Reviews by Jacqueline A. Lott

If you are looking for a light puzzle game for the sake of light puzzles, this is a relatively short game that is solidly coded, intuitive, and we (ClubFloyd) got through it quickly but not too quickly. The title and plot seemed intriguing, but are ultimately a thin veneer for the puzzles. Our (spoiler-filled) transcript is at this link.

This is a simple game, beautifully written, forgiving and elegant in its execution. It is a relatively short but very memorable experience, and definitely recommended.

This game is interesting in a couple of key ways, so I'm glad to have experienced it, even if I didn't necessarily love the game itself. This is a 2020 Inform port of a BASIC game from 1984. Aside from one fun narrative twist near the beginning, it's mostly a game of "puzzles for puzzles' sake." The backstory (if any) is not explained, you solve a few puzzles leading to The Final Puzzle, then the game ends suddenly with no epilogue. Essentially, there's no story. But afterward, Gavin Lambert provides some lovely background, including his own very plausible head cannon of the prologue/plot, history of the game, and background on this period of text gaming. I enjoyed the post-game commentary more than the game itself, though you have to have played the game to make the post-game commentary worthwhile.

This game is just fun and kind of (very) dumb, but it has many clever little touches from the author. It could have been a little bit more deeply implemented, but then there are a variety of hilarious (or horrifying) things that the author DID implement that will surprise you. If you're looking for a weird, fun, short game, this is recommended.

Some will find this game disturbing, but I definitely recommend it if you're looking for a surreal game that evokes images of an older, darker time, and deals in the sort of monsters seen in woodcut-illustrated books from the nineteenth century, when fairytales were far more sinister.

The game can be a bit frustrating due to under-implementation... but it was written for Rapidocomp, so that comes with the territory.

I may never have found the ending if I hadn't been playing as part of a group. There are clues to what you're meant to do, contained in text you are 100% likely to encounter in the game. Part of the reason you may struggle to find the solution is that it's ... counterintuitive. But the author definitely gives you the clue or two that you need. If you can hang in there until you figure out the solution on your own, you're more likely to get the full impact of the ending.

If you really can't figure it out, the command you're looking for is (Spoiler - click to show)FEED RAGMAN.

If, after you play the game, you'd like to see the moment when ClubFloyd figured it out, and our reaction, here's the ending, which I feel is worth reading all the way down to the jokes and puns at the end.

It's not the most polished game in the world, but I will always remember the writing and the experience, which is why it gets a 5 from me.

While there are a couple of spots where precise wording in commands can be a little frustrating, this game on the whole is absolutely lovely. It's a small game with straight-forward puzzles that are fun to solve. It contains adorable NPCs, amusing writing, and cute hidden touches. It is clear that it was written by someone who loves nature and the ocean and being in the ocean.

I loved this, but it will not be for everyone (or likely, for many). It is novel, unlike any other game I can recall playing, and had a core dynamic that had an immediate effect on my emotional state, which is always worthy of note. I played it as part of ClubFloyd, and the transcript of our session can be found here.

Had I not played this through to the end, I might have given it a two.

I got through it and from a technical standpoint I'd at best give it a three.

But given how it left me feeling afterward, it definitely gets a 4. Well done.

It was unexpected and very cool to see this game materialize years after the Indigo New Language Speed-IF. It takes less than an hour to play, and is slightly on rails, but it's a fun ride.

Note: This piece of interactive fiction is not for everyone.

Ms. Lojka or: In Despair to Will to Be Oneself is an experience. It's an experience I recommend to those who are up for it. I don't know how much agency I had in directing the outcome of the story — I suspect that I had little to no agency, that this was linear, that the story was being told to me. This would normally be an issue for me, but it wasn't here. Here, the sounds wash over you and the art grabs you (and sometimes surprises you) and you feel a bit like you're in a David Lynch film, and you're never entirely certain if you want to be there... but you can't escape and you can't look away, so you just keep with it.

People are going to remark on the type-writer effect, and probably not in complimentary terms. But the type-writer effect is necessary. It's part of the experience on a couple of fronts, and it wouldn't have the same impact were it not present throughout. So just accept that and accept the author's pacing. Be open to the experience.

