Reviews by dogdennings

Less interactive fiction and more endurance test, The Story is a Room is what happens when you structure an entire game around one action and then force the player to repeat said action ad nauseam. In this case, the player is going to be opening boxes. Lots and lots and lots of boxes.

The real appeal here is the humor. While the writing itself is not overly comical, the act of having to repeatedly open box after box becomes so tedious so fast that the humor is created through wondering what the purpose of it all is.

Unfortunately, that humor is not going to appeal to everyone. The gameplay is very repetitive and the boxes have various sizes, shapes, and descriptions, so simply spamming “G” over and over is not going to get the job done.

The Story is a Room is certainly unique, but that uniqueness will probably not appeal to a wide audience. If you enjoy absurdist humor, you will probably enjoy this box-opening marathon.

You are at a cafe with Sandra and O’Brien. You can trust Sandra, but not O’Brien.
An ancient castle looms large on the horizon. There is a glass of wine in front of you. You really need to get out of this town.

Based on one of the author’s dreams, Dreadwine is a short and surreal game about trying to escape from a totalitarian government. You and your friend Sandra must find a way to leave town together before you both are arrested and turned into wine.

On one hand, the game can be frustrating. There is very little that you can interact with and the locational details are often inconsistent. For example, a building might be described as a barber shop at one point and a brothel at another point. Sandra serves as your companion NPC, but she proves to be more of a hindrance than a helper.

On the other hand, I suspect that the frustration is mostly intentional. Dreadwine is based on a dream after all, and dreams are often confusing and disorienting. That feeling of frustration also ties in well with the game’s themes of hopelessness and paranoia.

The game features two endings, but they both share similarities.

While I didn’t find the gameplay of Dreadwine to be very engaging, the surreal and oppressive narrative more than made up for it. Fans of weird fiction will find a lot to enjoy in this interactive nightmare.

It is not easy being a bread artist with sculptor’s block. Maybe a night out on the town will spark your imagination.

Written for a Speed-IF competition, Tall Tales in the Big Easy is very short with few locations. However, the game does have a lot of creativity, with a plot that involves voodoo-cursed croissants and alligator bones. None of it makes a lot of sense, but the game is so short that it doesn’t really matter.

The game features multiple endings. It also has a scoring system, which sadly doesn’t seem to work.

Tall Tales in the Big Easy is a bite-sized slice of Louisiana atmosphere. If you like your games short and weird, I highly recommend it.

I am a cat burglar, and I am currently standing outside a house. Eric is here, and he wants to talk to me.

>Talk to Eric
I don’t understand what you mean!
>X Eric
You see no such thing.
>Hello, Eric
I do not understand the word "hello."
>Eric, hello.
I do not understand the word "eric."

There is a ladder here. I can neither "get" nor "climb" the ladder. When I try to examine the ladder, the game informs me that the ladder is "object1.leaning on the wall|lying on the ground."

Through a combination of brute force and dumb luck, I eventually make my way into an upstairs bathroom. The homeowner notices me. A fight ensues. Sometimes my punches land, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the game seems genuinely baffled as to why I would want to fight someone in the first place. After wrestling with the text parser for about three minutes, I accidentally trigger an ending. The game is now over.

Put simply, Cat Burglar has a lot of technical problems. I played the game in both ADRIFT 5 Runner and Parchment. The game definitely ran better in Parchment, although I still encountered a lot of bugs.

On a non-technical note, I feel the need to warn potential players that Cat Burglar has a pretty dark tone. It is advertised as a pornographic game, so I expected sex scenes, but Cat Burglar’s approach to sex is very much of the “You are helpless and at my mercy and I can do whatever I want to you and no one will stop me” variety. And I want to stress that I am not judging the author nor the people who enjoy this type of fantasy. However, I personally didn't find it very appealing.

While the prospect of playing as a sexy criminal who has to use not only her thieving skills but her womanly wiles to get her way sounds appealing, Cat Burglar suffers from far too many technical problems to be an enjoyable experience. I do not recommend it.

Locked Door III feels very much like a combination of the two previous Locked Door games. The puzzles are not overly complicated, but the gameplay does require both object manipulation and NPC interaction. The map is small, but the locations have their own unique personalities.

I didn’t notice any typos, but I did encountered a bug. I was able to finish the game with a score of four out of three, which I am pretty sure is something that I am not suppose to be able to do.

Compared to the two previous games, Locked Door III feels the most like an actual puzzle, albeit a very small one. If you are thinking about getting into this series, I would recommend skipping the two previous entries and starting with this one.

A balding man named Bob stands between you and your freedom.

While more complicated than the first game, Locked Door II is still pretty bare-bones. It is a two-room game with one puzzle, but this time the puzzle is centered around interacting with an NPC. The game can be completed in seven turns.

