Ratings and Reviews by Rovarsson
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Excalibur in Avalon, March 30, 2024---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"She is not any common earth
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye
Where you and I will fare."
[T.H. White, The Once and Future King]
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>\>LISTEN
You hear the hiss of the kerosene lamp and the quiet chatter of your friends.
Frank Leandro and his fellow soldiers are playing cards in their barracks, winding down from a day patrolling the Vietnam jungle.
>The pale lamp casts dark shadows across the room and onto your faces, even as this war does the same to your souls.
After saving his friends from a surprise attack in a particularly heroic (and lethal) manner, Frank is intercepted in the afterlife by King Arthur and sent to Avalon. Unimaginable dangers threaten the world, and to ward them off, a Quest on this dream-like isle must first be undertaken...
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Thus, right after the brutal prologue of Once and Future, you are transported from the realities of the Vietnam War to an idyllic fantasy-setting. This contrast is repeated further in the game, and it's what gives it its own personal feel.
Fantasy adventures, no matter how serious the threat, always retain an escapist feeling of relief to me. The distance in time and space and plane of existence of the imaginary world lessens the urgency of the need to act. Sure, there may be an Evil Warlock threatening to lay waste to the Land, but in the meanwhile I'm strolling through the forests and mountains, gawking at the wondrous sights, secure and far away from the real world.
Once and Future shatters this escapist solace on multiple occasions. These intermezzos not only impress upon the player the immediacy of the horrors of war, they also serve to load the larger fantasy-side of the story with a more weighty significance.
Having pointed this out, I hasten to add that, in itself, the Isle of Avalon is indeed all one could wish for in a fantasy game. Forests, lakes, and mountains, with mythological references and fanciful creatures, diverse areas with their own moods, from oppressive to playful, blinding fog-filled vales to far-reaching mountaintop views.
Unfortunately though, the entire island is mapped onto a rectangular grid of NESW-connections. The artificiality of this layout, which was emphasised by drawing my map by hand, clashes painfully with the unpredictability I associate with exploring the wilderness.
The game does partly redeem itself in later stages. The Isle of Avalon is a sort of "overworld", reminiscent of the Sundial Zone in Trinity. While the objectives of the several subquests are to be found here, obtaining the information and objects to even begin contemplating their solutions requires travelling to other realms, which do have somewhat more adventurous geographies.
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>\>LOOK
---Old Woman's Laboratory
Strange brews burble and froth in cauldrons scattered around this room. Ancient alchemical devices are intermixed with more modern chemistry equipment. The shelves are stocked with bottles of all sorts and sizes. A podium fills one corner of the room. To the east is a formidable looking door.
Location descriptions are ebullient and evocative. On several occasions after reading a paragraph, I found myself closing my eyes to paint the room in my mind. Many memorable images and colourful impressions found their way to my imagination while I was going over my progress in the game during those not-quite-dreaming moments right I fell asleep.
>---Fantastic butterflies laze their wobbly paths through the air with tiny artworks on their wings. One flits past your face and you are left with a brief flash of the Mona Lisa, while another lands on a flower, giving you a clear view of Whistler's Mother
Every once in a while, a cut-scene or conversation dumps a page or two of continuous text. I found these interesting and entertaining each time, a welcome pause from my investigations and a chance to savour the writing without plans for my next commands taking up space in my head.
While these descriptions are a joy to read and visualise, that joy is layered and muddied. There is always a menacing undercurrent of dread, caused by the player's memories of the harsh and gruesome war-scenes.
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>\>
You freeze for a second, startled by a sudden noise.
I love how even an absent-minded stray press of the ENTER-button without typing a command first is incorporated into the flow of the story. As this example shows, the implementation is mostly deep and detailed. SMELL and LISTEN almost always give location-specific responses, and XYZZY is approriately dark and gloomy.
More importantly, there is an abundance of synonyms and alternate commands, and many failed attempts at a puzzle-solution do give a veiled explanation of why it didn't work, nudging the player's problem-solving faculties along.
Most puzzles and obstacles, especially those involving object-manipulation or the timely application of magic, flow naturally from the setting, their solutions intuitive from within the perspective of knightly tales and Arthurian Legend.
There are also several logic-problems, one of which became a bit of a tedious excercise because of the length of the chain even after I had deduced the basic mechanism.
The most difficult are the puzzles where assistance or information from NPCs is required. The ASK/TELL-mechanics (without TOPICS) are not up to the task of ensuring the player happens upon the correct conversation branch with the right NPC, which left me flailing in the dark quite a few times.
And while I'm on the subject of talking to NPCs, here's an excerpt of my notes scribbled furiously while in the middle of an important conversation with Merlin:
>Damned conversation bug!
Each topic triggers twice, and a dismissive response is slapped onto that for good measure. And some other stuff. Depending on the question, the character I'm asking , and the precise dismissive response, I've smacked into a list of no less than four "Dingledoofus doesn't have anything to say about that," in a single reply to ASK DINGLEDOOFUS ABOUT TINGALING.
Then I go exploring a breathtaking new part of the map, everything is interesting and moody and intruiging... I forget all about my conversational annoyances...
"Oh, here's Donglebupkis! I'll ask Donglebupkis about the Tingaling."
And then Donglebupkis does have important things to say about Tingaling, but still her response is followed by "Donglebupkis grunts dismissively."
Bang! Right back to gritting my teeth.
But as play went on, and as I grew accustomed to this idiosyncracy of the conversation system, my annoyance subsided to the point where I just skipped over the redundant final dismissive response to my questions altogether.
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From what I've read about Once and Future before I started playing, this game was made over several years, all the while debated and eagerly awaited by the community.
Although I think it largely succeeds at fulfilling its ambitious potential, here and there it feels like the author overreached a tad. Or, by the end of the development period of years, the final push was a bit too hasty, leaving some burrs and sand where it should have been smoothed out.
An engaging puzzle-heavy Arthurian story, with added gravitas through its references to the real-world Vietnam War.
Very, very good.
Epistolary Mystery, March 27, 2024Feeling angry, hurt, betrayed, le Docteur must leave for the countryside, banished from the educated and cultured social circles of the city. Fortunately, a sophisticated high-class Lady comes to live in the village shortly after, providing at least some measure of worldly and literary conversation.
Through a series of letters to the lover left in the city, we learn about the goings-on in the peasant town, the background of this high-class Lady, and the events leading to le Docteur's banishment.
The story plays in the past, perhaps 3 centuries ago. It’s an impressive tour de force on the part of the author to write the letters so consistently in the voice and style of a cultured person from that age, distinguished yet emotional, full of purplish expressions without dropping out of character.
The epistolary form the author has chosen lends itself perfectly to a gradual build-up of the mystery at the heart of the story. The letters are one-sided, we only ever see the perspective of le Docteur. They start off as an account of a lover’s yearning, a lament over the circumstances of their parting. Slowly, the focus shifts to the letter-writer’s new living circumstances: the village of Meaux with its peasants and farmers, its livestock and farmlands. Throughout the most part of the narrative, le Docteur is preoccupied with securing the attention of the lover left behind, recounting amusing or strange events in the village and avowing undying love and desire.
Underneath this light and gossipy tone, the reader gleans more and more threatening fragments of an unfolding mystery, while the protagonist remains oblivious of the possibility of this looming danger. The distance of the reader to the events described in the letters leaves room to see correlations that remain invisible for the letter-writer, who is too close to see the bigger picture. Of course, from an out-of-game perspective, it’s also the case that the reader is capable of expecting a turn of circumstances that is impossible to prepare for from within the story-viewpoint.
Le Docteur's letters speak of intense emotions of love and longing towards the left-behind lover, and the reader is an engaged, empathetic witness, often even flinching at jealous words of accusation or egocentric and manipulatively twisting arguments. Until the very end, the love story remains the main focus, the mystery serving to heighten the tension without ever taking control of the narrative.
Very tense and touching. Among the best I’ve read.
"Hominem unius libri timeo.", March 27, 2024The product of the Prince-factory, your education is almost complete. In these final hours before being sent off to the Kingdom that awaits you, you must prepare yourself for a Joust of Rhetoric against one of your fellow/adversary Princes.
To this end, you must explore the Factory, proving your knowledge of the Book of Princes to gain coins of merit. These can be exchanged for coins of gold to buy equipment.
On the surface, this seems like basic RPG-gameplay. Level up you armour and weaponry, or rather, in the context of this setting, your luxury attire and your rhetorical techniques, until you feel strong enough to face your opponent and hopefully prevail and attain your Kingdom.
However…
The setting of La Fabrique des Princes, this vast complex of corridors and halls, where the walls have faces and voices speak enigmatic words, is too intruiging to just traverse in a simple goal-oriented fashion. A menacing feeling of deception soon grabs the player’s attention, inviting to search deeper…
Although the map is small, a mere 15 rooms, it gives the impression of a much larger edifice, isolated from normal time and space. I would have loved to search this place in parser-style, but I must admit that being denied the option of closely examining the many puzzling features of the rooms and hallways adds to the feeling of uncertainty and puzzlement.
There is a region of the map which is normally off-limits to the Princes, but is opened up for you on this special occasion. It would have added to the atmosphere of secrecy and hidden meanings if it were indeed off-limits, and some kind of subterfuge was necessary to access it, instead of just being given a key.
The use of timed text put me off a bit. I didn’t feel it added anything of worth to the piece. Fortunately the timed passages are short, so annoyance is kept to a minimum.
Discovering more of the Factory’s history and purpose, and meeting the “marginal” characters at the edge of the map was well worth the time spent pursuing “side”-quests. A story about how stopping and thinking is more valuable than blindly chasing a predetermined and ill-understood objective.
A thoughtful and thought-provoking piece.
Guided tour through time, February 10, 2024Picture this:
You and your friends are taking a stroll through the woods when you suddenly come upon a dilapidated house with a big warning sign on it. What do you do?
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\>N
Front of House
The dilapidated building turns out to be a neglected old house. Surely
nobody lives here? To the north is a large door with a sign on it. To the
west a small path leads around the side of the house. The main path is to the
south.
\>READ SIGN
The sign says:
MAD SCIENTIST
NO TRESPASSING
GO AWAY
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Exactly! You go around to the side of the house and break into the basement. After such a monumental display of <strike>stupidity</strike>Adventure Spirit tm, everything that happens now is completely deserved.
What happens is that you are appointed guinea-pig "volunteers" for the Mad Scientist's forays into time-traveling. Travel to five places and times in history and bring back five symbolic items.
Excuse Me, Do You Have The Time? has a bit of a moodswing issue. It has difficulty deciding whether to emphasise the gameplay or the immersive experience of the surroundings, and decides to do both. The varying depth of descriptions and the care with which they were crafted are good examples of this.
-Many times an EXAMINE-command is met with a dry default "You can't see that,"-response. At least as often the game says "The pink handkerchief is not important."
-Something similar holds for directional commands. The normal default "You can't go that way,"-response is present for obviously closed directions (a room with only one doorway), but in some locations the author breaks the fourth wall and explains to the player directly why a certain direction is closed off (instead of blocking the way with an appropriate in-game command).
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>Cross-roads
You are at a road junction. Roads lead north, south, east and west. The
road to the west leads away from the village. This would have been indicated
on a signpost but all signposts have been removed for the duration of the war
as a security measure.
\>W
It's obvious that there must be a road leading out of the village but, as I
didn't want to have to include the entire north of England in this game, you
can't go that way.
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The sparse default responses and the jokingly breaking of the fourth wall create an atmosphere of puzzle-priority. You have a setting and a flimsy frame-story, now get on with the obstacles the author has put in your path.
However, this stands in strong contrast to the care that went into the historical details of the setting. Examining a rock might tell you that it's not important, or even that it's not even there, but examining a frescoe will give you a detailed description of the depiction, along with the mythological context. All while the frescoe is no more important than the rock.
While I appreciated this amount of attention to detail a lot, the contrast between the sparsely described "normal" game world and the enthusiasm in the description of these choice objects gave me the feeling I was being taken on a guided tour, where the tour-guide decides for you where to look.
The unevenness of the depth of description and implementation, apart from causing an imbalance in the feel of the world, also has a very strong impact on the perception of puzzles and potential solutions.
The heavy descriptive emphasis on certain details focuses the player's attention on them. To remain with the frescoe-example, I tried finding deeper symbolic/metaphoric meaning in the picture, I counted recurring elements in search of a hidden code, I tried to push eyes and stars to see if there was some secret machinery hidden underneath... I must say I found it a bit disappointing when I realised that the lovingly described artwork was an elaborate bit of worldbuilding, and that a simple down-to-earth LOOK BEHIND ELEPHANT would produce more tangible results.
I wouldn't really call the decorative descriptions "red herrings", I got used to them as historical information rather than puzzle-related clues quickly. They might throw off the player's focus the first few times, but the game is consistent in its style of puzzles, it won't suddenly change tack and expect you to deduce an obscure code from a background painting.
The collection of puzzles on offer in Excuse Me, Do You Have The Time is challenging but solvable, if you meticulously search every time-zone. Objects found in one time-zone may be needed to solve a puzzle in another, so there will be some going back-and-forth between areas. Using the items in the corrects way sometimes requires clever leap of imagination, an understanding of the culture of the specific time-zone you're in.
