Reviews by Rovarsson

Jen just got her backside handed to her onstage in a battle-exchange of "Yo Momma"-jokes. This calls for revenge! And nothing shuts up a smug bully like Gus faster than the raw truth. Time to go snooping around the club for some insult-material that will leave your opponent stammering and crying for his mommy...

Actually, this game's setup is very reminiscent of the loosely biographical Eminem vehicle whose title I referenced above. I had a lot more fun with Raising the Flag on Mount Yo Momma than I had watching the film though.

The author manages to believably cram three multi-step puzzles in a tiny 8-location map. All locations have their clearly delineated function in the logical sequence of subpuzzles, sometimes more than once. The general club atmosphere is maintained throughout while the separate locations get an individual vibe.

The practical side of the writing is great. Uncluttered descriptions with the important stuff clearly standing out without becoming a dry list. A step-by-step hint system that masquerades as an in-game THINK ABOUT command. Easy communication through TALK TO, SHOW TO, or INSULT (of course...)

About half the puzzles require finding and using objects, often clever and always firmly in the time-honoured adventure style. The other half is all about NPC manipulation. On my first round of exploration through the club, already a few dozen ideas popped into my head for distracting, coercing, or otherwise using certain NPCs to further my goals. Most of these were too farfetched, but when some of my ideas turned out to work, I couldn't resist a little fist-bump. ("Hah! I told you I'd get you!")

The goal that needs furthering is, as is implied in the title of the game, perfecting your craftsmanship in dragging someone's mom through the mud. That's not cool. But a lot of Yo Momma-jokes are so over-the-top and exaggerated to the point of absurdity, or just plain bewildering non-sequiturs, that they do become funny (or at least groanworthy) again. The fact that the protagonist is a young girl standing her ground in a macho-dominated environment also shaves a lot of the viciousness off the insults.

However, the only time the "jokes" do become cruel is during the final confrontation, when this sympathetic young girl mercilessly uses the secrets she found out about her rival to grind him into the ground. (Jen reminds me of Lil' Ragamuffin from the Guttersnipe-games in a way. You wouldn't want to get on her bad side.)
Somewhat justified perhaps, because the antagonist character really is a bully, and because Yo Momma battles are ugly fights so those who enter should know what's coming.

I for one would like to see Eminem try to stand his ground against Jen.

The Bony King of Nowhere is not a good game. It's clumsily written, with descriptions that somehow manage to be short and rambling at the same time. The tone shifts unstably between overwrought attempts at humour and heroic fantasy played straight.
The author unevenly shook a big bag of capital letters over the Objects in the game, so they are all capitalised. Except when they're not. A bunch of apostrophes mutinied and decided to pick all the wrong "itses" to go hang out.
The way the location descriptions are printed is wonky, with one half of the text on top, the automatic object listing in between and another few lines of description underneath.

It took stamina and dedication to power through instead of throwing it aside after the first few rooms.

And yet...

Underneath the clumsy wonky wobbly writing there is actually the scaffolding of a decent fantasy adventure quest.
The map is small and seemingly straightforward, but it has enough twists and turns to make it interesting. Similarly, the puzzles come across as simple, but most have a little hindrance or extra step that gives them the necessary satisfaction value.

And the inclusion of NPC Gerald the Heroic Mouse is a stroke of brilliance.

Oh, if only the author had sent this through a few more rounds of testing, and sat down at the writing desk a while longer...

Finally! The archeological researchers must have realised they couldn't understand this thing by themselves. After three months in the brigg, you get a chance to analyse this alien machine yourself. Under close supervision of course...

The Weapon is essentially a complicated puzzle box. Lots of buttons, a few technogadgets, a sequence of actions to figure out. On the surface, the puzzles are not that hard to figure out. It's just that, between the exact order of commands and the annoying presence of your supervisor, there's always a few extra complications to deal with first.

The descriptions of the surroundings are finetuned to the purpose of the game: clear, easy to visualise, no distractions or red herrings. There's a bit of colour in the alien aesthetic of the room, and the outer-space setting is hinted at without requiring further investigation. Although it's not necessary to talk at length with the NPC, the conversation tidbits do lend a bit of characterisation and context.
Even though it's a difficult balance to avoid giving the player too much information in a game like this, I would have liked a bit more exposition and backstory. It would have helped the emotional engagement with my PC.