While I applaud the author for continuing to write games, there is still not enough here for a recommendation.

You find yourself locked in a room. Can you unlock the door?

Locked Door is a two-room game centered around one puzzle. The game can be solved in four turns.

I am usually a fan of terse writing, but Locked Door takes it to an extreme. Not only is the game very short, but almost nothing in the game has a description, although examining yourself does produce the rather humorous response of “just some dude.”

On the positive side, I didn’t encounter any bugs or typos.

I realize that Locked Door was an exercise in minimalism, but there is simply not enough here to warrant a recommendation.

There is a killer on the loose in Elmville, and unless you want to become their next victim, you better hurry up and bring them to justice.

Wolfsmoon is a horror-themed puzzle game with pixel artwork. It was written in a terse style that is meant to mimic the text adventure games from the 1980s. However, Wolfsmoon is much more forgiving than games from that decade. While the puzzles are not exactly easy, the game cannot be put into an unwinnable state.

The gameplay is broken into two parts. The first part has you exploring the town of Elmville while collecting items and solving puzzles. There are a few NPCs that you can interactive with, but they are mostly static and unhelpful.

The second part takes place in a puzzle house. You find yourself trapped in a mansion, and you have to search every room carefully for clues on how to escape.

I felt that the puzzles were of medium difficulty. I did get stuck frequently, but progression never felt impossible. I was able to finish the game without a walkthrough.

Wolfsmoon also features beautiful pixel artwork for every location. The artwork does a great job of adding to the atmosphere without distracting from the written descriptions.

On the negative side, some of the writing is a little awkward. For example, if you try to fill a tankard with stew, the game will tell you that tankards are for beer. Fair enough, except for the fact that you have to eventually fill the tankard with something that is decidedly not beer. These moments are few and far between, and they certainly don’t ruin the game, but I can see how they could cause confusion and frustration.

Atmospheric and challenging, Wolfsmoon is a great game. If you enjoy solving puzzles, I highly recommend it.

You are home alone, but not entirely alone.

In All Alone, you play as a struggling artist who is currently living in a sub-basement apartment. Your significant other is at work, and you have settled in for the night to watch some television when a news report about a serial killer comes on. And suddenly the phone rings.

While not technically a one-room game, the entirety of All Alone takes place in a very claustrophobic apartment. The gameplay is puzzleless with a focus on exploration and object examination. It is a short game, but the author does a great job of ratcheting up the tension. And the level of object interactivity is really impressive. Almost everything in your apartment can be examined.

It is hard to talk about All Alone without discussing the ending, and it is hard to discuss the ending without revealing spoilers. While I did enjoy the ending, I will admit that it left me with more questions than answers. Maybe that was the point. Maybe the underlying message of the game is that your emotions can distort your sense of reality. Maybe, but I honestly don’t know.

All Alone is a genuinely scary game with an impressive level of detail and a plot that plays with your expectations. I highly recommend it.

You wake up in the middle of the night with a throbbing headache and an itchy scalp. It is only going to get worse from here.

Based on an idea by H.P. Lovecraft, Ecdysis is the story of a man struggling to make sense of a rapidly changing environment. The game begins in a rather mundane setting, but soon shifts to an alien landscape of lust and violence.

The gameplay is a little too linear for my liking, but the story is interesting enough to keep me invested. Locations, people, and objects are represented as clickable hyperlinks, so you can play the majority of the game with just the mouse, although typing in commands will sometimes give you additional information. The game is short, and there are no puzzles, aside from the general process of interacting with the environment. There are multiple endings, with each one seemingly more grotesque than the last.

I recommend Ecdysis, but that recommendation comes with an asterisk. If you are looking for a scary but ultimately uplifting story about conquering evil, you are definitely looking in the wrong place. But fans of the macabre will find a lot to appreciate in Ecdysis.

You, the always dutiful museum employee, have just stumbled upon a meteor. It would make a great addition to your museum. Too bad the meteor is currently too hot to handle…

The Lake is a one-room game centered around one puzzle. The puzzle itself is not difficult to solve, although I will admit that I found the solution to be amusing. However, the lack of detail is the thing that really holds the game back. For example, the titular lake cannot be examined.

The Lake is a very short game centered around one puzzle with a joke solution, and while I will admit that I enjoyed the game, I wish that more time had been put into the descriptions.

Craverly Heights is a short game with a lot of creativity. You play Dr. Langridge, a brilliant physician at Roland Memorial Hospital. Pauline, your patient, is in desperate need of an operation. Sadly, her insurance is refusing to pay for it, which saddles you with the laborious task of trying to raise the money yourself.

