Ratings and Reviews by Blake
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Enchanting, October 4, 2022I play interactive fiction intermittently, as life often has me too busy to dig into larger games. I decided that I was tired of missing out and wanted to really dig into the classics of the commercial era, the ones I'd heard so much about but never experienced firsthand. What order should I play then in? How about by difficulty? Of the two introductory games, Wishbringer sounded more appealing than Seastalker, so off I went.
I'm pleased to say that I've kept my skills sharp in the gulf between games. I beat the game in an evening with no hints and a 100% score. Moriarty's prose is wonderful and his puzzle design is perfect. The game is a Nasty on the Zarfian Cruelty Scale. You can absolutely make the game unwinnable. However, it's pretty easy to figure out where you've gone wrong, and this is a good thing. It teaches the novice to pay attention and play optimally, as later games will not be as kind.
I struggle to think of criticisms. This is a simply an enchanting little slice of the Zork universe, worth a play by everyone.
Immensely Overrated, May 6, 2022This game has some of the most annoying puzzles I've seen. Ones where the logic required to solve them just barely holds up. At every step, you're required to make some massive leaps of intuition, performing ridiculous actions that have little cluing. Even when I had the general idea, the actual steps involved were bizarre. (Spoiler - click to show)Getting the crab, for instance. Tie a strap from some goggles to a shingle (huh?), then tie that strap to a shrimp (huh???), then put the whole assembly into the crab's home, and it'll float to the surface carrying the crab (WHAT). How the hell is a goggle strap big enough to tie around a shingle - a shingle big enough that we also use it to dig six feet into the ground? How does the shrimp not slide out? This is so convoluted and stupid. Or how about those benches? I typed "push benches south", which worked just fine, but then I'm expected to key in "put benches against wall". Why not be consistent, and just let me type "push benches southwest"? Obviously, I can't get specific without spoilers, but know that if you want to solve this without hints, you'll need to be prepared to try a lot of things that don't really make sense, and learn not to be surprised when they end up being correct. Also, there's several times where you have to perform the same action multiple times, in one case with no clue that you need to do so. (Spoiler - click to show)(Searching the trash barrel.)
It gets off to a bad start by taking place in a boring location - a mostly empty beach. Your character gripes about their job - you see, they've got a lot of money in the bank, and this vacation in paradise has them thinking that they could stand to do a lot less working. And there is your plot. Seeing enough exciting sights to convince an independently wealthy person to quit their job and live off their savings. This isn't especially relatable. Sure, most of us would love to explore the world instead of toiling away in drudgery, but having the money to do so just sitting around: that's less common.
I think the main obstacle sitting in my way was the fact that most of the puzzle solutions involve magic, which I wasn't expecting. It's out of place. The other story elements are so grounded that it just seems silly. The overblown writing when your character is being "emotionally moved" just felt forced, and hearing them go, "Hmm, maybe I SHOULD quit my job???" after each one was insufferable. People don't act like this.
The whole game is just obnoxiously twee in tone, and seems to think that having emotional fulfillment rather than treasure as a goal is "deep". It's not. They've just replaced Zork's treasures with adjective-heavy descriptions of nature. Your character has no depth; they just go from wanting to quit to quitting. And again, the puzzles suck.
Two stars for being well-programmed, but otherwise I think this game is overrated fluff that is mostly unsolvable without the hints or a walkthrough.
The worst puzzle in the game:
(Spoiler - click to show)Jumping into the ocean with a brick. Idiotic. There's not the slightest clue that you need to do this. Maybe if your character said he wanted to kill himself - why else would you thrust yourself to the bottom of the fucking ocean? But no, it's so he can appreciate the beauty of the coral reef. Well, of course.
A Shack on a Rock, November 18, 2021Here’s a true obscurity, a Quill game written by one man, with no publisher, probably moving very few copies. I went in expecting very little, (and fearing an early Jarod's Journey) only to be pleasantly surprised. This is a well-designed piece that humanizes Noah, and tells his story without ever dipping into Sunday School farce or Hollywood apocrypha. It's a tale we all know of course, but it's about the journey, not the destination.
What a fun journey it is! While technically in the Cruel category, it's not an unfair or difficult game. Sure, you will restore a few times due to death, and there are two beginner's traps that can make your game unwinnable early on, (Spoiler - click to show)(missing the key and cutting down the wrong trees too early) but they're not abundant and you can usually tell where you went wrong. It helps to know the story, as the game has you act out every key moment, and it assumes you have that knowledge for at least one scene; namely the olive branch. There is a well-written introduction though, and praying to God in the beginning reveals His plan, giving even someone unfamiliar with Scripture the info they need.
The gameplay is solid, mostly consisting of preparing for the Flood. These are actions that are obvious, but still fun. People forget that text adventures don't have to be slogs, running the player through an interminable gauntlet of brainteasers. There is pleasure to be found in the mundane. Think of all the happiness people have felt maintaining gardens and digging mines in a game like Minecraft. I enjoyed buying supplies, preparing food, finding drinking water, building the ark. The writing is solid. It’s a serious game, but it’s never stoic, stiff, or preachy. Noah’s piousness and care for the animals that God has created comes through, as you move about the Ark and feed each one. Just like when preparing for the Flood, it becomes quite meditative. Though you do need to be careful who gets what food item; there’s just enough for everybody, and some animals will only accept one kind. It’s pretty easy to figure out who gets what. Just be attentive.
