Ratings and Reviews by Rovarsson

A title like The Gerbil Riot of '67 makes my imagination run wild and almost overflow. Scenarios of little mammals running the streets, scaring good citizens into their houses and locking the doors flash before my eyes.
But the title isn't used in that way. I'd like to say it's more akin to the great Calvin & Hobbes' "The Noodle Incident", or "The Llama Incident" from Milo Murphy's Law, that is, an event of great import to the protagonists' life that is never explained but often referenced, and obviously casts a shadow over their ongoing existence.
This game tries halfheartedly to make "The Gerbil Riot" an incident of the second kind, but after a short reference in the introduction the whole little-mammalian-uprising is forgotten and left by the roadside.

Disappointing. (I'm not apologizing for ruining this because of all of the things below. The game's just not worth hushing about to keep people's expectations up.)

What follows instead is silliness. I like silliness. But I also like some substance with or underneath my silliness. I didn't get it here.

You're being held in an asylum for the incurably insane, and you want to escape. You have to play into all the other patients' needs or weaknesses to find the means for your escape, and eventually you must get past the guard to walk out the front door.

First off, to enjoy this game even a little, turn off all sensitivities regarding stereotypes of mentally ill or unstable fellow humans. They're funny 'cause they're kraayzzieie, didn't you know? Those crackpots do the darndest things, haha. And if you have to do the darndest things to them to get your mcguffin, then that's all the funnier!

Apart from stereotyping (and that's put mildly...) psychologically vulnerable people, Gerbil Riot seems to get most of its humorous kicks out of self-referential "ironic" jokes (get it? get it?) and insulting the player (in the older DOS version) or at least making fun of the player (in the z8 file I switched to when I entered the Copy Protection Room and found out there was a registration fee of 3 £ for the password.) I actually found the insulting version marginally funnier.

The puzzles would be straightforward but entertaining if the parser would have been a bit more robust ("I would if I could, but I can't!" may seem a nice variation on a default command-rejection message. Until you've read it eleventyfour times in response to completely justified commands...)

The NPCs are cardboard, only good as one-trick obstacles. The map has some redeeming features in the second half of the game, but is ultimately unsatisfying to draw/visualize. There are a few honestly good and clever clues and associated puzzles sprinkled around the game, but not enough to redeem the game as a whole.

But I don't consider the few hours I spent with Gerbil Riot lost or wasted. I had fun insulting it back and imagining that if I had paid for a physical disc version, I would use it as a frisbee aiming at high-voltage electric cables.

"You can't judge a book by its cover."

Yes, you can. I judge books by their covers all the time. And by the size and type of font, the colour of the ink, the amount of whitespace on the page, the texture and smell of the paper, the illustrations if there are any, and any number of sensory details that influence my feeling about a book.

I wasn't able to ascertain the smell nor the texture of Harmonia's pages, but I found it an aesthetically pleasing work in all the other areas.

It has few but beautiful graphics that look like charcoal or leadpen drawings which complement the "old" feeling of the game perfectly.

Specific to the beauty of a mouseclick-driven text, the new paragraphs fade fluently into view, giving the eye half a blink's time to adjust and expect the coming words just before being able to legibly pick them out.
Perhaps my faux-tactile experience would have been even better if my cursor arrow were the nib of a quill pen, or the relaxed finger of a hand following the lines. Small nitpick, to be sure.

But of course, the saying has a point. No matter how prettily clothed and wrapped, the story must stand on its own when abstracted from all these adornments.

Harmonia surely can stand on its own. It is a SF steampunk time travel story looking back to the past. It makes excellent use of foreshadowing to heighten the suspense throughout, and adds a small twist in the end. The main character is a clearly drawn young woman with a strong voice. To talk more about the content of Harmonia would be to tell too much. Let the reader do the reading.

I do want to speak of the craft the author shows. It is considerable, especially in its pacing. As I was reading the first paragraph, I pressed "restart" after only a short while, having been tickled by the text. I sat down properly, took a deep breath and settled into a slow and focused mode of reading.
It's a treat to let the languid, comfortable sentences come over you at their own tempo; they have a musical rhythm that invites mumbling along or even reading aloud.

I should also like to dwell a short while on the form the author adopts in writing this story. In keeping with its inspirations, the late 19th century Utopians, Harmonia reads as a first person account of supposedly real events. In the principal narrative line, several other sources are found, read and discussed. Each of these in turn takes the form of an eyewitness account or a journal entry. Again, first person singular. These accounts are commented upon and annotated by other characters, or in the case of the main line, by the main character herself. The effect is that of a nesting or layering of first persons in dialogue, creating an intricate web of story threads.

Now, all of the above could as easily have been said about an ordinary, "static", work of fiction. Wherein then lies Harmonia' interactivity?

For one, it has choices. At my leisurely but concentrated pace, it took about two hours to complete one reading. In this time, I encountered but a handful of defining choices. (Beware, reader, for these are not accompanied by bells and whistles. Pause before you press.) As is my habit with these choice-based games, I only played it once through. I therefore cannot tell how far the other paths may diverge from the one I travelled.

