Ratings and Reviews by AmberShards

The Woods are Dark begins well, with a splash of Irish color, and also as others have noted, provides a reasonable justification for exploring a haunted house. However, once you are past that and the first handful of room descriptions, all the flaws of a carelessly-coded ADRIFT game come to the fore.

For instance, you generally can't interact with objects once you've achieved whatever you were supposed to do with them, even if they are still referenced in the room description. The default responses to interacting with scenery objects (or objects deemed now unimportant or not yet important) are flat-out denials that the object exists. The two-word parser is chafing, especially in a modern IF game. The atmosphere is better than average, but the puzzles are completely unclued and don't move the plot forward at all; they barely add to the atmosphere.

Even for horror afficianados, The Woods Are Dark doesn't deliver much. Its limitations far outweigh its delivery. Past the intro and the first few rooms, it's all downhill from here.

I swear that I don't understand some IF games, and this is one of them. After fiddling and fiddling with the game, I can't find anything to do. You're chained to some guy and you can't escape. In the end you're back home. What happens in between the two points is really just one long exercise in frustration.

The whole "Spend time talking to someone you hate" thing is not fun AT ALL. (Maybe the female gender loves this sort of thing for reasons I'd rather not psychoanalyze. Someone did add this game to a romance list. Yeah. That in itself is creepier than the entire game.) And it's a one-room game, so your claustrophobia is off the charts, but not in a creepy or terror-inducing way, but in a frustrating way. You might end up quitting the game out of boredom before the end comes, but if you hang around for it, there's nothing spectacular awaiting you. That's the ultimate insult.

The ending itself doesn't even seem that awful, so the entire point of the game is pointless. Not only that, but the big feature of the game -- conversation -- is implemented as standard ask/tell. No, there are no topics. No, there is no "Talk" verb. Argh! And if that wasn't enough, there are profanities included for your discomfort, reminding us that the PC is just as scuzzy as the NPC.

So to sum, there's nowhere to go, no-one to root for, and nothing to do.

Baluthar features horror tinged with science fiction, in a rare example of where elements of the two genres fuse into a cold, grim, dreary concoction. (Yes, that is praise!) It has a rather rich back-story and gives you a flavor of dread with an opening quote from Ecclesiastes (one of the heaviest books in the Bible). With all this said, it doesn't go for the atmospheric or emotional jugular, but rather presents puzzles along the way that -- if they worked -- would support the unfolding of the story nicely. Unfortunately, all progress halts at the door scene. The answer isn't too hard to figure out, but it just doesn't work. It's a shame, really. I was looking forward to seeing how Baluthar turned out.

Did I play the same game as the other reviewers? Reading the reviews and the contrasting their sparkling appreciation to what I experienced makes me seriously question if most of the reviewers are on high-grade antidepressants or terminally too-nice. Shaking off that bit of strangeness, let me say first that I started playing Violet expecting a lot. (Yes, those reviews did bias me towards expecting something off-the-charts good). Reality was a bit lacking in comparison.

First, the narrator (Violet) is wearying. Yes, you can say that she's cute; yes, there is this whole exotic appeal to her, but the endless needling, the superiority, and the martyr complex simply wear you down after a while. She is so overdramatic that it drains your energy. Women like her are why guys collapse into saying "Yes, dear," and try to do whatever their wives want, simply to be left in peace.

With that said, the game itself is strangely unforgiving. To solve the puzzles, you must instinctively disregard what Violet wishes. Furthermore, you often have to (Spoiler - click to show)destroy the very things that celebrate your relationship. I'm not sure what the author intended, but that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's like I'm being forced to annihilate love.

Worse, the puzzles themselves are poorly clued, and often feature an exceedingly strict parser (for instance: "ear" doesn't work, but "ears" does), or important details that should be present when you examine something, but are missing. I've never used the hints on any game as much as I did with this one. This left me feeling very frustrated. I understand that the puzzles are odd, but if that's the case, then shouldn't near-misses be subtly nudged towards the answer? Instead, they are rewarded with standard responses. Probably the most egregious example of this was (Spoiler - click to show)the whole slingshot ordeal.

The ending felt more like how you feel after reaching dry land after being at sea for a few days: you're filled with relief that it's over. Yet even here, the relief is not admixed; there's a bit of creepy cruelty present as well. I'm definitely unsure that I would go to Australia with Violet if I were the main character.

That's another thing -- the main character is a guy who's apparently rather loose, and the game features quite a bit of sexual innuendo. The fact that it's couched in humor doesn't ameliorate the facts of the situation. In one scene, you're listening to the the PC's ex and another man engage in various unspecified sex actions from behind a door. Yuck.

The game features snappy dialog, a seamless conceit that never once breaks memisis, and an interesting narrator. The execution of the puzzles, however, is unfair and frustrating. There are also a few bugs remaining (for instance, there is no response to throwing the coaster). Taking it all into consideration, Violet isn't fantastic, but it could be improved quite a bit by cluing the puzzles better and by implementing a few more verbs.

Although it is set in an apartment, All Alone is head-and-shoulders above other such room-limited games, because it successfully induces all of the claustrophobia that other games only hint at. Here, claustrophobia, paralysis, and isolation, all spiral together into a cold sweat of undiluted terror. On the analytical side, this is pure stalker-horror with the player as the potential victim. The setup uses the limitations of the setting and even of IF itself to bring the aforementioned emotions into play. It's quite effective, and the emotions are compromised only by the profanity towards the end.

However, there is nothing original about the antagonist, and the PC's inability to fight back is also rather stereotypical. I found it frustrating that she could not use the phone as a weapon or that she had not taken any precautions at all, especially given that there had been multiple murders recently.

Still, it is a well-done example of the stalker-horror genre, and it's worth playing.

The game starts off cutely and then right after that smacks you with a puzzle that defines unfair. It's not clued and there is no way to get anywhere in the game without pulling the good old "examine everything" bit.

Then you have a parser that doesn't know common verbs (like knock), and a lot of purple prose. Seriously, there are very few objects in the four-doored vault area and there's purple prose? Not only that, but there are bugs.

Once you make it past a door, you'll find puzzles that are just as annoying, and perverted NPCS to boot. One of the puzzles is a riddle. Another puzzle (get this) is a mathematical word problem. It was at this point that I gave up. I thought games were supposed to be entertaining.

Building is an atmospheric surreal/horror game with puzzles that are loosely connected together. As far as tone goes, it is darkly romantic through and through. It won't appeal to puzzle fiends, but atmosphere junkies will find it more to their liking. Theme? The nature of the modern workplace, seen through a very cynical and mourning mirror.

There are no bugs that I'm aware of; the game is playable and winnable. The puzzles are fair and not difficult except for one, which is challenging. I designed it that way so as to not disrupt the atmosphere.

It is influenced by Babel, so fair warning would be if you don't care for that style of gameplay, you won't enjoy Building much either.

This game is like a sketch, a very rough one done in charcoal, that shows some hints of what the finished drawing could be. I wish folks would not release unfinished games as you go into a game expecting to be able to DO SOMETHING and find out that you can't. Sigh.