Reviews by Giger Kitty

I enjoyed this game very, very much. Partly because it defied my initial expectations by escalating to outrageous levels, and partly because it's so darned well implemented. It seemed to have a response for everything I tried. When I booted up the game, saw a "my apartment" type of thing, and saw the seemingly reasonably innocuous premise, I had no idea that this would be a game that would be working WITH me, and not struggling AGAINST me. Logical thought assisted me in solving the puzzles, and with such a strong implementation, every step of the way felt rewarding.

I played this by constantly optimizing my time; I would save, find something that caused progress, restore, go do that thing, and save again. I can't imagine playing a timed game any other way. Maybe if I hadn't played it like this I would have been extremely frustrated. As it is, obviously, the limit only ran out when I let it, to see what happens (in this way I saw all four endings in order).

The escalation of the whole situation was unbelievable, and I very much enjoyed the inherent humour; I much prefer the humour of a bizarre situation taken seriously than the constant barrage of jokes.

Looking at the reviews and ratings, this one doesn't seem to be a favourite. Well, it's a favourite of mine. In great part because, and I can't stress this enough, it was implemented solidly enough, and responsed reasonably enough, to my attempts, that it always felt like it wanted me to solve it. There are far too many sadistic games that delight in just being a brick wall to the player. Even Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy did it in a comedic way that invited you to laugh with it even as you swore through gritted teeth. The style of games that say "This is a puzzle and I'm not giving you any help at all, and I'll only respond to exactly what I want to you type, and if you try to experiment I'll give you blunt 'that doesn't work' one-liners" - and that last bit is, to me, the clincher; experimentation must be the key to puzzle-solving, and without feedback to build from, it's just bad, bad, bad - is a style I no longer have patience for. The hardest oldschool games I can think of, which I enjoyed, did reward experimentation with some little tidbit that would help me solve the puzzle later.

Bit of a rant; my point is that this condensed puzzler does it right. It's with me every step of the way. With the very egregious exception of forcing me to guess the verb to open a certain door - that's the reason I'm rating it 4 and not 5 - it gave me proper feedback every time I tried something, and took pains, sometimes, to direct my attention to the appropriate spot.

I had a great time playing and solving this game. And I enjoyed its endings - particularly the last one, which makes the most sense if you've seen all other three.

Parting thoughts - but man, I really felt sorry for the PC, having to live in that dump!

(Many reviews comment on bad implementation. I don't know what to tell you - I didn't have any of those issues, apart from the one I mentioned. My review reflects that)

I will tackle this review by sharing my experience with this game, because I played it, gave up on it in frustration, came back, and gave up again for a totally different reason. Before giving up, I became quite enamored with it. So there's totally a love-hate thing going on. Quite appropriate, isn't it, for a "cold, austere beauty".

This is also something that I make a point of doing in my reviews. There are usually, and this game is no exception, reviews already out there that are excellently objective. I also sometimes try to objectively review the game, or parts of it, but with such great reviewers as have come before - shoulders of giants, and all that - I think the only way to say something that's still relevant is to share my experience. If this is not something that appeals to you, well, you've been warned. Bwahahaha, and all that.

First off, the math that I picked up in school was pretty basic; I went into arts, into acting, into music. I always did find math to be fun, in a crossword-puzzle type of way. I mean the equations that we were given to solve. I mean the stuff that people usually say "that's not the good part of math, that's the drudgy part of math that people are right to hate". I liked it. It had rules; you applied the rules, and solved the equation. Much like a game.

I also may enjoy some puzzles, especially basic cryptography (simple letter substitution, the kind that Poe's "Gold Bug" popularised), but they are definitely not what I play IF/adventure games for. I grew up with the LucasArts and Sierra adventure games, and when I discovered IF, it was the Babels and Anchorheads of this world that spoke to me. My favourite "aHA" moment was when figuring out the elevator puzzle in Hollywood Hijinx. The puzzles where you put yourself in that game world, with those objects and inventory items, and you think, "how can I manipulate these to achieve my goals?"

