Ratings and Reviews by Juhana

Announcement to all aspiring authors: please, please don't release the "game" you made while going through the first five chapters of the I7 tutorial. Thank you for your attention.

When I was a kid I read a novelization of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It was a huge disappointment: the book was essentially the entire script written in complete sentences, nothing added or removed. I was once again reminded of it when I played this game. You Have To Burn The Rope is a clever, funny and meaningful little Flash game, and this is its literal novelization.

As it now is, it doesn't work. The commentary of the original game is completely lost when the medium changes. The original parodies the aspects of modern online platformers, but that joke doesn't work if the medium isn't a modern online platformer and the author of this version clearly has no insight of this genre to make a similar commentary on the aspects of modern IF games.

Besides, if the game is called You Have To Burn The Rope and the command BURN THE ROPE is a "dangerous act that would achieve little", something has really gone wrong. (You have to BURN ROPE WITH TORCH.)
(UPDATE: The author realized this himself and changed the game's title. That's funny enough to earn an extra star.)

The game is a good start for a beginning author. That being said, it has its fair share of problems, beginning with the story that resembles a bad fanfic of a B-class action movie. The locations have very shallow implementations and the prose is sloppy. The chase scene finale fails to convey any sense of danger or speed and is broken in quite many ways.

After all these faults, why do I then call the game a good start? The game is released with source code and it contains a section with several paragraphs of author brainstorming and analyzing the game. The final game has very little left from what seems to be the initial plan - with a bit more time and devotion (and beta testing!) the author has the potential do a lot better.