It’s a shame that religious games are so often made just to proselytize. This title shows that you can make an approachable, enjoyable game with religious subject matter. For those who fear that I am writing this out of bias, I will disclose that I am an agnostic, though I don't think being Christian would discredit someone from writing objectively on a Christian game. (Not many folks out there singing the praises of Bible Games.)
All in all, I really enjoyed Noah, and have no real complaints. The author went on to write one more game six years later, a text-with-graphics adventure based on The Plagues of Egypt. I can only hope that it maintains the same level of quality seen here.
A Rotten Apple, November 18, 2021What an oddity this game is. At first, it seems pretty good. It's coded well, and makes use of multimedia, with a title screen, music and sound effects. A nifty premise: you're a boy who's been turned into a dog, a mutt specifically, and you have to make yourself purchasable to your mother, who wants a white poodle. You have full access to every doggy action you might think to invoke - great implementation. The writing in general is sharp and economical. The puzzles are all clever and well-designed. (Although the last one is missing some crucial information. (Spoiler - click to show)Watching the TV will mention garlic driving off Dracula, which is meant to clue you to use garlic to get rid of the fleas. However, that involves getting some garlic out of the restaurant. To do so, you must unplug the robot. However, the plug is never mentioned. Nor is any socket. It's a goofy game - how do I know the robot isn't just like Rosie from the Jetsons or C3PO or something? "x plug" doesn't even get a response, you have to just guess that it's plugged in and type "unplug robot". Yuck.) It also has plenty of red herrings, bonus points to score and places to visit that aren't necessary to win. Some good solid work went into this game. Seems like it should be a solid recommendation, right?
Well it would be, but all is not well. The author has a misanthropic streak that taints the whole experience. Every human you encounter is either a crass stereotype or pointlessly cruel. (Except for the hairdresser, and maybe your mom.) The author takes jabs at blacks, asians, the elderly (twice) and more. I cannot discern why - is it meant to be funny? I suppose so, but most adults have outgrown shock comedy. A kid turns into a dog - this should be a family-friendly romp. What's with this tone?
Sadly, that's not even the full extent of the author's mean-spirited, sophomoric attitude. He put several notes in the game mocking the work of Andrew Plotkin, Lucian P. Smith, Graham Nelson, and lastly, with particular venom, Suzanne Britton. (Spoiler - click to show)He calls her a slut, a bitch, and says she ruins the hobby for everyone else. What? How? What did these authors do to deserve vile insults? Nothing. Apparently not liking someone’s work is justification for a personal attack. Also, a bit egotistical to trash acclaimed writers in your very first game, wouldn’t you say? Not that it would ever be okay, but it’s especially stupid when people don’t even have a reason to take your side. These authors you’ve targeted are all friendly, helpful people who have done a lot for IF, and the first impression you’ve given of yourself is not nearly so positive. You're burning bridges before you've even crossed them.
Now about that ego. I forgot to mention that this guy advertises his music and guitar luthiery, both in the credits and in the game. It's a little inappropriate for the contest to advertise your non-IF business, though there's no explicit rule against it, but it's even more ridiculous to expect us to give you money after watching you hurl vicious insults at other writers for no good reason. Your smug condescension towards these authors, the people who enjoy their games, and your overall distaste for humanity in general are awful PR. Why would I buy a guitar from you, Tim, when I know you, like Futz in the game, will likely be muttering about me and flipping me off once I'm out of earshot? Doesn't make much sense.
This was a polished game with some good design. It may seem fun to play in parts, but it's impossible to ignore the rotten core that sits in the middle of it. A sorry waste, but at least Tim was kind enough to not return with more enlightened takes on the good people of the IF community. For that, I’ll say thanks.
Putting the "Good" in the "Good Ol' Days", March 23, 2021This game is awesome. The prose is just right: simple, evocative, but never terse. The puzzles are very solvable; I needed no hints to beat the game, though I may peek at them if I can't get at all three endings on my own. It really hits that sweet spot; it feel like Zork in puzzle design and writing, but without descending into self-parody or fourth wall-breaking, or constant references to the games it's celebrating.
I really do love those puzzles. Not only are there multiple solutions, but the solutions are all plausible and funny. Funny? Yeah, I laughed out loud at both the silliness of both the solutions and their outcomes. Perfect example of cartoon logic done right. They're zany ideas, the kind that you think of and go, "That could be it, but there's no way, that's too clever, it's probably something more boring." Fortunately, Johnson is no boring designer, and your imaginative or fanciful solutions actually work here! Of course, your mileage may vary. Moon logic notoriously varies from person to person. But man oh man, when you and the game are on the same wavelength, it's a great feeling.
I can think of few better games to show a new player to introduce them to old-school text adventures. They can play it on-line easily and it needs no additional documentation. The parser is great, supporting UNDO and a convenient browser save. And it's not some super-easy game that will hold their hand, either.
I can't say enough good things about this little quest. Smart but not smarmy, it's just what a throwback should be.
Simply Beautiful, March 22, 2021This is a lovely, much-acclaimed game that seems to have been slightly forgotten. It's a shame, because outside of a few frustrations, it's a stellar work. You have great implementation. Writing that is atmospheric without ever being florid. A complex NPC with tons of interaction. Fun puzzles that fit into a complex structure. Optional puzzles that point-hunters can look for. There's a little bit of something for everyone.
