Reviews by MathBrush

So, my experience in playing Phobos is atypical; I played in tame mode, and I just used a walkthrough, because I wasn't very interested in the game.

But the writing turned out to be quite good. The mishaps of my companion and the finale were some of the best things I've read in a while. This game ends up reading a lot like the meretzky-adams game Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Also similar to that game is the transportation syste, where you travel between disconnected worlds.

Even in tame mode, some dirty stuff sneaks through, but it is on the level of the movie Space Balls (e.g. a suggestive spaceship, a man or woman getting almost undressed against their will, etc.)

Using the walkthrough, the game seemed pretty hard. The copy protection in this game is achieved by having a horrible maze with horrible monsters, where you have to use two of the feeling to get through.

The game has the infamous t-removing machine, inspiration of future games such as Earl Grey and Counterfeit Monkey.

Overall, I'm not sure if I'll play it again. But I think meretzky does some of his best writing here (perhaps he was enthusiastic about the subject matter).

Most of Andy Phillips games have the same bones with different overlays. In all of the games, you play a protagonist with some sort of special features (in this one, you're an intelligent accountant), a femme fatale, and cinematic scenes with really hard combinatorial puzzles.

The special features of this one are the setting (most of it in an abandoned boarding school), and the gruesomeness of it. It was a bit over the top, even compared to his other games.

If you haven't tried any of the other games, I really liked Heist and Time.

This is the third Magnetic scrolls game. It was meant to be based on magical spells, like Enchanter, but you have to do a LOT of work before you get any spells.

The game lets you get through deathly obstacles, but you will lose a bit of luck if you do, which blocks you out of the endgame. So if it says you lose a little bit of luck, go back to an earlier save!

Overall, a super british game, with all of the spells based on British slang for 'thing' (like wossname and so on).

Very frustrating, very unfair, but interesting and with good graphics.

I did not like the first Magnetic Scrolls game, The Pawn, at all. It was juvenile, and the puzzles were unfair.

Guild of Thieves is much better; it's still unfair at times, but not so much, and the juvenilia have been cut back.

You play a thief who has to steal a large number of treasures from a castle and its environs. It's a very Zork-like setting. The map felt large at first, but eventually it was easy to picture it all.

There are treasures absolutely everywhere. It's easy to find several treasures, but I doubt anyone's found all of them on their own. Magnetic Scrolls aren't know for their fairness, anyway, but you can get a lot of enjoyment out of this game right from the getgo.

(Caveat: I played a final (non-beta) version of this game without graphics right before it was released).

Wordsmith by Ade McTavish is a very, very good game. In 2014, the author released Fifteen Minutes, which was one of the best difficult puzzle games in a long time, an intricate time travel game involving half a dozen copies of yourself. Then, in 2015, he took 2nd place in IFComp with Map, a mostly puzzle less but big story-based game that was emotionally powerful.

In this game, he's combined his best of story, setting and puzzles. The game has a free version and a commercial version.

In the free version, you create worlds in several stages, like Sim Earth. Your solar system ages over time, making different planetary orbits more or less favorable over time; you can make a planet for each orbit out of different alchemical materials. You then try to create a form of life that fits that planet , and then you teach the life culture and skills until, hopefully, they develop interstellar travel.

I found this thrilling, well-written (with procedural generation) and difficult. Fortunately, with 6 orbits in each solar system, it isn't too hard to get one to interstellar travel.

The game seemed to require a big info dump at first, which put me off, until I just ignored it and experimented. This worked much better; I should have thought of the book you get as a reference guide, not a book to be read back to back but to be consulted.

As for the commercial portion of the game, it's just getting started after the world building ends. You explore an absolutely huge, 7-level space station with a sprawling plot involving a widespread conspiracy and opposing forces.

I found the world building fascinating, although it was hard to keep track of the various locations; this should be a lot easier with the graphics in the finished version. I especially got lost in the ground floor a few times, as the building rotates.

There is a complicated card game in the finished version which I have yet to try, as I found an alternate path around that part of the game.

Overall, I recommend this game, and would rank it around the level of Blue Lacuna or Sorcery!.

Edit: I forgot to mention that this game uses graphics in a way not seen in parser games ever. The graphics respond to commands in this game in an extremely useful way. It's a technical masterpiece in this sense.

Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy is co-written by Douglas Adams, and the strong prose shows this. The game is very imaginative and vibrant.