Because that's what this is. It's an experience. The art is fantastic and the audio is perfect and the voice is casual enough to feel comfortable with you — especially when it's making you uncomfortable. Even the way linked text is slowly revealed after you've had a moment to digest the words in front of you is artful.

Play this in a dark room, full screen, at night.

I would give this 4.5 stars if I could, but I can't, and 4 stars seems too low. So I'm giving it a 5. On a scale of 1-10 I would give it a 9, based on my interactive fiction rating methods.

Thank you, Mr. Evans, for writing a truly enjoyable story - wonderfully implemented, thoughtfully and carefully written, and thoroughly coded.

To speak too much of this piece would be to ruin it for others, so I will be brief. Photograph shined in the 2002 IF competition. Evans ventured beyond what was necessary, such as the dream sequence and the mishap on the way to the store, to illustrate the concerns of adulthood looking back on what might and should have been. Though the nature of this story requires that it be linear, Evans meticulously implements deviations from the plot as wistful reflections upon how things might have been different. This piece might not appeal to younger audiences, but to those of us who look back now and then to wonder if this was the proper path, Photograph is a must.

This is a quick game, but only if you're able to surmount its challenges (some intended by the author, some not). There are red herrings and optional herrings and unseen things that must be sought, as well as at least one coding issue that can hang people up and cause them to abandon the game. But I played it with ClubFloyd and we stuck with it and found a couple of endings, including the one that I think is the 'good' ending.

I can see why the other review so far gave it three stars. It's a first time author's game, written in under a week, and it (not surprisingly) has issues, but I liked the concept and the imaginative setting. I also have a soft spot for games that explore anatomy, and I enjoyed the blending of qualitative description and clinical jargon. So I bumped up to four stars for this.

Definitely memorable.

Not for the feint of heart (or those of weak stomach).

This is both dark and fun, and it's difficult to write a non-spoilery review, but suffice it to say that the type of fun that is had is not expected. It's also a relatively quick game to play. Recommended.

ClubFloyd played the Inform version of this on Easter 2014. Overall, I am glad to have played it, but take it for what it is: a one-room puzzlefest with a holiday theme. I recommend you play it on or near Easter to boost the enjoyment, and be willing to try things you would never ever try in a real life confection shop.

This is Welbourn's first work of IF, and a speed IF at that. He was learning to code as he was writing it. Nevertheless, it has little hints of the sort of things we'd see in later games from this author. Very short, fairly easy.

One of David Welbourn's very early games, this is a quickly coded speed IF. Go in realizing it's a speed and just have fun with it. It starts out dour and emo and you think it won't be fun and then it surprises you and you're clapping your hands the way you do with delightfully unexpected wacky IF. (If that is a thing you clap your hands for, as I do.)

The one and only hint I shall give you (and this isn't a spoiler) is that this isn't a one room game. Once I figured that out, things went pretty swiftly.

We played this on ClubFloyd, and came pretty close to bailing on it because it's got many of the touches of a first-time author who didn't get a game thoroughly tested, but ultimately we stuck with it and all of us agreed that we warmed up to the game despite (or perhaps even because of) these flaws by the end. I wasn't sure it was worth the time at first, but looking back afterward I had a great time playing Colonists. 'Endearing' is one word I'd (oddly enough) use to describe it. That said, I generally enjoy quirky games with amusing descriptions of things meant to be revolting, so your mileage may well vary a great deal. As for me, I'm looking forward to the sequel. Four stars may seem a bit high, but had it been a scale of 1-10, I'd have given it an 8 based on my pre-defined rating scale, which converts to four stars here.

We played this on ClubFloyd and really enjoyed it. It's short, fun, and when you're done it feels like you've experienced an episode of Firefly — complete with a twisty ending. Worthwhile.

This is an fairly adorable, small, quick to play game, and probably the only interactive fiction I've played where the PC is a zebra. It has a small, easy to map landscape, solid writing, and a clear goal.

I did hit one small snag... (Spoiler - click to show)Sometimes you need to be specific in conversations, and >ASK _____ ABOUT _____. Other times, even when you might think you're supposed to be *very* specific, you should just use >TALK TO _____. And don't even try giving commands to other characters in this game, even though that seems like a good approach; the game will tell you to leave that character alone, even when you may well be on the right track.

