Ratings and 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.