Besides the puzzles themselves, there are stumbling blocks in the way that are more a consequence of the game structure and some design decisions.
--The distance between a puzzle and the objects needed to solve it and/or the clues needed to understand it is sometimes very large. This makes it difficult in some cases to see the connection which would be obvious if clue, item, and puzzle were in the same few locations.
For each area, a clue in form of a cryptic poem is hidden somewhere in the game. I found some of these to be helpful in understanding the bigger objective of each zone, others not so much. I think it really comes down to how your brain works if you understand which information to derive from these poems.
--There are one-way dead-ends in some of the time-zones, meaning that if you didn't find all the important objects on your exploration, you can't go back to have another look. It's a good idea to put a checkpoint-save at the start of every area (while you're still in the time-machine!)
--There's a limit on how many things you can carry with you, even with the added space in a handy rucksack, and there's no way of knowing which objects will be needed when first entering a new time-zone. Also, there are a lot of red-herring items, objects you pick up or are given in the course of the game which may give a nice impression of the time and place you're in, but which serve no practical use.
As a result, you'll be doing a fair amount of selecting items you might need from your collection, and even then you'll be doing some high-level inventory juggling.
Fortunately, you're not alone.
Aside from acting as an extension of your inventory capacity, your three loyal companions (Tom, Dick, and Harry. Really.) have other uses as well. Their remarks on your performance and banter among themselves serves as a bit of comic relief. Sadly, their pool of utterances from which the game randomly picks each turn is rather shallow. I quickly zoned out and ignored them. Your friends' help is needed to solve some of the puzzles, in situations where you yourself are found lacking. Lastly, they form a three-level hint system. I used this a lot, especially Tom's vague nudges, but they're of no great help when you're well and truly stuck. Their hints will edify you on how to tackle a problem, but they will not enlighten you on the sometimes harder task of finding the right object. You're still left to search the entire map on your own if you haven't found the item the first time through. This leaves you vulnerable to Zombification.
A lot of other NPCs inhabit the areas you visit. The majority of them don't understand a word you say. Being from a different country in the distant past will have that effect. The few that are open to some form of limited communication are there for puzzle-progress only.
Excuse Me, Do You Have The Time?'s structure of interdependent time-zones opens up many opportunities for interesting associative breakthroughs in solving its puzzles, but it's also very cruel. The anxiety of having missed something stopped me from fully enjoying the setting.
Good puzzler.
Quarter-century look-back at a flawed game., February 2, 2024---> 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.
Lucky Charm, January 31, 2024If you play this game without slavishly following the walkthrough to the smallest detail, you will ragequit when the endgame throws you out right before the final 6 or 7 moves.
I did.
Many puzzles in Jinxter have a straightforward adventure-game solution. This solution has potentially life-threatening side-effects. You don't actually die though, but it takes a little bit off your luck-stat. Which you need. Which I didn't know. Which I only found out when I was thrown out of the endgame because I was low on Luck.
Restoring won't help this late in the game, the only way to experience the endgame and the good conclusion of the story is restarting and finding out the intermediate steps of caution in every solution.
>"Somehow, you don't feel quite as lucky as you did."
If you read the above line, it's time to restore and tackle that last puzzle again. Carefully...
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Now, do play Jinxter! It's fun!
No, really, it is.
For ages, Aquitania has been under the protection of an enchanted bracelet which grants above-average luck to its inhabitants. Recently, the power of the bracelet has diminished by the theft of several of its dangly charms. An opportunity for the Head Green Witch Jannedor to enlarge her influence on the land of Aquitania.
Your quest is clear. You must find the missing charms, restore the bracelet's enchantment, confront Jannedor!
Wait... Who is this "You"?
It appears that our savior of the land is actually a random hapless passer-by, designated by Fate (and a rather befuddled Guardian) to take on this land-savioring task.
Perhaps Magnetic Scrolls earlier works provide a clue to who You is...
-There's no mention of gills and fins, so it's not the dimension-portal jumping goldfish-detective from Fish.
-No exceptional catburglary skills, probably not the thief from Guild of Thieves either.
Nope. Seems like You is just an ordinary adventure person without any distinguishing traits.
The world that unfolds for You to explore is large and varied. It all starts out in the mundane comfy familiarity of You's own home, and it goes progressively more into fairy-talish territory with each new area.
(Ahem... When I said mundane, I should point out that's a rather relative term. The street in right out the front door is a literal Neverending Lane, and your furniture becomes, well, animated from time to time, presumably caused by the uncontrolled leakage of Luck.)
When I glance at my pen-and-paper map, the general shape is a narrow connecting line with bulges that represent multi-location puzzle areas. Four large areas are connected by some sort of vehicle ride (with attached puzzle). Apart from the connection between areas 1 and 2, these are one-way only. I love vehicular travel in adventures. It draws open the map and gives an impression of real long travel, as opposed to traversing unrealistically long distances on foot.
At least one sneakily hidden passage requires some weakly clued detection work, but the area it leads to is more than worth it.
Jaunty and exuberant writing pulls You into the cheerful atmosphere of the game-world; vibrant location descriptions are supported by beautiful pictures that are helpful in constructing a clear mental image of You's surroundings.
>Spring
>This cool spring, surrounded on all sides but the west by steep banks, bubbles up from underground. It looks entirely artless and natural, belying the fact that Xam's crazed gardener constructed it by means of an intricate system of dams and hydraulics, initially flooding half the neighbourhood and leading to a series of acrimonious lawsuits lasting several years.
At other times, it's more restrained, slipping in a drily humorous response to an EXAMINE-command.
>The telephone is a telephone, just like a red one, except it is green.
Speaking of the EXAMINE-command... There is none. Everything is done with LOOK (fortunately its abbreviation L is accepted). It took some conscious effort to redirect my fingers' deeply engrained automation from X [object] to L [object], but the adjustment wasn't too big.
On the whole, the parser is perfectly adequate. It recognises complex commands (DROP ALL EXCEPT) and multiple-action commands (SMELL DEAD FLY THEN LICK IT). It is however somewhat too fine-grained, making the PC feel like a toddler who has to be pointed to all the discrete components of a seemingly simple action. Until you get used to holding the PC's hand, this leads to a lot of "With what?" and "To whom" responses where a modern parser would deduce these things without problem.
---->Short aside as to why I'm mentioning this: Jinxter was published in 1987, when these finer points of parsing were not by any means to be taken for granted (still aren't, actually, when you look beyond the strongest of modern parsers). Boasting about parser-strength was a real promotional tool, and players then would not have found these "shortcomings" to be disruptive.
To be sure, I never encountered an instance where parser inadequacy hindered the solving of a puzzle. The puzzles were more than enough of a challenge all by themselves.
The first area is gentle enough, the puzzles are easily recognisable and the limited amount of items in You's inventory makes it rather straightforward to come up with the correct solution. (Look out for that additional Luck-complication though!)
The later areas, however, are much harder, especially the midgame. A bunch of interdependent locations necessitate running from one part of the area to the other to find the right item to use on a distant puzzle, there's an unknown order to the obstacles that needs to be figured out in order to make real progress, and the puzzles are just harder.
Add to this a further complication: the "carry-all" You picked up early in the game turns out not to be a carry-all at all. It's handy to keep all You's stuff together, but each item still fills up your inventory, whether it's inside the container or not. The inventory-limit is generous, but in a game like this it's hard to predict if you're going to need those nailclippers a second time or not. It never certain when it's safe to discard an object, so You ends up carrying every carryable article around. This becomes a problem when one of the one-way passages prohibits the transporting of the carry-much and forces You to choose which items to bring.
The majority of puzzles are clever and fun to hypothesise about. Some are very elegant and surprising, with a solution so simple that it's not obvious at all. Others are obscure, underclued to the point of unfairness, requiring many attempts and possibly a few RESTOREs.
---->Be sure to put a checkpoint-save at the beginning of each new area. Allthough it's impossible to die in Jinxter, it's exceedingly easy to wind up Zombified. I also encountered a bug that would have made the game unwinnable had I not been able to restore to my checkpoint. ((Spoiler - click to show)The Bartender gets fussy when you give him the wrong coin. He gives you a glass of beer that you cannot interact with.)
There are many NPCs to interact with. They're of the thick cardboard type, but the cardboard is painted in bright colours and cartoonish features. They're fun to mess with a bit, amusing caricatures, but don't expect any depth of conversation. Their main purpose is to serve as obstacles, to be fooled, distracted, mislead in the search for the missing charms.
There's also a weird Guardian (the one who appointed You as the right person to undertake this quest in the first place) soaring around who will regularly appear out of nowhere. It's worth asking him about the problem at hand, but don't count on a helpful answer. He might point You in the right direction, but it's just as possible he'll be too confused to help in any way, or too busy with finding the nearest whatever-it-is that he's after this time. In short, you shouldn't rely on the Guardian as an in-game hint system to help you find the charms.
Collecting the charms grants access to the magic powers they possess. Each charm encapsulates a single spell. These work as simple and straightforward manipulations of the surroundings, nothing too complicated, but a nice extra toolbox to consider when pondering a puzzle. And of course they're a lot of fun when thrown around randomly at innocent, unsuspecting things or people in your immediate vicinity...
I started this review with a warning about the unfairness of the endgame, or, more precisely, about the necessity to do everything just right during the entire game to even be admitted to the endgame. And I did not restart and replay to enter the final few commands that separated me from the conclusion of the story. Nevertheless, I found Jinxter to be an engaging and entertaining exerience. Just watch your step and leave your temper at the entrance.
Il Reggente., January 24, 2024How Unseemly!
-------------
The King is dead! All hail the Ki... well, seeing that Prince Charles is a five-year-old nasty specimen of royalty who has barely outgrown his toddler nappies, that should be "All hail Primo Varicella, Regent of Piedmont!"
Once you've managed to outmaneuver your rivals to the Regency in the maze of backstabbery and treasonous wit that lies before you at this time, that is...
Several times during my earliest forays into Interactive Fiction, 20-odd years ago, I started playing Adam Cadre's Varicella and quickly bounced off it. My expectations then were firmly geared towards long linear quest-adventures, and this game's time-limit and simultaneous sub-puzzles stumped me. I never got much further than trying to kick one of the guards in the nads when he wouldn't stand aside. (A swift death was my reward.)
In the past years, I have played and enjoyed a bunch of optimisation games, and delving into the historic vaults of IF had exposed me to many Cruel games with numerous try-die-repeat puzzles. With the added wisdom and experience so accumulated, I felt ready to once again tackle this highly acclaimed Classic of the Renaissance with an openness of mind and the patience to appreciate it on its own terms.
>"Photopia has made more of a mark, I suppose, but Photopia is a short story; Varicella is a world. There are so many things to see and do…"
--Adam Cadre on Varicella--
A very true assessment. What the author doesn't mention is that no single playthrough will ever contain even half the content this game has to offer. Merely to gather the absolute minimum of information necessary to solve the game requires multiple focused playthroughs. Finding out about the other conversation topics, item descriptions, hidden nooks kept me happily engaged for a good while after I had solved the central puzzle.
Varicella is amazing.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----Rise Of Primo Varicella; A Truthful Account Of Our Behind-the-Scenes Assistance To One Palace Minister In His Ruthless Ascent to Power----
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--> I. In which We Acquaint Ourselves With The Pallazo del Piemonte:
As a first move, we slide our pocket pocket watch into our breastpocket, we won't be needing it anytime soon. Let death come as it wills. (In other words, do not pay notice to the advancing clock in the status bar.) In these first few visits to the Palace, our primary focus shall be on the basics of this imaginary world: the Map! Exits and entrances, locked doors and other puzzles, the locations of items to pick up and NPCs to chat up.
The Palace on each level is built according to an almost completely symmetrical floor plan. This arrangement will be most convenient later on, when time is of the essence. For now, we might as well draw our map and note and label the offices of our rivals for future reference.
Pairing the practical to the pleasant, our tour allows us to take in the halls, rooms, and corridors of the Palace, all described from Primo's point of view.
>\>LOOK
Your Quarters
You may have been relegated to the top of this tower, but that hasn't impeded you from imbuing your quarters with an excellence that not even a team of interior decorators flown in from Kyoto could achieve. Only someone with your finely-honed sensibilities could have taken this amount of space and kept it from seeming appallingly cramped. Though the panoramic windows to the north and west do their part in opening up the room, you still have to give most of the credit to yourself.
His attention to the smallest details of ornamentation reveals an inordinate fondness for luxury and style, this seeming to be his greatest priority in life, apart from his unquenchable thirst for power.
--> II. In Which The Gap Between Primo Varicella's Knowledge And Our Own Is Bridged, And Our Shared Understanding Is Broadened:
Having lived here for years, Primo has been involved in the palatial scheming and plotting for a long time before we made our entrance. It's essential for the player's understanding of what's going on to absorb all the information at hand to catch up with him.