Finally, I am keen to learn, within reason. I like occasionally following Wikipedia links that explain some sort of mathematical problem or paradox or something.

I am, in short, the layman with a few basic notions.

Reading the about text, I was left with the impression I would be the target audience for this game! (more so if I liked mathematical puzzles more, but ah well) And indeed, the game tickled my fancy immensely, at first. It made certain things very visual, very accessible. The royal road that doesn't lead to geometry, our pal Achilles, the growing lines in the axis, the way that we gather the information via our math book. I felt like I was being given a teaser of a world which, though not my own, was beginning to interest me.

Let's let that sink in for a second. This cold, austere beauty captured my heart. Surely that means that the game was doing something really great. I particularly enjoyed the responsive implementation; the game was working with me, and not against me or at cross purposes.

Then I came to the prime numbers puzzle. My brain froze. I hate that kind of thing. I sighed, turned to the hints, and solved it that way. Even as I did, I thought to myself, huh, this was quite logical and sensible. If I'd given this some thought, I might have been able to solve it.

Then I came to the scales. It is a puzzle with three scales, each scale with two pans, each one with multiple blocks.

I was already soaking up a lot of new information. And these scales puzzles, I'm honestly so, so tired of them. My brain froze again - terminally, this time. I played around with them, I read the hints, and in the end I decided, ok, this is not for me. "This beauty is cold and austere indeed", I thought. "There's no point in forcing. I like a different sort of beauty. This is good for what it is; but it is not for me."

I deleted the game. It was nighttime, so I started up another game "A Bloody Life", played a few rooms, then went to sleep.

And I kept thinking about this game. It kept me awake for a little while. I kid you not. I kept going over it, and going over what I had liked, and telling myself that I had done the right thing by quitting if I wasn't having fun. But still, you know, I couldn't let go.

So next day - after a mostly sleepless night, for some reason - the first thing I do is, download the game again. I decide I'm going to give it a proper try. It's not hard, I think, to open a text file and write down the equations on the scales. The hints told me what the overall goal was, and told me that (Spoiler - click to show)the non-lettered blocks all weighed the same (which is something the game itself had already hinted at), so I figured all that was left was the equation part. This is the bit I used to like in school, I told myself, so give it a go.

It was... embarassingly easy, as it turns out.

And fun!

From then on, I kept going. There was one more place I couldn't understand - the chest in the hidden room (I shan't spoilerize any more). I just couldn't really understand what I was meant to do; there were dials that said one thing, and there was an inscription that said another, and I didn't know which of those two I was supposed to "solve". The built-in hint system solved that for me. I still don't quite know the logic, but I am quite content to accept that it's a puzzle that just flew over my head. I still got the logic of the final solution, just not quite WHY that was the solution. No matter! I was still avoiding hints overall, and having a lot more fun this time! The game was throwing lots of new stuff at me, and I was consulting my little book and making headway as best I could. I was glimpsing, at a very basic and introductory level, a fascinating world. And I was actually understanding it, up to a point. Euclide's fifth postulate, Pascal's Triangle, the secretary problem, I didn't know about ANY of these things. The things I recognised the most were, heh, Achilles and the Tortoise (thanks to Terry Pratchett's Discworld and to Beyond Zork, mostly!), and Plato's Cavern, which is the one thing I recognised from school.

...you can tell there's a "but" coming on, can't you?

It's the TRON sequence. The Euler thing.

I hate these. I always have.

Look, I tried it. I understand that it's really simple, really basic. Laugh at me if you will. Make fun. Call me a moron. Whatever. I not only hate these puzzles, I absolutely suck at them. Very hard.

So I try it, I map it, I experiment, and eventually I give up. Cue the hints.

...the hints don't give a solution.

They give a couple of tactical pointers.

Huh. Ok, I guess; let's try putting them to good use. Let's try the puzzle again with those pointers in mind.

