Reviews by Michael R. Bacon
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Casual IF should be a myth, but..., April 27, 2009I asked some friends who are not even very computer-savvy to try "Lost Pig" and they became engrossed after a few minutes of user-interface confusion. I had always thought the confusion would be enough to put off the average user (and still do not believe in IF as a profitable venture), but each of them greatly enjoyed the game and wanted to continue playing longer than my laptop was available to them.
Essentially Interactive Poetry, April 27, 2009One of my favorite sandbox gameplay interactive fictions. Rather than presenting a strong plot or developing fleshed-out characters, The Space Under the Window is an interactive free-verse poem with many different endings as well as paths to those endings. It is very rewarding to play repeatedly, even if one spends less than ten minutes exploring the possibilities.
I only wish it were more fully implemented, allowing more keywords to cause revisions to the narrative.
Convoluted, but fun, November 15, 2007The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was my first experience with IF, and it was very frustrating, but in a way that entertained me greatly. The game unforgivingly kills the player again and again for oversights so ridiculous that the player was obviously not expected to even guess at them until after dying. If that's not something you enjoy, the deliciously witty prose is worth the effort, even if you resort to using a walkthrough, step by step.
An Engaging Couple of Hours, October 27, 2007"Good" is not high praise. It is praise though, and I praise Floatpoint with disappointment.
Puzzles are of little importance or challenge in this mildly short work, which is a matter of little consequence, because the focus is on story, artful prose, and player choice rather than on player ability. The final "puzzle" is really a decision reflective of a particular player's reaction to the primary situation portrayed in the story. This sandbox-esque element of the game is rewarding by way of its delicate responses to each choice.
Emily Short's prose is good, and her morally-interested science fiction world is exceptionally well-developed, mostly by way of careful descriptions, for so short a story. Most prominently, several of the endings and player-character flashbacks made me want to think more highly of the work than when analyzing it as a whole. It impressed some emotions and concerns upon me, as intended.
The overall design of Floatpoint is elegant, as one would always expect of Short, but the actual implementation is oddly impaired by several odd bugs which do not prevent the completion of the game. One of them, however, starkly emphasizes the necessity of disbelief in the fiction before the reader/player which had been so well built up by descriptive writing. Now, nearly a year later (in the midst of IF Comp 2007), these problems have still not been addressed, which confuses me further since it is the fiction of such a productive and usually, I felt, meticulous designer.
Floatpoint is not in the same category as the strongest of Emily Short's interactive fiction, but its worth is very much equal to the time one puts into it. I recommend it to the many who seem to have only completed one or two of her pieces, but not as highly as some of her other works such a person might have missed.
Creative, innovative, and oddly-flawed, October 21, 2007I enjoyed Common Ground well enough that it was hard to leave the game to do the other things I needed to do for the day.
However, it has several odd flaws, most notably a few instances of technically poor writing. While I place story, characters, and gameplay very highly in my list of qualities to judge a work of IF by, language errors are terribly distracting for me. If this does not trouble you, I would recommend Common Ground very highly.
If you share in my distraction caused by little errors, I recommend it anyway, especially if you want to play a short, easy game with an interestingly and unusually told story as well as well-developed characters.
Extensive interaction and characterization, October 21, 2007This is the work I recommend most highly of all interactive fiction.
Galatea exemplifies wonderful characterization, character interaction, and open-ended (within a very small framework, granted) gameplay. The entirety of the game takes place in one room and is made up of interactions (primarly conversation) with the statue-character named Galatea. Reaching an ending is not hard, but making the choices to find every ending that one wants is a challenging endeavor.
Facade (known as a landmark in character interaction and AI) is very derivative of this system of gameplay, though it is far less interesting or involving.
Pointless z-abuse, October 21, 2007zRogue is an interesting programming exercise and well done, but not really something worthwhile for the player, I believe. Rogue is readily available on many other platforms. Since it is entirely text-based, the novel connection to interactive fiction is somewhat credible, but very little remains to make it interesting for the interactive fiction audience.
If you're an IF programmer and want to be impressed, go ahead and take a look. If you want to play IF, don't bother.
Pleasant sillyness, October 21, 2007Describing it would ruin it, other than to say that it's surprisingly fun for seemingly almost no reason at all. It should take you only a few minutes, none of which will you regret.
Delightfully fun, October 20, 2007The language is engaging and fun, more than it is actually funny, which it certainly is. The most event/story-based fun (as compared to thoughtful gameplay) I've had in IF.
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