Noire d'Encre is a puzzlefest on a short fuse. Or rather, it's a game in which you have to find a lot of objects to solve a lot things, and you're on (what for me felt like) a very cruel timer. I'd say it's probably impossible to win on the first playthrough. If you're the sort that would take that as a challenge, have at it!

All that having been said, it is definitely worth playing, and it's worth playing in the dark, wearing headphones, at low- to mid-level volume. The game is laced with pretty awesome sound effects that are effective (difficult to pull off in IF!) and add to the game play.

In the long run, I'd love to see a second release of this that has a more merciful timer, an explanation as to how the PC came to be where she is, and a little brother with a bit more personality, but this first release is nevertheless a lot of fun. I'm very glad to have experienced it and I definitely won't forget it.

I really enjoyed Life on Mars?, and found it to be a surprisingly immersive experience, even though it's not a terribly interactive game. This sounds counter-intuitive, perhaps, but because of the situation the PC is in, the approach felt very appropriate and was executed very well. I was less keen on the later game, but feel that this game is definitely worth playing for its somewhat novel approach to revealing backstory. Clearly the author put a lot of effort into this, and it paid off with a haunting experience that generates a great sense of empathy in the player.

Heated is a game set in a boring apartment which the author describes as "meditative" and "sparsely decorated" to make us think his creative use of underimplementation was intentional. There's some mildly amusing writing, albeit not without its mechanical errors, and some unintuitive and unrealistic puzzle design. Then again, I'm a pretty productive member of society, and the PC in this game is a slacker who probably deserves to not get the raise that they're hoping to receive. Possibly I just can't relate.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the plot (this isn't a spoiler, it's something mentioned right after you start the game): you are already on warning at work, haven't had a raise in forever, and need to get to work early, looking sharp, and finish a report to put yourself in line for a raise. I'm sorry, but this is not the sort of escapism I'm looking for when I sit down to play interactive fiction. There's nothing to be learned here, no big aHA moments, just a not terribly engaging puzzle fest.

The game's one schtick is that your stress level goes up and down depending on stimuli. That could have been kind of fun, and is a good idea in and of itself, but the event context and setting in which it was used simply did not engage me enough to make me stick around to see if Peers did something interesting with it.

(This review is based on the original IF Comp release.)

In many respects, I very much enjoyed Aotearoa. It was perhaps the closest I've ever come to experiencing the comforting old skool feel of a Choose Your Own Adventure ported to interactive fiction. The PC, the plot, the things that happen... it feels like something straight out of a good CYOA by Packard, and I mean that as a high compliment.

The game grabs you right away with a strong prologue that is appropriate to the story and gets your mind ready for an adventure set in the land of the Maori. The writing is strong and sure. But once the player is given the volition to move about and do things, some of the gaps start to show. I hate to point out those gaps, because Wigdahl has done some very, very good things here, but I found myself pretty frustrated.

The frustrations varied. One example: items mentioned in scenery descriptions that sounded useful for the current puzzle sometimes weren't actually implemented. In another instance, a very plausible alternate solution was unaddressed; I had everything I needed to solve the puzzle but the game said I didn't have the necessary items ((Spoiler - click to show)I had a straight stick, when what the game thought I needed was a board). There was a lot of rail roading and quite a few triggered events that were very difficult to figure out unless you got lucky and stumbled upon them or went for a hint. The conversation menu topics were pretty limited, and often avoided things that would have been very useful in favor of things I wasn't too curious about.

That said, I enjoyed quite a bit about this game. Some of the puzzles were quite clever and fun, and there were a fun command that allowed you to name the critters you encountered in the game. There was an element of backstory and character development lovingly crafted for this game that you don't often see in this sort of game, giving it an element of depth you wouldn't otherwise expect in this genre. The scenery descriptions were generally quite beautiful, with a definite sense of having been written by someone who spends time in the natural world.

Unfortunately, the greatest frustration of all was that I'm pretty sure I encountered a show stopping bug. My husband was one of the testers, and he took a look at my predicament and agreed. Sad way to end the game, seemingly about three-quarters of the way through, and before what I suspect was an interesting climax.