...nope. Still nothing. Yes, I'm THAT bad at this type of puzzle. Remember the type of player that I am; this is exactly the sort of thing I hate in my adventure gaming experience. Consider also all the puzzles that I had to solve to get to this point; I had been putting an effort, and I had felt the game kept rewarding my efforts, so I kept wanting to go on. It was all very positive.

So I sigh, come here to IFBD and check the "detailed solution" that's linked here.

The "detailed solution" doesn't give me an answer either.

And this pisses me off.

This. Pisses. Me. Off.

Excuse me, author?, goes my internal monologue. You make a detailed solution - detailed solution! - and you don't bother to give a solution to the puzzle that's stomping me? What, did you think it's beneath you? Did you think anyone could solve this easily with just a few pointers? Am I that useless and hopeless a player? Do you care so little about me as a player? Should I just quit and let others, who "get" you, play this game instead, seeing as I am not worthy?

Like I said, I was pissed off. I feel at this point it's better to be blunt about how I felt when I saw that, well, the "detailed solution" didn't detail the solution to a puzzle that I was stuck on. I feel that this is the sort of feedback that sometimes lacks: an honest depiction of how the player feels when encountering certain situations. Not destructive, not inflammatory, not insulting; but no holding back. Because, hey, the player felt that way because of your game; and the player was certainly not holding back when they felt it. Surely, author, it will interest you to know the reaction you caused.

So, I was still fuming when I checked the other available walkthrough, which DID have a solution. I could have continued. But... I didn't want to anymore. If the author was going to snub me that hard, to have so much contempt for me, then this was no longer a game I wanted to play. So I deleted - this time for real.

Long read, this. Or maybe a rant. I see it as candidly sharing my experience, my thought, my feelings.

This game is good. It's really good. It really captured me. It must have; I came back to it after giving up once, and even now I still think fondly on it, so much so that I needed to come and write this review, to serve as final punctuation, so I can move on. The imagery, the implementation, the way that it was mostly accessible to someone who has somewhat basic knowledge and was keen to learn.

But there are certain things I cannot get past. Different things at different times. I can accept a lot of things, and others I absolutely cannot. It may not sound like a big deal - but I hope that, through my rant, I was able to explain why it was such a huge deal. When we are really enjoying something, the bad things stand out all the more; and I was loving this, up until my progress was completely stopped by a puzzle that wasn't for me and an author who decided not to give me a solution so I could move on.

Well, if you don't want me to move on, author (goes my internal monologue), I shall oblige.

Moral of the story: it's possibly not really about which type of player is suitable for the experience. It's much more about how accessible the author makes it.

The story lives and dies by its atmosphere, its mood; so whether or not you like it will depend on whether or not you feel the atmopshere.

Gameplay is on the basic side; implementation is a bit south of "solid"; the story itself seems a bit too outrageous. The question is, will the game's mood make you buy into that outrageous story?

For me, it did. Hook, line and sinker, this is stuff I love.

I was impressed with the pacing; after a strange introduction (wonderfully, delightfully, strange) you begin the game in an apartment, and your quest is to get coffee. If your first command, like mine, is >X ME, you get the default inform answer. So, first looks are likely to be underwhelming, and you seem primed for a basic quest in a mundane setting.

It is as you examine the things around you (I don't think this is worth being in a spoiler, is it? Examining everything is the bread and butter of an IF player, and we're talking about the very first rooms) that you realise things are off; this is not as straightforward as you thought, and your impressions are challenged a few times until you grok onto what's happening. You also realise that the game uses descriptions to give you bits and pieces of the overall background plot, so you'll have to examine everything you come across. Is this a chore or a delight? Again, it depends on how much you buy into the game's premise and plot. I found it to be a low-key apocalyptic body horror that really spoke to me. You will have to piece for yourself who/what, exactly, the PC is; there are enough hints for you to have a broad idea. And it's rather satisfying when you see confirmation of your hyphothesis.