Both the explicit asides in and the implicit hints at palatial power-dynamics between the lines of the room descriptions have already given us a view of the treacherous web of ambitons we'll need to navigate. A good way to get more insight is Primo's own record of his rivals and potential allies. (He has a nifty gizmo...)
This leads us straight to the next step: seeking out the other palace residents. Each and every one of them has their own flavour of wretchedness. Be it raw lust for power coupled with the guileful cunning needed to reach and hold a position in the Palace, the powerless misery of being a mere plaything in the machinations of the Court, or the distanced watchfulness of one awaiting the developments before choosing sides, all the players on this stage are deeply disturbing.
For at least one of them, the ordeals that life amidst these scheming villains have pushed her firmly beyond the reach of reason:
>\>ASK CHARLOTTE ABOUT ME
"i see a little varicella of a man," Princess Charlotte replies. "scaramouche! scaramouche! will you do the grim fandango? i think you will!"
Primo, with all his cynical scheming, is not by far the worst of the lot.
Gaining access to the personal quarters of the other palace inhabitants confronts us with the first few obstacles. Easy and straightforward as they may be, they provide the necessary first steps toward the cogs and wheels we'll need to set in motion. Careful navigation of the conversations and attentive investigation of their rooms will reveal secrets and weaknesses to be exploited later on. The items available in the private rooms point us toward potential ways to eliminate our rivals.
--> III. In Which Fragments of the Scheme are Discovered and Executed:
The accessible rooms and halls of the Palazzo di Piemonte fully investigated, the other denizens interrogated in as far as they would let us, important-seeming items in our inventory, the mind reeling with possible scenarios... It's time to finally act upon the hunches and what-ifs that were triggered by our exploration.
Each of Primo's rivals has their own puzzle-chain, their own sequence of steps toward their elimination. Because life in the Palace moves along at its own pace, and our adversaries are busily deploying their own sets of perfidious tactics, many of our actions are time-dependent.
A number of obstacles require intimate knowledge about the other residents gained in previous conversations to goad them in our desired direction. Other hurdles are of a more physical or technical nature, where we manipulate nature instead of people.
The main objective here is to find the way to take out each of Primo's rivals separately, without worrying yet about the others during one particular tour.
--> IV. In Which I Piece together Primo's Plan:
Alas! I failed at this final task. I had figured out the movements and weaknesses of Primo's rivals, and for each of them I found a way to exploit this knowledge against them. The distinct sequences for eliminating each of the other power-hungry wolves were clear to me, without even once peeking behind the curtains.
++++
Speaking of peeking behind curtains, we're treated to a nice reference to the Bard if we do precisely that:
>LOOK BEHIND TAPESTRY
The tapestry is flush against the wall, with nothing behind it but cool marble. You were expecting Polonius?
---Adam Cadre, Varicella---
--------------------------------------------------/
QUEEN
"What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?
Help, ho!"
POLONIUS (behind the arras)
"What ho! Help!"
HAMLET
"How now, a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead."
----He kills Polonius by thrusting a rapier
through the arras.----
---William Shakespeare, Hamlet---
--------------------------------------------------/
++++
Despite repeated attempts, I never succeeded at ordering the moves in these discrete seqences into an effective interlocking whole. After getting rid of the majority of opponents, there always remained at least one foe that I had not dealt with soon enough.
It's not enough to execute the separate sub-schemes one after the other, no matter in which order. Primo needs to think many moves ahead and slide the distinct plans together to have a chance of defeating the large-scale puzzle. Acquiring items and solving preparatory puzzles for a later adversary must be taken care of while still dealing with the present opponent, so that the whole of the masterplan is as time-efficient as possible.
When I felt utterly defeated and finally looked at a step-by-step walkthrough, the ultimate all-encompassing sequence of moves presented itself as a magnificent complex web, dealing with every circumstance and threat in an interwoven simultaneous master scheme.
Following the walkthrough and seeing events unroll showed me a vision of an inescapable, interlocking, overarching solution which has an almost mathematical beauty.
--> V. In Which Primo Varicella Prevails:
At the end of this horrible tale, Primo stand atop a heap of corpses, rewarded with the Regence of Piedmont. With the child Prince Charles under his protection and authority, his dream of power is fulfilled.
>"Yet it cannot be called talent to slay fellow-citizens, to deceive friends,
to be without faith, without mercy, without religion; such methods may
gain empire, but not glory. Still, if the courage of Primo Varicella in
entering into and extricating himself from dangers be considered,
together with his greatness of mind in enduring and overcoming
hardships, it cannot be seen why he should be esteemed less than the
most notable captain.
--Nicoló Macchiavelli, Il Principe; Chapter VIII: Of Those Who By Their Crimes Come To Be Princes.-- ("Agathocles" changed to "Primo Varicella)
The short epilogue concludes the story of Regent Primo Varicella in a fitting manner. It left me staring unseeing into the distance, pondering the fate of my luxury-loving, power-lusting companion whom I, contrary to my wishes, had grown somewhat fond of.
Varicella is among the very best IF has to offer. Magnificent.
Non Cogito ergo Non Sum?, January 19, 2024First of all: A Beauty Cold and Austere is extremely well coded and implemented. Every action I tried that had even the slightest relevance to the problem at hand was understood. The parser understands tons of synonyms and guesses accurately what you want to do from differently formulated commands. This is a joy in every adventure, but it is doubly so in a game like this. There is a lot of precise fiddling of switches and turning of dials here, and any less near-perfect implementation would have made this a hell of frustration.
The puzzles here are logic and fair (duh). The author has put in a lot of effort to guide the player to understanding why the solutions work. I daresay that I have learned a (vague) thing or two about calculus.
The game truly shines in its visualization of abstract mathematical concepts and problems. An algebra problem made concrete with balancing scales is something one could find in an oldschool text adventure. Making an infinite converging series tangible or visible is harder. And programming, nay, creating a working machine in the game that lets you manipulate such series at will is just a heavenly present to any IF-tinkerer.
The writing is very good. Well-described locations, the occasional joke (well, a bit more than occasional, but it stays within bounds...), good NPCs. On the larger scale, it's harder to say:
Like The Chinese Room, a game that explores some basic concepts of philosophy, A Beauty Cold and Austere explores many mathematical concepts. And, like The Chinese Room, A Beauty Cold and Austere does not have much of a story beyond that.
It makes up for this though. Instead of a story-structure, we get an ever-widening understanding of mathematical concepts and how they are linked to eachother. And this widening understanding is beautifully reflected in the way the gamespace evolves. The map itself expands and deepens with your mathematical discoveries (or inventions, depending on your philosophical standpoint). You also have the backbone of math's history and many of the great minds in it to give the game a recognizable structure.
I like this game a lot.
At first, I didn't even know why I bought this Geiger counter..., January 18, 2024...but then it clicked.
Scavenger is what it says on the tin. The tin is corroded and highly volatile. It might be radio-active. It's located in some raider base you just happened to find the coördinates to. Whatever it is, find the tin.
Sounds straightforward enough, doesn't it? Well, it mostly is. Until you start to collect pieces of evidence of what exactly happened before this existence as a scavenger on a blasted Earth. Until you meet a little girl who managed to survive in a ruined bunker... Until you get to the bottom floor of the base.
Scavenger plays as the epitome of old school scavenger hunts, and in doing so far surpasses most of them. Verbose, evocative descriptions, a sympathetic-but-not-quite protagonist, a backstory savoured in bits and pieces...
The thieving-adventurer brought to his knees, stripped of his kleptomania, given purpose and sent out into the world again. A barren ruined world. This time taking whatever is there for bare survival.
Must play.
A new perspective on Grandad's mansion, January 18, 2024Ruby’s riding the bus, on her way to the hospital. Her father’s not well at all, and Ruby’s struggling, wanting to see and hug him as fast as possible but at the same time reluctant to see him sick, postponing the confrontation with her dad in a bed in a too-white room.
There’s been a rise lately of a new genre or side-branch within IF: Works where the main game is embedded within a frame-story which opens a perspective on the protagonist and the (fictional) writer, which colours the player’s interpretation of the events. In Repeat the Ending and LAKE Adventure, what would have been a rather standard text-adventure on its own gains a more complex meaning and narrative depth by the player’s experience being informed by the frame-story.
Hand Me Down's prologue introduces Ruby and her father, Miles Walker, in a slice-of-life choice-based manner. The choices have no immediate consequences for the rest of the game, the player can choose to rush to the hospital room, or go with Ruby’s reluctance and opt for a number of delaying activities without special punishment or reward. The simple presence of the choices as a depiction of Ruby’s worries is enough to put the player in the right mindset for what follows.
Once Ruby is with her father, he is quickly wheeled off for medical tests. Before that, however, he offers her a much-belated present: a game he has written in TADS3 for her sixteenth birthday.
-A Very Important Date-
The main game, considered outside of the frame-story, is a straightforward treasure hunt. There’s a party going on in the back garden of the manor, but no one, not even you, the birthday girl, is allowed without an invitation, a costume, and something to share with the other guests.
The manor has an expansive map which is almost completely open for exploration from the start. There are outdoor and indoor regions, some rooms with unexpected functions, and loads of stuff to examine and investigate.
Simple (but thorough) exploration will yield a great harvest of objects, some necessary to gain entrance to the party, some apparently just stuff lying around, either on its own or as left-overs from finding another object in or under them. The inventory can become quite unwieldy if you should choose to hang on to everything. Leaving items behind might mean that you lack a crucial object for a puzzle you have yet to encounter… I picked a convenient central stash-spot to dump everything I didn’t regard as useful at the time.
Puzzles range from simple lock-and-key to clever physics to fiendishly difficult multi-step decoding, and even dating. (In the historical sense, that is.) This latter variety absolutely requires the use of outside sources to solve, something generally frowned upon in IF. In A Very Important Date however, with its game-within-game setup, it’s not only justified but could even be leveraged to deepen the player’s engagement. (More on that below.)
The “fiendishly difficult” puzzles could be brought down to simply “perplexing at first” by a scrupulous pruning and streamlining of the gameplay relating to those puzzles. More gentle nudges toward a solution when the player is flailing around aimlessly, cleaning up some of the clutter in rooms with such a puzzle so the pertinent parts are more readily visible.
In fact, the implementation as a whole is rather uneven. For most of the game, it’s more than adequate, splendidly surprising even in some instances where examining bits of scenery returns a beautiful reverie about the sun’s rays, or in one memorable instance, a not entirely shabby freestyle rap. In other parts though it seems the author fell victim to a heavy bout of implementation fatigue, leaving all but the most immediate objects undescribed and thus dropping much of the moodsetting scenery descriptions aside. At one point I joked with the author in a PM that I could read his state of mind through the depth of implementation, whether he was in the creative flow or stressing against time, playful and free or distracted and worried.
The same criticism holds for the writing. Here and there the descriptions feel cluttered, grating sentences and elegance lost. This actively works against clear visualisation of the surroundings by the player. It makes me suspect that the author too did not have as coherent an image of the room as he wished, or that more time was needed to sort the important and unimportant bits.
This said, there are true flashes of brilliance too. The Vegetable Garden with its compost heap, or (my personal favourite) the Statue Garden with its intricately carved figures are a beauty to imagine, and made a lasting visual impression on me.
For any other game, I could close the review here, concluding that I had fun with this challenging and satisfying treasure-hunt puzzler, and that it might benefit from another run through the testing mill. With Hand Me Down however, I have only laid bare the superficially obvious. The game-within-game approach deepens the emotional response I had, widens the range of interpretation considerably.
Synthesis
Throughout A Very Important Date, there are reminders of the “real world” of the prologue. The author, Miles Walker, Ruby’s father (!), has left pictures, notes, letters, all kinds of information about his own life and that of his father, Ruby’s grandfather, around the manor. Perhaps these started as little Easter eggs for his daughter to find, little tidbits about her family’s history to discover in her birthday present. Along the way, however, Miles has begun using his writing of A Very Important Date as a way to capture intimate lost moments, ventilate anger and grief, remember or break down turning points in his own life.
The PC-Ruby in A Very Important Date remains a typical underdescribed player character in an old school adventure game, frozen in excited exploration and casually conversing with funny animals. Miles Walker understandably wrote her like this, expecting his real-life daughter to project her personal feelings of joy and discovery onto this digital placeholder. This PC-Ruby shows no emotional response to her father’s sadness and frustration evident in the notes he hid in the game. But, with the Ruby from the prologue still echoing in our minds, we can only imagine the effect this all has on that girl sitting in the too-white hospital room with the laptop on her lap…
This is where the intense emotional impact of Hand Me Down lies for me: In keeping in mind that I am not playing A Very Important Date, I am playing Ruby who is playing as herself in this text adventure her father made for her as a deeply personal gift. I’m channeling this girl in the too-white hospital room, shaken by worry about her sick father, learning intimate details of her father’s life she didn’t know or realise. My mind’s eye kept flashing back and forth between the manor, where my PC was doing all this fun and frustrating stuff, jumping through the hoops as we make our adventure PCs do, and the too-white hospital room where Ruby is typing commands onto the keyboard, worried about her father, maybe crying…
This invites further speculation about this tangled web of of relations. If the player is channeling Ruby playing PC-Ruby, then what of the fictional author? Miles Walker, Ruby’s father, is a character in Hand Me Down. He’s the in-game writer of A Very Important Date. While he was struggling with TADS3’s containers, was Brett Witty channeling Miles Walker as he is seen by the player?
