Reviews by cgasquid

Okay, no, actually, that was terrifying.

So many awkward situations, fired in such quick succession ... it seems like every choice you make either cycles back or makes things worse. I'm not sure whether this story is entirely linear or whether it has heavier branching.

Regardless, the brief prose still pulls you into the story. I think I need to go take a klonopin.

You have a surreal world based on an academic subject, with the protagonist being a practitioner of that academic field who seems to have forgotten everything until after they've solved the relevant puzzle. Aside from the weird locations and situations, there are also famous geniuses in the field hanging around to be interacted with, including the Greek hero Achilles (as seen in one of Zeno's paradoxes).

The description above describes both The Chinese Room and A Beauty Cold and Austere. Half of the description also applies to Dr. Dumont's Wild PARTI. The main difference is that while the latter two games apply to the hard sciences (mathematics and physics, respectively) while the former applies to philosophy.

The secondary difference is that the latter two games actually work. I don't mean "work as a game," although that's true as well -- The Chinese Room is incredibly buggy and insufficiently implemented.

You have a ludicrously small inventory limit for no particular reason. You have a container, and objects are shifted in and out of it when you use them as expected. Three specific objects, though, can be put into the sack -- including automatically -- and can't be removed. In two of the three cases that's an instant no-win situation.

"Light lantern with lighter" works, but not "light lantern". The qualiascope requires very specific syntax and functions inconsistently. Certain conversational options not only don't work, but show a parser error message. There are typos throughout, in a few places actually making the meaning of sentences ambiguous. Most of the nouns in the text are unimplemented, in some cases bafflingly so ("trees" is implemented but not "tree"?) Objects are obtained by solving a puzzle, used once, and discarded; the puzzles are strictly one-per-room and the game only contains two rooms without a puzzle in them.

Most of all, though, is the handling of the subject matter. A few puzzles are actually solved through application of philosophy, but more of them seem to be jokes. In a couple of cases actual philosophical dilemmas are given pat, "correct" answers. While it's not uncommon for games in the genre to just randomly dump historical figures into a room, The Chinese Room may be setting a record for useless cameos.

The tertiary difference is that the two better games are both fairly po-faced; the situations are often funny but they aren't wacky. Whether this is good or bad is up to you.

Overall this game has a lot of potential; the writing positively sparkles and there are some great moments. But there's just this feeling that the whole thing is .. rushed.

Note: This is the only game I think I've played where the player character is firmly established as bi.

Pokey the Penguin is/was a webcomic so bizarre that it may well be outsider art.
Various identical-looking characters and their weirdo friends do nonsensical things. Entire sections of the comic are clumsily crossed out. The comic is either ironically or bizarrely bigoted against Italians. It makes absolutely no sense.

Prodly the Puffin is another webcomic that is either a parody or an homage to Pokey. It makes slightly more sense than Pokey, but the characters are even worse people; Prodly is kind of like the Family Guy to Pokey's Liquid Television.

This is a game based on Prodly. It fully displays the crudity, pointlessness, and idiocy of the comic ... which in this case is a good thing. This is one of the few IF games worth playing that allows you to play as a vicious, murderous piece of garbage who torments and tortures his friends.

Whether you find it funny is up to you. There's a strong early-2000s "humor is cruel" vibe to it, and I mean, when it was the early 2000s, that kind of humor had a cruel audience. Does Prodly the Puffin have a place in this more-enlightened-until-it-abruptly-all-went-septic age? I think so, even if only as a time capsule.

For the record, I played this on a real Apple ][+ in the 1980s. It was my second text adventure ever, after Scott Adams' Adventureland and before Zork II.

An asteroid is speeding towards Earth on a collision course. (Never mind that in the 1980s our first warning of an approaching asteroid would be its impact.) Your goal is to qualify as an astronaut, fly your shuttle out to the asteroid, set charges to blow it up, and return safely to Earth.

No, Bruce Willis is not included. And this game came out 18 years before Armageddon anyway.

Despite how it might sound, this is actually a fairly simple task. There are a handful of puzzles with self-evident answers, mostly consisting of getting information in one place and using it in another. You'll probably want to take some notes.