The implementation gets a little bit sketchier. A few too many paragraph lines when I don't think there were supposed to be; using "him/her" pronouns to refer to people didn't work (that was quite unfortunate); "USE" is a verb that is going to be your friend. Clearly the focus was on writing and world-building. I seem to remember there was even a room description that included an action - you know, the sort of situation that's a classical no-no, because it gives the illusion that the action is repeated every time you type "look". Also, stuff like "car" not being recognised but "cars" being. A character whose default ASK ABOUT response is to say she wasn't paying attention because she was looking at the lake... but if you then X LAKE the game tells you that's not there at the moment.

Conversation is done almost exclusively via "TALK TO", with one notable exception - which is expressly spelled out for you. There are many possible keywords these characters could reasonably respond to, storywise; but apart from the one that's spelled out, I only found one other, and really, it's not worth looking for any. It's a TALK TO conversation system; best to stick to it. (After writing this review, I checked the game's itch.io page where the author recommends that you do ASK people ABOUT stuff. Sadly, if this was the author's intent... it failed utterly. I recommend you don't; if you do, frustration awaits you. The game is very enjoyable with just TALK TO and the one keyword that is expressily given to you for you to try.)

The writing serves the worldbuiling very well, so it's very jarring when you come across a default Inform stock response. Very jarring. The effort to rewrite these would have made a significant difference.

I don't think I want to talk about the story much, because I love its lack of definition. It's got so many things going on - it's a veritable stew of elements. I can hardly credit how well they go together; I think they only do because the focus was not on making a credible, plot-hole-less coherent story. I think the focus was instead on making an atmospheric story, with bits and pieces thrown at you, for you to make sense of and put in a coherent whole.

With that last sentence I may have given the impression that the game is of the style "throw every nonsensical thing at the player and let them find a story in there somewhere". No. Absolutely not. There are very clearly defined elements in this story; it is not random haphazard stuff. But there's so many different elements put together that I find it somewhat difficult to put them all in a completely cohesive, history-book-style narrative in my mind.

And - I can't stress this enough - I don't think you have to do that, anyway. This is a piece to be experienced, rather than to be completely understood. At least, that's what it felt like to me, and in this context I found it deliciously enjoyable. In a dark way. I was often reminded of (Spoiler - click to show)that Parasyte manga/anime.

I'm afraid I intensely dislike the cover image for this game. Its cartoonishness is at complete odds with the experience I went through.

To sum up, I believe the game is very enjoyable - if you are willing to buy into its universe, and if you like the game's way of doing things (examine everything, take it all in, accept that conversation will be limited and the game will make things a bit more difficult for you than it should by not always implementing everything in a way that is comfortable and sensible). If you want your fiction to be a bit more realistic/grounded, a bit more straightforward; if you very much want a solid, robust gameplay experience; or even if you are not comfortable with the themes this game touches on; you probably will feel differently.

Personally, I will be very interested in playing more games from this author.

The reviews of this game speak of it so glowingly that certain players may feel that it's their fault if they don't enjoy the experience. It's called a hidden gem, it's spoken of with high regard, ratings are generally very high (deservedly, in the sense that this is a colossal, monumental piece of work that deserves, at the very least, utmost respect and even some reverence).

So I stuck with it, and I stuck with it, and eventually I went "this just isn't for me", and that decision brought me tremendous relief. So I came here purposefully to say:

It's ok not to like this game. It's ok if it doesn't do it for you. You don't have to force yourself to like this thing that so many people rave about.

The historical depth of the game has been spoken about at length; it is well known that is is a masterfully-researched simulation of the 1893 World's Fair Expo. And if you approach it in that vein, and stroll around, and don't really worry much about puzzles or mapping, you're likely to have a pretty good time. Although you'll find that most locations have somewhat sparse depth; there may be two or three scenery items at most exhibit rooms, or one or two, that you can examine and generally not do much with. I mean, this is not unreasonable, considering the sheer size of the game; I don't think anyone expects rooms with thirty individually implemented unique items. But, the result is that eventually things start to feel a bit empty; pretty, but shallow. You walk around, examine two or three things that the room description describes, and move on to the next room.

