Reviews by namekuseijin

I was surprised the implementation was pretty rough and lacking verbs and understanding, unlike previous works by the author. It is in fact written in the historic ZIL language and compiled with tools Infocom authors used. Not sure going back to the past is that great.

This is a simple and short satire. There's pretty much exactly just one "play mechanic" and there's no real need for any walkthrough. When you see it, you'll know exactly what to do to impress that ogre...

As far as satire and short, entry-level works of IF, this is pretty good.

here's this game's blurb:

"Explore the wizard Bartholloco's castle with the help of a versatile magic wand. Can you overcome his challenge? Can you levitate a rock? Can you slice a baltavakia?

(Puzzle-oriented and family friendly.)"

sounds cool, huh?

no, no it is not cool. At all.

You see, there's a whole generation of players, and now authors too, that have never played text-adventures before. And yet, they try to make one - perhaps for some kind of retrogaming kink. One or another author may however surely have played one of these cool CYOA things, where you just tap/click your choices away (if any, that is, instead of just a disguise for click-next) to move the story forward.

But still they try to make ye text-adventure of ole. So, the first thing they do is to get away with verbs - it's a depressing trend really. In this game, you can only go directions, examine stuff and point a wand at things. No inventory-management (taking stuff makes the PC receive a shock).

Now that it is constrained enough that even Grunk or cyoa players can play it, it's time for real meat of the "gameplay": the wand comes with 3 colors in the shaft and by changing the color-combinations you can really make things go exciting! You have a color combo for OPENING THINGS and possibly many other useful actions!

Now isn't that ingenious and original? Instead of boring the player out of finding some key to a door or something, you make the player tinker with the colors in the wand until they find a combo that works for OPENing a door! Wow, isn't that versatile wand something? It really made it worthwhile to delete all the standard verbs and make it so mindnumbly dull to make simple things happen! It is almost as ingenious and versatile and constraining as that char-removal device in Counterfeit Monkey, right?

seriously, get a grip...

so, not interested in the gameplay, writing is kids level, setting is as generic as possible, yadda-yadda-yadda. I'll give one more star because I feel it's written in good will.

BTW, I didn't enjoy DiBianca's walking simulator last year either... my suggestion is to play some real older parser IF (because new parser IF is all fucked up) and to get back to the drawing board...

guess what? I very much prefer the interactions-dialogues via graphical symbols - quite easy actually as you only have to choose between 2 pairs or so, in contrast to old time guess-the-verb - in this game than the actual text, spelled-out in god-slow typing animation, which seems made for small children or retards and really goes like:

The TV is droning. The front door is closed.

You look at the clock.

You look at the door.

You wait.


Grunk would be pleased. I didn't and gave it a 3 for the originality in the new take on guess-the-verb... and guess what? 3 there might well be about 2 or 1 here...

seriously, each year IFComp comes shockful with kids more illiterate than in previous years. Why even try to make a text game in the first place when you can't or don't like to write or read?

How about dropping the games and reading a good old book to learn how to actually write?

poor guy uses twine to write out his inner rage against those lucky few economic elite bastards

this clickable static fiction reads so single-mindedly and plays so linearly that even the author seemed to get bored with it and thus finally offered one more choice, one that seems central to the plot:



Emma takes a "gap year" after graduation in order to find out what she really wants to do with her life.

> Travel, vacation, shopping! London, Paris, Milan, Tokyo, New York!

> Compassion and volunteer work. Helping the poor in society and striving for a fair and just world.



it was obviously very out of character for Emma, thus I chose the latter and guess what?


It was tedious and uninteresting work, and she decided to find something more useful to with her life instead.


sure enough, there was no real choice in the single-minded rage propaganda with a 1-dimensional character about as deep as the author's mind... so much for choice-games... the only real choice here is to keep churning and filling ifdb with 1-star clickable static fiction...

Kill or be killed in a manichean fictional setting. is it possible to even get killed? Perhaps it's random or just happens to be one of the possible static outcomes in this hypertext

Seriously lacking too in breadth of action: got to a single finale by just linearly clicking single choices offered, like opening a drawer. I wasn't impressed enough to try other paths.

