Reviews by AmberShards

Although the Z-Files review nails the essence of the game, there's a few other aspects worth commenting upon.

Bloodline is probably the best use of the one-room game setup besides Marika the Offering. All of time telescopes to a single handful of fragmented seconds as you play a game with a guy you adore. It's not nearly that Romantic, of course.

The game is wildly inconsistent about the objectives of the main character. Is it to have a first kiss, or to get laid? Yes, 13-year olds totally like "going all the way" does happen, but that doesn't mean it's pleasant to participate in such a game. This is one of those situations where it'd be nice to know before playing what was in the game. (The game does not mention the main character's concerns about fitting in, although that could be a possible -- albeit poorly-worded -- conclusion that would also fight against her other comment.)

Outside of the profanity and the implications of sex, Bloodline captures the feeling of a slumber party well: the cliquishness, and the sudden emotional changes, particularly.

Finally, the pacing is lackluster, as the game really consists of only four turns at the end; everything else is simply waiting for your turn and additional cluing.

The Couch of Doom explores one of those humorous and almost painfully realistic scenarios -- motivating yourself to face the world (in this case, by getting up off of a couch) when you really don't want to. Sounds fun, right? Unfortunately, the fun in this case is mostly window dressing.

The small things first. Some verbs just don't do anything (like READ INVITATION). Some verbs that you'd expect to be there aren't (like PET SHAYS). Purple prose abounds, which is more annoying than usual given that this is a one-room game. It's even more annoying that the game mentions a computer many times, yet it's not accessible, which knocks the realism factor down quite a bit.

All those aren't fatal flaws, though. However, Couch also doesn't tell you when your mood changes, and if mood is roughly equivalent to points (or at least progress), it's important that the player realize the effects of his actions. What if I had done something to knock my status down and didn't realize it? It's unfair to not tell the player about important changes to his world. Yes, I used a masculine pronoun back there, and that's because the sex of the main character is never mentioned directly. You can discover it by interacting with one object, but that's not the point. Games shouldn't hide important information from players!

I might have been able to slog on to the end, but the final and dooming problem was that the game was dreadfully missing clues. The entirety of Couch consists of trying things at random until you find something that makes you feel better; that this could be argued as realistic doesn't mean that it makes for an enjoyable game. Besides, even the most dispirited have an internal dialog that gives them some clue what would lighten their mood. That's wholly absent in Couch.

I understand that the deadline for the Jay Is Games contest was aggressive and that many games didn't have the luxury of beta-testing. That's why the little things aren't the problem here, but the fundamental design issues are. If you have only so much time, then make sure that the design is solid first. The Couch of Doom, at least in its current state, would best be appreciated by puzzle-solvers with patience.

Yes, this is yet another Lovecraft IF horror, so you know what to expect: sea creatures, 1800's-esque mansions, the occult, and of course, nonsensical gibberish that's supposed to be ultra-scary, or something. I'm no fan of these boring horror tropes, but "Manor" sucks you in without presenting itself as Lovecraftian initially. Therefore, I have to give it backhand kudos for pacing.

However, pacing alone doesn't redeem the game. Spelling errors, underimplementation, lack of clueing, and guess-the-verb abound. Perhaps the game can be finished, but its unfinished nature will trip up many players long before they reach the end (or quit upon discovering its Lovecraftian nature). The descriptions it does feature are sparse, barely-there wisps of words, almost placeholders. The only thing that saves the game from one-star land are a few original scenes that crop up about mid-way through. (Spoiler - click to show)Particularly, when you read the journal in the office, and once you talk to your uncle. The latter I'd even go so far to describe as inspired.

Another good point that I must begrudgingly concede: the puzzles are not difficult. They don't get in the way of the story and they don't feel artificial when they do occur; some may complain that they are too easy, but I'd rather have it that way than the reverse.

All in all, Manor is a semi-interesting game, and probably a cult classic if you love yourself some Lovecraft. The game isn't finished, but I do hope that the author fixes it up, because it'd be a shame to let the few good scenes go to waste.