(This review is based on the original IF Comp release.)

We begin the game with a exceedingly clever and original premise (at least, not a premise that I've ever seen before). The writing is witty and fun... a few typographical errors here and there to distract, but the prose manages to do what it needs to do without being repetitive, which is a trap it could easily have fallen into given the premise.

This game is interesting in that it's almost entirely conversation driven, but you can only talk about objects in plain sight. This at first makes it seem as if the game will be pretty short, as you're in a room with six people and limited objects, but there is a lovely layering of detail that is not at first apparent, and it turns out there's more to the conversation than it would at first appear. The game looks as though it'll be a banana, but turns out to be a bit more of an onion, and this is a dreaful metaphor, so I'm going to move on and give this game a score.

It wasn't perfect, there were a variety of ways it could have been better. It probably deserves four stars, but I had a lot of fun, so I gave it five.

I started with this one by following the author's initial advice upon booting the game: I read the About text. It claimed that the focus of the game is more on plot, atmosphere and exploration rather than on intense puzzle-solving.

And then we started off with a bunch of puzzles. Plot-driven puzzles, mind you, but I found myself refreshingly all geared up for story, and suddenly I was trying to figure out how to lock doors and cover mirrors and get rid of light through the window so that I could fulfill the very pressing need of getting to sleep. Plot and atmosphere rather than puzzles, eh? I felt kind of betrayed right out of the gate on this one, and perhaps because the game promises to be not puzzly, there are no hints and alternative solutions don't work the way they should.

The other initial impression I had, though, was a positive one: nice art, author-drawn, with good use of Glulx features. There's a nicely crafted, aesthetically pleasing map visible during play, which shows the layout of objects mentioned in room descriptions. It provides a better sense of place. There's also an image of the two characters in the game, and I'm curious if this image will change as the story progresses (sadly, it turns out that it does not, though that would have been a nice feature).

The game also says I'm supposed to be thinking about things a lot. I try that a bit. I try to think about the thing that's most pressing on my mind right now, according to the status bar, and can't figure out a way to think about that. I'm not sure what that refers to, the game tells me.

And then here we go again, with some more puzzles. Here's the thing, Author: I like puzzleless IF, so please don't build me up to believe I'm going to experience a game that's puzzleless, and then put scavenger hunts and look-behind-object puzzles in my way.

I sense that the game, though solid in writing and intriguing in plot, could really have benefited from more testers/testing, and that makes me a little sad, because there's a lot that's solid here and it feels so close to being really good. But it's frustrating me just enough to be annoying.

I can't decide if the game was ultimately intentionally surreal and disjointed due to perceived themes of mental illness or just... well... if it was just really screwed up writing.

Anyway, my husband wishes I'd had a microphone recording me while I played this, because this game drew from me a whole range of audible emotions: loud sighing, profanity, frustrating grrs, nervous laughter, a couple of fairly loud outbursts, and once (just for effect) I slammed a nearby stool into the carpeting. I had an audience, though. I was conscious of that.

This is probably a two star game, but it's almost a three, and I am the sort who likes to give the benefit of the doubt, so I'll give it a three. Sad, though, as this could have done so much better.

I generally love C.E.J. Pacian's work, and the cover art was lovely, so I was looking very forward to playing this. Then I actually launched the game, and I found myself in a cell. And the cell door was open. Like, I didn't even have to escape the cell. And there was this boring bit of walking and not really looking at much because there isn't much to look at and the descriptions weren't all that engaging and CEJPacianesque.

I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the title of the game. Maybe it's that it's science fiction (not my thing). Maybe it's that it starts not so much on a railroad as a rollercoaster. Maybe it's that I hit a runtime error about a dozen moves in. Maybe it's that I was in the mood for saying damn the gender binary! I mean, we finally get into the Pacianisms, and that's amusing enough, but I still felt... well, not so much railroaded, more like I was in one of those little carts at Dollywood with a bar across my waist, knowing I was going to have to sit there and listen to the recorded dialog of silly people.

As I said, I like Pacian, so I stepped away for a bit, played something else, and came back hoping I'd start to really feel engaged. But I never really was. That makes me kind of sad. I think this is simply Not My Kind of Game. I decided to step away again, but this time I didn't come back.

