Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

This is a Twine-based game that consists of a set-up phase where you personalize your character, followed by a standard Twine game where you choose from a variety of sequences to achieve one of numerous endings.

It is a medium-sized, puzzle less game that is meant to be a sort of academic essay. It was submitted as a dissertation, I believe, and parts of it read like one, but it is not completely dry, and manages to have some fun.

The authors seem unaware of the field of interactive fiction. They describe this as a proof-of-concept of "ergodic fiction", which is defined by the 1996 book Cybertext as fiction that requires human participation and choices to shape the experience. It is clear from the book's definition that almost all of interactive fiction is ergodic fiction, and in fact most interactive fiction is "cybertext", which is ergodic literature requiring calculation.

This game treats a really important aspect of interactive fiction: the save feature. Most games, despite any sense of urgency they may try to instill, become slow, measured-out puzzle games with the heavy use of save and restore.

It is almost impossible to overcome the habit of save and restore, probably because most games intend the reader to use it.

This game was designed as a full-throttle, jump-out-of-the-airplane experience. You should absolutely not undo, save or restore this game; in the Club Floyd transcript, one of the users hit undo out of habit, when it seemed that all was lost; but they then undid the undo, and promised to finish the game together, and it was worth it.

This is a short game, and a fun game. I would give it 5 stars in its genre, but 3 stars as a generic interactive fiction game. As it is, I'm leaving it with 4 stars.

Short game with a few branching options but only one ending.

Seems like a fun little game a parent and child put together as a family project. No puzzles, inventory, or exploration.

Much better than anything I did as a seven year old. If you are reading this, I laughed, I liked the pictures, I cared about the dog, and only I wish it had lasted longer...

This is essentially a good, though short, "creepy" game with purposefully silly descriptions. The puzzles are hard enough to be fun and easy enough to not ruin the goofy atmosphere. Puzzles are essentially "collect everything and try it all one by one in each room".

I supposed the reason I most enjoyed the game was the pacing. There is always something to do to move the game forward. I used hints on the very last puzzle, but I didn't really need to.

Game can be finished in under a hour. One or two simple mazes with no tricks (people who hate mazes might even like these mazes).

Muldoon Legacy is an enormous game, one of the largest I have ever seen. It has a wide variety of interesting puzzles, with a sci-if/fantasy backstory.

I fully expected to deeply enjoy this game, having loved Curses and Not Just an Ordinary Ballerina, and having just come off the similar game Theatre. However, I just couldn't get into the game.

I played without a walkthrough for a few days, getting only around 11 points. I am not the greatest puzzle solver, and I don't mind using walkthroughs when I'm stuck, but the game gets stuck too frequently.

Case in point: after the intro (which required some, to me, unintuitive commands), you begin at the museum's steps. As you are immediately told, getting in requires not one, but two keys. And the second key requires (Spoiler - click to show)a seemingly random sequence of button presses on a keypad). There is virtually nothing to do while waiting to solve this puzzle.

Compare this to other games with early bottlenecks, like Zork. There, if you can't get in the house, you can always explore the forest. And if you do stay to solve the puzzle, putting yourself in the mindset of the character gives you the answer almost immediately. (Spoiler - click to show) Door locked? Try the window . The beginnings of other games such as Curses, Ballerina, and Theatre all give you more options or a more gentle beginning, and giving you a pile of smaller puzzles that aren't that hard to work through while digesting the big ones.

One bottleneck would be fine, but they occur over and over again. It is as if ALL puzzles require "two keys" (for instance, another early puzzle requires (Spoiler - click to show) lighting a match with a brick you had to search for outside, then using the match to light a branch you found in another room. And the brick can't be found by using "examine"). This is compounded by my least favorite way of creating fake difficulty, which is giving rooms exits that are not in the description (although you are given hints in other areas about these exits).

I suppose that this game resembles Jigsaw more than anything else, with similar fake difficulty and bottlenecks. Both games, however, are still fun to play through, but don't expect to get far without a walkthrough.

As a final note, Jon Ingold writes some great games. I especially enjoyed the short game "Failsafe", and many people have enjoyed "All Roads".

Revised comments:
I decided to at least see the rest of the game. The nozzle room was one of the best things I had seen in all of interactive fiction. But I stand bh my original review. What makes this game not click if it has great puzzles and enormous amounts of locations, and a developed plot?

Pacing.

