Ratings and Reviews by Dan Fabulich

I think this game is off to a good start, but it needs testers, and preferably some hints and/or a walkthrough. (I guess it's possible that someone already tested this game, but the game doesn't mention any testers or any credits, so I assume by this that nobody did test it.) I recommend asking for testers on the intfiction.org forum.

Here's some material I would have sent the author if I were a tester.

The game is missing a bunch of "standard" commands:

* HELP (you can type "?" instead, but it's easy to overlook that, and if you do overlook it, there's no easy way to discover that it's missing)
* RESTART (to start the game over again). In practice, "QUIT" does something similar, but that wasn't obvious.
* X as an abbreviation for EXAMINE
* ABOUT for information about the author and testers
* TALK. The game uses "SAY" as its verb to communicate with NPCs, but "SAY" doesn't appear on the "?" menu (it only appears in the intro screen at the start of the game, which you can't easily get back to, because you can't RESTART). "TALK" could be a synonym for "SAY", or, at the very least, if you try to "TALK" or "ASK" or "TELL", the game could invite the player to use "SAY" instead, and in particular to "SAY HI."

In addition, most of the NPCs are missing most conversation topics. At a minimum, you should be able to SAY any of the items you're carrying, or any of the other NPCs, e.g. "SAY THEENA" to Dion.

I gave up after I died. I examined the payphone and a coin fell out, but "EXAMINE COIN" failed. Stephanie said to "present a coin for passage," but "PRESENT COIN" failed. "GIVE COIN" "PAY COIN" "PAY FERRY-PERSON" all failed.

This is what testers are for: to find the places where the author may think it's obvious what to do/say next, but testers weren't able to guess it, so you can add some synonyms (or at least recognize what the player was trying to do and hint them in the right direction).

Also, I didn't like the "green screen" effect. It's using a monospace font, but the letters don't fill the width of their grid slot, so the letters look like a ransom note, with wildly differing amounts of space between letters. For example, in the word "seem," the letters "se" have more space between than "em," which makes it unnecessarily hard to read.

By means of the matches, you'll travel through time and space to various places, meet a handful of charming NPCs, and solve a dozen inventory puzzles. Keep notes and you'll probably solve it in under an hour.

Veeder's NPCs are always reliably charming, and this game is no exception.

As I write this, the game identifies itself as "Episode 1" of a series. Thus far, it's a fine short piece; I'm curious to see how it expands in subsequent episodes.

This game includes a few dozen rooms presented in a random order. You're given a menu of options, which often invite you to take a risk to get greater reward. Most of the rooms have a joke or a clever word or two.

You'll probably lose at least once, but when you continue play after losing, the game will present you only rooms you haven't seen. I won on my second try after doing that.

With persistence and just a little luck, you'll probably get to the bottom in well under an hour.

The conclusion of the game is a fun crunchy arithmetic logic puzzle. The puzzles leading up to it are not as fun.

There's an annoying, very tightly timed puzzle where you have to avoid a sentry who arrives at a predictable time, requiring you to UNDO a bunch to avoid him.

Inside that room, there's a "guess the verb" puzzle using a non-standard verb. (Spoiler - click to show)You have to "spin the painting" even though it says you can't "push the painting." "It can't be pushed, since a nail is holding it to the wall." I thought this was unfair.

And in the puzzle with the host, if you guess the right thing to do, he delivers a line of dialog, but the game gives no indication that you've solved the puzzle. (Spoiler - click to show)When you "hit the host," he complains about it, but it turns out that once you hit him, he's unable to stop you from opening the door. The game doesn't make that clear enough; I had to read the source to solve this puzzle.

The logic puzzle at the end was fun, though!

This game's central puzzle is to escape the pub. There are two ways out of the pub, numbered #1 and #2; when the game ends, it tells you which of the two paths you discovered.

Solution #2 requires a bit of "guess the preposition" that I felt made that puzzle kinda unfair. (Spoiler - click to show)I don't see why I should have to "look under the tray" to see that it's oriented incorrectly. I think that should have been revealed to me when I examine the tray or something.

Overall, it's a cute little game, and if you cheat on solution #2, it's an enjoyable game for a few minutes of play.

A handful of rooms, with a handful of choices. All of the choice questions have right answers, and most of the wrong answers will block your progress or kill you instantly.

It's hard to get a sense of what the rest of the story will be like from this.

If you check the about screen before playing, you'll see that this game includes a disclaimer:

Disclaimer: The thoughts, actions and attitudes of the characters in this work do not reflect the views of the author himself and in many ways contradict them.

This game depicts some fairly deplorable attitudes, including racism, without rendering any clear judgments about those attitudes. Note that the author doesn't say anything about his own views.

But, why not?

(Spoiler - click to show)The game is about the main character hiding in a closet due to a pandemic apocalypse; the story is told in flashbacks, exploring the main character's memories.

Later, it becomes clear that a man-made racist disease has spread, a disease that targets different races differently, and that it turns people into zombies.

But, in the twist ending, it appears that the main character was actually a zombie, but falsely perceives everyone *else* as zombies. He sees a couple of people who he thinks are zombies, but turn out to be government officials in hazmat suits, killing zombies. (In fact, we don't even strictly know that the main character's point of view was incorrect, except that there are multiple characters who perceive the main character as the zombie and themselves as zombie killers, and the main character has a nightmare that agrees with their point of view.)

Why tell this story about racists without taking a point of view? Is the moral of this parable that racists and anti-racists are both equally right, or equally wrong? Are they at odds because they're all insane, unable to perceive each other's points of view? (Or is it just the racists who are insane in this way? Are we all insane racists?)

Zombie stories have a long history of racism, and a long history of erasing their history of racism from the public eye. "Pop culture has used the zombie, fraught as it is with history, as a form of escapism, rather than a vehicle to explore its own past or current fears."

I'm afraid that the author's answer is to shrug: I dunno, I just wanted to tell a zombie story about racism because it's fun. Come on, man, can't we tell a fun, escapist story about zombie pandemic racism now and then?

To that, I say, no. Zombie stories don't have to be fun or escapist, but when they are, it's because the zombies are simply evil, without moral complications. There's nothing fun about suspending judgment about zombie pandemic racism. If the author was aiming for fun, the added racism themes and moral dilemmas work against that goal.

And if the author wasn't aiming for fun, then what's the point? To raise the question "is racism as bad as anti-racism?" Why??