Reviews by cgasquid

This story is the direct adaptation of the Call of Cthulhu adventure "The Haunting," typically used as the first adventure in a campaign to get players used to the research-investigate-probably die cycle that the RPG follows. The game follows the investigation point-for-point, and quotes from the adventure repeatedly.

Nowhere in the game or its description do I see any mention of the original adventure, of the fact that this is an adaptation and not a fully original work, or any credit given to the original author. There is a vague reference on the itch.io page, but frankly, that's not enough.

In any case this is a poor adaptation.

The early part of the game functions similarly to Leisure Suit Larry, where you have to know the names of specific locations to drive there, but there is no friendly cabbie to let you know the list of locations if you TALK TO DRIVER.

When you do think of the proper locations, all you do is walk through maybe a single room with an under-detailed NPC and then SEARCH whatever's in the room beyond. You can't LOOK UP things in the card catalog, you can't effectively ask people for help, just get to SEARCHing. The game has a conversation topic sequence but you don't get enough words for it to make a difference.

For all that the room descriptions are lush and detailed, not much else is. There are piles of unimplemented objects and default responses to natural actions, you "see nothing special" about unusual objects, and the shallowness makes solving puzzles impossible without reading the author's mind. There are also situations where your PC "decides" not to do something that would be a natural action, or where only one of two synonymous commands has been implemented.

Finally, the game ends with a randomized combat sequence that is heavily weighted against the PC. I was only able to complete it with repeated undo's and retries.

All in all, this is not Ectocomp's shining hour. I'm honestly surprised nobody caught this, as "The Haunting" has been included as a sample adventure in several editions of Call of Cthulhu and is one of those "shared experience" adventures that most players have gone through and love to share their individual stories about.

everyone is, i think, familiar with the genre of "one move" games, originated by Aisle and followed up on by titles such as Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle and 50 Shades of Jilting.

unlike most such games, this one has a puzzle. you have one move to act. that action, all by itself, a single command, has to completely solve the puzzle.

the puzzle.

that damnable puzzle.

the evil, insidious, dastardly, cruel, vicious, mean, demonic ... incredibly interactive, deeply implemented puzzle.

i mean, i found my experience with this game to be one of incredible frustration, but it was the kind of frustration where the parser is being perfectly responsive and the reactions to your actions make perfect sense and you always feel like you're this close to the solution when in fact you're still another fifty iterations away.

five stars for That Damnable Puzzle. one star deducted because something important isn't made sufficiently clear: (Spoiler - click to show)the event isn't always exactly the same, and the differences are of paramount importance.

absolutely not recommended for beginners or inexperienced players. for all that there's only a single command required, i rank this with some of the hardest IF i've ever played.

the one-move game Aisle has been endlessly remixed, parodied, copied, and reiterated at this point. most of the copies have ignored the pathos that was the original's intent, instead focusing on the bizarre responses the original provided for more out-there commands that seemed to hint that the protagonist was suffering from dementia.

in this offering, you are sitting at a restaurant table with your lover, and you intend to leave them. you have one move. every response the parser recognizes will print out a joke interpretation of what you typed as a method of dumping said lover.

the key here is "every response the parser recognizes." most of the things i typed after the obvious were not understood. objects whose presence had been established in one narrative were not implemented, and couldn't be interacted with in the next restart.

it's not that this kind of game can't be done well, though admittedly i can only think of two times it worked: Rematch and I'm Having a Heart Attack from the Apollo 13 collection. in both cases the implementation was extremely deep, and you could (and needed to) build on what you learn about the setting from your previous actions to give you ideas for later attempts.

here i ran into too many brick walls of unimplemented words and lost interest.