The Chronicler has a great title, and an author whose e-mail address ends in alum.mit.edu, and some of the initial writing is decent, but upon actually playing the game, I started to see gaps in its implementation. I then checked out the ABOUT text:

Chronicler is a short game for the Interactive Fiction Competition 2010. Unfortunately, due to time constraints it's only half finished, or perhaps three-quarters. I can only hope that you'll find some amusement from the manipulations of objects it affords, while apologizing for the shortness of the experience.

This is a piece about "living under the Stalin era, in four parts." I'm going to be a touch spoilery here, but just a touch. After all, I played this several times, but never lasted more than thirty moves, so I can't possibly be spoiling your immersive experience that much.

(Spoiler - click to show)I died of starvation once, but then I started plowing potatoes and grain like a mad man so that I'd be ready when they came to collect my share for Mother Russia. No matter how industrious I was, though, I was always pinned to the ground, called an enemy of the collective, an enemy of the people, an enemy of Russia, and killed. I'm not sure if it was a bug or what, because I always had more grain and potatoes than the game said I needed, even after feeding my dying wife whom I couldn't bring myself to euthanize... because somehow, someway, I knew we would survive.

Yes, life in Stalinist Russia is horrible, but you get a sense of this about ten or fifteen moves into the piece and the rest of the game is not terribly interesting after that. I mean, I admire the premise, and the ambition of it, but I think it could have been done in a more engaging way. Bit more of a plot. Bit more promise that the misery to come would at least be interesting misery. More than four beta testers next time, Michelle.

This wasn't bad, per se, it just wasn't good. If you're going to take us back in time and show us how miserable a certain period was, you have to make it engaging enough that people will actually want to stay in the Hell you've (re)created for them.

And I didn't get far enough into this one to figure out where the title came from, which made me sort of sad. But they kept killing me!

I was very deeply conflicted, on a few levels, as to how to rate this game.

On one level, this game has a beauty, an allure... a sensuality running through it. A spell. I felt like I couldn't stop with it, and this is the first comp game in a long time where I remember going far in excess of the two hour mark. I wanted to find the end. I cared.

That said—and there's unintentional metaphor here—the critical ingredient of the spell that binds you tightly and draws you through the game? The bit that makes it possible to find its ultimate conclusion? The walkthrough. I honestly don't see how you could get through this game without it.

At first blush the game is silly and on rails, but then suddenly it grows sinister and seductive and opens up in such a vast way that the interactor has no clue where to go, what to do. I tried an attempt without the walkthrough—and got far!—but could never have found the end alone. I'm not sure how this could have been mitigated, either. On the one hand, I enjoyed the agency it gave me, but it gave too much, too quickly. I drowned.

I said I was deeply conflicted on a few levels, and I've only touched on a couple. I should move on with that.

There are other things this piece does really, really well. For example, it does a great job of show—don't tell—with accents. By the time I was half-way through, I was reading dialog in my head that dripped of humid Southern nights laced with cicadas. This was done exceptionally well, without misspelling everything to hit you over the head with it. Maybe I only picked up on this due to having spent a lot of my time in the South, though. I'd be interested to hear others' views on this point.

To continue with respect to the writing: it is this lovely mix of succinct matter-of-factness, evocative descriptions, and eloquent dialogue. This is what hooked me fairly early on, kept me going through my initial dismay, and teased me far enough along that I couldn't let go.

Also, we begin with this sense of being a slave, of being directed, and gaining volition... earning it. That was well done, though (as mentioned above) I think the author loosened the reins just a touch too quickly.

(Spoiler - click to show)I've been asked what I thought of the Voodoo. It is, at its core, the sensationalist sort of voodoo you get in horror novels and Hollywood. But that's what this is meant to be, despite the author's research. It's obvious he knows a bit about Voodoo, though if this is because he's spent time in New Orleans or just read a lot of articles on Wikipedia, I'm not sure. I'm completely unfamiliar with Louisiana Voodoo.

But I know enough of Voodoo from a trip I made to Haiti and books I've read since that trip and research into some of the artifacts I brought back with me that I understood a lot of the terminology used in this piece of fiction. It was interesting to compare and contrast what I knew of Voodoo to this. I'm not sure if the areas where things diverge are on account of Louisiana culture, or just the sensationalism.

