Reviews by AmberShards

As others have noted, the writing is top-notch and places the player in a believable penumbra of the Zorkian universe. The over-the-top humor is also well done. The first glaring problem, however, is that the PC's actions and restrictions just don't make sense. Adventurers are known for trying all sorts of things in order to solve puzzles; it's their nature. Thus, the game fails right from the outset with a PC that is effectively straitjacketed.

The responses are entertaining -- at first, until they become tiresome and opaque. Apparently the puzzles depend upon doing random things until you figure out the secret parts of various objects that allow you to solve them. I say "apparently" because after 100 turns and still not a single point, I gave up in frustration.

Beyond the mindlessly illogical PC, the unclued nature of the puzzles, and the ridiculous catch-all behavior of the troll, there's not much to really set apart Enlightenment as a game. Don't misunderstand -- the writing is excellent, but the game mechanics are not, so as a game, Enlightenment just doesn't deliver the goods. I suppose you could spend an afternoon banging your head against the wall, but why do that? If you need to resort to hints to get even the first point, you might well love this game. Me, I'm not in favor of games that frustrating.

Enlightenment is basically for masochists only.

Although tagged as a humorous game, the humor consists of third-grade non-sequiturs, and different ways to die whenever you fail to guess what the author was thinking. Yes, spelling errors show up; no, there are no hints for the puzzles you're trying to solve. The description is right -- it is hard to win, especially when you have no idea what you're supposed to be doing. To call Epyk a humorous game, even a sophomoric humorous game is too kind.

Eric's Gift is a linear and rather stilted example of interactive fiction. The mood it presents is faintly wistful, but too tranquil to inspire much interaction. I suppose that works after a fashion, but what interaction is required is cryptic and not well-clued. As a result you must guess the verb repeatedly or examine everything to progress to the next scene. Not even the inline hint system prevents frustration.

What can you say? It's an Introcomp entry, so it's not finished. It's tough to write a fair review of something that isn't done because you have no idea whether what you experience will be the tenor of the game or whether it will change the further in you get. Honestly, all Introcomp entries should be thrown off this site because there are so many unfinished games here already, but if I tried to wipe this page, I doubt that people would let me.

Anyways, what you have here are three rooms and a quote box in the second one that won't go away until you type in another command. There's nothing new here but the concern for the characters is unusual. You have a sense that things matter and it feels like tragedy. I think this story could end up as a moderately good game, but I'm not sure how long it would be.

I'll admit it; I've never been a fan of Whyld's sparse and over-the-top humorous games, which is why I downloaded this one with a bit of trepidation, even fear. What I discovered was, given the author's previous games, stunningly well-written. The game itself layers the dread stone by stone until you feel the weight of the dread conclusion hurtling at you like a freight train. There's only one problem: a handful of turns before the climax, at the penultimate moment, you are kicked back to a previous scene with no way to escape from it. I really, really, hate to give two stars because the writing is so good, but at least running Spatterlight, you can't finish the game.

I'm wondering what game the other folks reviewed, because the version of Ecdysis available at the download link to the right and up a bit is spartan and under-implemented. I have no problem with games occasionally yielding up gems of purple prose, but this game implements so few objects that virtually everything is purple prose. That's frustrating and especially so when you're trying to avoid the main ending.

The bare-bones prose works until you start actually exploring the rooms and feel the linear plot snug around your neck. Then you wonder why the author couldn't bother implementing default responses and why the game knows so few verbs. Not only that, but objects disappear or appear only when it suits the plot.

As for the alternate endings, I couldn't find them, and after a while of fiddling with the game, I just couldn't see the point in it. It's a horror game and a Lovecraftian one at that, so there's no hope of a happy ending here.

Points for a creepy atmosphere even though the whole Lovecraft approach is tired and kind of silly.

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.