadn't expected to ever see her again. Or his thoughts about Beauty later in the game, and her own affection for him.

In terms of mechanics, the travel system is awesome. I wish all games had it. Puzzles were well-clued and felt natural. The room counter in the status line was handy. And the system of magic and servitude was explained clearly and worked for me.

What I like about both Bronze and Metamorphoses is the obvious attention to detail in world-building, characterization, and background. I get the sense that these characters are real to the author and while there's a nagging sense of only scratching the surface, what players do see still manages to have a strong impact emotionally. These people have distinct voices in the narrative and because no one is purely good or evil, there's a satisfying depth to them not found in the conventional fairy tale.

This is the second time I played this game. The first time, this database was either not operational or I hadn't discovered it yet. Being one who comes and goes in the interactive fiction community, part of the reason I replayed it was to get back into the mindset of this medium and I remembered I thoroughly enjoyed this game the first time.

Playing again, I have to say I appreciate it more because I'm not as preoccupied with how to solve the puzzles. It's not that the puzzles are hard; they are in fact incredibly intuitive and I didn't need a walkthrough. I even found several solutions to puzzles that I hadn't discovered the first time. There is one guess-the-verb issue and another solution that is somewhat alarming, but I think this is a subjective judgment coming from someone who isn't generally in it for the puzzles. I don't mind puzzles, but they need to be consistent and plausible for the story, and all of these were. They were even fun, because you can be very creative with the paths you take.

However, what really makes this game stand out for me is the symbolism and writing. Knowing more or less the results of actions allowed me to focus more on aesthetics in prose and story, and this game is a good combination of acquiring items and giving those items significance as more than just treasures to take home. They are concrete items with ties to the immaterial, and it's not only the items that undergo changes.

It is tough to talk about the game without spoiling things. But if you like well-intigrated, logical problems that grow out of the world and backstory of your character and get fulfillment from endings (yes, there are multiple ones) that make you think and are what you make of them, I think this is a journey worth taking that is immersive enough to revisit from time to time. I know this one isn't leaving my collection if I can help it.