The continued tension between levels of reality, the juxtaposition of the girl exploring the manor and the girl crying in the too-white hospital room, lift Hand Me Down to a degree of sophistication, a height of complexity above and beyond the qualities of the surface adventure. The characterisation and emotional weight set by the prologue reverberate throughout the game-within-game, the father’s intimate intrusions serve as a bridge, feeding “real-world” feelings into the imaginary adventure, regularly jolting the player’s realisation of the wider story in which she is taking part.
It is here that I think there is a great opportunity for the puzzles requiring out-of-game resources to play a significant role in leveraging the identification of the player with Ruby, and in more closely entangling the text-adventure with the frame-story. The father, aware of the fact that his daughter is an adventure-novice, could break the in-game fourth wall to leave little encouraging remarks, explaining to her that she might need to look up some information in an encyclopaedia. (“Hey Ruby-doo! I’m glad you’ve already made this much progress. If you found this note in the skull, you might want to open up Wikipedia.”) This would strengthen the in-game father-daughter bond, and it would also alert the player to do what Ruby’s father says: prepare to do some out-of-game research.
Bugs and momentary lapses in implementation aside, Hand Me Down had me deeply engaged for more than five hours (fortunately I remembered to enter my rating at the 2h-mark).
Remember: The player is not you. The player is Ruby, the girl in the too-white hospital room, worried sick about her dad, crying over the “treasures” of her father’s intimate revelations her adventure-counterpart discovers in the family manor.
Very moving.
----wipes dust speck from left eye----
Cats & Dogs, January 16, 2024Alien Cat Beings from Extra-Terrestrial Outer Space have dognapped your dearest Tookie! And they have a remarkable propensity for subjecting dog-rescuing humans (point in case: you) to riddles, math problems, and other tests of wit.
Tookie's Song starts off with a brilliant first puzzle. (Spoiler - click to show)A simple and elegant bit of misdirection. Most of the other puzzles are more standard adventure fare, several having alternate solutions, and some requiring a bit of thinking around the corner. An algebra calculation can be solved independently by the player, but in-game resources are available to make the calculation for you. There's a riddle, but its solution is so obviously clued that those who don't know it can easily deduce the answer so it doesn't lead to an annoying out-of-game web-search.
A mostly symmetrical hub-and-spokes map offers four areas of puzzle solving. They're not completely self-contained, so if an obstacle stumps you, just explore a bit more and the answer will be obvious when you find the requisite item. The descriptions of the rooms are short but evocative, appealing to different senses.
The seasonal theme of the spokes seems to be completely arbitrary, but it lends atmosphere and a bit more depth to the different puzzle-areas.
The implementation is on the shallow side, but everything important is well-described. Trying to manipulate irrelevant objects quickly sets the player straight with a funny slap on the wrist.
The cat-aliens you meet have distinct personalities. Especially Gus the Bartending Cat is a pleasure to chat with for a while. And when you have to bend your personal ethics a bit to get past an NPC, it helps if he’s clearly described as a smug bastard (in this instance: Eddie).
The writing is snappy, funny, upbeat. I often got a smile out of some entertaining turn of phrase or an amusing remark by one of the cats.
A fun bit of entertainment, good for an hour or so of lighthearted puzzle-solving. I liked it.
Antiquarian saves world., January 15, 2024Decades ago, the benevolent and righteous King Serak was corrupted by the foul influences of the Demon Lord Malthazar. Knights and Mages from across the land united to form the White Army. Led by the brave Lord Thaylor, they defeated the dark forces in a great battle. The once-good King Serak was incarcerated in a magical prison beyond space and time.
Recently, the Evil of Serak is rising once again. Escaped from his magical bounds, he has taken the now elderly Lord Thaylor and his daughter Leoria in captivity and threatens to overtake the fair lands of Malinor. This time, the grave task of saving the world falls upon Maddog Williams. An antiquarian. Alone. (Perhaps the knights and mages were on a tea-break?)
The Adventures of Maddog Williams in the Dungeons of Duridian is a curiously malformed chimera of a game, with elements of various styles of gameplay illfittingly wrought together. Nonetheless, it manages to rise above the awkward joining of its components to form an altogether enjoyable piece of IF.
At heart, Maddog is a traditional parser-based graphical fantasy adventure. In a pseudo-medieval setting with castles and dragons and magic, the player needs to guide the protagonist through a series of puzzles and obstacles to defeat Evil and save the land.
For the most part, the puzzles are straightforward and well clued, unlocking doors and secret passages with a variety of key-objects, figuring out when to use the magical properties of an item. It's a bit dissapointing that although Maddog Williams is introduced in the prologue as an antiquarian and a tinkerer (the opening scene shows his alarm clock to be a watersprinkling Rube Goldberg contraption), neither of these specialities play much of a role in the problems he faces during his quest.
The parser is of in-between quality, adequate and up to the task. It does allow for complex multi-word commands, but in practice it gets easily confused by anything more complicated than LOOK UNDER. Unless there is a clear goal for a complex command, it's best to stick with simple two-word instructions. LOOK and LOOK [object] need to be typed in full since L and X are not provided. INVENTORY, some other game functions and all meta-commands are handled through the F-keys, which took some serious getting used to.
The fantasy setting and Maddog's actions within it are conveyed in a gently mocking tongue-in-cheek tone, poking fun at the tropes of the genre without slipping into outright parody.
The locations are rendered in simple but pretty pixelated graphics, and the pictures are supported with lush descriptions in the text descriptions.
The writing as a whole seems to strive for a mixture of funny entertainment and heroic gravity. Its success at this is uneven, often it comes across as overwrought, but even then it's a joy to see the effort that went into the elaborate cutscenes and conversations.
Many futile actions and failed attempts are accounted for and met with a funny custom response, rewarding the player's playfulness at poking around the surroundings.
According to the Merlin-lookalike who welcomes you to the game, the player takes the role of Maddog's counsel and advisor. In this setup, "You" should refer to the player directly. Throughout the game however, the narrator is often inconsistent about this, sometimes using "You" in the plural for the duo of Maddog and the player-as-advisor, sometimes reverting to the usual 2nd tense adventure narration where player and PC are conflated into one agent, sometimes narrating events from Maddog's 1st person viewpoint, sometimes having Maddog speak to the player/advisor directly. Rather than being confusing or annoying, this adds to the loose and casual atmosphere of the game.
The overall pacing of Maddog's quest towards the inevitable castle dungeons at the end is pleasantly varied. Obstacle-heavy areas where the tension runs high alternate with more relaxed village-exploration with the obligatory visit to the local pub.
Exploration of the world of The Adventures of Maddog Williams in the Dungeons of Duridian is done by (here comes the first awkward hybrid-element...) walking around with the arrow keys. Typing N/E/S/W is not understood by the parser, the entire world must be traversed by wandering from location to location at a leisurely pace. Contrary to parser-players' expectations that everything in sight should be immediately accesible for taking or manipulating, it's necessary to stroll around inside the rooms too, otherwise PULL LEVER will be met with a dry "I'm not close enough."
This unfamiliar way of moving around was actually very cool. Not only does it give a very tactile connection to the game world, it also opens up a nice tactic to respond to tense real-time threats: you can pre-load a command into the parser and fire it by pressing the enter-key at the appropriate time.
Of course this means some exploratory self-sacrifice beforehand to identify said real-time threats. As a rule, Maddog in its entirety is not averse to unavoidable PC deaths. Sacrificing our curious antiquarian's life is on several occasions necessary to gain indispensable information toward puzzle-solutions later in the game.
On top of the keyboard-movement, Maddog's Adventures are further "actionised" by awkwardly grafting multiple gameplay elements from other gaming genres onto the main adventure trunk.
-On a regular basis, Maddog comes upon an enemy who must by defeated in a fight. This requires the player to press the F1 key to enter combat-mode, whereupon our protagonist and his foe square off toe-to-toe in a 2D fencing match which amounts to stepping back-and-forth along a line, taking turns bashing each other's head in until someone's life points are drained. (Play in EASY-mode and you'll be fine.)
-At a crucial point in Maddog's quest, he'll call the help of a friendly Dragon to cross the mountains to the Evil Castle. On the way there, they must engage in some 2D arcade-style dragon dogfighting, blasting unpredictably appearing hostile dragons out of the air. Lightning reflexes, furious button-mashing, and a good amount of swearing are prerequisites to complete this stage, especially for the player accustomed to the tranquil tempo of parser turns.
-Once inside the dungeons, it must have seemed like a good idea to mix things up a bit by incorporating a platfroming room as an obstacle. Jumping (SHIFT-key) from pillar to pillar (in something resembling 3D this time) with, ahem, less-than-accurate movement control is, ahem, challenging...
Although the jumping and fencing and shooting are clumsy and frustrating, I found these things ultimately charming. They never take too long, and mashing my way through these sequences felt a bit like a throwback to the NES-console days of yore.
I've used the words "clumsy" and "awkward", and I stand by my assessment of The Adventures of Maddog Williams in the Dungeons of Duridian as a somewhat illfitting and malformed chimera. Nevertheless, I immensely enjoyed the hours I spent playing the game. Highly recommended for those who wouldn't mind a bit of a disruption of their normal parser-gameplay expectations.
Curly fries on fangs., January 6, 2024Seriously?
Your first night off in like, forever, one of the few times you have enough change in your pockets to treat yourself to some comfort grease-food, perhaps washing down this fight with Luke, taking time to chat a bit with the nice waitress, and there's one of those bloodsucking hypermosquitoes at McDonalds?
Can't a girl get some well-deserved rest for once?
Halfway through the hour or so I played 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds, an old math joke I heard once resurfaced:
>If an engineer wakes up because the trashcan in her hotel room is burning, she'll get the fire extinguisher and put out the fire, then call the fire brigade.
If it's a chemist, he'll cover the thrashcan with a tight lid, trusting the lack of oxygen will take care of the flames.
A mathematician will scan the room and go back to sleep once she sees the sink, assured that a solution exists.
I felt like the mathematician after a while in 16 Ways. I had successfully killed the vampire in 4 ways ((Spoiler - click to show)UV-light, Plunger Stake, Machine Gun Scripture, Holy Squirt Gun). While I was searching my surroundings and setting up preparations for these four (and a bunch of less prepared other attempts which resulted in death...), I saw many glimpses and clues for a bunch of others ((Spoiler - click to show)I think these would work: Call the Cavalry x 2, Garlic Fries Poison Bait, Holy Bucket Door Gag, Frame the Vampire, Close-up Cross Necklace). After going through the game about a dozen times, I put it aside, content with my four confirmed kills and satisfied that solutions existed for the rest.
After going around a few times, starting anew to get each kill-method set up just right began to get tedious. Exacerbating the situation was the feeling that I was being punished for being playful. I feel this game sorely lack an UNDO-button. A bunch of times I chose an obviously *wrong* option, just to see what would happen. While the resulting death/failure scenes were nice, their entertainment value didn't balance out the chore of restarting, even with the option to skip the intro.
About that: I feel the intro is by far the best part of the game. The narrator's voice, part internal monologue, part half-annoyed explanatory grumbling at the player, is funny and hints at a complex character. Add to this the glimpses of background worldbuilding and the fragments about the PC's relationship with her friends/colleagues and her mother, and the short intro proves to be an impressive and effective piece of writing. It does a lot of heavy lifting, placing just the right images and associations in the player's mind to create the impression of a full, real world and a rounded PC personality.
Fun game, good writing, nice for a quick dip, great for completionists.
The Ferris Wheel goes Round and Round..., January 5, 2024
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A XYZZY award for Best Setting and several nominations in other categories for an author otherwise unheard of? Intriguing, but in no way unique. Still, worth a bit of sleuthing...
Keanhid Connor... It does have a familiar ring to it, no? Juggling the letters around gives us, among a list of other rather amusing possibilities, none other than Hanon Ondricek! A quick click of the author's name in the end credits confirms this by unscrambling the letters.
1) Structure and relations:
Cannery Vale is an interactive experience consisting of multiple layers of reality. While I was sitting in front of my computer screen actively playing, I was deeply engaged with the twisting and turning story, clicking links and options to see what would be the result.
Most of my time away from the game however was spent thinking about how this thing actually fit together. I found myself analyzing the ins and outs, the different levels of agency, the way the influences of the various real and imaginary characters intersected and clicked into each other. Allow me a moment to try and untangle my thoughts.
-Our clever sleuthing has uncovered that Hanon Ondricek wrote Cannery Vale under the pseudonym of Keanhid Connor. A first obvious, albeit mostly inconsequential, layer of fictionalisation and obfuscation.
-Keanhid Connor (let us assume the reality of this personage, if only for entertainment value) has written the game software. It defines the outer limits of the work. All the different story elements and how they affect each other, the characters, the plot-twists, the overarching structure. The entire collection of potential events lies in wait in this piece of software.
