Reviews by virtuadept

So, you may have played this before, possibly in the newspaper even. There's two pictures side by side. At first glance, it's just two copies of the same picture. But no, there's something different between them. Maybe a few very subtle differences, even. And you have to spot all of the differences and then report what they were to solve the puzzle.

That is what Paranoia is, but it's done as a text adventure. You are in a room. There are various objects in the room. You have to decide what if anything about the room is different between the last time you pushed a button. You must use every sense here to detect any slightest change.

Paranoia responds to almost every single thing you try to interact with correctly. Not quite everything but most everything is either correctly implemented as scenery. I suppose it achieved this by keeping it all in a single "room" (from the player's perspective, anyway, I guess that this might be implemented as a bunch of very, very similar "rooms" in the game engine with small differences).

That's it in a nutshell. If you love difficult puzzles, you will probably love this. Accept the challenge! If not, this probably isn't your thing. Paranoia is well implemented.

Chime Rhymes, Clue Through!

This is a rhyming game, and apparently not the first by Andrew Schultz but it was the first one I've played. I got stuck. A lot. I needed help. There is good help. There's a device in the game that is very helpful, and I thought that was implemented brilliantly.

Overall the theme of rhyming and feasting was an interesting one. This game is not terribly long, but it is long enough to feel like an accomplishment in solving. It is light hearted, and I laughed a bunch, especially at some of the responses to incorrect attempts. I am definitely eager to go back and check out some of the earlier games in this "series."

Not a bad way to enjoy an evening of puzzling word-play.

This was pretty random but awesome. I mean, it really has intriguing writing. It kind of sort of felt like chess, but to me it also kind of felt like those old SwordQuest "Fire World" games for the Atari 2600, where you have all these elemental enemies to deal with. It is rather short, but I think that works for this game quite well. I was satisfied at the end and had not gotten bored with running NSEW all the time. The ending is quite good. There are certainly worse ways to spend 10 or 15 minutes of your time.

So this is a quaint little diddy with pretty cool retro-pixel graphics and an old SCOTT ADAMS style parser. The graphics are really what make this kind of fun. Without that, this is just a "deliver boxes and solve minor obstacles while doing so" type game.

But the art gives it a 1980's retro-vibe, and it succeeds well as a retro-game. It is rather short, I feel as if the author probably ran out of time. Also there does not seem to be a real point to the story, other than you just do your job as a post-person. Which I guess, is its own reward, really. Hey, it was cool for Kevin Costner, right?

Did I mention I liked the art?

Iyashikei is a serene mostly-on-the-rails, short (15 minutes tops) diversion that feels like something a hypnotist might use to try to hypnotize someone. BERAAAKK! (chicken noises) Like, you know, the hypnotist that tells the audience member to cluck like a chicken, BERAAAK!!! (cluck, cluck) And when they wake up, they have no actual memory of doing it. BERAAKKK!!

Unfortunately, Iyashikei does not actually hypnotize you and make you act like a chicken. (CLUCK! CLUCK! Scratch the ground with talons.) It is rather peaceful, but with conflict comes story. A story with no conflict to resolve, is it really a story? BERAAAAAK!!! (cluck, cluck)

The serene-icity? BEREAAAK!! (is that even a (cluck) word? (cluck cluck))
Is broken by the lack of implementation of the scenery. A lot of gorgeous scenery is described. But when you try to take it in, by examining it, smelling it, tasting it, feeling it, listening to it... BERAAAK!!!!
the "it" is always "you don't see any 'it' here" (cluck, cluck)

So, apparently this game does not actually hypnotize you, (cluck, cluck) nor does it let you explore the peaceful scenery in a detailed way. BERAKK!!!

I like where the author was thinking here, but it needed more time in the BERAAKK!!! (cluck, cluck) oven.