Reviews by cgasquid

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.