-Inside the IF-piece, we come upon a layer of "Real": A writer (let's call him Inkhorn O.D. Cane) has secluded himself from all distractions in a hotel room. This, he hopes, will help him in finally finishing his novel. This fictional writer introduces characters and landmarks, writes and deletes events, activates possibilities and enforces boundaries for the protagonist to act upon. In general, Inkhorn O.D. Cane tweaks the setting in the hopes of finding a breakthrough to bring his novel to a satisfactory ending.
-Underneath this, we encounter a layer of "Fictional": The novel's main character (One Nick Hardon, if you will) is set loose in the setting created during the most recent writing session, free to poke and flail around. He is not under the conscious control of the writer, who experiences these sequences only through dreams while napping. Often One Nick Hardon escapes or derails the forward progression of the plot to get lost in pointless activities or hurl himself into unforeseen deathtraps. These pointless exploratory shenanigans and dead-ends are necessary feedback for the writer to get a grasp of behaviour and mutual influence of setting and protagonist.
-Finally, of course, we come full circle back to our out-of-game reality: The player (S. Von Rasor, in this instance) sits in front of his computer screen and interacts with the IF-piece. He engages with the game at multiple levels:
a) During the writing stage, he steers Inkhorn O.D. Cane in creating the setting, opening and closing options and pathways to take advantage of inside the world of the novel.
b) During the novel stage, he inhabits One Nick Hardon while exploring the most recent iteration of the setting in detail, looking for ways to get further in the narrative. Much like the protagonist himself, the player is flying blind here, especially for the first half of the game.
Ultimately, the player is looking for a Win-condition.
S. Von Rasor does this by taking control of both the writer's conscious decisions about setting and plot and the subconscious investigation of the consequences of the writer's choices as the protagonist in the dream-sequences. The fact that the two sets of circumstances do not easily flow into one another is exemplified in Inkhorn O.D. Cane's frequent complaints about One Nick Hardon's taking the narrative into his own hands (and dying for the twelfth time...)
2) Gameplay:
When disregarding the story content and looking at the form of the game, Cannery Vale very much resembles an elaborate puzzlebox where actions on one end have causally related consequences on the other end, sometimes predictable, sometimes unexpected. In fact, I was often reminded of games like Chasm, Archipelago, or Myst. Pulling a lever, pressing a button, entering a combination makes something happen in a distant location, and it's necessary to investigate the game-world to find out exactly what has changed.
Here, the writing stage consists of flipping switches, quite randomly at first, to make things happen in the novel-world. Investigating these changes requires slipping into the novel's protagonist and descending into Inkhorn O.D. Cane's imagination through his dreams.
Interestingly, and in keeping with the writing process, One Nick Hardon's actions in the novel feed back into the conscious mind of the writer, resulting in more switches to flip to tweak the setting in subsequent iterations of the loop.
This last observation is related to another characteristic of the game. It has a similarity to that genre of games where the player controls doppelgänger PCs, or parallel-universe twins, where the actions of one in their domain/time help the other progress. On various levels of reality in Cannery Vale, characters have the power to cooperate with (or work against) eachother/themselves.
-Above, I have described the mutual feedback loop between Inkhorn O.D. Cane and One Nick Hardon, wherein writer and protagonist work together towards further understanding and exploration of the novel's narrative. From another viewpoint one could say that the writer does a bunch of preparation and then trusts his subconscious to bring the story to life and feel out the details, meaning that the writer is cooperating with himself.
-One Nick Hardon works together with other iterations of himself. Some objects or pathways are only accessible with certain narrative passages turned on or off, while later in the story those same passages need to be the other way around. Therefore, the protagonist must explore the world in one loop to acquire a cetain objective, which then is remembered and passed on to his next incarnation in the following loop, even though the passage which made that objective possible has now been closed off.
-S. Von Rasor, too, is cooperating with himself. Through the actions of both incarnations he controls in both layers of the game-reality, and the repetition with variations throughout the writing loop, he aligns Inkhorn O.D. Cane's and One Nick Hardon's choices with his goal: getting further in the game, seeing more of the story, approacing closer and closer to the Win-condition.
-(And let's not forget to tip our hat to Keanhid Connor, who made this all possible with his creation of the universe.)
3) Game/Story:
Despite my abstract comparison to mechanical puzzleboxes, Cannery Vale offers a deeply meaningful narrative experience once you drop down into its world and become involved in the story.
An unnamed man suffering from adventure-induced amnesia (a fact humorously lampshaded by the writer), regains consciousness on a deserted beach. His search for himself leads him to the end of the road, the top of the island. On his way, he must overcome obstacles, convince others to help him, escape dangers. Pretty archetypal, right? Maybe even a bit (IF-)cliché?
Well that's the point. Here lies the brilliance of the layers, the writer/novel framework. The player engages with both the writer-persona and the novel-protagonist to shape this archetypal narrative template into an interesting story full of discrete, personal events.
Once the form of this story starts to come forward, within the boundaries set by Keanhid Connor, it's an exciting, surprising, sometimes scary mystery. Threatening atmosphere lightened by funny and romantic moments, detailed conversations with believable characters, a bunch of rather explicit sex-stuff, a naturally flowing progression of events to their inevitable conclusion.
Inevitable conclusion?
I have to admit, I don't know. It felt like it when I finished, an organic whole with a natural flow.
As I only played through once, though, there are certainly many secrets and pathways I did not see, corners and roads I did not fully explore. That probably means there are many more endings, and certainly more ways to reach an ending, than I experienced.
The ending I did experience was fulfilling, sad, enlightening, thought-provoking. Much like the feedback-centered mechanics of the game, the story twisted back onto itself, spitting me out where I started. Not in any way does this take away from the insight I gained along the way though.
I felt emotionally drained and refilled, newly aware of the circle of losing and loving, having and giving.
Very strong.
Roadtrip Pause, January 2, 2024Exhausted after a long drive through the desert, you and your girlfriends pull up to a dilapidated motel. A good night's sleep will get you ready for the next day of driving and visiting the sights.
But then the neon cactus flower blooms, and the Cactus Blue Motel proves to be very enticing. Maybe you'll prolong your stay. Just for a day or two...
The visual presentation of this game is spot-on. Clean white-on-black text with a clear layout, and the links presented in a neon-blue, like the billboard out front. It keeps the player aware of the closed-off location that is the motel, with nothing but dark desert surrounding it.
When the plot took a turn into supernatural thriller territory, I was unimpressed at first. I liked it, sure, but it was a bit too reminiscent of Stephen KIng's The Shining to get me deeply involved. Creepy motel with a mind of its own doesn't want the characters to leave. Check. Age-old guests and employees assure you that the motel is the best place to be. Check. Mirages of inviting amenities luring the guests to while away their time for just a bit longer. Check.
The tour of the rooms where you meet the other motel-guests was very promising, with a few memorable characters and scenes. The conversations did get a bit repetitive over time, and I found it hard to distinguish between personalities when their answers to questions about themselves and the motel were so much alike.
The unlocking of a previously inaccesible room provides some much-needed forward tempo, when a talking Jackalope (yes, a talking Jackalope,) asks your help with his investigations into the nature of the motel. It turns out he's sending you on a series of undisguised fetch-quests. I like fetch-quests, but when solving them amounts to a sequence of overclued clicks, my sense of urgency and agency is quite diminished.
Fortunately, Cactus Blue Motel is saved by its heartfelt and (for me) relatable finale. Wrestling free of the Peter Pan fase, refusing to keep clinging to childhood certainties, facing the adult world with all its complexities, dangers, and scary opportunities can be a painful process. The metaphor of steeling your will to escape from the soothing motel (or refusing to, and staying behind...) landed true with me. It helped me remember the 20yo kid I once was, and helped me assure him that it turned out not so bad after all.
Wrath of a vengeful God, January 1, 2024In Heretic Dreams, the protagonist is a "Pathfinder", one who can, through meditative sifting through the void inside, find the luminous threads that lead to the precious ores, salts, and minerals needed for the tribe's survival.
But she has been greedy in her past, biting off more than she could chew. She has eaten of the Deceiver, and part of Him now fuels her powers.
He didn't like this. And He has her scent...
Heretic Dreams shines with beautiful prose. A handful of sharply evocative sentences per page, flashes of lightning illuminating vivid scenes or locations. The brightness of these paragraphs leaves the reader in darkness, inviting the mind to fill in the blanks, triggering the imagination.
Demanding too much from the imagination, perhaps.
Despite the broadening understanding of the backstory and the setting provided by multiple replays, I found the sparsity of the information offered too scant to grasp enough of the context to fully engage with the story or its protagonist. The fragmentary nature of the narrative left the thread floating free, unconnected, too unjoined to achieve true depth.
But perhaps this does serve the theme of the story. The protagonist's as well as the player's choices are subordinate to Fatum, Hubris leads to downfall, there is no escaping the Word and Pledge of the Dark God.
♫ Bird is the Word ♪, January 1, 2024I never knew that when birds speak English, they sound like the lovechild of HAL and Spock!
Bridget's counting the days until the end of summer camp. The people are okay, but phones are not allowed, the food sucks, and she's never been one for all this physical nature activity sports stuff.
Also, she's been having these really weird dreams lately...
On the other hand, that girl Bell Park seems nice. Maybe more than just nice...
Through the slow escalation of the tension in Bridget's dreams, the horror of the bodysnatching bird-people infiltrates the reality of camp-life. The organic, off-hand incorporation of the magic realism drags the player along unnoticed, until it becomes clear that the "reality" of this teenage story has become quite unreal.
Birdland masterfully achieves a balancing act of realistic teen drama and creepy horror.
The core story is funny in its over-the-topness, while remaining easily recognisable. It acknowledges the importance and sincerity of the feelings and priorities of its teenage characters. Some of them are there to fill predictable roles, others have more depth, all of them get space and freedom to breathe, not squeezed into a mere caricature.
The horror slowly seeping in could have been a liability to the earnest depiction of the characters, threatening to disturb and overshadow the gentle and detailed approach to their relations in the story. It isn't. Instead it presents a carefully crafted narrative opportunity: to fade out the NPCs into mindless birdslaves for the second half of the game so the budding relationship between Bell and Bridget can develop more freely. Once they are they are left alone, the mind-enslaving bird-people trying to take over the human race offer the necessary obstacles to overcome together, allowing the romance between them to grow.
Almost the entire story is in direct conversational (theatrical) writing, with the surroundings and immediate events described in "off-stage" cues between brackets. This means the diversity of the characters' personalities is related to the player solely through "show, don't tell". The words and actions of the characters themselves bring them to life, not the author's descriptions of them.
The player interacts with the story through clicking options. Some may have hidden consequences (I played through only once) or are there only for flavour. During the crucial dream-sequences however, the choices very clearly do matter, and feedback on the results is given immediately after. Increases or decreases in stats are explicitly, proudly displayed, and later in the game some options are labeled as available because of a stat being high enough, or greyed out for too-low stats.
Still a relative newbie to choice-games, I found this overt "gaminess" quite jarring in the otherwise emotionally/socially involved narrative, a true-to-life (except for the bodysnatching-bird bits) exploration of a developing teen romance. I quickly got used to it though, and it was a helpful realisation that my choice of path was completely up to me, that there were no right or wrong options. I learned to follow my personal preferences, not worry about closed-off options, and work with the choices I did have.
I am very impressed with how Birdland has an effectively scary and alienating horror subplot that serves as a means to put the romantic main story in the limelight.
Great story, endearing and life-like characters, warm and romantic bodysnatching horror.
The Queen requires your services., December 21, 2023Wait. The Queen will notify you when there is work to do.
You are an artificer of sorts, making things of glass and metal, and of substances more rare...
While you are waiting for the orders of the Queen, you are free to roam the palace and the city.
The writing in With Those We Love Alive is extremely good. Short paragraphs with a few poignant words ignite the imagination of the reader, summoning forth a world of symbols and dreamlike juxtaposition. There are minimal glimpses of a world, with slight (and unsettling) variations in the descriptions. These sparse but association-filled descriptions offer fertile ground to the player's mind's eye to fill in the rest, and to let the mood suggested in the text percolate through.
With Those We Love Alive opens with a rather unusual direct plea to the player: have a pen nearby and draw symbols on your own skin when the game arrives at transitional moments. Related, but less immediately fourth-wall-penetrating are cues to participate in the events and surroundings in the game, like a breathing excercise, or strong sensory cues inviting the player to imagine the location as vividly as possible.
I was all-in, pen and breathing and wide-open senses and all.
The first part of the game lulled me into a slow and soothing routine. Each day-cycle I would take a tour of the palace and city, tinker a bit in my workshop, and go back to sleep, all the while waiting for the Queen to call upon my artificer's talents. Despite the relaxed repetition of familiar actions, there was always a feeling of looming threat.
Things change when outsiders show up. The pulse quickens, new elements and shards of backstory are introduced, intruiging but hard to connect.
The finale charges forward in a frantic flurry of impressions, a fast-propelling chase/action sequence, fragmented and breathless.
There is a notice at the start of the game: "Best experienced with headphones." It is. The soundscapes and music are an integral part of the experience, guiding the player's mood and heartrate through the acts of this story.