I love hiking, and this game feels like a hike in the woods. This is the author's first published game, but it certainly doesn't feel like it. Yes, they're writing from experience, but they're not just coding their house. They've lovingly sketched a section of the Pacific Northwest, filled it with new detail, and avoided every first-game mistake. Most of the puzzles (barring one optional one, but hey, last lousy point) are clued well. There's good variety of actions, multiple solutions to problems, and a puzzle structure that puts everything on a timescale. I enjoyed solving something and then figuring out how to schedule it so I could accomplish all goals.
I highly recommend this, which is why I've been so vague. Play it for yourself.
Spoiler discussion below.
(Spoiler - click to show)Okay, so I did praise the puzzles, but there was one I needed a hint for. The pika. I had gotten to the end and the PC was insisting on having eucalyptus for the bath. Annoying, as that's hardly life or death, but fine. Where is it? Obviously, I know it's native to Australia, which the guidebook confirms if you consult it. Okay, let's go ask Bob. He misleads me by saying his wife loved the leaves too. Okay, so now I assume they're in his cabin or something. Nnrt! Wrong! Instead, you have to give the herbs you find to the pika. What? This doesn't work. I know the guidebook says they go into the tunnels and deposit the herbs they find. That doesn't make me think that giving him herbs will let me trade what he finds. And why would I think he could find a non-native plant? Maybe if I could see the eucalyptus trees when on that node, or smell them, or something, but there's no indication that they're growing anywhere. This is a silly puzzle in a pretty normal game. Also, like Andrew Plotkin and Paul O'Brian before me, I have no idea how that egg works. I couldn't get it to appear at all. At least it's not necessary. Blah.
Some funny/odd interactions I came across.
(Spoiler - click to show)If you type "kick bucket", you get the following message: "Bob may be a doctor, but his name isn't Kevorkian."
Typing "give note" to Bob gives this response "He politely refuses. 'I wouldn't miss the chance, if I were you,' he says with a wink."
If you type "sing", it say: "You sing a few bars of 'I Love to Hate Men.' Even if you don't really mean it, that song always lifts your spirits." - this is not an actual song, according to Google, so I'm guessing it's some weird in-joke. Really out of place in a romantic game.
Lastly, a response to O'Brian's quibble about a particular out-of-character PC action.
(Spoiler - click to show)The puzzle he mentioned, where you smoke out the wasp nest. He found it odd that she would burn his toilet paper, so he got stuck not knowing what to burn. What's funny is that you don't have to burn the toilet paper - it's an alternate solution. The solution I found was much more sensible, actually. At any location where there are trees, just "get leaves"; you'll end up with a pile you can put in the bucket and burn under the nest. Same points, same move count, and I think it makes more sense than waving a tiny fire on a stick around anyway. So don't worry. In my game, Bob didn't have an unpleasant surprise when he visited the outhouse that night :)
Two Grams of Magic, March 19, 2021This is an unfinished game from the enigmatic Rybread Celsius. The puzzle of how genuine he was has never been solved, and while some have called him a dadaist, a postmodernist, and a genius, others have denounced him as a mere troll, or someone playing a clever joke by offering up baffling nonsense as art and laughing when pretentious critics praise him. Well maybe the laugh's on me, but I like Rybread's bizarre prose and strangely atmospheric games, even though they are often hard to solve without a walkthrough.
This unfinished fragment from the author is brief indeed, but still has two grams of that twisted Rybread magic. Playing as a little girl, you search your sleeping aunt's house for candy. It's hard to find though, as the game informs you with very little subtlety that your aunt is anorexic, and has thus purged it from the house. There are three rooms, and three pieces of candy to get, but Rybread does well in this small expanse. Two wonderful moments: (Spoiler - click to show)descending into the carpet, and reading about the knife. The way the girl nonchalantly descends is striking and feels like genuine insight into the mind of a child and their imagination. The note next to the knife is chilling, indicating that the aunt's anorexia has developed into body dysmorphic disorder (BDD).
Considering how interesting these few rooms are, it's a shame that Rybread never finished it. I'd like to see more, but I'm glad we have at least this glimpse.
Homebrew Parsing Leads to Laughs (and a bit of creepiness), March 19, 2021This is clearly a programming exercise and is barely playable. It's ultra-short, and the challenge is figuring out the actions necessary for completion. There's little in the way of feedback for any actions that don't lead to progress, and just a few sparse locations, one of which has 90% of what you need to win. I suspect the code behind this is quite simple. The goal is just to go through your morning routine and drive to work. You eat, drink, kiss your family goodbye, and drive away. The drive is very eventful, if you don't grab everything you need, but other than that there's little excitement.
I knew all this going in, having read the hilarious reviews on the game's page. But I wanted to see it for myself, to poke at the game see if it did anything interesting. Sadly, it really is that sparse and empty. I did enjoy reading the small amount of heightened prose. The tone is so strange.
If there ever were to exist a Stepford Husband, it would be this protagonist. He talks about his life with a happiness that feels artificial, spouting platitudes like a pull-string doll, meekly satisfied with everything. He describes his wife, his motorcycle, his toast, and his patio with an equal level of moderate enthusiasm, but never with any specificity. His wife and daughter aren't even named, and can barely be interacted with. Work, the one thing he does complain about, doesn't seem like it actually upsets him. He still sounds like an automaton, denouncing his also unspecified work but still concluding that oh well, it must be done. Throughout the entire game, he keeps saying he does this exact routine, each and every morning. It's definitely not intentional, but the effect is creepy. The brevity and lack of response to anything but the required actions makes it feel like you’re stepping into the mind of a talking display in a museum or a theme park ride, one given consciousness, doomed to live out an eternal groundhog's day without ever being aware that they are doing so.
