Ratings and Reviews by Giger Kitty

I've been playing this, and overall the experience has been cautiously positive, barely. The game doesn't often give you clear goals, so it's about experimenting; and the game is a bit weird about the information it gives you, and how much. You are in an alien planet, where you know nothing about the creatures and vegetation; but if you look at them, the narrator is happy to give you information you couldn't possibly know. You are expected to type "l plants" and "l creatures" often; the narrator's disambiguation will tell you what they are called, and so you will know how to refer to them. Which is neat in how it diminishes "guess the noun", but it makes very little sense. By the way, this differs from other Sci-Fi and fantasy games (like, say, Space Quest) in that, in this game, the PC is not part of this fantasy world. Roger Wilco may know the name of some alien species even if we don't, but there is zero way that the protagonist of this game can.

Talking to characters is a bit like trying to extract teeth. While they respond to suitable topics, there is zero notion that a conversation is taking place, and only rarely can you follow up on anything they say.

What I found most interesting about this game is the parser. It's the type of parser you expect from regular IF, but certainly not from these parser-driven graphical adventures. "It" is recognised. If the games asks you a disambiguation question and you respond to it (>GRAB FLOATER. "Which do you mean, the small flotater or the large floater?" >SMALL) the game actually recognises and parses that correctly. You can drop your inventory items at any time (and have an inventory limit), and, amazingly, you can >DROP ALL and >GET ALL.

Apart from that, it's a product of its time; design-wise, somewhere between Sierra and LucasArts. You can certainly die a lot (and there is only one death screen; this game taught me the value of having Sierra's entertaining death messages), and most of the times it'll be because you stepped somewhere you shouldn't have, or stepped off a path. In fact, there is some bugginess associated with this, as you may find the character will trigger a death-collision even though they didn't actually collide with the thing. Certain objects can be drawn in front of the character during animations, when they shouldn't be. In one place, it's very easy to walk into an unwalkable area and just break the game visually.

There seem to be no noteworthy walking deads - or at least, no cruel ones. There are a couple of things that are clearly, or seem to be, irreversible; if you keep a healthy amount of savegames, and are careful not to make irreversible blunders unless you're exploring a path and therefore have a savegame to go back to, you should be fine. It appears that you won't find anything like the earring from Codename: ICEMAN in here.

The music is quite unspectacular, mediocre. Which fits in well with the generic plot, the dissonance of learning this alien flora and fauna via the narrator, the graphical glithes, and the blandness of conversations. This game is, overall, bland. It's not that it does things bad, mostly, it's that it doesn't really make them worthwhile.

When I got stuck, I found that exploration and experimentation usually paid off, which made me rather trust the game. Although some of the player feedback could be misleading or unhelpful; baiting the cage was an exercise in frustration, and some parser responses may lead you to think that a certain action is futile and not worth trying again, whereas it may be worth trying again in a different screen, even if it looks like it's exactly the same situation as the one you just got told off for.

Now, here's the thing: I didn't finish the game.

Why?

Because there is a whole section that's full of those Sierra-style winding paths that kill you after you fall off from them, that you have to traverse super carefully. Plus, it's got branching paths (not quite a maze) so you have go back a forth a few times. I did that section, it seemed like I had done everything I could, then left and never went back again.

So, stuck, I turn to the cluebook.

And I read that I have to go back there again.

And... my heart sinks, and I just go... "ok, I think I'm done."

I don't remember much about Infidel, also by this author, except that it was a decent puzzler (if ultimately forgettable - I certainly remember nothing except some hyerogplyphics) with a whopper of a memorable ending (Berlyn wrote many other games, of course, including "Suspended". For some reason, though, he is forever the author of "Infidel" in my mind. Unlike, say, Brian Moriarty, whose various games are memorable in their own right... but I digress). This game certainly feels like it has the technical and design influence of one of the Imps, but it falls short in almost every level (by which I mean, it's "not quite there", rather than being actively bad). Quite a few puzzles I solved by lucky exploration, but then would go "why did I try this? What if I hadn't? I could have been really stuck here for the longest time." Now, credit must be given for a game that gets you into the mindframe where you DO stumble upon these puzzle solutions, which is what I mean when I say it doesn't get things wrong or bad, it just fails to achieve anything stronger than "bland".

And then of course you have that moment in which I felt my soul drain through the soles of my feet, as though I was staring into a deep black hole (i.e., the prospect of returning to that branching path of deadly walkways)... I can't fault it TOO much because it's a design choice of the times, we can blame Sierra for it, and it was the graphic adventures' version of a more physical, less cerebral, less "you can beat it just by typing the commands in a walkthrough" moment. Kinda like minigames. It's a kind of minigame, where you stop playing the adventure game and instead fiddle around trying to get the character through a difficult spot. We have Sierra to thank for a number of horrid design choice staples, and this is, sadly, one of them.