Looking a bit deeper than the puzzle box at the surface, taking the at first minimally understood premise into account, The Weapon plays a subtle game with the different levels of knowledge about the situation of the NPC, the PC, and the player.

The game's subtitle is "An Interactive Misdirection". This is clearly implied in the relation and conversation between NPC and PC at the start of the game. The protagonist must keep progress on the machine hidden from the supervisor, lest the research is halted once the NPC figures out too much by herself.

But it also holds true in the relation between PC and player. The player is moving forward half-blind, motivated in-game by the vague objective of the PC, and out-of-game by the wish to solve the game's puzzles. This leads to her being led to an unsuspected (at least for the first half of the game) outcome. The twist was both simpler and more surprising than I had anticipated, even when it's obvious from the beginning that the goals of PC and NPC do not align.

A very clever game of NPC- and player-manipulation, manifesting itself on different levels of understanding.

Having a huge number of followers is great when you're the prophet of a new religion, but all those people tend to get hungry and grumpy at some point. Sadly, sermons don't sate their bodily appetites.

Playing as Jesus Himself, in The Bread and the Fishes it falls upon you to provide the five thousand believers who have gathered on the shore of lake Gennesaret with food. While you're at it, you might as well grab the chance to heal some sick, wounded or disabled people.

The author thought it funny to portray the relation between Jesus and God as an irreverent father-son buddies friendship, filled with informal speech and anachronisms. Not that this bothered me, I just didn't think it was funny.

Overall, the game is well-implemented and detailed. It has a pleasant atmosphere throughout, with nicely written locations and characters. The puzzles are mostly easy and straightforward, except for one mathematical problem which, allthough not too hard, is a bit of a bore and doesn't fit the tone at all.

An attempt at a funny riff on the miracle of the bread and the fish, not always successful. The mythological gravitas of this bible-episode is completely stripped away, and the jokes are not good enough to fill the gap. Even then, a pleasant way to spend an hour or so.

In Hibernated 1, the protagonist Olivia got some much-needed help in navigating the spaceship from a native extermination robot. Eight Feet Under follows this robot, nicknamed Vlad, during four separate slice-of-life episodes.

Each episode is short and self-contained, centering on one main puzzle. There is definitely some preparatory exploration and map-drawing needed to get a good view of the problem and the available resources, but once that is done, the solutions are pretty straightforward and logical. Central to a lot of the (sub)puzzles is the arsenal of modules of various functions that Vlad is equipped with.

The maps are quite small, but when put next to each other, and especially when combined with the map of the Hibernated 1 main game, they hint at the enormous size of the spaceship, with many specialised areas.They are not intentionally confusing, but there are enough corners and forks in the path to make navigation just a bit tricky.

Allthough the protagonist is a robotic extermination unit, there are some basic emotions and character traits that emerge through the game. Or perhaps it's just that we humans like to anthropomorphise our gadgets... I felt that for its destructive purpose and the built-in weapons, Vlad seemed very loyal and lonely, in need of "masters" to feel secure and valued.

Especially the final vignette, where Vlad goes unnoticed on a mission that would leave Olivia stranded in the void, gave the impression of a self-sacrificing effort to rescue the new masters.

On the implementation front, the game falls somewhere between a retro-adventure and a full fledged modern parser. Multi-word commands are possible, but most of those follow the syntax USE X ON Y. This confused me a bit at first when I tried to ANALYZE or GRAB when I should USE ANALYZER or USE GRABBER. LOOK (L) is not recognised, instead the command is REDESCRIBE (R), which strengthens the retro-feel.
A lot of scenery objects (but by no means all) have a short description which helps flesh out the surroundings. However, performing an action upon these objects, or an invalid action on a takeable object, gets a generic non-helpful response. For a lot of necessary objects, though, helpful nudges are included.

A touching backstory about the life of a service robot that mostly has to be inferred from small crumbs and filled in by a human empathic mind. Entertaining puzzles and setting.

Our dearest foulmouthing lionhearted street urchin Lil' Ragamuffin is in trouble. Again. A gang of maffia goons with a serious case of stereotypicalitis want her pet rat to make money in the cage fights for them. Of course Ragamuffin isn't going to rest until she sets things straight frees her buddy.

In the usual style of the Guttersnipe-games, reaching the endgoal involves a bunch of interconnected far-fetched fetch-quests, each even sillier than the next. Still, once you get the hang of things, there is a certain warped logic to the kinds of solutions that work.