While I appreciated all this, and was impressed with a lot of elements, the piece didn't move me in the way it obviously did others.
Despite the meditative calm of the first act's routine, and the additional assurance at the start of the game that "Nothing you can do is wrong", I was still put off by the seemingly endless repetition. The small variations in the text seemed to hint at events happening behind my back, but however much I visited all the locations, precious little changed. This caused a certain level of background distrust in the game. Was I missing something obvious to move the plot along? Was this routine really supposed to drag on for so long? I started to feel lost, disconnected from the intentions of the author, pointlessly flailing wandering.
Of course, in hindsight, this might well be exactly the feeling that the game wanted me to have. If so, it didn't really take.
After the change at the start of the second act, things do start to happen. I remained quite unsure what things though. Except for the most superficial layer of actions and events, I remained in the dark about any meaning the game was trying to convey.
The associative dream-like style left me without handholds, bewildered, drowning in a sea of unconnected symbolism. I felt something deeper was going on, but I couldn't for the life of me get a handle on it.
Having read several other reviews, I do acknowledge the impact of this piece on many people, but this deeper impact stayed largely outside my grasp. I experienced a sequence of beautifully written symbol-laden associative story-fragments, with a sense of deeper significance always out of reach. It left me with a sense of missing out, of reaching in vain for context and meaning.
He likes the blue things in the broth..., December 20, 2023
(A very effective horror Twine. Gruesome, sometimes disgusting on the surface, but the most scary was how it manipulated my mind into helplessness. My impressions of Bogeyman:)
Bits and pieces, shreds of brutality and gag-inducing vileness.
Images behind your blinking eyes, impossible to erase.
Foul acts, abuse, neglect.
These may be gruesome, but they are not the worst.
The anticipation is.
The certainty that the next press of your finger may, nay,
will effect the next step of cruelty.
The realisation that heroes are powerless, resistance begets more pain.
And you're glad it's theirs, not yours...
Silent acquiescence becomes your friend.
A smile is a crime, betrayal a virtue.
Is life worth continuing, if life is sacrifice of fellow victims?
Or try to sacrifice yourself.
Are you that brave... and does it matter in the end?
All this in the next press of your finger...
The eeny-weeny tinkle of agency drills down the fear.
The room of the murder., December 19, 2023(Review based on the IFComp version of the game.)
I’ve played gummibears and wizards solving crime, private noir dicks and superheroes vs villains, animals even. Time someone dropped the whole costume dress-up routine and just wrote a straightforward murder story.
Enter Last Vestiges. You step into the room. The corpse has been taken away for the post-mortem examination. All the furniture and other items are untouched, awaiting your detailed examination and balanced judgment. Two people, the landlord of the premises Carl and your superior officer Knapp, are present to ask for additional information.
I love this. A well-constructed murder mystery by itself is more than enough to the inquisitive mind. It does mean that there is more pressure on the game to provide a compelling experience without the distraction of a tongue-in-cheek narrator, parody references, or comedy antics.
There are two related conditions in my mind for a serious, realistic crime investigation game.
-Deep simulation is the first. This is a case where the author cannot get away with having the game tell the player “That’s not important,” or “You can’t do that.” It’s in the nature of the crime investigator to examine everything to the last details and search even the dusty corners of the drawers. I was surprised that the verb SEARCH was denied. I know it has fallen into disuse in modern times, but if ever there was an occasion where one wants to search things, it would be the investigation of a murder location…
-The second is player authority. The game has assigned the PC as the chief investigator of the case, the detective who leads the inquiry into the circumstances of the crime. I took this as the game implicitly recognising my supreme command through my role as the PC.
This means picking up, turning over, looking under, smelling, tasting, licking anything I deem worthy of inspection. It also means expecting the parser to understand what I mean when I point at a “mug” and call it a “cup”. Or any other synonym or half-synonym the thesaurus has to offer.
No handwaving or lame in-game excuses for why I can’t move the desk. Just move the desk, even if it takes half the police force and the mascotte dog.
In short, I’m the boss.
----loosens tie, flutters hanky at reddened face----
Last Vestiges falls somewhat short in these areas.
The clues I gathered were vague enough to leave some lingering doubt, but they did support the suspicion that had been growing in my mind from the moment I opened that top drawer. Very satisfying to see that my not-100%-sure gut feeling paid off and pointed me in the right direction.
I liked this a lot. When I wasn’t trying to yank the clothes out of the wardrobe.
“You don’t need to do that.”
Cuddly and dark., December 19, 2023Snuggling under the covers together. An unsettling dream. Waking up to a changed room. She’s bleeding! You have to save her.
KABOOM is about some very heavy subject matter. It’s filtered through the viewpoint of a girl’s cuddle toy, a stuffed hare. This means that the PC is innocent and clueless about the circumstances happening around it, and it produced some fuzzy cuteness feelings in me (“Aw! I like games with stuffed animal protagonists. Is this going to be like A Bear’s Night Out?”).
Soon however, reality pierces the cuddly feelings. Wriggling free from under the girl’s arm requires some determined action, a grim image immediately underlining the desperate urgency of the situation.
Considered this way, the cuddly stuffed hare protagonist has opposite effects. Its cluelessness about what’s happening initially dampens the impact of the horrible events, but the player’s realisation of the true nature of the game’s subject hits harder because of it.
Saving your girl requires some quite standard object manipulation. In both puzzles (after getting out of the girl’s embrace), there was a single step I overlooked at first which made them a tad more challenging.
The entire game (puzzle solving, narrative tempo, player engagement, clarity of the surroundings) suffers from poor design. The interface forces the player to do a confusing amount of clicking to get her bearings and to manipulate the intended object. Imagine having a parser without an implied LOOK when entering a room, for example. Sometimes the player has to explicitly (and for no discernable reason) refer to the PCs limbs, which are separately implemented under an “Inventory”-link. This necessitates spreading your awareness over more buttons than is needed. It frustrated me when I thought my intended action was not in the list of choices, and then found out that it was several more clicks away, buried in this “Inventory”.
Taking my distance from the technical issues and letting the story come to the forefront, I must say I’m very moved by this piece. The helplessness of the little girl in her collapsed room, the powerlessness of the hare to rescue her by itself… (This is captured in a touching image when the hare looks at the ruined house and concludes a scary giant must have caused this.)
Technically lacking, emotionally moving.
Of geese and circus-people., December 19, 2023The ringmaster’s nerves are in tatters. Along with all the paperwork threatening to overwhelm him (and flood his camper), there’s now Phantom of The Circus sabotaging the crowd-drawing main acts of the show! As the clown of the troupe, surely you have the necessary skill set to save the spectacle…
Armed with naught but your brain and the tricks of your trade (balloons and pies), you must find out how exactly the Phantom succeeds in spoiling the performers’ acts and counteract his schemes. There’s a fair amount of freedom to do some clowning in the meanwhile, but I would have liked DANCE and SING and JUGGLE and JUMP to draw a bit more of a crowd. I loved some of the classic slapstick routines you can initiate while navigating your way through the crowds.
Honk ! consists of three thematically separate parts. The player is free to mix and mingle these though, there’s no pressure to tackle them in any prescribed order.
I opted to treat the parts as distinct chapters:
The NPCs’ campers are huddled close together, perfect for accessibility, and also to hear their stories one after the other, so as to form a coherent picture of what exactly this Phantom is up to. Dialogue happens through a menu of topics, but there are a bunch of freeform ASK ABOUT options too. Either way, the characters’ conversation goes beyond what is strictly necessary for your investigation. The personalities and the social dynamics within the circus are as much a talking point as the manner in which the Phantom disturbs the performances.
With the requisite knowledge about the saboteur’s modus operandi, I headed out to treat myself to a grand tour of the fair grounds. If you should feel an inclination to clown around, have at it! Your appearance alone will draw some looks, carrying around a certain object will necessarily cause some unintentional(?) slapstick antics, but it’s perfectly possible (and in-character!) to add a little more clownesque mayhem to the general hubbub. Just for the heck of it!
Finding (and safely acquiring) any objects you think you might need is fairly straightforward. Some are just lying there ready to be picked up, some need a bit of laid back puzzling. This is not a puzzle area. It’s for preparing the puzzles to come.
Hearing your circus friends accounts’ of how the Phantom goes about sabotaging their acts, combined with the objects you picked up on the circus grounds, should have given you a reasonable idea of what to expect and how to handle it, at least in broad strokes. I found that my plan for saving one of the performances worked exactly as I had imagined. The others needed a little tweaking. Luckily, after a failed attempt, there is a short “debriefing” with the circus artist involved where they point out how close you came to the solution.
Helping your colleagues get through their acts unscathed is all well and good, but the point is of course to thwart the villain’s attempts once and for all. The endgame turns out to be an action packed sequence where, when the player takes too long with certain actions, the game narrows the interactivity and proceeds the plot on its own. Tempo is more important than guessing the next move. This works brilliantly, and the final confrontation with the Phantom permits one final triumphant clown move.
I laughed a lot!
Where did it all start?, December 17, 2023Your empty suitcase on the bed. Time to pack up and leave. Leave this house, leave this “us”. But you can’t figure out what to pack and what to leave. Loose ends and grating questions stand in the way of going away.
The Gift of What You Notice More offers a symbolic representation of self-analysis. Digging through past experiences and feelings to unravel the doubts that lie beneath. Photographs serve as portals to enter and interact with particularly meaningful points in your now-over relationship.
The game has the protagonist explore the world in the photographs. Dreamlike subconscious additions to the reality of the photos offer opportunities to better understand yourself at the time.
Deep and hard questions about relationships arise throughout the work. I think that the form clashed with the content in this respect. Three self-contained puzzle areas have to be solved and revisited, three chains of rather traditional adventure puzzles. I found that I lost sight of the deeper symbolism as I was merrily exploring the areas and solving a stack of puzzles which involved, among other things, (Spoiler - click to show)a mouse and some cheese, or a counterweighted heap of sandbags. My thoughts were more centered on mechanics or mammal dietary particularities than on the protagonist’s emotions.
Presenting the puzzles in a choice interface which facilitates the lawnmower approach further diminished my engagement with the intended meaning of the piece.
I also felt that The Gift of What You Notice More grasped at simplistic answers to the questions it asks. It partly lost my goodwill when it wanted me to pinpoint “Where did it all start going wrong?” by choosing one of three distinct moments. I can’t read other people’s minds or hearts, it may be different for them, but my emotional history doesn’t work this way.
It is however a common coping mechanism to point at one event or moment as the cause or the origin of problems. It gives a sense of control and clarity. Viewed like this, the game approaches some ways people deal with emotional hurt very closely. (Misguided ways, I think, but I can’t read hearts or minds.)
I encountered a few gripping images during my playthrough: (Spoiler - click to show)a theatre where the birthday party is the play, (Spoiler - click to show)an Angel under a lantern in motionless rain, (Spoiler - click to show)tangled vines instead of hugging arms. Very strong symbolic emotional impact there.
At the end, stronger because of your newly found understanding and balance, you are free to pack your suitcase and leave.
I would have loved an epilogue that incorporates the items you chose to take with you, to elaborate how these items fit in with your new resolve to live your life.
A matter of memories., December 17, 2023A little boy is sad but hopeful. He’s programming a game about an adventure by the lake behind the house. Maybe it’ll be a bit clumsy, but it’s heartfelt and exciting. It’s a present for his little sister. They’ll play together when she gets home from the hospital. She cut off all her favourite doll’s hair, but she’ll be home for her birthday. And then they’ll play his game together.
A teenage boy is sad and angry. He hacks into his old hobby game. He pours his grief and rage into it. Their father left you know. And she didn’t come home to play his game. He kills his enemy. He stores away his memories, safe to vaporise or keep according to his wish.
An adult man is sad and desperate. He found his old game in a forgotten box. It won’t work on his computer, really, an acquaintance plays it for him while they’re talking through the screen. He doesn’t know this guy that well, he chose him quite at random, really. Just someone who could get the game to work and be there while the man remembered. And oh! how did that angry stuff get in, I was a teen, I think I don’t remember… It was long ago…
His daughter’s here, he says: “Dear daughter, tell me please, it was so long ago, does it still matter now? Ancient history, it is, surely it can’t matter now?”
His own denial answers the question.
And we, dear players, who are we? Are we young hopeful Eddie, rushing to the lake? Then we must be angry Ed as well, taking vengeance on the lake, in the little way he can. Drowning and saving his memories at the bottom of the lake, as best he can.
Are we listening to adult Edward, as he comments on his game? His old and ancient game with his old and ancient pain and joy and loss?
Can we sit then with old Edward, while he asks: “It’s all so very long ago, does it still matter?” And we pat his shoulder and assure him: “No, no, it’s ancient history, how could it still matter.” We can sit there with Edward, both knowing that it does.
Refrain from Sarcasm..., December 12, 2023Sunday afternoon. Lie back in the sofa, get your book and a cup of tea. Aahhh…
----tingaling----tingaling----
Or take a call from your mom who’s desperate because she can’t get her printer to spit out her oh-so-important presentation.