I read a short horror story like this, where a simple room-cleaning AI for a rich kid thought that all of its actions were autonomous, the product of independent choice, not knowing that its routine lifecycle was one that it couldn't violate if it had been allowed to try. It's a disturbing look at the concept of predestination. What if our actions are all decided in advance, and we're playing out those actions, the phonograph needle of time riding the groove of our life, operating under a mere illusion of choice until the day our song ends?
This game is awful, but in a way that's both very funny and also a little unsettling. I'm grateful for these oddball homebrew games that cropped up over the course of the competition. They served as a great reminder of just how good the tools for making adventure games were, and they remain fascinating curiosities to look back on today.
More Of What We Don't Need, March 16, 2021It's a shame that this game is getting low-rated by alt accounts, because it gets in the way of honest discussion of its merit, or lack thereof. OK Boomer is a hopelessly lopsided, righteously angry, and religiously blind polemic on the sociopolitical zeitgeist. My issue with the game is not necessarily its politics, but rather the way it's delivered.
The game is very short, so I'd recommend playing it before reading on.
There seem to be three points here. 1 - That capitalism and conservatism are fundamentally flawed philosophies supported by the uneducated, uninformed, and racist. 2. That people who support such philosophies need to be more open-minded and have open discourse with those who think differently. 3 - Echo chambers are dangerous places that only serve to reinforce the believer's will.
The irony that the author completely misses is that the narrow-mindedness of the Boomer strawman they have stuffed and erected here is something they are also guilty of. Never once in the game does the author consider that they might be wrong, that they are unwilling to have their beliefs challenged, that their sources of information may be just as guilty of party line rhetoric. They condemn the Boomer for rigidness of belief, of blind conviction, but they never turn those accusations inward. Indeed, the author is so convinced that they're right, that it almost comes across as satire, a biting criticism of the vitriolic op-eds, exposés, and hit pieces that have dominated both sides of the political divide as of late. Sadly, this game seems to be another straightforward contribution to that pile. It extols the virtues of open, honest dialogue, but that's not what it actually advocates. In the end, the positive outcome they portray is a one-sided conversation where the Boomer finally breaks down and admits that the Millennial is right after all. Confession, not conversation.
There is a lesson to be learned here, and it's not what the author intended. That lesson is that we must all strive to be more self-aware, learning to recognize and avoid dogma and ego. The author, much like their strawman, seems utterly convinced of the righteousness of their cause, never questioning their own beliefs, because, after all, they're right... right? It's the other side that has it all wrong! In fact, they, the author, are not just right, they're a good person; their ideas hold moral value. That means the other side is not just wrong, they're evil! So they can't coexist with the other side, or reconcile any difference of belief - the other side agrees with them, or else they're a part of the problem.
That description above is not specific to any one belief system or even politics. Tribalism, authoritarianism, zealotism: all can be tied to instating and enforcing any belief. The critical mistake most people make is assuming that they are the exception. "Well yeah, it is dangerous to be dogmatic, but this is different!" It's not. Fact is, we all share different points of view as human beings. We always have and always will. We're never going to exist in a world where we see the same problems or want to solve them the same way. The key is acknowledging that not all problems have just one solution. Instead of trying to steamroll the other side and enforce your beliefs through power of law, we should strive to actually understand each other, recognize the differences that exist, and learn to live with them. Until we do, moral crusades for the principles of the day will continue to rage, and war and death will always be the wages. The short history of humanity is filled to bursting with those who fight for what they think is right, only to see their empire crumble and their ideology rejected in the new society that emerges from the detritus.
Again, this is not about whether or not I agree with the author or not. In fact, that's the whole point. Even if I think they're correct about each and every point, in the big picture, that doesn't matter, because someone somewhere does disagree, and will not change their mind. Getting along with that person - that should be the goal. The person who sits in diametric opposition to yourself must be approached with kindness, a willingness to maybe be wrong, and the maturity and strength to continue sharing the same planet even when that other person staunchly continues living in their inverse worldview. Until we make this breakthrough, history will repeat itself. With both sides refusing to look for common ground and venomously attacking each other through screeds such as this, I can only hope that the inevitable crumbling isn't any time soon.
As stated in the title, this is more of what we don't need. I encourage the reader of this review and the author of this game to free themselves of echo chambers, to find and befriend people who think differently, to answer less and ask more. I have friends that run the gamut of the political compass, and being able to unite in the common humanity we share has made each of us a little less dogmatic, a little less judgemental, and a lot happier.
A Strong Early Title, September 24, 2020The contest continues in Temple of Vran. The first Ket game mixed reasonable, tidy puzzles with a few impossible actions, intent on making sure sales could peak before people started achieving 100% solutions and assembling the final code. The second game dispenses with this; I'd argue that this game is solvable, front to back, without a hint or a walkthrough. I only needed a few prods here and there to keep moving.
Now it's still not easy, mind you. There is death, items you can waste, mistakes you can make that will render your game unwinnable. But they're fewer and farther between now, and we have no more stalling tactics. Instead, we have a slight upgrade in combat - we can now switch weapons to deal more handily with certain foes. There's far less retreading of the same ground - the game is a bit shorter but covers more area than the cramped dungeon of the first game. More locations, more items, more surprises. These are not always simple interactions, either. We get spatial relationships, one plausible location, some color-matching, and a few Scott Adams pure-logic stumpers. All of them are doable.
