Ratings and Reviews by Rovarsson

The shame! The humiliation!
Tasked with escorting an infamous Space Pirate captain to justice, you now find yourself locked in the brig of your own vessel. The pirate crew intercepted your ship.
Oh, how to redeem yourself?

Breaking out of this cell would be a good start...

After doing just that in a very text-adventurely way, Piracy 2.0 opens up wide, both in terms of map-directions as in terms of options of which puzzle to tackle first.
It immediately becomes clear that this is a game above all else. There is a framing story about pirates, and there are discrete puzzles to solve, but this game managed to tickle my SuperMario-nerve more than any other IF I have played. After a few tentative tries, I was not playing to defeat the pirates anymore. I wasn't even trying to solve puzzles for their own sake anymore. All that mattered was finding a succesful sequence of steps to navigate all these obstacles in a row for a victorious runthrough.

Pirate mooks jump up at random and shoot at you. If you get hit (randomly decided I think) you get wounded. You can get wounded a limited number of times (10, I think) and then you die.
Fortunately, if you jump against the right blocks in the ceiling, a heart pops out that heals you... Kidding, but there are objects to restore health in the game.

Exploring and mapping the spaceship takes time and restarts. So does experimenting and understanding what all the consoles and machines are for.
When you have done this preparatory work, it's up to your brain to link up smaller plans into a big-picture attempt at victory.

Crucial in this will be a console where you can give commands directly to the ship. Options include flooding the cargo bays or beaming up Yoshi with the transporter beam...

Once you confirm one of these options, a countdown starts. From then on, you have only so many turns to make your final and decisive moves.
If you have done your preparation right, maybe you will return to your superior officers and your family as an honoured hero. Of course, if you botched it you will float namelessly into the depths of space.

I have replayed this game more times than I have any other piece of IF, precisely because it hits the same buttons as a hard level in Mario Bros. The downside is that I couldn't care less about the backstory or the subtlety of writing. I was playing the system, not the surface-story. The first few times you start up Mario, you might notice the pretty green pyramids in the background. After a few failed runthroughs, you don't notice such superficialities any more.

Surprisingly addictive gameplay for an IF piece.

Oh, I missed swinging on ropes with a knife between my teeth and a good round of swashbuckling under the Jolly Roger. I thought those were mandatory in a game with pirates.

...but apparently your aunt Beverly has gone missing. (She was always a bit weird that way...)
And your sister Emily has been in a foul mood the last few days too. (Even more than usual.)

With these small crumbs of information, Things that Happened in Houghtonbridge starts off as a mystery investigation. During the first few parts, more and more bits of information are revealed, drawing the player deeper and deeper into the suspense. There are hints of family relations grown crooked and darker events in the family's history.

These small but gradually accumulating clues led me to believe the game was about finding and revealing a foul skeleton in the family closet. My expectations were pointing me toward an unsettling but altogether realistic mystery-drama.
However, the way the story was heightening the tension, together with the overall mood of the writing, began to make me suspect that I was in for a twist to another much more cliché genre in Interactive Fiction: the malevolent-entity-trying-to-break-through horror subgenre. Indeed, when I found and read some missing papers, this is what I wrote in my notes: "Yep, there's a monstrous entity involved."

After some adjustments to my perspective as player, settling into the new context, I found that the game more than redeemed itself for what I had perceived as somewhat of a letdown.
The family-drama angle is never completely abandoned, it becomes accompanied by another intertwined supernatural plotline.

Working up to the climax of the game, there is a sequence set in a farmer's field that lifts up the entire game and decisively shows this is not a DIY-L.Craft out of the same old mould. More in line with the scarier bits of Alice in Wonderland, this sequence is desorienting, mesmerizing, and filled with strange out-of-place landmarks and personages.

It is also here that the previously rather calm tempo of the story picks up and leads into a breathless finale.

The writing in Things that Happened in Houghtonbridge is very strong, from the shorter, dry and to-the-point descriptions of the early game to the long fastpaced paragraphs that make up the endgame.