On the other hand, the puzzles are (I assume) by Steve Meretzky, who is one of my least favorite puzzle writers from Infocom. Sorcerer, though great, was my least favorite Enchanter game, and I get tired of Planetfall early on. So when I started this game, I was scared of any misstep sending me on a wild goose chase into an unsavable state.

So I just used a walkthrough and sailed through the game, enjoying the witty prose. I plan to go back and read more of the room descriptions and the actual guide. I often find that this approach works with very difficult or unfair games, because the second playthrough can be done without a walkthrough, allowing your memory to help you on some puzzles but still having fun with those you forgot.

The game has several puzzles that are frequently referenced in interactive fiction reviews and forums: the Babel-fish puzzle, and the tea. It may be worthwhile to play through with a walkthrough just to see these.

Note that Douglas Adams released this game for free when Activision went a long time without selling it. I don't know the current status of it, but he intended to freely distribute it at least once in the past. It is not available on Lost Treasures of Infocom for iPad, my usual go-to place for Infocom games.

I loved Infidel. You play a jerk adventurer who has alienated everyone he knows as he searches for a hidden pyramid. The game has a long intro sequence in your camp before reaching the actual pyramid.

The game is very Indiana-Jonesish, although there are no NPC's. Every few rooms, there is a death trap waiting to destroy you. Hieroglyphics on the wall tell you how to avoid some traps, but they sometimes describe things far away, and you have to puzzle out the meaning of the hieroglyphics yourself.

This game is advanced, but I got much further between hints than I usually do in an Infocom game (although Emily Short mentioned two guess-the-verb problems in her review that I found helpful before I even played the game).

This game has a great flavor and style, similar to Ballyhoo's dark circus theme. I strongly recommend this game.

Zork II incorporates my favorite puzzles from MIT Zork: the palantirs, the tea room, the round room, the robot, the volcano, the glacier room. The dragon (a callback to Adventure) was a fun challenge, and the two or three NPCs made the game quite fun. I enjoyed watching the wizard travel around zapping me.

I prefer Zork I's treasure drop off system, however. It was annoying having a huge pile of treasure, not knowing what to do with it.

I used a walkthrough on a few places (especially the oddly-angled room), because I wanted to see the whole game. Having completed MIT Zork before made some of the hardest puzzles trivial.

It's hard for me to review this game (the first horror IF game by Infocom, and one of the first horror games ever) without comparing it to later Interactive Fiction based on Lovecraft's work. Specifically, Theatre, Anchorhead, and Lydia's Heart come to mind. How does this one compare?

First, size. The Lurking Horror is on the small side, due to PC capabilities at the time of publication. It is about the same size as Theatre, and much smaller than Anchorhead or Lydia's Heart.

Next, setting. The game is set in an alternate version of the MIT campus called GUE Tech during the winter. This worked well for me in the end, with the creepy Department of Alchemy, dark buildings and deep basements, and the gross muddy areas. It gave them game a more campy feel though, like Theatre, as opposed to the bigger games.

NPC's and enemies. While The Lurking Horror has a few okay PC's, it really shines in the creature department. I had played for a few hours without encountering more than one 'creature', and nothing that threatened me, so I was quite shocked when I (Spoiler - click to show)buried an axe in the chest of the maintenance man without any reaction from him. The further the game got, the more disturbing the creatures got. The enemies are more like Theatre's than the later games.

Puzzles. The Lurking Horror has some puzzles that are just dumb (especially the carton in the fridge). Later on, though, the puzzles get more fun, especially as you use the same objects in more and more ways. In the end, the puzzles are more like Lydia's Heart than the other two games, although there are much less puzzles overall.

Overall, it seems to me that the Lurking Horror was a great success that became eclipsed by later games. Theatre ('95) seems to be strongly inspired by The Lurking Horror, while Anchorhead ('98) seems to be inspired at least partially by Theatre (as it includes some similar puzzles). Lydia's Heart ('07) was more of a successful reboot of the Lovecraft idea using newer technology.

Until last week, I had no idea that Infocom games were still available on current platforms. After downloading an iPad app, I had the pleasure of trying my first commercial game after 5 years of free interactive fiction.

The manual and feelies were great, and the parser was very smooth, with great runtime. I missed several of Inform's features, especially when killing enemies. Overall, the game felt thoroughly tested, and a large number of the annoying features of MIT Zork were removed. Examples include a better coal maze, some of the smug writing, and better correlation between exits and etrances of nearby rooms.

I thought at first it was silly to split up the game into three, but having started Zork II, I am really enjoying the expanded versions. Very few of the free games I have played rival this kind of polished game, with Curses! and Anchorhead as my main examples of great gameplay.