This is one of those games where you have to play over and over again in order to find the secret combination that allows you to win. The problem with this game -- as with all games of this sort -- is that emotion is crushed by the bus of monotony. You need prose that really hits home in order to motivate players to replay a game repeatedly, and Grief doesn't come close to such prose.

I played the game through once, and while I was surprised by the ending, I wasn't motivated to play it again -- nor did I have much hope that victory was achievable, given the name of the game. I suppose that's another way to play this game: just once, lose, and then reflect upon the nature of grief. However, even that method of playing is unsatisfactory, due to the just-the-facts-m'am style of prose. So what does Grief achieve? It manages to be decently coded, threadbare, and unmotivating.

Upon reading the introduction, I was thoroughly baffled. First, if you represent 3-D objects by common 2-D representations (a circle for a sphere, for instance), how is that new? Why create a whole new term to sum up common painting techniques? Second, I was baffled by how a painting style could express itself in words. Playing the two games only confirmed my generally dismal impression of abstract art, especially abstract art as interactive fiction (fiction presumes a narrative, after all). In any case, the two works, Black and White, purport to represent two extremes: no freedom and unlimited freedom.

White places you in a world that you have created and gets away with generic descriptions by claiming that you have made these things, so there's no need to describe them in detail. However, White has bugs. Typos abound and the room title never matches the status line. The interaction consists of an ELIZA (artificial psychologist) approach that is somewhat less interactive than that AI experiment. Here, the narrator comments in glowing terms on everything you do, but nothing you do has any effect. This is unlimited freedom in an abstract and ultimately purposeless way.

Supposedly Black represents the other extreme -- an utter lack of freedom; however, White didn't represent freedom in any meaningful sense, and Black doesn't represent lack of freedom in any meaningful sense. The opposite of freedom in IF would be a static story, but Black presents no story, only a one-room exercise in frustration. (Spoiler - click to show)Every single command generates the same response, except for one. After typing in "QUIT", Black responded, "There is no way out of this darkness." "Yes there is," I said, and quit the interpreter.

Philosophical struggles can fuel great prose and make for engaging interactive fiction, but "Suprematism in IF" completely forgot about the "fiction" aspect of IF. Neither Black nor White addresses the fundamental nature of story; both focus strictly on puzzles, and as a result, come off as cheap, cynical, and ultimately, unsatisfying philosophical experiments.

Neither experiment delivers anything original as far as philosophy goes, either, serving up only the reheated dish of nihilism. Saying that there is no hope in either freedom or lack of freedom, both are chains, both are prisons -- that itself is a false equivalence; many, many people have given their tears, their sweat, and their blood to be free. They were not satisfied by such simplistic equivalences, and neither was I satisfied by "Suprematism in IF".

Glowgrass presents a future that is shrived of emotion and a time where natural resources are nearly depleted. This perspective is unavoidable, due to every room and every object being described in the same mathematical manner with salient environmental preachments. This approach made the game not very enjoyable, but I was able to muddle through until the bugs and the under-implementation hit.

Trying to (Spoiler - click to show)plug things in or connect them is a well-known problem with this game (see prior reviews). If you use the word "connect" by itself, you'll get a loverly TADS error. And if you type "HINTS", guess what? There aren't any! However, the ABOUT tells you that this game is not a puzzle-fest, but a story. That's cold comfort when you're left wondering what to do with the objects that you can't fit together in any way.

There are a few interesting moments that I was able to discover, but they don't make up for the dispiriting and frustrating whole.

This is probably the shortest IF game in existence. It has fewer options than Aisle; it takes less time than other one-turn games like Pick Up the Phone Booth and Die. Unfortunately, it doesn't compensate the player for either of these two restrictions. The writing, while satirizing well-known IF games and H.P. Lovecraft, does so in an over-the-top pulp style that's old hat. The endings seem tacked on and gauche; the most interesting thing is the whole setup, and as a result, the game is barely worth playing.