As with the previous installments, there are a lot of rough edges in The Baleful Backwash. Sorely missing obvious synonyms, a grating lack of customised responses, some typos and small bugs.

However, this adventure easily rises above those imperfections through the spontaneous fun it draws forth in the player.

Lil' Ragamuffin is an endearing character, but don't tell her that. You'd hurt her street-urchin's sense of pride. The other characters are walking dripping clichés, but in this style of game they are more than welcome. Their one-sided stupidity adds to the comedic atmosphere, and for cardboard cutouts, they have a surprising amount of things to say about each other and about the useful objects in the game. Ask them about anything you can think of, it'll greatly help you in figuring out what to use for which puzzle.

The map turned out bigger than I expected when going in. Not only were there more rooms, but the place also felt big and alive because of the elaborate moody descriptions of the locations.

The author uses a fast yet precise writing style, with many details singled out but all of it seen through the eyes of the main character. This makes it easy to sympathise with Ragamuffin and to share her outrage at her best friend being held captive.

And an outraged Lil' Ragamuffin is a joy to be around, as long as you're on her side.

Don't you hate it when you've let yourself be captured by your nemesis, got into his latest death-trap for his amusement (and that of the viewers), and he can't even afford you the courtesy of staying to watch and applaud your "certain death"?

Well, it happens at the beginning of Dynamite Powers vs. the Ray of Night. What follows are a series of delightfully pulpy escapades, each fully playing into the expected Bond/supervillain tropes while presenting an honest challenge at the same time.

Beneath the breathless location descriptions, the game is actually built very efficiently. Everything is elaborately described, but the rooms contain just the information and equipment necessary. No silver trinkets or red herrings to divert the attention.

Despite the jokingly over-the-top writing style, the puzzles are no laughing matter. Even with careful deduction, it's necessary to fail and restore a few times to gain essentiel bits of information to take into account.

The game cheerfully plays with the awkwardness of describing a "show" from a visual medium in the language of a text-adventure. Not only does this mismatch produce some comedic effect, the game derives its most challenging puzzle from it.

Very polished, the author did all the necessary work to account for the large number of possible combinations in the middle game.

Due to a slight misreading on my part, I managed to destroy my home planet in the endgame. Hopefully you won't.

It certainly is worth trying.

0.14 light years. That's all. At the speed of travel that would be like standing on the doorstep of the destination. Almost being able to extend a finger to ring the bell.

But no. The ship's computer decided being caught in an alien vessel's tractor beam is enough to wake me out of that sweet/nauseating comatose sleep...

Something must be really wrong.

Well, in Hibernated 1 (Director's Cut) there doesn't seem to be at first. My ship's alright, no leaking pipes or other damage. There is however a humongous alien ship looming over my front window. And over my rear airlock. And once I get to exploring it, big enough to be looming over quite an angle of visible spave from my point of view.

Let's say it's large.

Not only is it large, it's weird. I'm used to the nicely symmetrical dimensions of my own ship, but this alien one extends unexpectedly far in unnecessary directions...

The game-map of Hibernated follows a pragmatic, functional, straightforward plan. NESW. Except it encourages nautical directions to keept the player closer to the setting. I am always looking for the author's use of the map, the rooms and their connections. This is an element that can add a great deal of atmosphere to the writing of the descriptions.

Here, instead of using wriggly curving pathways, the author sticks to right angled F/SB/A/P -directions, but the difference between the familiar, symmetrical map of my "home"-spaceship and the alien ship is still enough to warp my directional feelings. Once I entered the alien ship and started drawing a map, everything seemed to be lopsided, heavy on one side.

This juxtaposition of symmetrical-lopsided ship design is strong enough to emphasise the difference between both ships.

But there is a shift that completely twists the mental image. A twist that makes it abundantly clear that these ships are hanging still (relative to one another) in vacuum space, that shows, once it *clicks*, hpw such masses behave in space.

Now, of course, there is no way I'm hunkering down in my own little ship. Exploring the alien ship however is tricky. It's set on "quarantine" mode, aso I have the dual task of finding out why the doors are locked and finding out how to cross those barriers.

A lot of these puzzles are quite straightforward variations on "find key; use key." However, at just the right locations (or just the right plot-beats), there are two puzzles.

One that is straightforward and one that is, well, straightforward... And stil they manage to stump the player's progress at just the right time.

Especially the second one of those straightforward puzzles manages to break the adventurer's expectations and elicit a gleeful "yay".