It's a work of fiction. It's probably pretty offensive to some. But I took it as a work of fiction, and I enjoyed it.

I didn't realize (for some reason(!)) until after I'd completed the game, that there was a hint menu. Maybe that would have been enough. Maybe I could have gotten through without the walkthrough. Maybe I could have found my way without feeling led. That's really all that held me back on scoring this very, very well. But I rather doubt that to be the case. Some of the things in the walkthrough felt so. poorly. cued. I stand by my original statement: I don't see how you could have gotten through this game without the walkthrough. If you did, please leave a comment. I'd love to know.

I wanted this to be more. Really wanted it to be more.

I should probably give this a 3, but I enjoyed it too much, and thus gave this a 4. That is, admittedly, a bit of a gift.

It is not spoilery to tell you this first bit, because the game cuts to the chase on this with the first move and, let's face it, the title itself is spoilery. I won't go into the political particulars, but I'm on a space station, and there's been an explosion, and the systems are having trouble coming back on line, and I'm a tech. I gotta make things right.

I generally avoid science fiction at all costs, the two exceptions being when ClubFloyd is playing some scifi, the other exception being when a game comes up in my comp queue. So I heaved a heavy sigh as I began the game and the plot became clear. Then I started having a few traumatic Infocom Suspended flashbacks. Then I thought to myself, "I'll play a few turns, write it off as crap, then move on to something that hopefully involves an orc looking for a pig or someone trying to finish their dissertation."

But then Sokal had to be all polished and stuff, and I couldn't write it off as crap. I had to keep playing! Ultimately, the game is less about the science fiction and more about ethical choices, morality, politics, selfishness and selflessness, that sort of thing. It's not exactly terribly deep in those regards, but it's not a very long game and it's difficult to delve into such things in detail in a game of this length.

But I would nevertheless like to point out that it is still super swaddled in scifi gift-wrap with a giant scifi bow on top!

So if science fiction is your thang, you might like this. It is not my thang, but I feel bad holding that against the game. It's not Sokal's fault I really don't like scifi! So I added a point to my score to compensate for that.

Short and fairly easy to play, multiple endings. Seems like it could have benefitted from a WAIT FOR 6 TURNS command (or something similar), and a couple of other verbs that were suggested in the prose but not actually functional (REMOVE X from Y comes to mind), but it did anticipate some non-standard things that I tried to do. Only a couple of typographical flubs. It does a good job of backstory, character motivation, and is clever with its (optional) use of sound without being annoying (thank you, Sokal, for asking me if I had sound enabled... I took that as a warning; prior games by other people have just scared the poo out of me by not asking first, and I didn't really like that very much).

So, I gave this a 4 (it would have been a 3, but I bumped it up one to make up for my scifi allergy).

This one... failed to grab me.

I mean, I had some amusing moments, but they were accidental, such as this bit during the opening sequence, in which the PC is having a bit of a bad day on a very crowded train:

Two or more of your neighbors seem to be competing for the right to stand on top of your feet.

>KILL EVERYONE
You can't find anything relevant by that name.

If you are new to interactive fiction, you may like to try typing HELP.

The title made me suspect that this is Yet Another Apartment or House Game.

Then I thought that perhaps the author was playing a Deep Game. Perhaps the author was trying to lure me in. "Mwuhahahaha! I will make 'em all think this is a crappy apartment or house game when in fact it is anything BUT that!" cackled the anonymous author. Yes, perhaps I was just a pawn, falling into anonymous' trap...

What's this? (Spoiler - click to show)Then I started getting persistent and uncapitalized messages about how I really need to unlock my house before i wet my pants?

Yes, this author was playing a very Deep Game.

>unlock door with copper key
You unlock the front door.
gotta go! gotta go!

>pee self
That's not a verb I recognize.

>urinate
That's not a verb I recognize.

>relax
That's not a verb I recognize.

>release urinary sphincter
That's not a verb I recognize.

So, ultimately, this really is just a crappy apartment game, albeit with a twist.

It would really be great if people would stop entering coding exercises into the IF Comp.