In fairness; this is not exactly a problem. It also prevents the player being overwhelmed. It keeps things going. Keeps them moving. Keeps them light. Crucially, it makes it more obvious when you are in a room that actually has something you can manipulate.

All the same, you may find that the game sometimes will tell you that it can't see something it just referenced in the description. In my experience, every time I tried something with a non-standard verb, the game didn't understand me. In one particular case, "enter basin" was met with "If you want to jump into the basin, just say so", which annoys me to no end, because, game, if you know what I want to do, then just go ahead and let me do it; you've shown me that you don't do well with non-standard verbs, so I'm keeping it simple for your sake.

Mapping is another thing... yes, you don't need to map the whole thing, in the sense that you can use the map that the game came with for the overall grounds of the fair. You'll need to mark it, make notes on it. Now... to each their own, but if I don't map every single place myself, then I don't really have a notion of how it all fits, and more importantly, what is where; what objects are where, what events. For me, making the whole map is a necessity. I was, in fact, trying to map out the Government Plaza when I went "I'm this close to officially not having fun anymore and just giving up."

The puzzles are... well, I liked them, those that I saw before giving up, but they can be really finicky. Certain puzzles have you in rooms with, like, 10 hieroglyphs, or 8 pedestals and eight display cases (the Smithsonian is where I actually went "That's it, I'm done. I'm outta here"), or a number of totems. Or you may be balancing a sliver of bauxite, a hunk of the same, a large piece of the same, and a chunk of coal, weighing stuff on a scale. Typing the necessary disambiguation each and every time gets really old really faaaaaaast. It's not the type of puzzle that IF excels at, this is a puzzle that's best used in graphic adventures. Sure, IF has done them before, IF got there before the graphic adventures, but even so... it's cumbersome to solve these puzzles.

But by themselves, in a smaller map, without the micromanagement, it would probably be acceptable.

The micromanagement, yes... Have to eat, have to sleep, have to manage your inventory. I'm sighing deeply even as I write this. Again, nothing untowards; nothing that IF hasn't had us do time and again.

In fact, that's the whole thing. 1893 is a sum of a lot of things that are either good or, at worst, standard fare for IF and text adventures; point at each other individually, and it won't be so bad. Large map with sometimes shallow navigation? But I loved that in A Mind Forever Voyaging. Sprawling puzzlefest? Mulldoon Legacy remains one of my favourite games, that I remember very fondly (and Hadean Lands, not quite sprawling but very puzzly, is a gem). Time limits and food management? Well, one needs only to save the game, explore around, then reload and optimize moves.

But when you put them all together in a single game?

It's exhaaaaaausting!

And as for the plot? Apparently it picks up, but it's an object hunt (plotwise. Each object is hidden behind multi-step riddles). It's really not very motivating.

No one seems to say any of these things, so when I was playing I kept telling myself "Come on, give the game a fair shake. It's got things you admire, the puzzles you did solve were enjoyable (if finicky), and there's nothing here you haven't seen already a thousand times".

Yes, but rarely were they all in the same place, served by a plot that I was really not interested in. I perked up when I saw an indication of a puzzle, but some of them were so finicky that even that drained my excitement.

I was feeling guilty because I wasn't liking this game.

Now, that's just not right.

So I'm writing this review expressly to share my experience, and to say:

"If you also are not enjoying this game, it's ok. It's not you, it's just a bad fit. You're not missing out on what everyone seems to rave about. It's not worth it to push it when you realise you're not having fun. Admire the breadth of the work, which really is awe-inspiring; shed that weight; and move on."

(My rating reflects the dichotomy between my respect and admiration for the work itself... and my complete lack of enjoyment.)