As mysterious as the background story begins, it's expected toward the end. I don't mean this in a bad way. Prometheus' effort to rejoice humanity deserves repetition. But this is a game worth more playing for those two puzzles. The backstory could become *story* with a rewrite.

Very engaging atmosphere, brilliant puzzles.

---> Our learned co-contributor to Intfiction and writer of the comprehensive IF and Infocom-related blog Gold Machine has unearthed an interesting work from the early modern ages of Interactive Fiction in the form of one of his own old games. In a considerable labour of IF-related textual archaeology, he has published a Critical Edition of the seriously flawed 1996 Inform 5 game Repeat the Ending. It consists of an edited version of the original source text (i.e. the game itself), supplemented and supported with in-game annotations and a separate Reader's Companion (referred to together as the paratext.)

This Critical Edition collects a series of contemporary and new essays on a wide range of topics such as the genesis of the original and the edited game, exploration of the themes in the work, the (supposed) development of authorial intent, the evolution of language-use, and the shift to a more player-friendly version of the high Zarfian Cruely level of the original. The articles found in the Reader's Companion were contributed by P. Searcy, D. S. Collins, C. A. Smythe, A. H. Montague, and Drew Cook himself. Each imparts their own emphasis on topics viewed from their personal field of interest.

Along with these scholarly texts are included a number of reviews, both contemporary and of later dates. These give a nice insight not only into the reception of the game, but also into the IF-ecosystem at the time of their writing. An interview with the author is also attached, although the vagueness of the answers to pertinent questions means that it hardly contributes more than some amiable atmosphere to the discussion.

Reading the entire Reader's Companion requires a fair amount of time and focused attention. It's worth it though, since its contents give the player a life-line to guide their interpretation of the sometimes obscure storyline and design-choices in the game proper.

More easily accessible are the annotations scattered throughout the game-text. They clarify, raise questions about, or merely point out notable or confusing responses and features the player may encounter, and may then choose to delve into further in the Companion. The footnotes double as much-needed tutorial information for new and experienced IF-players alike where such guidance for tackling the game is absent from the source text.

In the combined paratext, much attention is directed toward the differences between the 1996 original work and this 2023 edition. The authors views on a number of topics seem to have, if not radivally changed, then certainly noticeably shifted in the two-and-a-half decades since first writing Repeat the Ending in 1996. Interestingly, on many occasions, both in his own words and when paraphrased by the other contributors, the author vehemently denies any such shift has indeed taken place. He claims that this new version is the one he always intended to create, putting aside any real differences as artefacts of his inadequate proficiency in Inform 5 coding at the time. This is hard to believe, to say the least. When studying the essays, and comparing the new edition's text with a transcript of the original game that was circulated in 2003, it becomes clear that the 2023 "definitive" version is close to a complete remake.

An important caveat, and an in my view critical flaw of this Critical Edition is that the original source material, i.e. the 1996 version is not included in the package, neither as playable game, nor as source-code. All comparisons between the original and the new versions therefore rely on second-hand references, the word of the author, and the text of the 2003 transcript. The veracity of this last bit of data is problematic to say the least, as all acounts regarding it characterise it as implausible, misleadingly edited at the very least, perhaps even dishonestly doctored in full. The results, statements, and deductions found in the so-called "Critical" Edition's essays are all built on loose sand because of this omission of the original source text.
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--->Apart from analysis and clarification, the paratext serves an important, if secondary, role when viewing the work as a whole, i.e. the totality of game, essays and footnotes. Careful, measured perusal of the analytical asides while playing leads to greater involvement and deeper engagement with the game as the player is experiencing it. The paratext delivers a conceptual framework for attempting to understand the game's meaning, it opens an intellectual pathway to the strong emotional impact of the game's story.

Conversely, and at the same time, the scholarly approach provides protective distance from the distressing themes and actions. This certainly applies to the player who can withdraw into a more reflective state of participation when direct experience becomes overwhelming. It is hard not to speculate if the author chose this scholarly approach for the same reason, not to be confronted too directly with the hard themes of the game, but to have a roundabout way of writing about them when immediate handling of them became too painful...

When the paratext messages are disabled in the final chapter of the game, this protective effect becomes very clear. Here, the player has no choice but to experience the unfolding of the story directly, without the option of circumventing, avoiding, or delaying the emotional intensity of the story.
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--->And here, now, dear patient reader, I must abandon all pretense of engaging in distanced scholarly debate. For I have to speak of the source itself, the heart of the work, the game Repeat the Ending.