The game's difficulty -- ALL of its difficulty -- comes from the tight time limit. Every action you take uses up a certain amount of time, so there is no time for any distractions or any mistakes. The "puzzle" is therefore to write a walkthrough so efficient that not even one move is missed.

This, I am afraid to tell you, is NOT FUN.

It's not even like this is an efficiency puzzle. Mission: Asteroid is ludicrously linear -- there are no alternate solutions to puzzles, no multiple routes, no optional areas, nothing. You're more likely to die from a typo or because you accidentally used a synonym than anything else.

Oh, and if you DO die, the game simply continues like it didn't happen. You can "win" just by ignoring it and continuing to play.

Compared to Mystery House, this isn't that significant a piece of IF history, and it's buggy, poorly designed, and hopelessly linear. I've played better adventure games programmed by fourteen-year-olds.

The Game Formerly Known as Hidden Nazi Mode is a harmless game about finding bunny rabbits hiding in a Jewish neighborhood. Adorable, right? It could be that the author grew up in a Jewish neighborhood, or the game could be aimed at Jewish kids and attempting to create familiar surroundings, or it could just happen to be one. It's a nice, homey, friendly place that's safe and welcoming.

Until you enter the "special command" -- (Spoiler - click to show)JOIN THE SS.

Suddenly the game is about a Nazi officer searching for Jewish families. The rabbits are replaced by terrified innocent victims. Both the player character and the game itself become monstrous.

The point, though, is that the horror is hidden -- not the way horror is hidden in a creepypasta game, but deliberately hidden by the creator to pass along an abhorrent message to an intended audience under the nose of the mainstream buyer. And this is absolutely something that a sufficiently 2edgy4u kid could discover.

The author's point is that you never know what's hiding under the surface of the media your kids are consuming. Not unless you can actually examine it, take it apart, and make sure there's nothing under the surface.

I ... don't fully agree with this. It's not that parents shouldn't curate their children's media. That's a matter of carefully walking the line between too restrictive (isolates the child from friends, prevents learning critical thinking during crucial development stages, weakens child's resistance) and too permissive (forces confronting adult ideas at too early a stage, encourages poor conflict resolution, demonstrates unchallenged bad behavior).

What I don't agree with is the notion that seeing publisher-provided source code would accomplish anything at all.

If someone is already perfectly willing to hide rancid, nauseating evil inside a children's game, what on earth makes you think that the source code document will be the same source code as the actual game? If the game is a lie then why would the source code necessarily be the truth!?

At the age I was, I got hours and hours of fun out of Adventureland ... 's demo. As sparse as the text was, as weird as the puzzles were, and as unsolvable as many of them proved to be in the demo, it still felt like I was being drawn into a vibrant world of the imagination. I loved it. I loved the things that I imagined happening off the edges of the map, and I loved the idea of a world where dragons take their sleep of ages in random meadows and jewels and objets d'art could be found hiding everywhere you look.

There are lots of things in Adventureland you wouldn't see much after the ascendance of Infocom. Ridiculously varied landscapes where the entire biome changes each time you take a short jog. Treasures lying out in the open, marked so you can tell them from dross items. Single-move puzzles where you just had to bring the right item. And absolutely bizarre moments like dealing with the bear.

In 1980, Zork would hit the commercial markets and instantly become a "killer app." But Adventure International would keep publishing games until 1984, because there was still a market for this kind of minimalist, constrained narrative experience. And, looking back on it, I can see why; it's like comparing the experience of an Atari 2600 game and a Playstation 4 game. It's not that the modern game is "better" because it's more sophisticated; the two are just different.

Unlike most adult IF, Softporn Adventure has actual puzzles and gameplay outside of simple seduction. Given the era, it's not surprising that the puzzles are simple and shallow and the prose is flat.

But no one talks about this game to talk about it. There's the sleazy and unpleasant story behind the game's cover. There are the bizarre and illogical puzzles. And, of course, this game would later be reworked into Leisure Suit Larry, and the irony that there's actually a worse version of Leisure Suit Larry.

In a strange way I kind of wish this had been a Hi-Res Adventure like The Wizard and the Princess or Mission Asteroid. Not because it would be hotter with pictures (nothing could make this material erotic) but because I have a morbid interest in seeing how this game would look in that "crude even for the Apple ][+" style.