It is therefore all the more grating to see the mechanical object-, exit-, and character-listing clash with the descriptive text.
Sometimes it thoroughly breaks the mood, when the description of the antagonist's location is preceded by "You can also see ..." and "From here, you can go to the west."
In at least one location, the automatic listing spoils a surprise by mentioning an exit that the protagonist (or the player, for that matter) should not know about.

I found the characters to be a bit of a mixed batch.
The protagonist's parents are so underimplemented as to come across almost pathologically cold and distanced given the circumstances. When their daughter enters the living room after being out searching for the mother's sister, they don't even acknowledge her arrival, instead keeping their noses buried in their books until you talk to them.
The PC Olivia, her sister Emily, and her best friend Brianna on the other hand are much more accomplished characters, with their own thoughts, habits and passions.
Lastly, even though we only know her through her diary and through other character's remarks about her for most of the game, aunt Beverly shines most of all. Precisely because of the gaps in my image of her she was the most evocative and engaging.

While I generally liked the setup of the puzzles (standard adventure fare, entertaining but not original), I found that the game often robbed me of the satisfaction of actually solving them on my own.
Because of the menu-based conversation system, any clues that might come up in exploration or other conversations are rendered moot. The option to ask the right character about the relevant topic just shows up in the talk-to menu anyway.
Similarly, when you encounter a puzzle which requires a code or a number, it's enough that the protagonist has seen the clue. The game then remembers it and uses it automatically when needed. This means that the player is not required to do any brainwork or remembering.

The writing of Things that Happened in Houghtonbridge can be engrossing, so much so that one might ignore the graphics above the text. I must urge every player to look up there frequently. The subtly changing pictures add a lot to the atmospheric experience of the game.

Great story, thrilling build-up of tension and an exquisite dreamlike sequence in the field.
Uneven characters, unbalanced puzzles.

I enjoyed playing Things that Happened in Houghtonbridge a lot.

(This review is for the ParserComp version.)

A bouncer looks down his nose at you. "So sorry to inform you, sir, but we do have a dress code here. If you would be so kind to adhere to it or shove off. Please."

Opening Night starts out with a straightforward puzzle: find a way past the bouncer and into the theatre. We meet our player character, who seems to be a somewhat obsessed fan of the lead singer/actress in the play this evening. His insistence upon getting in goes two ways: it garners sympathetic feelings for his obvious and honest admiration for the show's leading lady, but it also verges on the edge of creepiness.

In later chapters however, the need to get a personal meeting with the actress falls away as the prime motivation of the game as it transforms into another story altogether.

There are puzzles, but they serve mostly as a means to get the player more deeply involved with the story.Away to elicit a deeper emotional response as the game goes through its metamorphosis.

In the end, Opening Night is a short and compressed tale centered around the eponymous pivotal night in the protagonist's life. While the game shows us only scenes from the theatre and its immediate surroundings and never elaborates on the player character's personal life, Opening Night still manages to somehow imply the protagonist's entire life story. We are given just enough hints to let the imagination take over and fill in the blank years.

Very strong storytelling.

Your devout and upstanding uncle and aunt probably have nothing but the best intentions for a young boy like you, but being cooped up reading a sermon while the sun is shining and the birds are whistling is hellworthy torture.

How to get out from under your aunt's watchful eyes to enjoy what's left of this wonderful afternoon?

Sunday Afternoon is a very small game if measured by its map. Five rooms total. Two of those rooms however are so chockful of things to examine that they count double at the very least. A lot of souvenirs and books and bric-a-brac, all with a history.

This ties in to the kind of puzzles in the game. Rather than manipulating some machinery, you have to deal with the people keeping you indoors, and the objects in the rooms hold the key. Finding your uncle and aunt's weak spots, their buttons if you will, requires careful attention to their reactions in conversation and a certain knowledge of their habits and character.

While it is (in theory) entirely possible to finish the game successfully in a flawless runthrough, it's actually recommended that you do a fair amount of flailing around and trying unsuccessful actions multiple times. In a framing story flash-forward reminiscent of Spider & Web, the hapless player will discover a bitterweet justification for the unrealistical behaviour that is typical of the protagonist in a text adventure. It's worth taking a moment to let the circumstances of this framing story sink in. Think about what it means for the actual game/story you're playing/reading.

