Reviews by dvs
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An adventure for a first-level magic-user, March 16, 2021This early Infocom game seems well-designed for first-time players to explore the world of text adventures. However, to a modern player, the descriptions are overly spare. I understand that many of the empty rooms are there to give the feeling of being in a castle or wandering around the nearby world but I would have loved to see much more description and interaction.
The gentle intro teaches the player how to cast spells and search the outskirts to find a way into the castle. One has to keep track of food and water throughout the game - although that is a nuisance it does make us aware of the passing of time and the passing of days and nights. It's a little irritating but not bad. Similarly, having to juggle items can be a nuisance but was part of the convention of the time.
Not everything is important. There are some random encounters with critters that don't affect the puzzles but do provide flavor. There's an odd emphasis on discovering treasures that mattered in Zork but seems to be just extra here. There were in fact so many unessential details that we missed something which turned out to be essential. (We ended up having to look at the Invisiclues for hints.)
Mid-game was frustrating as we figured out some tricky puzzles early on and missed out on easier puzzles. We ended up in a dead-end a few times by casting a spell incorrectly but didn't realize this.
Getting to talk to animals was wonderful, and a few of the NPCs were quite entertaining.
The endgame was very satisfying, even though we had to save and restore multiple times to figure out the key things we needed to complete our goals.
Enchanter is a good game for its time and was fun to play.
Lighthearted ghost story, March 5, 2021I played this game with a few friends (over Zoom) over two evenings. We enjoyed the breezy humor and several of the puzzles. Barnaby Mooch was definitely a memorable part of the game, as were several of the rooms in the hotel. We found it distracting to switch between command mode and interaction mode.
After we solved all the puzzles we were presented with a long non-interactive outro which resolved the story plots but we were no longer engaged and were just clicking through to finish. Perhaps if that section were expanded into an epilogue with more interaction it would have more emotional impact.
Puzzles with a Purpose, December 12, 2020I finally finished Trinity, a game I started 20 years ago and finally joined forces with a friend (over Zoom) to finish.
The game could be thought of as in three parts: the prologue, the Wonderland puzzles, and the stressful endgame.
The prologue itself is perfect, one of my favorite compact text adventures with emotional moments and whimsy.
The Wonderland middle section is long but also tightly created with its dreamlike setting and classic Infocom humor and puzzles. This is a save-often, unforgiving type of IF but nothing too tricky.
The endgame has a time limit where you have to do things in an efficient order. The feelies (available online by searching for "trinity feelies") become essential here. This was the weakest section of the game for me - there were more red herrings and harder puzzles. We did have to give up and look at the Invisiclues because we hadn't brought the right item(s) from the middle section (without any hints to guide us).
The ending...well I applaud Brian Moriarty's attempt to be moving and artistic but I thought for a while it was simply buggy. In the version we played (using Lectrote) we actually missed the final few paragraphs so it was even more abrupt for us than it should have been. It didn't have the effect on us as it has for many other players over the years.
It was one of my favorite Infocom replays that still feels fresh after so many years. Highly recommended!
Sweet, sad, funny fiction with few puzzles, December 12, 2020I first played Photopia about 15 years ago and cried at the ending. It took me a while to figure out how the different vignettes fit together and it hit me hard. I had never experienced such emotion playing a silly text adventure. I will always love that about Photopia.
I played the game last night over Zoom with my sister and her two adult sons, introducing them to their first IF experience. They quickly found the boundaries of the interpreter and explored. (What happens if I go north forever? Can I "x up"? How come I can't use this verb which is in the sentence above?) In the end they enjoyed it describing it as a choose-your-own-adventure book or the tabletop role-playing game Expedition.
There are so many clever bits I saw the second time through, how the game feels huge and open and yet is really just railroading through the story. They found rooms I hadn't found in my first playthrough which was a delight. They figured out to just hit "z" when it was clear their actions had no affect (rather than trying to speak to the NPCs). There was one moment when they accidentally hit something and started the next "chapter" before finishing reading the end of the previous vignette. There's no way to go back or scroll up to see what they missed. (We were playing the web version at iplayif.com.)
They want to play another game together sometime over Zoom. (Not the Z-code interpreter.) Thank you, Adam Cadre, for bringing us long-distance joy!
Painfully dated and old-fashioned, September 12, 2020This classic Infocom game is essentially seven short adventures, mostly needing knowledge of idioms or other wordplay, with a final endgame.
A few of the short adventures were basic and occasionally amusing, but half (Eat Your Words, Act the Part, Manor of Speaking, the endgame) are so random or painful or annoying to solve. The only way I could get through was with the hints but I found these extremely annoying.
Perhaps I would have enjoyed the struggles and found the wordplay and amusing in high school but in 2020 this game did not age well.
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