The amount of text and the quality of the writing are also improved, and quite funny, as well, both in description and interaction. This is an oldie worth taking another look at. The only real problem is that the follow-up, The Final Mission, is horrible, a truly abysmal game. I say play this one, and imagine how you would like the story to end. You'll save time and tears.
A Perfect, Petite Potrayal of Piratey Plundering, August 26, 2020I've recently started playing the classic Scott Adams games, titles that are referenced often but rarely played anymore. Starting with Adventureland, the first commercial text adventure and building quickly from there, Mr. Adams became a legend in early home computing scene, and his games, originally compressed into grammatical crayon drawings due to space limitations, and then remaining as such for the sake of tradition, became a large influence on those that would follow. His skill at squeezing personality and challenge into just a few kilobytes of data is on full display here, in what is only the second game of the series. It's a marked improvement on the first game in every way.
I'd messed about with these games before, but had never sat down, cracked my knuckles and genuinely tried solving one. So I booted up the proprietary Scott Adam’s Adventure Interpreter 3.4 and got down to business. I planned on playing sequentially, and never using a walkthrough. Adventureland stopped me at the gate though, as I found myself making zero progress. Its throw-everything-at-the-wall locations were also a bit annoying. (The big BOOOMING voice is still super funny though.) I decided that skipping it and coming back later was nobler than caving to the hint book right away, and so off I went on a Pirate Adventure instead. Three hours and no hints later, I was grinning with satisfaction at a 100% score and feeling quite satisfied. I was also left with some musings on puzzle design.
Scott Adams is in an interesting position as a designer here. He can't put clues in room descriptions as he doesn’t have the space. He can’t hide clues in examinations either, at least not often, as there’s not room to add a description to every single item or bit of scenery. (Still be sure to examine though. A few objects do respond, and with crucial hints when they do.) There really is that little space with which to work. Imagine trying to make a series of consistently challenging, fun, and unique puzzles when you have this little flexibility. Every piece has to be out in the open, and you only have a few locations were you can put stuff. It really is a testament to Adams' coding and design skills that he pulls this off consistently the whole game.
The majority of the puzzles are pure logic; as in, you have to deduce from your real-world experience and general knowledge how they might be tackled. As demonstrated in the famous (and infamous) +=3, a pure logic puzzle isn’t necessarily easy; in fact, it can be nefarious and impossible while still remaining within the parameters of logic. There's a sweet spot you have to find. The beauty to this sort of puzzle is that when you solve it, it’s a great feeling. A Eureka moment. Adams picks just the right items and just the right scenarios so that the logical answer can always be deduced. At least, in this particular game and for me personally. As my playtime shows, I was able to move through the game very quickly, never really getting stuck.
The writing also manages to do a lot economically. It’s kind of hard to quantify exactly why the prose in these games is as charming as it is. It’s definitely there though. All of the throwback Scott Adams-style games that have cropped up over the years, often in competitions, that have failed to provide that same feeling, illustrate why Scott himself does it best. Some great moments from this game, paraphrased slightly: (Spoiler - click to show)The pirate’s reaction when you try to sail while holding the book, “Arr, I'll not have that ACCURSED thing on my ship!”; the game telling you to type Weigh Anchor to sail, then just telling you the anchor's weight before giving you the actual command; the eternally squawking, cracker-chasing parrot; and of course the classic misidentification of the mongoose.
Is this worth playing still? Yeah! It’s a fun, light-hearted little treasure hunt, and an interesting look into text adventuring’s early form. Older games often get a bad rap, regularly written off as relics of an era best learned from then forgotten. I play a lot of older games and I've found this reputation to be unearned and unfair. Is this just nostalgia talking? The grumbling of a curmudgeon? Nope. I’m in my early twenties, and my first text adventure was The Things That Go Bump in the Night on Quest. This really does hold up as fun, even today. I'm looking forward to the next game, and my eventual return to the first.
Impossibly Charming, August 26, 2020This little classic is just as charming today as it was in 1997. There's a simple joy to this game, the way it remains sentimental without ever once dipping into the saccharine or the patronizingly childish. You could truly play this at any age and have a wonderful time. After all, who hasn't had a teddy bear or other stuffie that meant the world to them? Though I can't find the clip online, I remember even the rugged Jeremy Clarkson confessing to still having his childhood bear at home, saying that he wouldn't trade it for anything. This game, through its simple, kindly nature, taps into that attachment perfectly.
Several brilliant references here, and they're not only far more clever than just using some phrase, they're part of the puzzles! That's a bit risky on paper, as a total newcomer will not be familiar, but fortunately familiarity proves not to be necessary. You'll just smile a bit wider. This also has one of my favorite default responses for >d - "You tumble down, but being a soft bear, that's ok."
I will confess that one puzzle left me a bit baffled, the one leading to the dark place. Fortunately the game has a perfect in-game hint system, so I wasn't stuck. The only real complaint I have is that we never got something like this again from David Dyte.
Well-Written But Too Easy, August 25, 2020WARNING: Some very mild spoilers throughout.