I can't fault it TOO much...

...but there is NO WAY I'm going through that section again, either. Here endeth my playthrough, at about 130 points of out 350. I could go up to almost 200 points, I think, but for that I'd need to embark on a path I was not yet prepared for, clearly.

So the final thoughts are... this game is not discussed much, and there's a reason for that (there usually is). The most memorable thing about it is how friendly the parser can be, compared to other parser-driver graphic adventures. It even abbreviates "ask about" to "ab". It doesn't support "x" but does support "l" ("l"ook). As I delete the game from my hard drive, that is the strongest impression the game made on me.

Oh, here's a little tidbit. Those walkways of death? The last couple are so windy that the game just takes control and navigates for us (too little too late, buddy). When I saw that happen, already in an unforgiving mood, all I could think of "the testers must have really balked at this section, so they had to automate it instead of making it playable, but they still thought it was worth keeping. Gah."

The game is pretty short, and it pretty much telegraphs your actions. It rides on its humour; either you will like it, or you won't.

Rather hard to discuss without spoiling, but suffice it to say, you will know pretty early on if this tickles your funnybone or not. I loved it; the writing worked very well with the silliness of the story, brief as it is.

There isn't really much to say; interactions are telegraphed, as I mentioned, so you won't get really stuck. The game is quite short. It does manage to feel "interactive" in the sense that, yeah, it could have been a short story in static fiction, but the pacing of your commands somehow works to the humour's advantage. At one point, when a certain object enters scope, it does so by extending the description of your Citroen in a way that is quite ridiculous to watch - and is the sort of humour that arises from its IF format.

Gave me a few good laughs, and these days, those were sorely needed. I do have a soft spot for French humour, too.

"A Plotkin?", you say. You are intrigued. You've heard of these before, usually spoken of in reverential tones.

"Indeed, indeed, the genuine article. True creative spirit, the author; just can't stop him. Remarkable plumage, the Norwegian Blue."

"The what?"

"Hmm?" inquires the salesman. "The Plotkin. It's a remarkable little puzzler and no mistake."

"No, but you'd said... never mind", you sigh; best not to start another Python skit.

You take a good look at this Plotkin. It seems rather small, but rather imp-ish, a bit devious. You decide to ask about these characteristics.

"Oh, every Plotkin is devious up to a point, Sir/Madam/Non-Binary. Oh yes. That is part of what makes them fun."

"Fun," you repeat, deadpan.

"Well, certainly, some people find it fun. Others, I admit, less so. It's certainly rather cerebral, possibly for the true conoisseur. A Plotkin may not be everyone's cup of tea, but there are those to whom it is a truly exquisite experience. Nothing like it, no sir/ma'am/non-binary."

"Are they all this small, then?"

The salesman looks positively horrified for a moment. "Oh, NO, sir/ma'am/enn-bee; not at ALL! There are great gargantuan Plotkins, and some Plotkins may be comparateively small but be so tight as to take up a tremendous amount of time and brain-teasing fun! This is indeed one of the smaller models, but it does come together with two other Plotkins which comprise a sort of Tryptich. One feels it would have been more than that, but, life being as it is, these three Plotkins are probably all we will see of that series. Which makes it all the more valuable."

You scratch your chin thoughtfully. "How does it handle the prose?"

The salesman is now positively beaming. "Ah, you are a shrewd one, a shrewd customer, and no mistake! There is no pulling the wool over your eyes! Fear not, it is exactly as you'd expect from any other Plotkin. A superficial glance will show that the prose is utilitarian and practical-minded, but start scratching away at that surface - even an inch, s/m/nb, even just a mere fraction of an inch! - and fascinating wordsmanship will start oozing out, as rich as pus on a festering wound!"

"...what?!"

"What what?"

"What did you just say?!"

"Merely that the writing will astound and mesmerise you, even as it retains that simplicity and utility which most befits a single puzzler."

"But you... no, never mind," you say again; this salesman seems stranger and stranger. "And how does it handle?"

At this, the salesman's countenance darkens for just a second (is that sulfur you smell, very briefly? It goes away as soon as you notice it, though), and his tone is lower as he intones "Ah, there, s/m/nb, I admit there have been some remarks of a less than positive nature. Not that it will not astound you, s/m/nb, once you've realised what it intends to do; it plays with the very laws of physics, and that is a remarkable feat, truly remarkable. Can it really be faulted if sometimes it handles a little bit less than perfectly? But alas, I have heard it say that attempts to use disambiguation to resolve more succint parser inputs"...

...is it just your imagination or is his tone shifting into something that's more similar to an IFDB review?