Fix Your Mom’s Printer is short, but it offers a wide range of choices and pathways. Most of your mom’s speech offers three possible replies from you, roughly in the categories Insensitive Jerk, Angelically Helpful, Unwelcome (but often funny) Snark, Uninterested Okay-Mom.
I played through on both extremes (Jerk and Angel) once. As was to be expected, limiting myself to the one category of answers quickly became mechanical, the conversation unrealistic. But I wanted to see the sure paths to the Win and Lose states of the game.
When following the guaranteed winning path, it became obvious that fixing the printer was a case of game-imposed lawnmowering. And also that fixing the printer wasn’t the point.
For my earnest playthrough, I adopted a more natural, organic mindset. I tried to be helpful while lightly showing my annoyance at being disturbed on a sunday by occasionally giving in to the urge to reply in a sarcastic or jokey manner. (“Har-dee-har,” is mom’s irritated answer.)
Approaching the game this way opened up a whole breadth of underlying, never quite explicitated family issues. The relationship between mom and dad, your own relationship with your dad, unresolved tension between your sister and you,…
Fixing a recalcitrant piece of technology together with your mom becomes a way to work towards a better understanding of each other, an honest attempt to (re)connect.
A short piece with surprising depth.
Juggle your responsibilities as an impromptu B&B host., December 12, 2023I mentioned the name of this game to my son and soon we were jamming and scatting to it. It lends itself well to improvised didgeridoo-ish mumbling (♪mmballiimm♪bwwiiaannn♪bbwwiiimmm♪) while the other is rhythmically repeating it (taktakkatakBAli-be-EN-be-BAli-be-EN-betakataktak).
That was a lot of fun.
It also put me in a good mood to actually start playing the game. I soon found out that our free and joyful accapella improvisation fit the feeling of the game very well.
When Jack (the game lets you choose name and gender; I went with a young woman named Jack) arrives in Bali to visit her grandparents’ bed&breakfast, they spring a surprise on her: they’re going to Paris! Leaving Jack to run the B&B for a week! By herself. Yaay…
The choices allowed me to fill in Jack’s emotional and practical responses to this turn of events. I went with a mix of youthful confidence, appropriate care for the guests’ wellbeing, and a pinch of let’s-wing-it-and see…
I only played through once, so I can’t compare paths through the game, but I thoroughly enjoyed the story I experienced. I got to eat (and recommend) great food, enjoy pleasant breakfast conversations where people only half-understood each other and had to translate back-and-forth with their phones. I got to name and tame a feral cat and give her a shelter for her kittens (we became good friends, as far as that’s possible with a cat). There was a monkey I soon developed a hate-love relationship with. I got to deepen a friendship with a local young man and hike up a volcano with two teen girls who were glad to spend the day without their parents.
And at the end there was a thrilling sequence where we saved the B&B from a natural disaster!
Bali B&B felt like a combination of a soft hug, a warm shower, a sparkling conversation, a dip in the pool. Topped off with an exciting thrill ride where I felt safe to go with it because I knew the author had my back.
I enjoyed this a lot.
Read the Fine Print, December 12, 2023MWAHUAHAHAAA !!!
----bzbzZzoOooOoomm----krkrRrkzZziiing-KRAK----
It’s alive! Aliv-… Well,… I saw its pinky twitch. And it sneezed.
Darn! How does that Frankenstein fellow do it? This is the umpteenth attempt where you sewed sinew to muscle, connected the nosebone to the buttbone, rewired the freshest, least mushy brain you could dig up… Still nothing. The jigsaw-corpse on the slab before you remains dead meat.
But you are no mere Mad Scientist! You can draw inspiration from other sources of dark knowledge. The arcane arts of Magick & Summoning are at your fingertips… Hmm… It seems your fingertips are also a bit rusty. Now how did that Faustus fellow do it?
Nevermind. Just get a magicky Grimoire from Ye Olde Disappearing Magick Trinket Shoppe and follow the instructions.
Tadaa! Easy-peasy.
It’s just… Now you’ve got the Devil Itself here in your lab, and you haven’t figured out beforehand how to get It to do what you want…
Dr Ludwig and the Devil is funny. (The name “Dr Ludwig” is enough to make the corners of my mouth twitch.)
It’s framed as a recounting of events told by Dr Ludwig himself, some time after the fact. As such, the writing is infused with the hyperbole and delusional grandeur one can safely expect from a maniacal science-necromancer. The room descriptions are neutral enough not to get in the way of a proper reconnaisance. Once we have the Dr describing his own actions though, his twisted personality shines through.
>TAKE MIRROR
The mirror was mine! All mine!
Every description of an action is filtered through the Dr’s diabolical mind and comes out sounding, well, a tad on the obsessive side…
The biggest source of humour though are the characters. Dr Ludwig himself of course, whom we get to know through his recounting of the dark occurences of that night.
Hans (I think), the somewhat dim-witted president of the town’s Society for Pitchforks and Torches, is lovably stupid and friendly to all. He’s also vehemently opposed to the nightly digging up of corpses, for some reason…
The elusive shopkeeper of Ye Olde Disappearing Shoppe has a dry wit and a hint of sarcasm in her voice. She’s not so amused by all the work involved with packing up her goods and disappearing behind customers’ backs.
And then there is the star of the piece, the Devil Itself. Condescending remarks and deadpan snarks aplenty, it’s great fun to break down Its feelings of superiority by showing It exactly who Summoned who.
The customised responses hold a small treasure of winks at the fourth wall and clever jabs at IF-conventions. I derived many a chuckle from this. It also brings me to my next point:
Dr Ludwig and the Devil is polished. Like granny’s silverware when the Mayor comes to dinner. It sparkles like it’s been endlessly rubbed with pulverised brimstone and demon-dragon spit.
Failed commands, unrecognised topics, an accidental press of the “Enter”-key on a blank prompt,… They’ve all been re-imagined within the narrative frame of the Dr telling the story. Even meta-commands are part of this:
>RESTORE
Now where was I?
----[player looks up previous save]----
Right, there I was.
… as if Dr Ludwig had simply paused to drink a sip of water.
Of course, humour and polish quickly lose their strength without a good foundation. Not to worry, because…
Dr Ludwig and the Devil is solid. I encountered no bugs to break the spell. Scenery, object-handling, conversations are all deeply implemented. To aid the player in finding her way through the widely varied dialogues there is a list of general topics as well as a list of topics specific to each character. Besides that, you’re free to try and chat about anything else that crosses your mind. (Try it.)
Puzzles range from straightforward to hard and frustrating-in-a-good-way, without any guess-the-verb or syntax issues to stand between the player and her intentions and so obfuscating the correct path to the solutions.
The game is gratifying in its structure: just as I was starting to feel claustrophobic, being holed up in the cellar with the Devil, the world opened up and allowed me to take a walk outside to look for treasure. (I use the term “treasure” in the loosest of meanings.) Returning to the basement with all the requisite articles, with my plan fully formed, and going through the necessary steps toward the ultimate objective was very satisfying.
…
And then the game threw a curveball and expected me to solve the hardest puzzle of all to truly triumph over the demonic presence in my cellar before I could reap the rewards of my hard work. A brilliant puzzle, requiring the player to fully understand the possibilities ànd limitations of having the Devil Itself under her command.
Dr Ludwig and the Devil is very good.
The Fury and the Beaten., December 11, 2023A white gallery room. A Francis Bacon triptych. You, empty-handed, wearing only a linen robe. Another room, and yet another. Three triptychs hang before you.
You can enter the art, yes. Please do. Have a closer look.
Talk to the paint-imprisoned pain, the monster and the lover. Talk to the Fury and George Dyer. Poor George, bruised, dead.
See what mirrors the Creator makes. What tortured creatures he chooses to reflect his image.
The mouth, the bruise, the death.
Come see… Make your acquaintance with Francis Bacon, painter, tormented heart.
Mourn with us, perform with us.
And ask yourself while asking them: What is this deep within us all?
A glimpse into a world., December 11, 2023(This review is based on the IFComp version of the game.)
Have a rummage through the fridge and get a can of something from the pantry. Half an hour later, serve a bowl of something delicious. I love creative cooking!
A bit of creativity is needed here to cook your festive midsummer dinner. After looking around the house and checking the pantry, you realise some ingredients are missing.
Well, the missing ingredients, and by extension the whole game, are an excuse to get the player out the door and exploring the town. Creative Cooking is the author’s way of giving us a glimpse into the imagination he poured into his ongoing WIP. The ABOUT text advises the player to type HELP in every location, not for any hints, but for more background information on the world the author is building, of which this town, Leroz, is a small part.
The quest for the ingredients and the puzzles to get them are close to irrelevant to the experience. So is the actual “creative cooking” from the title, apart from a bunch of ending paragraphs about cooking. As a game, even as an attempt at a realised interactive setting, Creative Cooking fails. Its surroundings, scenery and details are severely underimplemented, there are no alternate commands for necessary actions, almost anything that falls outside the scope of the walkthrough is denied.
As a tantalising sneak-peek at what the author is working on though, I found the flaws and the author comments in the HELP-section made the work feel like an unfinished archeological artefact which I could try to investigate and decipher.
The most intriguing to me was perhaps the collection of books in the home library, the third location I visited. Their content hints at a world where there is a mixture of wisdom and intuitive magic at work, harnessed and studied and analysed in a scholarly manner.
One of the books also drops a clue that this fantasy world, Railei, is a far-away planet somehow connected to our own. Apparently a Raileian seer-prophet has witnessed a world of technology instead of magic, a great distance from Railei both in space and time.
An interesting glimpse into the world the author is building.
Theatrical Reality (or vice versa?), December 11, 2023(This review is based on the IFComp version of the game.)
I already liked the sound of this title before I knew what it meant. It has an inviting ring to it. Then I looked up “barcarolle” and found it’s a Venetian gondoliers’ folk song. That got me interested even more. A bit more searching learned that the “yellow” refers to an Italian murder/horror/mystery film and literature genre, named after the distinctive yellow (“giallo”) covers of the pulp novels that started the style.
An actress travels to Venice to star in a Giallo film. On her first night, she barely escapes a murder attempt. During filming the next day, a similar attack happens.
Barcarolle in Yellow is set up as an interactive movie script, blurring the lines between what is the scripted movie world and what is the in-game real world. Failed commands are met with an angry director’s voice telling you to focus on the part, descriptions of the player character’s actions make reference to an unseen audience, people around you are viewed as through a camera lens,…
Eva, the PC, is filming in Venice, so we also follow her during her acting work, and have to enter the commands according to the prewritten script she has to follow, adding another layer of confusion as to which world we’re engaging with.
As I noticed in the author’s work 1958: Dancing with Fear, IF is a genre that lends itself very well to a cinematic scripted style, allowing the player to direct the main character and decide on the action. Here, in Barcarolle in Yellow it seems that a perfect opportunity presents itself for a suspenseful murder mystery. The story is divided in scenes and acts, each with its own pace, atmosphere and tension. We can almost see the camera cut from one location to the other in the transition between scenes.
The writing is good, with a nice balance between attention to the surroundings (or the set…), and the events happening to our main character Eva Chantry. I like the use of space, with part of Venice condensed down to a handful of locations without feeling cramped.
I love the idea of the game.
But, however much I want to, I do not like this game as it is entered in the Comp. Perhaps aiming for next year’s Spring Thing would have offered the author more time to make it as good as it can be.
A game that’s modeled after a suspenseful film should move. Half the time I spent with Barcarolle has been struggling with the parser and unclear directions.
A game that depends on smoothly following the course of action, dragging the player along with the action and putting her on the corner of her seat with tension needs a generous, forgiving parser.
Synonyms for all the nouns should be abundant, every action should have half a dozen alternate commands, the player should be able to trust that her intuitive commands will be recognised and have immediate consequences that hasten the story forward.
Instead, half my commands were met with that angry director’s voice yelling at me “No, no, focus on this scene, don’t start dissociating again!”. And that’s a great story-appropriate customisation of the default rejection response! But not when the game recognises so few of the player’s commands that it comes up again and again.
I really liked Dancing with Fear. I have good memories of its main character Salomé. I’m starting to like Eva too, this game’s main character. It would be a pity to keep playing while frustrated at the implementation, and missing a great story with a great character unfold.
I’d love to play Barcarolle in Yellow again once it’s gone through at least one more thorough round of testing and editing. The way it is now, it doesn’t do its protagonist honour.
Dark Worship through DIY-furniture., December 6, 2023It’s been a long day, but you might as well assemble this last little table. Even though you don’t remember picking it from the racks of a certain furniture store that will not be mentioned by name…
All this DIY furniture has funny names, and this particular table is called “Dölmen”. Hmmm… It looks a bit like a one too. Upon looking a bit closer, you’re sucked in and transported to…
The protagonist has no idea yet, but the player has read the intro. The Old Norse Gods want to return, and they found the ritualistic nature of kneeling down in the living room, slavishly following instructions from a poorly printed booklet to map quite organically onto religious service to Them. In short, each desk or cabinet strengthens them and widens the archway into our universe.