This one didn’t do it for me. It has some great imagery, and the authors clearly loved making the game. I liked the psychic slant, though it felt more like an extra examine command or hint system in practice. The background story has some promise as well. As a full package, however, it’s not as much fun as it should be.
First off, the authors give themselves a pat on the back as they inform us that the game is full of “stuff". I don’t mind a bit of glib smugness, but it has to be earned. If you’re going to make a claim like that, your game ought to be filled to the brim with items, locations, people to talk to. It better not be an empty medical facility with a large number of one-note rooms, a small number of items, and a story told almost entirely via notes and flashbacks. The implementation is standard too. I was expecting tons of things to examine and sub-examine (and sub-examine). But there’s just a few things per room and very rarely do you get an interesting reaction. Very little show, a ton of tell. The Dreamhold this is not.
The writing is very good, though a bit dry in the less exciting sections. I love the vibe here, a mix of Carpenter and Cronenberg, with a little bit of Verhoven sprinkled on top. Body horror and gore, presented with a wink and a nudge (the washing machine in the basement functioning as a large intestine is ingenious). The descriptions of your psychic abilities are also handled nicely, and the flashbacks are remarkably effective in their design. We have some scary scenes, some entertaining descriptions, and some fun ways to die. Though it is odd how there are a few instances where the PC refuses to kill themself, when most of the time they happily traipse into death with a simple >w. I would have preferred a bit more proofreading. Twice are rooms with a flickering light described as “cinematic". What a mimesis-shattering adjective, one that also doubles, again, as telling in the face of perfectly good showing. Never again, please. Even worse, an exit is left out of one the room descriptions. Being forced to open the walkthrough to see that glaring error made me very unhappy.
There are multiple endings, nine in total, and extra puzzles to solve to obtain them. This may count as “stuff" but it doesn’t do much to entice me, as I’ve never like having to replay a game, or even just parts of a game, just to see a different ending. Usually, there’s only one good one, and its tedious to have to try the others while searching for it. I don’t mind extra endings as a bonus, like in the aforementioned Dreamhold, or as a few simple forks right at the end that I can save and retry. But in general, I prefer one ending, one challenge. The tedium, the sense of running in place that I get when going back after seeing The End on my screen… it’s so unpleasant. This is very much a personal preference, so I don’t hold it against the authors or let it factor much into my rating.
The puzzles are mostly perfunctory, though the optional ones require a bit more brainpower. Overall I was just bored. Waiting in the elevator, going through obvious action after obvious action, going to the next obvious point. The beauty of the text adventure is its ability to engage the player by allowing them to become someone else, to think and act and feel in a strange environment, or in a stranger’s shoes. When what you’re doing is this straightforward, you lose engagement. Again, the extra puzzles mitigated this, but having to veer off the beaten path just to have something interesting to do is a problem. I recently reviewed an older game that also had fairly simple tasks; Noah, for the Spectrum. That difference is that in that game, you had a more compact area, open-ended design (no locked doors or items you have to wait to get), and less tedium. I also consider the standards of the time. In 2010, you can make puzzles that are far more sophisticated, with more moving parts and NPCs. This isn’t a CYOA game. It’s you wandering around a big, empty facility, discovering fragments of a story. Take a page from Silent Hill, not Slender. You’ve created a surreal hellscape, give me some hard puzzles, a way to interact with it that's more complex than pushing one button or collecting a page. Give me some psychic skills, some psychokinesis maybe. Put a real stumper in, make me work for that good ending. I just want a bit more.
I know I’ve been harsh, but I don’t want to hurt anyone's feelings here. This game did have stuff I liked, mostly the writing, which is a very important part of interactive fiction. The game design is just bland when compared to the prose. I’m sure that this game would be great for a novice player. As a more experienced adventurer, I just found it kind of dull. A 2.5 that I'll round up to a 3.
Truly One of the Worst, August 25, 2020The first two Ket games were uneven but fun adventures, full of creative puzzles and charming imagery, two parts of a zany quest, leavened with a bit of Grimm macabre. This game has none of that. It is a soulless, clearly rushed, completely unsolvable bit of cynicism designed to stand between the aspiring contest winner and their prize. One might have hoped that after the tough but fair design of the second game, the third would be even better. Nope. All pretense of fun is thrown out the window as you stare blankly at the text-based companion to Hareraiser.
The problems are numerous. I will try my best to cover all of them. Hmm, let's see, where to begin...
Well, we have a new parser. It sucks. It's very slow and no longer lists exits, for no good reason. It's lacking in color as well. Were they trying to save space? This game doesn't appear to be much larger than the last. Who can tell?
The puzzles are atrocious. Not at first, actually. I got about a quarter of the way through, but after (Spoiler - click to show)zig-zagging to get the giant to break the trapdoor, it all goes to hell in a handbasket. You can only rarely examine anything and get a response. That was true of the last two games, and many other older titles, as well. But you could intuit and deduce item function in those; they took place in an actual world, and the items were used in ways that were plausible, at least most of the time. Here, every item has to be used in some completely illogical, non-intuitive, improbable, and highly-specific context. There are riddles to solve: you will never solve them. Even if you do, figuring out how to communicate the solutions is impossible.
It's absurd, honestly. Some of these could work in a modern game, with more opportunities to examine and experiment. Here, in this limited parser, you're expected to just look at the pieces and see how they would logically fit. That's fine in a game with a internally consistent world. That's how the Scott Adams puzzles worked. It's how they had to work, due to limited space. Here, though, we're doomed, because the author has also sacrificed the writing.