Frankly, last year's IFComp title 16 Ways to kill a vampire at McDonald's is just way more polished and better executed game of the same genre and theme.

click your way through this short linear single joke to find out

(Spoiler - click to show)YOU'RE THE GREEEEEEEEAAATTTTTEEEEESSSTTTTTTTT TTTTTTHHHEEEERRREEEEE EEEEVVVVEEEERRR WWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSS

kids, don't try to write when high, ok?

for thumbdowners: it's an extremely short review for an extremely short piece of barely interactive crap induced by cocaine. Click on the "Twee" link over there to see what I mean... seems like fame is not doing our favorite alien IF writer much good.

no, it's not interactive when it demands a "page turn" for each new word in the text. text effects don't turn it more interactive either, nor does the parser-like text links

screw you, bear sonny

I don't play IF with sound on, so I wouldn't know. Presentation is terrible with horrible cyan fonts over a background the color of dry blood.

Not IF: you read (bad) prose and click a link in the bottom to "flip the page". The story is about some boy with bad haircut who wears a shirt reading "fight the system" and doing it by revolting at competent literature by writing shitty literature I didn't care enough to read.

but I did give one more star because I think it's done in good faith and the author is probably just unaware about what IF is about.

This is not interactive fiction. It is a humorous satire of an immensely shallow mobile game/spyware that took the world by storm a few months ago and that pretty much faded into oblivion ever since. And while I did enjoy the satire aspect and humor very much, it still plays out just as shallowly and repetitive as the game it took for inspiration, so I just couldn't bother to go on and catch'em all let alone go into the Nyantech HQs and do whatever it was supposed to happen.

Didn't like that excuse for a game, didn't dig this excuse for an IF. :)

perhaps I'm missing something extra, like in Cadre's Nameless, Endless? if so, I may well revise it, but I won't hold my breath...

OK, REVISION PENDING:

ok, almost a year ago it seems like I reviewed it before even entering the Nyantech HQ. Since I hate Pokemon, I ended up hating this one too just for its subject matter, but I should know better to expect sheer brilliance from the same duo from Rover's Day Out, Hoosegow and others. Game's well worth it, just laugh your way with the satire until you get more proper IF from inside the building.

sorry for the initial rant

As much as I hate to give this thoughtful piece of a fiction just 3-stars, I can't reason how it could be any different: it's not quite interactive, but its fine prose and imaginative setting deserves something. Actually, by the end it turns out to be pretty evident that some kind of metacommentary on the IF community is at the heart of it all and that kinda ruined it to me.

(Spoiler - click to show)A girl is outcast from her village. The eldars actually wanted her dead, but she flees and survives her pursuers, eventually settling on an abandoned hut in the forest. Day after day she lives the miserable life expected from freedom: hunting for food (actually, choosing this or that link), customizing her hut (choosing this or that irrelevant link) and surviving some random encounters with past acquaintances who want her dead and either killing them or fleeing. She also finds a pack of wolves who were supposed to eat her, but don't feel like it and learns not much from it. Then some inevitable day one such encounter with villagers get her nearly killed, but she's helped by some ancient being and cast as some kind of undead. She now can hear spirits and have her vengeance on the village, by destroying the token of their traditions. She's really shown them how not to mess with sacrificial women, bastard eldars. oh, I got end 1, but no achievements unlocked, too bad.

anyway, I really liked the beginning and I liked the prose. Good writing is always scant in IF these days all with twitter fiction fans and all. But I felt that second person singular did nothing to me here. I was never under the illusion I could actually do anything, it didn't engage me into it. And while prose is good, there's not enough of a story there. The prose goes all about into trying to set the mood, to set you in the shoes of the character by lots of sensations, smells, tactile feedback thrown at you. It was almost like text VR! unfortunately, did little to me. Which is weird to say because I took quite some time with this one, so in a way, I was pretty engaged.

But now I've seen most of it and felt like I accomplished little here. I did have 2 parallel playthroughs with it, so I know there's lots of text you only see one way or the other, if one enjoys multibranching hypertext.

BTW, I truly loved the visual style of it. gorgeous and mood setting typography. at least that twine gets right. or is it plain css? anyway...