... assuming you have a thing for Deanna Troi from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

you're dropped into the uniform of William T. Riker and the quarters of Deanna Troi. (it's not clear whether this is happening before NextGen or after Star Trek: Insurrection, because they were never a couple during the series' actual run.) within very short order, you will also be dropping said uniform and, ah, initiating docking procedures, so to speak.

the main thing that distinguishes Deanna from other works of adult IF is that it gives Deanna agency and active participation. most works of AIF present one's prospective partners with all the detail and implementation depth of the wrench in Zork I: the item is there for a purpose, it doesn't particularly matter what it looks like, and until you start applying verbs to it it's not going to do anything, either.

in other words, this feels like a sexual fantasy, while most AIF feels, at best, like a still photograph.

now, i did still have trouble with it, but that's probably because i'm not personally well-versed in how to use the implement Commander Riker will be relying on. but it was still fun reading the dialogue, which rings remarkably true, and exploring the various Trekkian room features.

i'm still not sure parser is the best way to go with AIF -- it's always going to be somewhat on rails, and using Twine would save the player some verb guessing and the like. but honestly, this is a short erotic story where no one's being manipulated or taken advantage of and two consenting people get their nookie on. that's worth celebrating.

you are a college student (male by default, though it switches to female if you type (Spoiler - click to show)HETERONORMATIVITY OFF, something i'd give my left arm to be able to do in real life). you've been making practically no progress on your paper because you keep allowing yourself to be distracted, and your girlfriend is fed up with you. now you have an ultimatum: write 1,000 words by the deadline or she's leaving you forever.

as a point of stark realism, your college dorm room turns out to be a horrible place to study. there's no quiet, you're surrounded by minor irritants, and there's a MAJOR irritant who i'd think was trying to sabotage your relationship if there was any way she could know about the ultimatum.

in a very clever design choice, rather than being personality-free (or pointlessly sarcastic like the default library), the parser's voice is what you imagine your girlfriend would be saying if she was watching your situation right at that moment. it gives her a lot of character, and goes a long way towards redeeming her in my eyes (really, it's not fair to issue an ultimatum about something the protagonist can't really help).

that said, i did not even come close to completing the story without hints.

the puzzles in Violet are eminently logical, but still entirely brutal and require a ton of experimentation. so many things are happening at once that it can distract the player, as your problems aren't kindly enough to line up one at a time. the few means you have to fight back are counterintuitive and in some cases plain ornery (e.g., (Spoiler - click to show)the bizarre way you operate the radio).

but "it's hard" doesn't equate to "it's bad." we need IF for all levels of player skill and creativity. the only reason i don't refer to this as a hidden gem is that it's not at all hidden -- it's extremely well-known.

probably also says something that i was feeling depressed after writing a few negative reviews in a row, i wanted to review something good, and i came here ...

+=3 was intended to make the point that a puzzle can have a perfectly logical solution and still be virtually unsolvable.

it does not make this point, as the puzzle does not have a logical solution.

for those not in the know, the goal of the game is to pay a troll by handing it three items. this is the first puzzle and the only puzzle, and you encounter it immediately. however, there aren't three items in your inventory, nor are there any other items to be picked up. so, what to do?

the solution presented is to (Spoiler - click to show)think of objects that have been implemented but that are never mentioned in any descriptions at all, that are omitted from your inventory even though you possess them, and that can't be found by examining yourself -- specifically, clothes.

unfortunately, as too often happens when an author is trying to lecture the audience, it just doesn't hold up.

first, regarding the response to EXAMINE ME. (Spoiler - click to show)you're described as the adventurer from Zork. there was an object that said adventurer possessed that wasn't implemented -- the compass, mentioned only in the Alice-in-Wonderland area in Zork II. but it couldn't referred to. this conveys the information that you're a fantasy adventurer -- yet the words BOOTS and ARMOR aren't implemented. thus, even if someone does think of trying to obtain items by undressing, the first words they're likely to try won't work, and they'll give up on the idea!

second, regarding the game's tiny nature. (Spoiler - click to show)you're said to have just conquered a dungeon, but the game won't let you retreat to gather more items. in the games of this era there was always detritus left over -- the adventurer from Zork would at least have a lamp and sword. there's no logical reason to block this area off; the game is just refusing to allow you to go there because it isn't the intended solution.

