Reviews by cgasquid

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.