A very clever small escape game with unexpected depth.

Once again, your good nature got the better of you. (You are, after all, detective Good Fairy.) You hide Foo Foo, a suspected "bopper", putting off reporting him to the proper authorities while you investigate the case to your contentment.

Something deeper is brewing here in Fieldtown, and you want to get to the bottom of it...


Foo Foo is a "Fable Noir". All the characters are animal stand-ins for humans in a tale that's ultimately a reflection on human society. The animal characters further line up (more or less...) with the classic personages from a noir detective work. The thick-skinned detective with a secret sensitive side, the heel-turn friend, the louche bar owner/mobster. (Strangely, no mysterious dame with a husky voice and one of those slim cigarette pipes in the corner of her mouth…)

The story in its broad outlines, with its recognizable tropes and familiar pacing, follows the beats of a classic noir work to create and sustain the suspense. This makes it rather predictable in oversight.
However, tropes are tools, and the specific story they are used to tell in this instance is a deeply thoughtful one. Social inequality, money trumping law and a personal romantic backstory all come together.

This game has so many positives going for it. Great backstory and worldbuilding. Nuanced story with a shady morality. No problems with implementation, good and sometimes clever puzzles.

Then why was I left with a nagging feeling of disappointment after playing?

The map.

The structure of the map let me down. Well, the structure of the map ànd the description of the outdoors.

The game takes place on one straight street (alright, there's one bend...) that feels like a cardboard theatre decor. All the houses and shops that are relevant to the investigation are on the north side of that street. During the game, I kept hearing a tv-show host yelling in my ear: "Let's see what's behind door number three!"

(Actually, there is a back alley that becomes relevant later, but by then the tv host had taken up permanent residence in my forebrain.)

Small changes would have made a world of difference to my experience of the game surroundings. A fence and a construction site to block off the south side of the map for instance. Maybe a few streetmice peeping around a corner and a forgotten newspaper on the ground.

Great story, told in a very engaging style. A tad too quiet on the street.

After much consulting of the prophecies and calculating the trajectory of the new, bright star in the heavens, it is confirmed. The foretold King of Jews is born! You must travel west to the land of Judea to lay precious gifts at his feet.

The first part of Following A Star is a puzzleless preparation of the journey ahead and an introduction of the main characters.

Melchior is the wise and knowledgeable one, the natural leader.
Gaspar is a boisterous and forward military man.
That leaves you, Balthasar, as... Well, especially in the first part you're mainly there for comic relief while you try to get on your camel only to fall off again three commands later. No worries, you get to show your true potential in later parts where you are given the responsability of obtaining suitable gifts for the prophecied child.

Melchior, Gaspar and a large number of other NPCs are deeply characterized. Even in the short descriptions and the limited conversation topics, each and every one of them has a few idiosyncratic properties and independent actions to set them apart.

The game hardly ever breaks character in its reponses. Many, many nonessential actions still get a customized reaction, often very funny. (Try walking into a wall in the presence of the camels...)

After the introduction, you arrive in a small town in Judea. This is where the game proper begins. You, Balthasar are tasked with finding three gifts to present to the child who we all know is Baby Jesus. The only necessary puzzles in this part all have to do with obtaining the gifts. These are relatively easy.
However, while looking around the town you will recognize a bunch of sidequests. Part of the motivation for completing these is that you gain points. The real motivation for any adventurer is of course that they're there. They're also more challenging and more fun than the necessary puzzles. (See if you can help the instrument vendor clean out his trumpet...)
I finished a handful of these sidequests and I still only got an endscore of 25 out of 42. Room for improvement and enticement to replay.

Having acquired the gifts, you must find your way through the desert to Jerusalem. To do so, a tricky mathematics puzzle stands in your way. Here, Following A Star is brilliant in wrapping up the puzzle in the context of the journey. You are given an astrolabe and an abacus and must deduce your position by observing the bright star. An otherwise dry calculation becomes an interesting and pressing navigational question that is justified in-game.

