Ratings and Reviews by Jacqueline A. Lott

A Killer Headache started out on the sort of note that made me want to quit immediately. "Not another You Are a Zombie! game," I thought to myself. But then I stuck with it, and found that the game strikes out into some new territory. While it is a game where the PC is a zombie, and while it does focus a lot on eating brains, it's a surprisingly serious game, and comes up with a creative justification for why we always see zombies shuffling about moaning on and on about braaaaiinssss. In fact, the best part of the game focuses in on this aspect in a way that I found pretty novel. If you haven't played this yet, I recommend that you stop reading this review now and go play the game, because it's worth it just to see Ciul's take on the genre.

That said, the game did a few things that fell pretty short for me. Just about the time I was getting the hang of things, it felt like Ciul was saying, "Welp, okay, I've shown you what I wanted to show you so there's not much more point to this so let's enter the denouement." Suddenly I found myself going from puzzles that were so transparent that they didn't feel like puzzles to puzzles that were hard and seemingly pointless except to be there for the sake of having puzzles. Because, y'know, that's what 8 out of 10 IF players allegedly crave. That switch changed the mood of the game considerably for me. I was enjoying the back story more than the puzzles, and was willing to jump through minor hoops to get more flashbacks, until the flashbacks became solidly interwoven with the puzzles and provided no real story, just means to an end.

And as for the ultimate finale, I found it really linear with weak reasons why I couldn't do certain things, and even the hints didn't get me to the ending of the game. Upon reading the hints to see what my ultimate goal was (because really, I felt like I was just solving puzzles because they were there, not because I was feeling motivation), I thought to myself, "Really? That's it? That's the goal, to find a peaceful death? When let's be honest, I have found many, many ways to painfully die but then I'm dead so the end result is the same and when I'm dead I'm supposed to care after the fact that it was painful?"

This is when I realized that I'd gone from a game I'd enjoyed to a game I really wasn't enjoying at all, and so I quit struggling for the last lousy (fourth) point and called it good.

Sad, because I think this could have been a larger work that explored some cool ideas.

A clever opening to a game premise that's been done before. Quite a few times.

For originality points, I will say that this is the only game or story I've played that uses the premise that I've crash landed in the Bermuda Triangle, and that's why things are so wonky. That's where the originality ends, though.

This is Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It / Ad Verbum territory, which is territory I love, but this one doesn't rise and shine as its predecessors did. That said, I laughed a few times, and I won't say that I didn't enjoy it. I just didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed those other games, and it's pretty much impossible to not make the comparison.

I enjoyed this game, and recommend that others play it, but with a few caveats.

The game could have done with a bit more fleshing out, particularly in terms of implemented verbs and NPC interaction. Also, the timing of the grand finale puzzle could have perhaps been slightly more forgiving. This latter issue in particular made me beat my head against a wall until I was ready to not like the game anymore, but then I took a few breaths and remembered why I had been enjoying the game up until I started not enjoying it.

So what did I enjoy? The premise was a great one, for starters. While not unique, it was the first time I remember seeing it in interactive fiction. The game also has this really fantastic blend of fairly light, childlike perspective juxtaposed with some very dark and horrific elements. Placing these two beside one another made the light lighter and dark way, way darker.

Overall, I'm glad we played it on ClubFloyd, and will seek out some of Dan Doyle's other stuff as a result.

Cut the Red Wire! No, the Blue Wire! is of the one turn game genre. It's short, and could have used with a bit more deviation in responses, but in truth had it been randomized too much the player might spin their wheels even more than they already do. Basically, I thought this was frustrating and unsolvable and was cursing David for writing a game with a show-stopping bug... until I realized that it was written just as he'd intended it. When you *do* win, especially after the frustration, it's quite satisfying. Clever (if quick) work, Mr. Whyld.

We played tapestry on ClubFloyd recently, and took the game through all the various possible threads, something I'd never done on my own, years ago, when I first played it. What I found, first off, is that the game holds up well over a dozen years after initial release, and that second, the path I originally took that I thought best was probably less than ideal. Worth revisiting if you've played before, but only once.

Daniel Ravipinto stated at the time that he wrote the game that his goals were to see if a serious and interesting story could be merged with traditional IF 'puzzle' elements without one overshadowing the other, and to explore mutually-exclusive paths, a pre-defined main character, moral dilemmas, 'puzzle-less' IF, and semi-realistic NPCs. He does a very good job of this. This is a piece of IF well worth downloading.