Yes indeed, the writing here is awful. This is a nightmare, and not just in the gameplay sense. It also has the messy, incoherent nature of a bad dream. None of the chunks of world you progress through fit together. This isn't supposed to be Alice in Wonderland, it's meant to be fairy tale fantasy. I've seen this surreal, looking-glass style done well, of course, but here, not only does it fail to match the style of the previous games, it's also written with no punch, no imagination. It's so rote, and the series of key punches you make to slog through it have no connection. The game fails to mention exits so often that you're forced to map a blind maze everywhere you go. It'll say you're in a passage going north and south, but then you go west and boom, there's a room. Vital information is just missing. This is not a finished, tested product.
Trying to get a perfect score is futile. There's so many ways to cheat yourself out of points, one of which is saving. Yup. The game will add further sabotage when you save. And in what is already a buggy game full of instant deaths, cheap hits, (speaking of hits, the combat is all but gone too) and unwinnable situations, that's the cherry on top. It shows you exactly how contemptuous (and contemptible) this whole project is. Why put in the work for the first two entries if for the third, the eponymous final mission, you plan on just throwing together an unsolvable middle finger of a program? What is the point? To avoid giving away the prize? I wonder who won. They earned it, that's for sure.
Even from an historical perspective, this is a truly wretched game, and a squandering of what could have been. I like hard games; that's why I play a lot of older titles. But they have to be fair, be solvable. What I don't like are unfair games, games full of impossible tasks. This all this tape has to offer, and it doesn't even have decent prose to offer as compensation. This is the worst commercial adventure game, of any era, that I've ever seen.
It's... Alright., August 25, 2020Despite its status as a contest game, and its age, this is a perfectly playable game. You're robbed of an examine command for all but your items, but most of what you have to do can be deduced. The key word being most. There are a few completely impossible puzzles in here, thrown in purely to slow progress on the contest. Whether some dedicated geek got through without waiting for a magazine hint is anyone's guess. Fortunately, the other puzzles are easy to intuit and fun to play around with. You'll know when you've run into a brick wall. Peek at a walkthrough and continue on your way.
Of course, you can die left and right, or end up in an unwinnable situation. Combat, step and die traps, missing items, missed information... it's all here in its early 80's glory. But you likely know what you're getting into. This game packs personality into its small bites (or should I say bytes?) of text, and can be fun for those who don't mind a game that hits the hard end of the Cruel ranking. A fun bonus: you can carry over your stats into the second game in the trilogy, which is a marked improvement over this one.
An Exciting, But Flawed, Romp, November 20, 2019I love digging through the archives of 8-bit computer text adventures. There were so many released, due to the widespread availability of user-friendly adventure game engines (such as the one used by this game, The Quill), that you can find yourself in some truly undiscovered territory; games that haven't been played hardly ever since their initial release. Of course, being the era it was, a number of these game can be very difficult, and there may not be much in the way of hints. You also need to hunt down the manual if you want the backstory for most of the games, which is usually essential. But, if you're willing to be brave, you can have a lot of fun.
Which brings us to The Crystal Frog, an oddly-titled, old-fashioned treasure hunt. The story is as simple as can be; there's a valuable artifact called - you guessed it - The Crystal Frog. Go and get it. That's it.
How you go about getting it is the fun part. The game has a vaguely creepy, surreal atmosphere, as move through a series of disconnected environments, solving puzzles and avoiding death. This is very traditional, echoing back to the original Adventure in several resounding notes. You encounter creatures and places from a variety of sources - fairy tales, classic literature, horror, all described laconically and eerily. No one wants to talk to you - NPCs exist to be given what they want, and then vanish. You move between areas like Alice in Wonderland, the world changing with the disquieting suddenness of a dream. Several of the deaths you can experience are quite creepy indeed. All of this seems very intentional, and is a welcome change from the impartial blandness or jovial self-awareness found in other treasure hunt games. Much credit to the author, David Brown, here.
In addition to the titular frog, there are several optional puzzles you can solve for additional points, and your score is given as a percentage, making it easy to gauge your progress. You can die, sometimes without warning, and there's at least one timed puzzle, so save often. The game is small enough that it never becomes an issue, and knowing that death might be around every corner contributes to the game's suspenseful atmosphere.
So, this all sounds pretty good, right? No, it's not very ambitious, and no, it doesn't do anything that new, but it's a game in the classic Adventure/Adventureland style done right - something many try, but not too many pull off (how many games have you played that claim to be "like Scott Adams", and fall so short of fun? Too many for me!). So why the middling rating?
Well, there's a bugged room containing vital information right near the end that makes the game unwinnable, (Spoiler - click to show)(a code you need to open the final door is in a room that, when you enter, makes said final door unopenable. Sadly, a score bonus, for killing a vampire, is hidden there, so you can't get 100%) and prevents you from getting a perfect score. Only way to get past it is to look it up in a walkthrough first, or save in the right spot, go on until you get the information, and then restore back to that point to proceed. It's not quite game-killing, but it does take the wind out of your sails, or at least it did for me. I hate when you can't solve a puzzle legitimately, and I hate not being able to score the full 100%. Some might say that gameplay-wise, it's not that different from learning by dying, but at least that's intended, and you know what happened. Knowing that this was just a mistake, and that you could be wandering around forever before you figure it out (like I did), that just doesn't sit right with yours truly.