Some will complain that this game is not valid IF, but others have said the same thing about other one-turn joke games as well. You do have an option (singular) which gives you interactivity, although a very small amount of it. Magic Travels is best enjoyed as a satire about IF and common IF themes. It's not especially thoughtful satire, but what were you expecting? On the plus side, even if you hate it, it's very short.

This is another game where I must be immune to the charm, as Muse didn't strike me as either particularly emotional or Victorian. Although bugs threatened mimesis (you can carry around your trunk even though the game tells you it's too heavy, you can talk to the minister without introducing yourself), it was the lack of direction that really confused me.

There are no points that I could discover, and I had no idea whether what I said was leading anywhere or whether it was more idle conversation. Muse doesn't clue in the player when the PC makes progress and the PC doesn't often think about his conversations; it's very frustrating and left me just guessing topics and trying them out with every NPC.

The story cries out for a immersive world (say that you and the painter get angry; why can't you buy him an ale?), but instead it's bare-bones implementation time. I'm sure that there are certain paths that you should take, but I'm left mystified as to what they are.

I guess I could fight my way through to some ending, but I've got better things to do than spend an hour or more guessing the conversation topic. Muse aims high (Victorian romance) and sadly, falls short.

Marika the Offering presents a situation where every moment counts, and unlike most IF games that strive to achieve this with multiple exclamation points, Marika does this through a believable plot, a creative setting, and sharp characterization. The back story can be read by typing "STORY" instead of dumping the information on the player; while it is useful reading and it adds to the atmosphere, the back story is simply too long-winded and in need of a good edit.

The setting is the inside of a tower, although your goal is not to escape, but to prevent the Count from entering. It's a refreshing twist on the customary one-room theme that hasn't been equalled (or even attempted) since. As you might expect, the atmosphere is one of gothic desperation, which proved quite enjoyable.

The gameplay is where Marika unravels, unfortunately. Initial descriptions of items are useful, but succeeding descriptions are threadbare. Most puzzles are hinted well, but a critical puzzle is not, and furthermore, its solution is not at all obvious. Yet it's apparent that the author spent time on the gameplay, given the clever use of Marika's situation to govern her responses to unknown words and the utility of the death scenes.

On the whole, Marika is an enjoyable although frustrating game. The lack of clueing for an important puzzle, the lack of descriptions, and the threadbare responses all drag down what could have been an excellent effort, leaving it stranded as simply good and promising. Marika is one of the few games that cries out for the author to give the game one last go, not only for the sake of tantilizingly-close excellence, but also, because you've come to care about the well-sketched character.

POTA2 has many compelling elements -- a creepy atmosphere, a believable plot, a snarky narrator, and a dash of humor; however it also features features missing punctuation, erroneous game messages, profanity, a bare-bones implementation, and a throw-away ending. The result is a playable, moderately enjoyable game that fizzles out at the end.

As far as the atmosphere goes, horror often needs moments that release tension so that it doesn't become unbearable; POTA2 provides those points in just the right amounts (for example, note the name of the Ferris wheel contrasted with the rest of its description). The plot is basic, but functional and believable, but the main puzzle is thrown off-kilter by the uneven scoring system. I thought that the game was much larger than it turned out being due to that alone; a third or more of the points result from one action at the very end of the game. And speaking of that action, a false message leads you to believe that there's another item you have to find, when that is not the case.

The implementation's bare-boned nature also misleads you into thinking that there are more tasks to complete; in an absence of guidance, you're left to experiment endlessly with no clue as to whether you're on the right path or not. This encourages you to waste time on red herrings and not use certain items for their intended purposes. Even those intended purposes are not obvious because they are, in at least one instance, a stretch.

The ending came as a complete surprise, and an unwelcome surprise at that. Apparently winning involves making a certain choice at the beginning of the game in an area which you cannot get back to in order to do something that is wholly unethical -- in short, something which I would never have thought to do, and which would be out of character for the PC.

On the whole, POTA2 initially tastes good, but leaves you with a bad aftertaste, much like a diet soda on a hot day.