He continues: "... sometimes doesn't work as well as can be expected. Indeed, very often, when trying to PUT something ON somethingelse, it will disambiguate that somethingelse with something from your inventory. Which is usually the very 'something' that you were trying to use. In order words, although it'll be tempting to reduce your inputs to the smallest possible numeber of words, the parser is likely to try to put something on itself if left to its own disambiguation."

"Are you feeling allright?", you ask, more out of politeness.

"Never better!", he cherfully belts out, returning to his previous style. "And that is because, regardless of whatever little hiccups may occur, you will find this Plotkin to be so streamlined, and so daring in concept, that such trifling details will be completely forgotten as you solve this brief and simple puzzle!"

"Brief and simple?"

"Did I say that? Did I say that? Those very words? Could my very tongue have - well, ok, yes, it's true, relatively speaking the puzzle is concise and will tax the greatest of minds only for an instant, and give merely a passing headache to those of a lesser cerebral nature. BUT", he attempts to rally, "brilliance is not merely in the puzzle itself, but in how it is presented! A Plotkin that is a tasty morsel is no less filling than a gargantuan Plotkin; it is merely the difference between an exquisite snack and a full blown 12 course banquet."

"You've already said 'exquisite' and 'garguantuan' before."

"This is running too long and I'm running out of synonyms", he snaps back at once. His countenance - another word which has already been used - smoothes over as he says "In short, this is well and truly a Plotkin. In every sense of the word. All that you've come to expect from a Plotkin; nothing about its author is diminished."

"I'll think about it", you say, thinking mostly about getting the heck out of here - but also thinking about grabbing this Plotkin on your way out.

"A word of caution, however", he remarks.

You look quizzical, showing off your great muscular abilities in raising your right eyebrow a full five inches. You always were proud of that particular trait, useless though it is except for that one TV commercial those many years ago.

"This Plotkin and it companion pieces are best experienced... with a healthy period of pause between each. Think of it as cleansing the palate. The distilled experience of playing all three in a row may be somewhat... overwhelming... for some."

You sense the atmosphere has become rather oppresive, suddenly. With this, and with the clear feeling that the writer of this review has reached the end and doesn't really know how to conclude, you say your goodbyes and decide to visit a cheese shop on your way home. You hear those cheese have beautiful plumage.

I did not get far into the game, but I suspected it was all going to be along certain lines. Reading the reviews, I don't think I was mistaken.

It is an interesting thing to have a game where the actual mechanics are simple, and mundane, but the overall point is actually the story that you reveal as you go through the motions. There is then a balancing act: although the mechanics are not the point, they are what the player will actually be doing, so it needs to be minimally engaging, possibly fun up to a point (doing boring things can also work, but it's very risky; the player may simply decide to go play something else).

In this one, it failed to capture me. Part of it was that I was trying to figure out good places for the things I was unpacking, but at the same time I was also going, "why bother? This is an unpacking-and-dumping mechanic. What difference does it make where I put stuff?" But I still wanted to make it relatively sensible. Some things made sense for me to be in storage. Others made sense for me to be prominently displayed. But even as I was giving it some thought, I was always thinking, and the game never really contradicted me on this, "what is the point of giving it any thought at all?" If I had kept playing I might have just gotten into the routine of unpacking, examining, thinking about, and dumping wherever. I suspected the game might throw a "space optimisation" puzzle at me, and I don't know whether it does or not, but I was dreading it in such a bland setting.

Ultimately what made me decide enough was enough was,

a) finding an item that seemed so worthless I could not think of any reason to keep it: (Spoiler - click to show)a faded receipt used as a bookmark; no longer inside the book, so no longer even serving its fuction. Unpacking into a new office and you come across that? Geez, just throw it away! But that's not an option, we have to Find A Place For It. Even if it's storage. That's a pretty ridiculous item to put in long-term storage, though. That is the mechanics getting very on-the-nose.

b) trying to move boxes out of the way to get to the MISC box second (it was the one that made more sense for having a knife for cutting the tape, all boxes considered, after dealing with "stationery" first) didn't work; and it didn't work in a way that made it clear the game wanted me to go through the boxes in a certain order, which is all fine and dandy for the game but makes no sense as it's trivial to, if I really want to access a certain box first, just move things around. If I try to do anything to a box, I get a message like "All you need to do with the book box is get it open and get it unpacked." I was not expecting it to be on rails like this. Again: mechanics transparently getting in my way Just Because.

c) seeing that the desk was "creaking under the weight" of a calendar and a pencil. Really? Seeing that, I couldn't really muster any kind of motivation to try and make it sensible anymore. And once again, yes, this was Mechanics Transparently Showing Up And Reminding Me That Objects Were Really Nothing But A Size And Weight Property.