Far more importantly in my impression were the annotations in the main text that come into view as mere scribbles in the margin upon a press of salient words. Because they are not present at the first viewing of the page before the reader, but only become apparent as one actively presses, it feels as though the character scribbling the annotation is reading along, and, at the click of a word, whispers side-thoughts and elaborations as one moves a finger along the lines.

This technique invites a deep engagement with the text, where the interactivity takes the form of discovering more profound meaning in a joint reading of the story with the characters that feature in said story. A vivid reading experience indeed...

This game written as a first person account contains excerpts of eyewitness novels and scraps of personal journals and annotations in the voices of the characters and whirls around and around... until the game recedes from view and one is truly immersed in the experience.

A superb piece of interactive writing.

Hi, I'm Jacqueline Beautemps. I'm a Canadian journalist working on a temporary visa for the Bolivian Herald. Until now, Ive been mostly interviewing the lovely Bolivan people and writing articles for the lifestyle, media and cooking pages. This morning however, our star political reporter seems to have gone missing. I feel the urge to investigate...

I could just as well have been Randy Froomes from the US of A or Miss Topsy Turvy from England. The game would have remembered these bits of information from the short application form to be filled in at the start, and numerous details and customized responses would have been altered in the game-text. Rarely have I come across a game where entering "personal" information at the beginning had such an impact on the feel of the experience. Most of the time I semi-forget who my character was and just keep playing as "me-in-game". Here I was reminded at numerous small instances of who my character was. This helped in feeling truly immersed in the game world.

The deep implementation runs throughout. There are paintings and photographs and murals and billboards to look at (many with an actual picture embedded in the game), books and newspapers to read. Very few of these are vital or even important, but they add up to a vivid world.

Bolivia by Night is not a puzzle-oriented game. Although there are puzzles, and a few clever and surprising ones at that, they are never meant to be brainstakingly hard. Instead, they are meant to make the player engage with the surroundings more deeply while never stopping the story from rolling forward. Indeed, the game actively nudges, nay, pushes you toward the solutions. By the third chapter, these nudges are given by a certain charismatic Communist leader on your t-shirt...

That is not to say that Bolivia by Night does not pose obstacles. The main challenge is sifting through the huge amount of information about the history of Bolivia and the relations between the characters to find out where the investigation will lead you next.
Who should I ask about what? Where did that character say she was going to be? How does this fit with what I know already?

During the five-chapter-long investigation of the disappearance of your colleague where you learn about ancient and more recent Bolivian history which is sometimes quite depressing, the game alleviates the darker context with many, many jokes (try walking into a Burger King with said charismatic Communist leader and see what happens...), and many beautifully written evocative references to the beauty of the land, the culture and the history of Bolivia.

While the game has a definite happy end (and a bad one), the story in which your adventure takes place concludes on a more open but still hopeful message.

What touched me most about this piece is the obvious care and love of the author for Bolivia that shines through the entire text.

A beautiful, exciting and moving game.

This morning's groundbreaking transfer-experiment has failed. Maybe the Machine was miscalibrated, despite all the checks and double-checks. It worked on mice and reptiles, why did it fail with the first human subject?

Transfer is a mystery/detective game that plays in the aftermath of this failed experiment. Instead of providing a clear objective, the game relies on a few more subtle clues to grasp the player's curiosity. Two NPCs act a bit strange. It's left to the player to unravel the thread and find out what's behind all this.

A secret experiment needs a secret location. In this instance, a mostly underground scientific research base on a far-off island. This makes for a small and compact utilitarian map. Labs, sleeping quarters, common eating hall.

However, it's remarkable how much adventurous exploration can be crammed in such a restricted space.

Partly this is due to a few blocked-off passages that draw the player toward opening up these undiscovered spaces. When they do open up, they don't disappoint...

Another big part of the richness of the game comes from the behaviour of the NPCs. They all have their own agendas, and their walking to-and-fro helps bring the research base to life. You need to learn about their work and their routines to figure out how they might be involved in the greater mystery.
Giving the NPCs a measure of personal agency may enhance the lifelike feeling of the facility, but it also creates expectations the game cannot fulfill. It feels grating to break into off-limits areas while someone is standing right there, or showing someone their stolen stuff without it provoking any reaction. Playing Transfer with a straight face sometimes requires wearing quite stretchy suspenders of disbelief.

During the game, there is a lot of plain old exploring and searching and puzzling going on, but all the main plot advances rely on using the Machine. This main puzzle/solution mechanic is implemented in surprising ways. In the first parts of the game, this makes for original and well-thought-through puzzles. By the end however, there is a series of Machine-manipulations that inadvertently lean towards the comical rather than the suspenseful. It's still a good puzzle sequence, but its tone would perhaps fit better with a fantasy-comedy than a science-mystery.

