In this game, you pick your gender and characteristics and start building your own little corner of hell.
You have a catalog that you can buy stuff from, including new room types (represented by gemstones). You dig out rooms in any direction you want, then drop a soul in it. You get 1-3 points for each soul you place in a room. To get more points, you might have to buy a torture device or set a demon in charge of the person.
I went up levels pretty quickly, but eventually stalled. Many reviewers (and me) have come to the conclusion that the game is unfinished, and you can't actually play it in the intended way. This same author went on to wrote several more massive games with brilliant systems that ended up not being implemented.
I played the sequel to this game before this one. In both of the games, the details are really attended to; the graphics are well done, the writing is polished, and the game is segmented into nice, easy segments.
This game is about a house with a magic inhabitant. Crazy stuff happens all of the time in this house; lava, magic rooms, moving pictures, etc.
I didn't really get caught up in the game, but it is well done.
In this game, you are part of an anti-smoking ad, and you are supposed to die dramatically. But you keep getting distracted by everything around you.
I enjoyed the variety of deaths and non-deaths, as well as having a main antagonist whom you have a sort of relationship with, rather than a romantic interest.
In this game, you are helped by a ghost to understand a variety of logic puzzles, including a chess puzzle, forming a magic square, and playing the 'Lights Out' game on a 3x5 board.
For puzzle fans, this is a pleasant diversion, with Schultz's usual good implementation.
Honestly, I expected more of Nate Cull, author of games such as the incredible Glowgrass and the polished Frobozz Magic Support and Nevermore.
This game is a poor imitation of Rybread Celsius. Rybread was known as one of the worst IF authors of the late 90s. He had frequent typos, and often withheld critical information from players, and had bizarre, humorous writing.
This parody is essentially limited to the bad spelling and the Adventure references. I felt that the author's could have done much better here.
This game is a classic logic puzzle with a lot of hints or red herrings to its solution.
You wear a spacesuit with a lever that records your movement in a certain way.
The implementation of the surroundings is fun here. Schultz's well developed style shows through.
This same logic puzzle is the main puzzle in another IF game, (Spoiler - click to show)Grounded in Space .
Invisible Parties is the best known shufflecomp game, and an xyzzy nominee for best setting. And what a setting it has!
It is set in a tangle of worlds, which in practice is a 3x3 grid (at first) of scenes, where each scene is a party in a different world. You change as you travel between worlds, and much else does as well. The parties chosen are vivid and varied: miserable office parties, funerals, feasts, and so on.
The inventory system is highly unusual as well: you carry powers, instead of items. The powers are things like Art Critic and troublemaker, and provide some highly amusing or interesting responses depending on the location.
The plot slowly unravels, and this is where I had the most trouble. Knowing what to do next was hard, due to the conventions breaking nature of the game. I quickly reached a bad ending without knowing what to do not get a good one. I looked at the source code a bit, and that gave me some ideas for going back and trying again. I did, and I enjoyed it quite a bit the second time.
As a final note, this game contains an above-average amount of profanity. I stopped playing because of it a few times, and I'm not sure I'll play it again. For those who aren't troubled by profanity, I would strongly recommend this game.
Perhaps the weakest game in a very strong collection. You are the hypnotist of women. With no inventory or items or conversation, you wander about. Examining the Ladies makes your points go up until you win.
There are some typos. Overall, an odd game. But I'm glad the album was completed.
In this game, the doctors are testing to see if you have recovered from a mental illness. They test you by having you rhyme words that they say, but in an odd way and with a timer counting down quickly.
In no way is this an epic or life changing games but it satisfies all of my criteria for 5 stars, which is why I'm giving it that score.
This game is another Apollo 18 Tribute album game. You had a horrible accident and land in a hall of heads in your own blood.
The game gives you hints and nudges throughout to help you along. There is one real puzzle to solve.
The atmosphere here is good, but the game teases on more possibilities that it can't really deliver on.