Either way, now you know to look out for it, and you can click the very mild spoiler in the last paragraph for a hint on exactly what room it is that triggers the bug. The rest of the game is worth playing, though, and it makes for an enjoyable evening of spooky exploring.
An Interesting Diversion, November 20, 2019This is not a traditional text adventure, in any sense. It consists, basically, of you going about, solving puzzles, as (Spoiler - click to show)the parser itself starts to reveal how much it hates you. Trust me when I say that while that idea sounds stupid on paper, it's executed well and works fine.
Gameplay wise, this isn't too fancy. You have a few simple puzzles before the game starts revealing the twist. Then there's a very annoying section where you have to (Spoiler - click to show)guess a number between 1 and 10,000. Solvable, but tedious. Especially with the computer spouting the same three insults over and over again. It works with the game's theme, but it isn't really that fun. I guess it's not supposed to be.
Overall, there isn't much gameplay here, but as an experimental subversion of your typical text adventure, it's fine.
Genuinely Effective IF Horror, November 20, 2019A surreal and atmospheric game that manages to be genuinely scary, through a combination of strong prose, unnerving sound design, and creative use of the parser. Easily one of the best Quest games, playing to the engine's strengths and cleanly side-stepping its limitations.
The game tells a dark, tragic story. The author has a knack for coming up with very uncomfortable, unsettling imagery that combines mechanical and non-organic form with autonomy and flesh. They do a great job in integrating your actions into the scene at hand, too, forcing you to get up close and personal with your twisted surrounding. You're never just an observer, and this becomes a vital part of the story. The story itself is not told directly, but pieced together handily, and is left open enough in the right areas so as to allow for multiple endings, all of which are worth seeing. It's easy to tell where in the game the paths branch too, so replaying to see them all isn't too difficult. Just be sure to save fairly often.
The only real issues are a lack of proofreading (quite a few misspellings and grammatical errors), and low verb implementation - "use" is your main verb throughout most of the game, resulting in the game being quite easy. I was able to solve it with no hints and little trouble. I think some other people who have mentioned that they found the game hard may not be fully aware of just how much of each room you can examine. Part of the issue is the engine itself. Quest lists the "level 1" items and points of interest, if you will, the obvious ones, in the "Places and Objects" and "Items" boxes, but not the deeper, "level 2" objects, that are listed only in the room description.
A non-spoiler example: You are in a room. You can see a chest and a flowerpot. Both are listed in the Places and Objects box. They are "level 1" items. If you examine the chest, you find that it's unlocked. You open it, and there's a ruby inside. You examine the flowerpot, and you see a lump in the soil. You examine the soil, and you find a buried key. Neither the ruby, the soil, or the key will show up in that Places and Objects box. They are "level 2", and can only be interacted with the conventional way.
A spoilery, specific example from the game: (Spoiler - click to show)one of the hallways has holes in the wall. While not listed in the Places and Objects box, you can examine and find a journal that offers a critical clue in solving the janitor's closet riddle puzzle.
Because of this ambiguity, and because the author writes the game properly, so that everything is mentioned in the room description, I recommend closing that Places and Objects box and just playing based on the text, just like you would in a normal parser. You avoid a lot of confusion. That goes for any Quest game, really. Some of the bad ones will NOT list items in the room description, opting to include them only in the box, but the games that do this are usually rife with so many additional problems so as to render them not worth playing anyway.
Quest rant aside, do play this game. I've avoided spoilers, so turn off the lights, turn up the sound, and experience the game for yourself. Just remember to examine everything (the game does recognize proper shorthand, so just an "x" will do), and remember that the vocabulary is limited, and you should have no problems solving the game and enjoying one of the scariest IF titles out there.
Revision: I also wanted to add that this game must be played in the Quest client. Playing online causes issues with the multimedia, and the game will crash and fail to load audio properly. The Quest client also makes it much easier to browse other games authored in the engine, and is necessary for any game utilizing sound, so playing online is usually best avoided anyway. Cheers!
Weak First Entry, November 15, 2019Playing as The Hulk in a text adventure should be a lot of fun, liberating the player from the usual weakness of early IF protagonists, who often complain that they can't do this, that or the other, usually in regard to matters of physical strength. Sadly, this game, the first in the unfinished Questprobe series, makes little use of the main character's powers. You die in absurd ways, floundering through a very small area filled with annoyingly difficult, often unfair puzzles. The next adventure, starring Spider-Man, fared much better, but this one is a skip.
Not so much a game as it is a paragraph, November 10, 2014I went into this expecting it to be piece of tasteless crap. However, it wasn't even that. There's nothing to do in this "game". Literally. There's not a single command that the game responds to, with the exception of "examine me", which just gets the response, "Looking good". Doesn't help you much.
You start out passed out on the couch, but there's nowhere to go, nothing to interact with, no one to talk to, nothing. I tried every command I could think of. I tried going every direction. I examined everything in sight. No response for any of it.
Another review on the Quest website said that this might be a case of the author doing a test upload. As stupid as that is, if that is indeed the explanation, I think a less lurid title would have worked.
Or maybe the author wrote a full game and something went wrong in the upload process. Maybe the author accidentally uploaded an earlier version of the game and hasn't checked the comments saying that the game is unfinished. Maybe it's been created for overly analytical types like myself to hypothesize about, so the author can have a laugh as we grasp at straws. Who knows?
All I can do is state the obvious, and say, "Avoid this."
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