Reviews by Nusco

A curious short story about a tourist lost in Santa Fe and looking for his group. Simple, with retro-style puzzles. Ultimately too insubstantial to be satisfying. At least it doesn't make promises that it can't keep.

An earnest attempt at a mistery/action story. Very rough around the edges, with lots of edges. The "unexpected twist" in the end can be seen approaching from miles ahead.

A messy alien abduction story with a bunch of puzzles that range from the interesting to the totally pointless. Nothing to write home about.

An interesting "create" command lures you into fantasy B-games hell. Missing item desciptions and increasingly random story elements make this one involutarily humorous. It can be completed by using ESP or a walkthrough.

A short and very bland whodunit, where you don't really care about who did it. It feels like a series of in-jokes between the author and her acquaintances. The setting, a small private airport, is original, and it kept me playing.

A satirical game about the current Iraqi war. Pointless puzzles, confusing map and very peculiar humour. Wait a minute... That is humour, isn't it?

Zany fantasy game where the author jumps here and there trying to make it all feel part of a theme. Some of the long monologues are so bad, they deserve cult status (or maybe the author is very young?). Everything, including the "light" theme, is all over the place.

Short, underimplemented game about a guy escaping from somewhere. It's sci-fi, but it could be just about anything. Pointless and juvenile in its approach to story and character.

Sci-fi with neither the sci nor most of the fi. Some robots, some uninspiring locations, a generally sloppy feeling. The author's hints are as subtle as a slap in your face, but the puzzles felt too difficult anyway.

"Astronaut in peril" plots were all the fashion in the 2004 IF Comp. This one is another point against home-brewed parsers. The real-time technology never really comes through, while the bugs and parser limitations do. The prose and puzzles don't really help.