Solving puzzles and finding secrets advances the plot point by point. At the beginning of the new “chapter”, as well as in the introductory sequence, the writing shines. The room descriptions are clear and effective at conveying everythin the player needs while still adding to the atmosphere. It’s in the intermezzos however, in the overheard whispers and in the sudden actions of the NPCs in between acts that the narrative tension and tempo are best brought forward. The quality of the writing was certainly good enough to let me glance over some of the more improbable bits of the story.

The ending may feel disappointingly unrealistic to some. I for one really enjoyed the Poirotesque dénouement where the mystery's solution is summarized and elaborated upon by the villain with all the characters in the room. A fitting moment of closure for a puzzling game.

Heartily recommended whodunwhat and whoiswho against a scientific backdrop.

Opening up The White Bull, I was immediately drawn into the setting by a short musical score that helped set the mood. Important turning points in the story are similarly backed by an atmospheric musical piece.

A very promising intro: your girlfriend, a student of archaeology, wants to test her hypothesis that Minos' Labyrinth is not on Kreta, but on another small island in the Aegean Sea. Funded by her rich best friend, she has set up a private mini-expedition to investigate.

The White Bull is firmly divided in two parts: free exploration first, then a linear end-rush.

The first part has everything I adore in text-adventures. A large map which rewards careful exploration with wide vistas and seaviews. A diverse set of locations (beach, village, scrubby forest, rocky ridge,...) that still feel connected and natural. A few historical flashbacks/hallucinations to more clearly paint the context. And a few easy puzzles ((Spoiler - click to show)except DRINK FROM POOL to summon the Naiad; that was really underclued that give the player an early sense of accomplishment.

The objective in this part is gathering all the equipment needed for the next part. There is ample time to poke in all the nooks and crannies, get to know your fellow amateur archaeologists and enjoy bathing in the mythological atmosphere.

Having found all the requisite pieces of equipment triggers nightfall, the abduction of one of your friends and the switch to the second part (cue music).

Here you must enter the famed Labyrinth in search of your friend and rescue her. This part is mostly a linear series of one-room puzzles where you need the objects and the knowledge you gained from your previous exploration of the island. There is some truly exquisite and evocative writing here. Several rooms left a lasting visual impression with me. ((Spoiler - click to show)Ikaros Bound and Weeping.)

Despite all these great points, I found The White Bull to be disappointing. Partly, this is because my expectations were perhaps raised too high by the archaeology theme (Ancient Greek Mythology. Lemme at it...) and the game didn't quite deliver.

I also do think that there are several more objective criticisms.

The characters are underdeveloped. They remain hollow and flat. I had a hard time telling their voices apart. What depth the author tries to give them is through telling the player that they may have unseen qualities, without ever showing this in their actions or dialogue.

There is one brilliant puzzle in the Labyrinth-run ((Spoiler - click to show)The Cavern of Catwalks). The others are mostly straightforward applications of the objects you found in the first part. I felt almost as if I had been searching the island for a collection of coloured keys to unlock a series of coloured doors in the Labyrinth.

Disappointing puzzles and characters.

But also: very strong atmosphere and tension. Adventurous exploration of a great map. An interesting potpourri of Greek myths.

And some memorably vivid, evocative location descriptions.

Alone...

Alone in the deepest, most serious meaning of the word.

Before you a blackness the stars do not penetrate. Around you a galaxy collapsing under its own weight. Behind you an all-consuming, fast-expanding sphere of heat and radiation.

The remains of your exploded home are all that is following you. The supernova is gaining on you.

Andromeda: Apocalypse opens after the catastrophe on your homeworld that was the end of Andromeda: Awakening. There is a certain calm in the desperate knowledge that all is lost, there is no need to frantically try to prove your point to those who need to know. In fact, during this game's reminiscences, it is called into question if anyone even wanted to know...

The map of Apocalypse is very satisfying to explore. A giant derelict alien ship, battered by time, meteors and who knows what else provides the perfect mix of ordered hallways and corridors on the one hand, and clogged, torn, or plain ripped apart tubes and plates on the other. Chaos and recognizable structure in the right proportions.

There are puzzles, and a few of them made me stop and think and check my notes. However, the rhythm of the game thrives on thorough but speedy exploration, on getting pást the obstacles, not snagged up mulling about them.

While staying true to the "catacombs-and-puzzles"-structure of the first game, thematically this game offers more room to philosophical ruminations. In between the explore/action sequences, there are intermezzos of a dreamlike or hallucinatory quality where the protagonist discusses the meaning and importance of being human in contrast to the vastness of time and space. That sounds bloated and arrogant when I inadequately summarize it like this. In-game though, it works. Mostly because these discussions take place in a friendly and familiar setting with the protagonist and his uncle bouncing thoughts and feelings off one another.

By the halfway point of the game, you will meet an NPC whose nature and knowledge will bring this emphasis on the short and limited versus the vast and ungraspable even more to the foreground.

By the endgame, I felt a bit sad for this friendly NPC.

Many intruiging questions and themes touched upon in a setting that could not be more appropriate.

Very good.