I am dead serious about the defensive qualities of the scholarly diversions in the paratext. This game hits hard, and is brutally vulnerable at the same time. The protection offered by the distanced paratext seems to work in the other direction too. An intellectual wall shields the sensitive heart of the work. It's cradled in an analytical nest to keep whatever harm at bay.

The elaborate room descriptions in Repeat the Ending are interspersed with personal comments from the point of view of the protagonist. Interacting with the contents of the locations through the habitual IF-commands quickly runs into a frustrating wall.
Unproductive, unimportant, unsuccessful commands (of which there are many!) are met with plaintive, self-pitying, or even hostile responses.

The author subverts the traditional expectations of who the parser/narrator is speaking to or about, and uses them to blur the lines between the player and the protagonist on different perceived levels of reality.

The dramatic, mentally unstable state of mind of the main character, his lack of control over his life-direction is directed outward, ascribed to unrelenting external forces such as abuse in his childhood or poverty in his current situation. Or it is attributed to uncontrollable internal influences, the driving urges and voices in his mind. The latter is very effectively conveyed through the dissociation in the mental monologue of the character between the narrator and the actor. The ambiguous use of pronouns (we, I, you) points to the in-game confusion and powerless state of the protagonist. However, once the player realises she is controlling the character's actions through her input of commands, this ambiguousness extends outward to encompass the player at the keyboard. It pulls her into a complicit, even guilty role since she is the one responsible for the protagonist's decisions.

Throughout the game, there are two seemingly straightforward objectives. The main character must pick up his medications from the pharmacy, and visit his mother in the hospital. However, it soon becomes clear that none of the successful steps in the direction of these objectives raises the player's score. Indeed, it is only when the method of increasing the score becomes apparent that the true underlying goal of this piece reveals itself. While there is a straight pathway through the story that succeeds in both superficial objectives, real "progress" depends on rebelling against the railroad. Taking actions that go against the narrow definition of success, that take the protagonist outside of his automatic routine often lead to failure and death. However, these actions do signify desperate attempts of the main character to fight back, to regain some measure of control, some small grasp on life.

A telling insight into the dismal state of mind of the protagonist is offered by the confusing, disjointed images. They seem to come straight from a dream or some other, more terrifying subconscious process. Despite their surreal quality, the rough-scribbled outlines, splashes of colour, skewed perspective, and, most touchingly, their choice of details depicted lend an impact surpassing that of any realistic depiction of the scenes.

Repeat the Ending features an innovative magic system that exemplifies some deeper point of the game. Instead of the usual fixation on object-manipulation, this game is about recognising processes, changing states of the surrounding world (and of the mind). The deeper meaning of the work is reflected in this focus of the magic system: pushing against and redirecting the laws of reality to change the circumstances. Finding a way over or through the predetermination of the protagonist's life.

The multiple endings that can be reached are in line with both the struggle to break free of the railroad, and the depressed and dissociative mental state of the main character. They are a measure not of success, but of steadfastly reaching outside the limits of perceived set-in-stone possibilities while failing.
No matter which way the heartbreaking final scene plays out, the story will end on at best a bittersweet note. The best both player and protagonist can (and should!) hope for is a small sense of regained control, of personal responsability, of self-knowledge.

(This review is based on the Spring Thing 2023 version.)

But… but… I only wanted to play a game. A childish little spooky sleepover game… And now… She’s just…

This game starts out innocently enough. The youngest of the girls must take a tour through her own subconscious, aided and guided by her big sister’s voice. Soon enough, things take a turn into creepy territory.

The map of this game is splendid. It enhances the hypnotised-disoriented feeling of the little sister wandering through her own dream-world by looping back on itself in unexpected passages. Some locations are obviously dream or nightmare stuff, while others seem like minimalist doubles of familiar rooms. I don’t know which is spookier…

The hypnosis-game setup invites the player to enter in a sometimes confusing web of player-PC-agent-narrator relations. The different girls’ voices add to the confusion as each responds in their own way to the traumas that gradually come forward out of the shadows of the dream-world.

There are a few gaps in the implementation, mostly a synonym unrecognised or a reasonable but unnecessary command not understood. Nothing too worrying or distracting.

Very moody, in places actively scary. There are happier endings to be found, but the one I got feels just right (in a horror-story wrong way…)