I was certainly unpeeling a story, and I don't dislike stories that get revealed this way. In this game, I think it missed the mark. The mechanics were, to me, far too intrusive. It wasn't worth drudging through it, and especially it wasn't worth reducing, in my mind, the objects to their size/weight to find places they fit. I mean, if the game is about giving those objects a history and making them part of a revealed story, asking me then to forget that a pencil and a calendar is certainly not enough to make any desk creak under their weight is far too mimesis-breaking.

(I suggest you don't reveal the next two spoilers unless you've finished the game. Really don't want to spoil anything.) This game feels like the love-child of (Spoiler - click to show)Babel and (Spoiler - click to show)Coloratura. Two games which had a profound emotional impact on me.

This game also impacted me.

I remember when Marco Innocenti entered the scene with Andromeda Awakening. And I was like, yeah, it's ok, but I didn't really see what everyone else was raving about. It simply didn't click.

That was in 2011. In the last three days, I have played two other Marco Innocenti games ("A Train to Picadilly" being the the other one). Well, either I was very short-sighted back then and everyone else could see what he was going to become, or he grew immensely as an author.

I suspect both.

In this relatively short Punyinform game, which apprently does not constrain him but instead streamlines the gameplaying experience by focusing the action on just as much interaction as necessary (and yet the game feels delightfully responsive all the while), Marco Innocenti treats us to the three best things he brings to IF. He brings exquisite writing, with unexpected turns of phrase that border on the poetic, surprising by the matter-of-fact way they are stated. He bring a fertile imagination. And he brings remarkably solid puzzle design.

And we're talking what I usually call the good stuff in puzzles. The puzzles where you visualize the rooms and the objects, and try to resolve situations as though you were actually there. The puzzles where you experiment (not that experimentation is deeply detailed, but there is just enough - particularly, it skillfully draws your attention away from where you should not focus. That is so hard. I so deeply admire this), maybe with no particular obvious guidance but with a definitive notion, which grows stronger as you play, that this is where you need to direct your efforts.

The writing (at points you can sort of tell English is not his first language, but rather than that resulting in awkwardness and bad communication, it instead appears to enhance the atmosphere. Not many people can get away with that!) and the fertile imagination - and, in the case of this game, the absolutely masterful way in which, over the first handful of moves, you discover a few things about the PC, things that could have been stated immediately but which instead he finds a way to let us stumble upon by ourselves - are the tremendous glue that keep this together in the first half of the game, which is where the puzzles are. In the second half, it becomes a lot more about the story, the mood, the atmosphere. I found this to be an excellent choice. When you're envolved in a story like this, drawn in, sure, you can tackle harder puzzles for a while, but eventually you go "I want to see where this story is going!". Story-heavy games which get harder as the game progress can be very frustrating because of this. But the decision to ease up on the puzzles for the endgame section, and instead dole out story chunks in measured segments (so well measured; the final sections really are just story-dump, but they are told in such different perspectives, using such different techniques, triggered by different things, that it nevel feels like a dump) takes courage.

I had no particular trouble with the puzzles. I loved the manner in which they made me think.

Near the beginning, there's a point where you hear a voice tell you that you need to get to the location physically above you. I was so drawn into the game that I looked up. Me. The player, holding the tablet in my hands, playing the game through Fabularium's internal keyboard. I actually looked up, away from the screen, towards the ceiling of my room, and thought to myself "ok, it's up there, but I don't think I can get there directly from where I am."

Then I realised what I had just done.

...just plain awesome.

Similarly, don't want to spoil anything, but... how can I say this... after a certain revelation, I tried to do something, and I tried for 4 or 5 moves, rewording it. Not because the game prompted me, but because it felt right. Or rather, something felt wrong and I wanted to fix it. The game didn't let me, or the PC was not able to, so I just kept going, but it's so interesting that I felt so uncomfortable that, like an itch I had to scratch, for a few moves after (Spoiler - click to show)seeing what's in the quarantine room, and the other corpse with the same suit, I rather desperately wanted to (Spoiler - click to show)remove my own suit.

YMMV, different strokes for different folks, I don't guarantee that you'll love it as much as I did or that you'll have as great an experience. But I did. And I think it's the type of experience that I will treasure, just like I treasure the experience from those two games in spoiler tags there at the top.

I'm going to wait for a suitable amount of time, and then, next stop: A1RL0CK 2. I'm savouring the antecipation.

PS - Unrelated to IF. The protagonist here shares a name with a character in an anime I particularly enjoy, "Noir". This game has nothing to do with that anime. And yet, and yet, on a certain level, I sort of can see a similarity between both of them - the protagonist here and her namesake in Noir. It's probably just me. But... you know... this stuff lingers.