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 undos 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.

... 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.