A dramatic setup quickly mutates into a comedy of bad acting and ad-libbing. The map is small, but the rooms have a lot of personality. The characters are mostly static, but their dialogue does change depending on what you are wearing. There are multiple endings.

I usually find comedic IF to be more amusing than actually funny, but Craverly Heights has some really great moments. If you are looking for a light-hearted game that doesn’t take itself too seriously, I highly recommend Craverly Heights.

Maybe watching all those scary videos right before bedtime wasn’t such a great idea…

Something In The Night is a game about finding the courage to go to bed while home alone. Horror fans might be disappointed in the game’s lack of scares, but I felt that the somewhat humorous nature of it all worked to its favor. The game is well-made with no obvious bugs or typos. The gameplay is puzzleless and very short, but the writing manages to maintain a decent atmosphere throughout.

If you are a fan of the often goofy horror stories that get told at sleepovers, you will probably enjoy Something In The Night.

Working at a Quick Stop can’t be the most glamorous of occupations.
Thankfully, you have sexy Becky to take your mind off all that.

The author credits Adam Cadre for inspiration, and at times Becky definitely feels very Cadre-ish. The game waste no time getting right to the sex scenes, but it does feature an epilogue that took me by surprise. The game is short and puzzleless, although it does contain multiple endings.

Becky is an interesting take on AIF. It is not going to give you hours upon hours of gameplay, but it is creative enough to warrant a playthrough.

Castle Adventure! is about as old school as you can possibly get. It is the fantasy-themed story of a nameless adventurer and their quest to rescue an imprisoned princess. The map is made up largely of mazes that are separated by puzzles. The game can be put into an unwinnable state.

All that being said, I didn’t find Castle Adventure! to be nearly as difficult as a lot of older text adventure games. There were a few puzzles that gave me trouble and I had to draw a map to keep my directions consistent, but between the limited items and the minimalist room descriptions, I usually had a pretty good idea what I was suppose to be doing.

If you are looking for the next Photopia or Counterfeit Monkey, you need to look elsewhere. But if you are in the mood for an old school dungeon crawler, Castle Adventure! is here for you.

Mr. Webster, the lighthouse keeper, has asked you to take care of his lighthouse while he is away. Are you up for the job?

According to the publication notes, this is the authors’ first game, and it certainly bears a lot of the telltale signs of a first game. The map is small, the descriptions are unhelpful, and the coding is a little buggy. While the concept of having to take care of an isolated lighthouse all by your lonesome sounds like fertile ground for a story, the entire game can be finished in about 15 turns, which squanders any narrative potential.

Even more unfortunate is the fact that this also appears to be the authors’ only game. We all have to start somewhere, and while I will admit to being unimpressed with pretty much every aspect of The Lighthouse, I can’t really fault someone for wanting to show off something that they made. I just wish that they had put more time and effort into it.

If nothing else, I hope that The Lighthouse serves as a reminder that we all have to learn to walk before we can run.

You, a master thief, have just broken into a house owned by Jefferson Smith, the fifteenth wealthiest person in England. You have 2 hours to gather valuables and make your escape.

Despite being billed as a coding exercise, Burglar! is fairly enjoyable. Much like Hollywood Hijinx, Burglar! is a treasure hunt game that must be completed in a limited number of turns. However, unlike Hollywood Hijinx, Burglar! does not automatically end when you run out of turns. You can still complete the game, as long as you manage to avoid the homeowner while they search for you.

I found the gameplay to be moderately difficult. While some of the valuables are easy to find, others require the manipulation of hidden buttons and levers. The author also has a penchant for hiding objects inside other objects. To complicate matters, some objects exist only to serve as red herrings, a design choice that I have always had mixed feelings about. I was not able to get the full score without the help of a walkthrough.

I didn’t encounter any bugs, but some of the writing is awkward, with descriptions such as “an item of junk mail” and “there's a fridge is whirring away to itself in the corner.”

Burglar! does not excel in any one area, but the overall package is enjoyable enough. Fans of treasure hunt games might want to give it a try.

Oh, no, you are late for work! Better hurry up or your boss will fire you!

While not an outright parody, 9:05 does a good job of subverting a lot of the tropes commonly used in interactive fiction. You play a character with no backstory, you start the game in your bedroom, and you must accomplish a goal through the solving of various puzzles. To say anything more about the plot would be to risk spoilers, so I will just say that 9:05 starts with a simple setup that turns out to be anything but simple.

Difficulty is very subjective, but I found the game to be easy. The plot is grounded in reality, so all the puzzles have very logical solutions. The game will also offer advice when you type in a command that the parser doesn’t understand. The map is small and easy to navigate.

9:05 is a very short game, but it has a lot to offer to both IF beginners and IF veterans. I highly recommend it.