Less successful, I found, was a language puzzle where you have to decline the English nouns in your commands to a guard into garbled Latin. I studied Latin and Greek in high school, and the utterly unfunny pseudo-Latin phrases the game wanted me to construct drove me to just copying them from the walkthrough. (Compare constructing "Spanish" words by sticking "-os" at the endos. For realos...)

Fortunately, the finale redeemed the game brilliantly in my opinion. An ever sillier chase through the desert that reminded me of some of Monty Python's finest sketches.

Genuinely funny, some challenging puzzles, very good implementation and characterization. Recommended!

A disturbing letter has come from your old friend Raynard, the blacksmith in the town of Raven Wood. A new lord has come to inhabit the Manor, and sinister events have been happening since. Alarmed, you travel by carriage to meet him...

The Darkness of Raven Wood is an oldschool horror adventure. The two word parser can cause some guess-the-verb problems. Worse however is that the necessary verbs are used somewhat inconsistently. Case in point: the "Instructions" explicitly give the example of UNLOCK DOOR, which can even be abbreviated to UNLO DOOR, since the parser only takes the first four letters into consideration. However, when I found a locked door, I had to USE KEY instead. When at another point in the game I wanted to USE AXE when ATTACK [x] or CUT [x] or HIT [x] didn't work, it turns out I needed to SWING AXE. I feel this is a much more ambiguous situation than UNLOCK door, where USE would actually have been appropriate.
(EDIT: apparently the instructions on the rucksackgames website do specify SWING AXE and USE KEY. Just not in-game.)

These bits of parser wrangling are the only real criticism I can bring up as negatives.

The introduction sets a dark and oppressive mood which the sparse but efficient writing underscores. The frightening atmosphere is further enhanced by beautifully gloomy pixel art, among the best I have seen.

The game demands careful exploration of the map and thorough examining of the contents of the locations (no X, but you can abbreviate to EXAM). Most of the puzzles consist of simple application of objects in the right place. Some however require a good memory of locations previously explored, to make the associative leap that what you have just done here will have changed something there.

There are some areas where you will invariably lose your bearings. While it is necessary to search these thoroughly too, once you have done so there is a simple sequence of directional commands to get you out of the woods.
The cryptic hint list on the game's homepage is very helpful with this and other obstacles.

What started as an inquisitive exploration around the town at the beginning of Chapter I, becomes gradually darker and more frightening, especially when you enter the grounds of the Manor and then the house itself in Chapter II.

A good suspenseful and atmospheric horror game, somewhat hampered by the limited parser. Recommended.

Some SF short stories can leave you numb and exhilarated at the same time as the repercussions of the twenty- or thirty-something pages you just read reverberate in your head. I'll just namedrop the first three that pop into my reverberating head to show off a bit: Hawksbill Station by Robert Silverberg, Nightfall by Isaac Asimoc, Second Variety by Philip K. Dick.

Now stop to think for a moment. I can't be sure about anyone else, but I must have read hundreds of SF short stories that were less awe-inspiring, brain-shaking or mind-shattering. Less memorable each on its own perhaps, but all of them added up to a pile of more vague or diluted memories of enjoyable evenings and chilling nights and exciting afternoons spent with my nose in this or that SF-collection. Taken together, those less memorable stories have undeniably given me many more pleasant hours than the aforementioned three and their likes.

Bane of the Builders falls squarely in that second category.

It's a competently written and coded adventure. An engaging, if not very original, storyline.

It has a very cool trick where the surroundings shimmer and then things change all around you. (Reminiscent of a glitch in that movie that couldn't decide if it wanted to do magical kung-fu or just shoot everything to smithereens and then proceeded to do both... Not that anything like that happens in Bane of the Builders after the shimmer effect, but... I just got carried a way a bit there, okay.)

I had fun finding my way through the maze. The map is easily visualized, the impression of the alien base hanging in an underground cavern still lingers in my imagination.

The puzzles are not clued well enough, but persistence pays off (or the walkthrough, if you just want to experience the story.)

The end game is challenging but also a bit underclued. I had to fill in some blanks with my own imagination to get a coherent picture of why things did or didn't work.

But, all in all, a well crafted game and a well told story. One to put on the slowly growing pile of enjoyable afternoons playing a SF game while it rained outside.