My guess — and this is just a guess — is that this was written for a project for school under a time constraint and had no testing. I'm basing that entirely on the link to Vanderbilt and the fact that no testers are credited in the About/Credits text. If those two things are indeed true, this isn't too bad a release, and I do welcome more interactive fiction that tackles serious subject matter. However, I think the subject matter here would be better-served by a more solid game: immersion in this world is key to making the player really feel the visceral punch that the author is going for, and it's hard to become immersed in the game due to terse conversation and linear (and not-necessarily-intuitive) puzzle design.

We played this for ClubFloyd in March 2013, and there was a bit of interesting discussion afterward about whether this game needed to go entirely puzzleless or really embrace puzzles in order to make a bigger impact. Hard to say, but this middle-of-the-road approach didn't serve the story well.

All that having been said, and taking into account the valid points made by other reviewers, I nevertheless did feel this piece was successful in evoking emotions, and that was most likely a key goal for the author.

The writing is terse. The story starts with no real hook. There are misspelled words and mechanical errors.

Okay, I'll quit writing in the same choppy sentences of which this author seems to be so fond. Rereading that last paragraph that I wrote, I sound pretty picky, but here's the thing: while one of these things may be forgiveable (or even a feature, if done right), the triumverate seems a bit much. Here's the intro:

You wake up in a big hall made of stone. There is light coming from all directions.

You are in a big hall made of stone. The ceiling is really high from the ground. There is a deep silence in this room.

You can see some kind of glass room to the north.

My description is a somewhat jarring "Looking good," which feels like a shift in narrative voice (perhaps because it's two words, not the rhythmic flow of 7-11 word sentences I've already gotten used to. Taking inventory informs me that I have a mask, and examining it reveals that "All of you can see is it has two holes for your eyes and a big opening for your mouth.."

In the first minute of the game I've got no hook. That's fine by me, if the writing is evocative or the setting intriguing, or something. But the player has very little here of interest. Except wait, there's a glass room to the north, and that sounds kind of interesting, so I clicked on the little hyperlink for "glass room" (because there are convenient hyperlinks in this game), and find that the game has ended quite unexpectedly(!). Okay, so maybe that's the fault of the website, because I'm playing the game online, so I fire it up again to give the game one more chance.

> look at glass room
Nothing out of the ordinary.

And that's when I quit playing. There were twenty-eight games in the comp, limited time in which to play and review them, and this game needs a lot more meat to make it worthwhile.

Cons: I'm not into science fiction.
Pros: We like the moon. (Well, I like the real moon, not that song.)

Anyway, yeah, I'm not too into scifi, but I have always been particularly fond of the moon and am slightly sad that I was talked out of being an astronaut by someone I looked up to as a small child, so I decided to give the game a try.

This game has some strong things going for it, but a lot of issues.

What's really great about this piece from the start is that it has some humanity to it: I'm given a bit of a feel for who the player character is, first as a scientist and astronaut, then as a person who has lived a life. And the game also has some decent pacing: you're introduced to the setting, your role, the environment, your partner, and then you begin to wonder to yourself, "Gee, I wonder when there's going to be some crazy malfunction or other issue that suddenly breaks the tranquility of exploration and me settling into my new home on the moon base..." and then, sure enough, BAM! TURN 34! SOMETHING HAPPENS. The way it was all set up made me think this was going to be a really great game, but just about the time it gets rolling, issues start popping up.

I suppose that those issues can be summed up this way: the game has a really strong start, then you start to encounter things that should be implemented more fully — conversations that should be available given what's happened but aren't available to you, that sort of thing — then suddenly the game is on rails, and then it just flies completely off the rails into one great big long giant cut-scene. It's as if the author ran out of time before the deadline but decided to submit to the comp anyway, and found short-cuts to rush things along. This is rather too bad, because the game's got this quirky-endearing plot that feels like it came out of an old Edward Packard CYOA, something that really could have been explored in an IF Comp-sized game... but it instead comes off feeling like a quickly wrapped-up IntroComp entry: short, with all the attention on the front end.

For the author's benefit, I'd like to discuss some of the implementation issues that struck me pretty hard.

