Ratings and Reviews by fos1

Over the last several days, I have been playing Garry's Winchester High entry for Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2023. It is a brilliant game. I don't know how I missed that jam and particularly this game! Not only is the game very fun to play, it has a help and tutorial system to help new players learn how to play. Garry also shared the source code for the game. It is just as brilliant as the game. It is well organized into functions and locations.

Mathbrush is an awesome coder and author.

This adventure is fashioned after the developer of the Dialog Authoring system's Impossible Bottle. Impossible Stairs is a worthy tribute, just as challenging and entertaining.

Mathbrush is also quite generous to make the source code of this game available. It an excellent learning experience for code techniques and how the games built in IF tutorial game play system is implemented.

Impossible Stairs is well worth your time to explore!!!

The author this story is one that might have been a Twilight episode. Very true indeed.

The opening intro starts immediately in first person. That is unusual enough in interactive fiction (IF) that it stood out clearly. After that opening, you are drawn into the story as that person. This not so subtle opening drew me in.
As a hopeless romantic, I kept pulling for a solution that would solve the issues in the evolving relationship. The solutions were there, I just had to find them. They had to lie just outside the front door and always somewhere in another room – maybe? Will I win – lose? … Always drawn in further.

You see shadows of a former time. I wanted to find, no had to find the nascent characters: a nameless wife and Toby, a young son. The search leads on but memories just out of reach. I really wanted to find Toby!
As you explore the empty, dust filled house, you are led down a pathway searching for answers, memories that become more and more clear as you visit each room again and again: searching.

The wife’s art lays a theme that provides answers if you could only solve them. If you could have seen them, found the right questions and provided the correct solutions.
This a journey of transition that we all go through at times in our lives, not necessarily this transition but always one that starts and ends and can never be solved. Maybe - sometimes?

I guess it is a game. Every choice leads to another form of procrastination. I procrastinate too much but I'm retired. I need goals and deadlines.

Too much use of the F word.....

I played the game through a couple of times. The early part of the game is linear, a single choice after a page of narrative. After the intro section you will have a couple of options that will be pretty obvious, kind of a good / bad thing. The game is pretty unforgiving as it will reach a dead end (literally) with one of the choices. There is quite a bit of violence and some described sexuality.

I gave it three stars due to the humor and irony. Not a bad read but definitely contains adult content.

I have heard of the Donner Party. A new theory was in the news recently. What a tough time and a tough way to travel. But the west coast of North America beckoned settlers, a land of wealth and opportunity.

This is a well told story. How much is fiction? It is hard to say. The author has melded many of the facts on record with a well thought out narrative.

The Donner Party experienced hardship beyond that any of us could endure. Unspeakable things took place. The narrative covers those and more. In today's easy times, some of the narrative is hard for us to read and imagine being in that situation. Some of the material may be intense for young readers. Possibly PG-13?

The game was VERY forgiving and easy navigate due the choice based system. I "won" the game the first time through. It is somewhat short only taking a few minutes to go from beginning to end.

Choose wisely....