Anyway, as a game, Softporn Adventure alternates between simple, boring puzzles and parser-wrestling nightmares. It doesn't have much to offer even for its era.

I really wish I could convey to people that just because something runs doesn't mean it should be published.

It's also unfortunately common for novice writers to try to write "so bad it's good" games with self-reproachful titles like this one. Thing is, "so bad it's good" does not happen intentionally. When you call your game something like "the absolute worst IF game in history," you're probably going to be right, or at least in the running.

This doesn't even work as a troll game, and I think I put more thought and effort into this review than the author did into this game.

When you build a game with conversation, particularly conversational puzzles or conversations that set flags, it's not enough for it to just offer a challenge and a compelling story. "The Elysium Enigma" has challenge and it has an interesting story.

What it doesn't have are good characters.

There are essentially three NPCs in this game; your PC is a generic male Star Trek space guy and doesn't really have a personality.

The main NPC is a farm-girl named Leela; she is immediately described as attractive. When you first meet her she's dressed in rags and begging for help; the next time you see her she's stark naked and perfectly happy to walk around in that state indefinitely. You can give her femme accessories like combs and mirrors and talk to her about herself. (Spoiler - click to show)She will also kiss you, unprompted, and you can flirt with her and ask if she's up for a relationship. At one point she even throws herself on a bed. If you're thinking "hey, this is a ridiculous heterosexual male fantasy woman who exists solely to be a sexual object," then I'm right there along with you.

(Spoiler - click to show)Until it's revealed that she's a spy from an enemy space nation that wants to go to war with your space nation. This becomes incredibly obvious when you find a tight-fitting alien jumpsuit that fits her perfectly. Of course, the second she's exposed, she becomes a vicious ice queen who does nothing but try to kill you -- in other words, as soon as she begins acting intelligently she becomes a dire threat.

While one could make the argument that "Leela" is a disguise intended to pander to the PC's libido, she breaks character so briefly and solely for a fight scene so it's hard to consider that an excuse. You can do everything short of actually bedding her, and that feels less like forbearance and more an attempt to keep this from being classified as AIF.

Then you have Petroc, who is the SOLE person in the town and is a grouchy Luddite old man. While he certainly seems more realistic -- this is what you expected when you came to the planet, after all -- he's almost entirely one-note. Talk to him about anything and he'll turn it into a jab at the concept of technology or offer to let you give up your job and settle on the planet. (He makes this latter offer over and over.)

(Spoiler - click to show)That's all I really have to say about Petroc, but I had to have a spoiler here so the one for Leela doesn't make her blatantly obvious.

Finally you have Soolin, your ship's pilot. She, too, is immediately described as attractive. Despite the fact that she spends the entire game sitting in the shuttle trying to get you to give up and come back, she's probably the most likeable and realistic character in the game. Her responses to conversation aren't a syrupy male fantasy nor completely predictable. I liked her.

(Spoiler - click to show)Again, nothing more to say about Soolin.

I also have to say, having no one in the town but Petroc feels like a huge cop-out. You're visiting an alien planet with a vastly different culture! (Spoiler - click to show)Not that the culture has anything to do with the plot, but it's still interesting ... Give us some random NPCs hanging around, maybe split some of Petroc's information among several characters, anything to make this planet not seem so completely deserted.

This is a technically competent game. I only ran into a single bug, and it was just that an automatic numbering system couldn't spell the word "twelfth." It has some pretty good puzzles, like finding the flag, actually using the raft, and obtaining the passwords. The basic plot -- (Spoiler - click to show)a brief and boring mission turning into a hunt for a spy -- is serviceable.

But frankly, when you build a game where conversation is so crucial, having your characters consist of an irritating fanatic, mission control, and little miss Captain-Kirk-Teach-Me-Of-This-Thing-You-Call-"Kissing" feels like the missed opportunity of all missed opportunities.

Clever bit of dry, political British humor. You encounter Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on the street and have to keep him from joining a terrorist organization. I can't help but feel this was probably more topical when it was created.

Still, it's not bad per se. It's brief, it's more of a CYOA than actual interactive fiction, and there's nothing literary about it. But it's worth a few chuckles and trying for a few different endings.