and lastly, regarding the shallow implementation. (Spoiler - click to show)a handful of different words for specific articles of clothing -- modern ones -- are available. given the esoteric nature of the solution, again, someone isn't necessarily likely to keep trying clothing nouns unless they happen to hit on one first try. trying to remove my dress or shoes and being told the game doesn't understand would cause me to discard this way of thinking. this game needed a LARGE vocabulary of garments -- and given how little game there is otherwise, there was absolutely time to implement it.

overall, the reason that this puzzle is "logical but impossible" is because the author's rigged things up that way. all this proves is that IF authors are able to write puzzles where the only way most people can proceed is to read the author's mind or guess the right word, and buddy, that ain't news.

first, we need to look at 9:05 from the perspective of when it was created. certainly, there had been stories that concealed crucial facts from the player as a part of their structure, ranging from the clever (Photopia) to the merely frustrating (The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy). but the standard expectation of the time was that you could trust what the parser told you implicitly and assume you knew everything you needed to about the protagonist (most often there simply not being anything worth knowing).

a game like 9:05 challenges these impressions. the parser and protagonist are (Spoiler - click to show)telling a lie of omission. this is, obviously, a Generic Protagonist just going through the dreary opening moves of a typical slice-of-life game. (Spoiler - click to show)no, it isn't. you're not the Generic Protagonist, you're the person who robbed and murdered them.

9:05 is a very brief game that only rewards a handful of playthroughs before being completely explored. but those playthroughs have something very important to say about the nature of IF.

while i wouldn't exactly call a game that can be finished in three minutes and completely exhausted in ten a masterpiece, this is definitely an important work that signposted some of the narrative techniques used in many later games.

first to note, the provided link no longer works; the author appears to have taken the game down.

i mean, inasmuch as this is a game at all. much like many political games it has a point to make, and it doesn't want you messing around with things like choices or alternate story paths that might not lead to the desired horror.

this game accurately portrays the American police from the point of view of those minorities that are victimized by it. i'll give it that, which means it gets one extra star than most of the on-rails political IF i've read.

but honestly this isn't really much more effective than plain text would have been, and much less effective than a well-written essay containing documentation and interviews and providing proper citations.

which is to say, this kind of thing isn't going to convince anyone; it'll get a laugh out of the people who already agree with its message, anger those who disagree, and get a quizzical head-tilt from the rest.

i can understand the desire of art to be transgressive, and that this piece is intended to start as erotica before abruptly diving deep into what is, to me at least, (Spoiler - click to show)serial-killer horror.

i realize that (Spoiler - click to show)vore is a known fetish, it has its adherents, i've had furry friends who were into it, Your Kink Is Not My Kink But Your Kink Is OK As Long As It Only Remains A Fantasy.

but as something to spring on a reader without any warning, in a game presented as ordinary porn, it's a little on the extreme side.

if the (Spoiler - click to show)serial killer stuff had been accurately signposted in advance, i would probably have given this game four stars ... from another room ... using a long pole to click the mouse. it's very well written. but the fact that this incredibly triggering content was provided without warning forces me to reduce the rating considerably.

one of the problems with IF erotica is that it's generally written in a vacuum. minimal descriptions of anything but sexual acts, shallow implementation in general, and heaping helpings of read-the-author's-mind. even when the writing per se is good (e.g., Deanna) there's an inherent feeling of artificiality; much like bad porn, it just kind of starts at the sex and ends after it.

in order for an erotica game to work for me, at least, i have to understand what the characters are like, how they feel about each other, and what this means for them. to put it another way, i need the backstory.

(i acknowledge that there are some people who do prefer their porn to be storyless and characterless. to this, i reply that they are free to howl "get on with it" at my kind of erotica, just like i'm free to be bored and mildly revolted by theirs.)

"And the Robot Horse You Rode In On" is unapologetically a work of erotica; the author has even acknowledged that it began with a mental image of (spoilered for sexual terminology) (Spoiler - click to show)predicament bondage and expanded from there.

but for a work so short, it does an excellent job of characterbuilding and worldbuilding. you can understand your character. you can understand the other character. you can understand how this arose and where it might go.

well-written, engaging, and very, very hot.