J.R.R. Tolkien had the same issue. He developed a massive world, and coalesced it into the Silmarillion, which had great, well-written, detailed stories. It flopped. I like it, but it flopped. He then learned to trim his work down and focus on likable characters, a well-developed plotline and beautiful location descriptions.

This work is like the Silmarillion. It is 2-4 times the length od the massive curses, which Graham Nelson wisely trimmed down in size from his first draft. Puzzles are dense, and detailed. People say they like hard puzzles, but what they really want are puzzles that make them feel smart for solving them, but can be solved after a reasonable time. And, like the Silmarillion, no characters are especially likable. Everyone seems somewhat elitist. One finak issue is the prevalence of guews-the-verb issues.

I would recommend glancing at a walkthrough after each area to see if you did everything necessary. This game is enjoyable, but don't stress out about getting hints.

"Theatre" was developed after "Curses" and before "Anchorhead", and has many elements in common with both of these games, including some shared puzzles. It is a large, sprawling game, with many puzzles in the find-an-object-use-an-object category.

I found it slightly easier and slightly smaller than the other two games, but it may have just felt smaller because I always felt drawn forward to complete the game. A series of lost journal pages for collection provide a fascinating backstory.

As others have said, the writing feels a little off at times; however, the game gave me quite a few genuinely creepy moments during exploration, similar to the famous (Spoiler - click to show) "you forgot to close the front door" moment in Anchorhead. The game was strangely compelling despite the weaker writing.

As I said, the puzzles are slightly easier than many similar games. I also noticed that the author favored certain puzzles; for instance, there were at least five puzzles where the solution involved (Spoiler - click to show)pushing or moving a large object around.

A couple of times in the game, I thought I had put myself in an unwinnable situation by entering an area without some object I needed to get out. However, I found I was wrong. I don't think there is really any way to lock yourself out of winning, except by using one-use items when you shouldn't (when you have used a one-use item correctly, it will be obvious).

A couple of things, I wasn't quite sure what they did: (Spoiler - click to show)turning the switch in the electrical panel, and wearing the amulet. Also, as other reviewers noted, there were quite a few plot points never resolved.
However, I didn't feel cheated.

The one star off is for the lack of polish and the plotholes. Overall, though this is one of the most enjoyable games I have every played (for reference, the other games I've most enjoyed are Curses, Anchorhead, and Not Just An Ordinary Ballerina). I anticipate playing through it again several times in the future.

(I added the star back later)

I learned that this is an entry for a micro-writing contest, where all entries must be 300 words or less. Given that my only issue was the length, I am giving this five stars for the format that it is intended for.

**Original review**
This is not so much a game as it is a way of presenting a short, scary story. It is very-well crafted while it lasts, but there are only one or two real choices in the game, and they don't make a large difference.

I want to be clear that the game is exceptionally well developed and put together--but I expect that most people playing interactive fiction are looking for something much longer than this.

There are at least three camps in the IF world: those who hate using hints; those who rely strongly on walkthroughs; and (the largest group) those who like to play as long as possible without getting hints, and then use just enough to get them through.

This game appeals to all three groups; on one hand, the game world is fairly open and completely forgiving, allowing explorers to try other areas when they are stuck on a given puzzle.

On the other hand, the hint system is embodied in a large group of NPCs with fun personalities. Even better, some of the hints are wrong, as the NPCs have imperfect knowledge of the world.

The gameplay is most similar to Heroes, with a magic system and a lot of find-item-use-item puzzles.

The one annoying part was having to repeat the same basic commands over and over again. The "record" command is very helpful, although I won without it.

Unlike many similar games, the endgame was very rewarding.

This is a game with a huge world. The writing is excellent, with interesting historic tidbits and a fun NPC.

However, the game is full of hard puzzles that leave little room to do anything elseif you are stuck. Unlike other games with huge worlds (Zork, Curses, etc.), this game is pretty linear.

Another issue is that many of the puzzles are simply unfair. As other reviewers noted, you are required to look in places you are never told you can look. I got stuck for hours at a time two or three times, and each time was due to an invisible exit I didn't know I could use.

This game follows a small group of young adults as they investigate mysterious occurences for the school newspaper.

The hint system is supplied in the form of notes, assembled by a young man on behalf of the female narratot. I STRONGLY recommend reading as many of the hints as possible, as they pai t a fascinating picture of the young man, the narrator, and their environment.

There is a second, subtle hint system that soon becomes apparent to anyone getting stuck in the game.

I would recommend this to newcomers based on the two help systems and for experienced IF players based on the rich storyline (including the hidden scene detailed in the Author's notes).