For starters, (Spoiler - click to show)you're unable to speak to your partner when you're in a different location than he is. You're on the moon, which is sort of remote as work environments go, and there's just two of you up there, yet if you're outside the base and he's inside the base you can't speak to anyone — not John, not 'the base', and not ground control. Seems like a bit of a safety issue. (So you'd better hope nothing happens to you while you're separated from John! Which of course promptly happens the second you're separated from him.) As I went along, I realized that this was probably an oversight on the part of the author, because some of the cut-scenes do involve John speaking to you through the headset in your helmet, and you're eventually nudged to speak to ground control from the lunar module. There are also some minor things like wearing and removing your space suit, and opening and closing airlocks, which are kinda sorta handled, but could be slightly more elegant (i.e. done for you, instead of getting in the way of the action or killing you because you skipped a routine step that has to happen every. single. time. you exit the base — and there's a lot of coming and going, far more than I think is realistic, given what a pain in the rear it'd be to keep donning and removing a space suit).

Conversation-wise, after you see a flash of light on the surface of the moon that takes you off-guard, there's no real way to investigate it, which is annoying, so then you then come back in to the base and it's not a conversation option you can discuss with John (who is from Germany, by the way, but maybe he's adopted the name 'John' because people have trouble pronouncing 'Johann' at the space agency, or perhaps the United States finally achieves world domination by 2050 and everyone adopts English first names... but I digress). The only really obvious thing I can do after having this startling experience alone outside on the moon is have a conversation with John in which he gets excited about his lab samples, but even that doesn't trigger a conversation option to speak to him about the experiment in more detail (which is too bad, since it ends up having an effect on the plot). Ultimately, despite this unsettling experience I had, I have no option but to suggest we turn in for the evening without discussing it or looking into it further. Because that's what you'd naturally do if you were on an otherwise uninhabited chunk of rock and saw something that might lead you to believe you're not alone.

When I wake up, things have turned worse, and there's this crazy light in the distance that's intriguing enough to make me hear about it every turn, but I can't do anything about it until the game decides I can — which, okay, fair enough, but then don't torment me with it until you're going to let me investigate it, or else give me a better reason why I can't go check it out. I also found it kind of funny that the map was so limited, which I understand from the author's perspective, but... c'mon... it's the moon! It's pretty wide-open in every direction but I can only go somewhere if the plot needs me to do so. Some of the nicest touches in the game were the detail of the surface, the joy I got from jumping, things like that... so if you're not going to let me explore (which is the number one reason I kept playing the game), then give me a good reason that I can't go anywhere, as opposed to just saying, "You can't go that way."

So anyway, yeah, I feel like this just got released before it was ready. Extra props, though, for the line, "Your lightning-quick reflex has left him lying limp on the floor, snoring." That I enjoyed a great deal.

I gotta say, the opening text was not promising. The opening text, excepted and self-summarized, reads roughly as Oh, crap! The deadline for the 2012 Interactive Fiction Competition is only ten minutes away! There's no chance in Hades that I'll finish my Twine magnum opus before it's pencils down! Well, I could finish it, but it's not something I want to rush, much like my loving.</td></tr></table></center>

In retrospect, there are two things that are interesting about that opening text.

First, it's obvious after you play the game that it was not thrown together in 10 minutes. That misused apostrophe aside, the game is fairly polished. I'm not saying that Ruderbager Doppelganger spent months on Last Minute or anything, but it was certainly more than ten minutes, and while the premise is a bit off-putting, it's a setup that works well for the intended schtick.

Second, the writing style is pretty much like that throughout. If you find yourself guiltily cracking a smile at the phrase, it's not something I want to rush, much like my loving, then you should probably play this. It won't take too long.

I mentioned that there was a schtick. Indeed there is. And the schtick is cute, but sadly it is not very deeply explored. I kind of wish that the author had taken this and really explored it, without recycling any more text than absolutely necessary. That would have really made it fun.

And I suppose I should mention that the game is a non-state-tracking CYOA with a seemingly broken 'rewind' button. I personally rather enjoy CYOA, even without state-tracking, though I know many people find it too old skool for their tastes. YMMV.

At any rate, the game is nothing heavy or profound, but it was fun and I enjoyed it.

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.