Fortunately, in a way that reminds me of Pratchett’s Colour of Magic, the universe has a strong sense of self-preservation. Why that means exactly you must be the saviour of reality, no one knows. Maybe you’re an offshoot of an ancient royal bloodline or something. Anyway, save the world!
By assembling and disassembling furniture.
Apart from a few problems finding the appropriate verb caused by the fact that for much of the time you’re reading the instruction booklets backwards, meaning that you need the antonyms of the verbs used in the instructions, the (dis)assembly work went smoothly. (Not even one missing screw. Assembly does not follow the realistic simulationist path here.)
Actually, the booklets almost serve as a magic tome would in a fantasy game. A series of incantations that, when properly intoned, change the physical reality around you.
The real puzzles therefore are where to find the booklets, and where to practice the magic contained therein. One of these had me perplexed for a good time ((Spoiler - click to show)bringing the wardrobe to the lamp, instead of the other way round.)
The map is small but very effective. I loved the (Spoiler - click to show)"twisty little passages" in the description of the showroom.
After a spectacular large-scale endgame puzzle, it was unclear to me how to actually WIN the game. There are two options (I stumbled into one before I had a chance to try the other, which was a good/bad thing, depending on personal priorities.) One of them wins by (Spoiler - click to show)getting the hell out of there and letting the store burn. The other loses by (Spoiler - click to show)trying to do the heroic thing and confronting the Old Gods in their Cairn. Being a hero isn’t always the right thing, ask Susan Sto-Lat.
I was hungry for some backstory on the Old God’s cultists, maybe in a sort of “Meanwhile…” non-interactive intermezzos?
Good fun game, some tricky puzzles. Big show piece of a final disassembly!
Keys and cuffs., December 4, 2023(Review based on the IFComp version of the game.)
Without reading the blurb, I had expectations of a SF or fantasy work in which Lunium could be the setting’s rare unobtainium used for magical potions or as fuel for FTL-travel. Perhaps it would be mined on a distant moon of an uninhabited planet, or it could only be activated when mixed with dewdrops under the light of the moon.
Not so. Lunium is a combination detective mystery/escape room game. You wake up in a securely locked room, chained to the wall. Your memories are vague and confused, your vision blurred. You must have been drugged…
No points for originality, but it is a solid opening, a staple of IF.
You do remember, aided by the first few objects you find, that you are a detective on the verge of solving a series of horrible murders. Now you must get out and stop the murderer.
Searching the surroundings yields keys and combinations. Unlocking drawers and safes yields clues. Investigating, analysing, combining those clues yields information about witnesses and suspects. This information can then be used to start the cycle anew.
As with a lot of escape games, the puzzles felt forced. It strains the suspension of disbelief that everything you need to escape the room and solve the crime just happens to be lying around (more or less hidden/locked away) in the very location where you’re imprisoned. In this case though, this is justified in the (rather transparent) twist ending. Still, the ending cannot negate the impression of “Oh! How convenient. I’m finding keys all around.” that I had during the game.
Many puzzles do share a common theme (hinted at in the title) that ties them together and gives a nice sense of consistency. (Except (Spoiler - click to show)the colours on the back of the painting associated with the coins in your pocket. Come on, really?)
The character sketches of the suspects/witnesses were intruiging, but too fragmentary to hold my interest in the end. I would have liked more exposition on the relationships between them, and of the circumstances in which my PC came to interrogate or investigate them. Perhaps in some more elaborate flashbacks?
Lunium is aesthetically pleasing, with beautiful and detailed pictures of the room and the details within it. The option to view and enlarge the items in the inventory is well handled and very player-friendly.
A pretty and puzzly Twine to keep your grey cells pleasantly occupied for about an hour.
Murder-solving amongs the Gods, December 4, 2023(Review based on the IFComp version of the game.)
This title interested me because it brings together two elements that I would not have expected to see connected so closely. An ancient Egyptian god as a Detective.
Since I was a child, I have been fond of mythology. The story of Osiris and Isis always struck me as particularly dark. The victim, murdered for power, brought back to life through love, has lost something in the process and chooses to not return to the light but rule the underworld instead.
In Detective Osiris, you awaken from death in the glade of Thoth. Previously King of Egypt, the ritual performed by your wife Isis has brought you back as a god.
With my expectations formed by my memories of the source material, I was in for a big surprise when I started reading Detective Osiris. The playful tone of the story clashed hard with the sombre atmosphere I had imagined beforehand. A pleasant surprise, I must stress, as the first conversation with Thoth, god of writing and judgement, brought a big smile to my face.
The lightheartedness continues in the meetings with the other gods. Maat, goddess of justice and cosmic order, comes across as an ever-enthusiastic fangirl; Ges, creator of earth and humanity is a stoner who can’t stop bingewatching his favourite show: life on earth.
The investigation becomes a bit more serious once you start interrogating people down on earth, where at least some of them can empathise with the fact that being murdered isn’t fun.
Although the lighthearted tone and the detective-story twist held my attention for a while, the game ultimately couldn’t live up to the quality of its playful tone.
The most impactful choices the player can make are where to go first, the order in which to interrogate witnesses. This would juggle the sequence of the conversations around, and maybe give a different impression depending on the order.
While the witnesses, like the gods, are fun to talk to, the conversations basically become a chore of link-hoovering. There’s a riddle (can’t have an Egyptian story without a riddle now, can we?) and a number-puzzle thrown in, but nothing resembling a real obstacle, be it a puzzle or a difficult choice.
The author did surprise me again with the ending, twisting the source material around once more in a way that I did not see coming. I’m still not sure if I like the direction in which the original story was changed, but points at least for shaking it up.
A fun read to begin, but loses its freshness.
Hide-and-seek for your brother's life!, December 3, 2023I had a dream: The Doors were performing a sweaty, breathtaking drawn-out version of Riders on the Storm when David Suchet’s finely mustachioed Poirot appeared onstage and pointed accusingly at Jim Morrison. Jim jumped off the stage, right into the arms of the waiting Hastings.
It’s safe to say this title intrigued me, while at the same time expert-fingeredly tickling my funny-bone.
In reality, Death on the Stormrider has more in common with Poirot than with The Doors.
Your brother has found passage on the cargo-airship “Stormrider” for the both of you, provided that you make yourself useful onboard. The ship’s cook is found murdered and your brother is the only one who had the keys to the mess at the time. He’s locked in the brig until the ship boards at the next harbour.
It’s up to you to find evidence of your brother’s innocence.
Since your brother’s locked up for murder, you yourself are eyed with some suspicion. Nevertheless, you remain free to roam most parts of the ship. A number of passageways and rooms are off-limits, and you are severely limited in what you are allowed to carry around with you. (Or so the game keeps insisting. You are limited to items small enough that they could conceivably be concealed in your hand or clothing. However, given the amount of small stuff I was carrying by the end of the game, I suspect there’s a limitless hammerspace somewhere under your character’s suspenders of disbelief…)
The ship left the harbour in a hurry , running on a skeleton crew (which was also the reason for your hasty recruitment). Even then, with the cramped spaces between the cargo and the crew all having their own rounds and routines, having to do several duties at once, it’s hard to conduct a thorough investigation.
You do need to get into the off-limits spaces and carry around pieces of evidence, so you have to find ways to get past and around blocked off entrances and working crewmembers unnoticed.
The objective of the game is finding evidence. The core of the gameplay is hide-and-seek. Get to know the crew’s routines, find hiding spots on their routes or hidden passages around their locations. Time your actions so you can slip through the gaps between the other crew members. It gets even more complicated and exciting once you try to manipulate the others’ circulations through the ship to create your own opportunities for espionage and investigation…
The many independently moving NPCs, the different consequences of open/closed containers, the machinery of the ship having sometimes far-off effects,… These things are dependent on a great number of moving cogs and chains and toggles under the hood. I found some hiccups, but mostly the gears interlocked as needed and turned smoothly. The bugs I did encounter were minor, and the suspense of the game was good enough that I could overlook them.
This gameplay of hide-and-seek had the effect that the considerable suspense I felt was aimed at my own (the player’s) success, rather than being directed at the protagonist’s troubles or the fate of his brother. While sneaking around, I felt tension about finding a hiding place in time. I wasn’t very concerned about or emotionally engaged with the characters though.
The mechanics of the gameplay have their consequences for the writing too. It’s important that the player has a good idea where the NPCs are relative to the PC’s location at all times to be able to avoid them or hide in time. In the desfriptions, the bottom few lines are reserved for a list of distinctive footsteps the PC can hear. A single line of text has information about which character’s steps they are, how far that character is away, and which direction the character is going.
“Just forward, you can hear sharp, measured footsteps approaching.”
These lines are actually very well-written, condensing a lot of information into smooth prose. They are repetitive though, and when there are several characters within earshot, there are also several lines of this in the location descriptions. For a while, this can be a bit annoying. Soon however, my brain just started glancing over this text while filtering out the necessary information.
For an unavoidable trade-off between pleasant prose and indispensable game information, I think this solution found a good balance.
I absolutely loved finding my way around Death on the Stormrider's map. The (beautifully drawn) map in the feelies already gives an impression of how much rooms have to be crammed in a small space on an airship. It was only by exploring the decks myself during play, drawing the map room by room, with all the barriers and hindrances in full effect, that I became aware of the whole complexity of the game world.
The author employs a simple yet effective tactic for avoiding conversations with the other people on the ship: they speak another language and can’t understand you. Also, they’re busy working and wave you away if you interrupt them. Talking to them is not necessary to get a good impression of their character though. Everyone has distinct mannerisms (evident in the way they walk), their attitude toward you is quite obvious through a mixture of body-language and unintelligible-but-clear-in-context speech.
For each character, the X command also prints a beautiful drawing, which together with the text-description gives a good picture of their personality.
All these drawings, with the accompanying text, can be reviewed at leisure in the wonderful tablet you find in the very first room of the game. It serves as a notebook for clues, a reminder of tasks to do and places to visit, and a recapitulation of your investigation so far and the people you encountered.
Great addition, and well worth taking a number of turns near the end of the game to look back over all you’ve learned.
The endings (yes, there’s more than one!) felt a bit luck-of-the-draw to me. It’s not clear (ar least not to me) what the consequences were of showing this or that piece of evidence to one of the various crew members. Their behaviour toward the PC, dismissive, neutral, or halfway friendly, didn’t offer enough (any) clues as to how they would react to my revealing of the evidence.
An exciting investigation, with some unexpected complications and a bunch of different endings, depending on how meticulous your search is. Good game!
Woodland Wonder, December 3, 2023A very intruiging title. I didn’t know what to expect. The “tricks” part made me think of magicians or wizards at first. The game certainly has a magical air, albeit of a more realistic nature.
My parents’ house is surrounded by farmlands in all directions. A mile or so down the narrow road is a small forest. There were no children my age in the street where I grew up. My favourite passtime after school was exploring nature around my house, catching (and releasing) spiders, crane flies (we call them horse mosquitos), grasshoppers, etc… And no, my best friend is not a tiger…
Lara wakes up before sunrise and heads into the woods near the village with her sample box. She’s looking for stuff she might take to school for show-and-tell, and also just out of curiosity and wonder.
At first, Tricks of Light in the Forest comes across as a slice-of-life walk in the forest. Your sense of touch, smell, taste, are as much part of the experience of your surroundings as sight. Nature in all its forms is described in loving detail. Trees and flowers and moss in terms of their fragrance, colour, soft leaves or hard and brittle bark. Bugs up close with shiny beetle shields, dew-glistening spiderwebs, larger animals mostly heard instead of seen.
During the long walk, more and more images and memories and stories about Lara, her parents, the village’s history are triggered by the surrounding forest. These are personal to Lara, showing just a small part of her life here. Put together however, they lead to a fragmented realisation in the player of the broader setting. ((Spoiler - click to show)Twenty, maybe fifty years into the future. Global warming is in full effect, though not in a dramatic post-apocalyptic way. Trees are dying in the drought and uprooted by sudden rainfalls. Species have disappeared and others have migrated into the area. The cities are partly abandoned, skyscrapers are crumbling down.)
The subtle and gradual introduction of these elements into the story has an unsettling effect on the player, but for Lara they are part of her life in this place. She is aware of the changes through stories her parents tell her, and through events during her lifetime, but these things are simply part of the natural flow of things in her experience.
We get to share her view on the woods through an intimate first person viewpoint, with her fears and delights intertwined with her observations of nature.
Later in the game, some puzzles are introduced in a spontaneous manner, blockades and obstacles one might reasonably expect in a forest that has been returning to its wild state for many years now. Their solutions are not that hard, they serve more to force Lara off the beaten track and penetrate deeper into the forest where she witnesses more of the changes to the environment.
Tricks of Light in the Forest is beautifully illustrated, with drawings reminiscent of images out of old natural history books. When Lara reaches notable landmarks, a handdrawn map pops up and shows her progress on the forest path.
Most impressive and impactful are the subtly changing colours and intensity of the background, depending on the lighting of the location (bright sunlight, overshadowed by the canopy,…), or reflecting the time of day (early morning fog, noon sun,…).
A deep, slow, thoughtful piece. Beautiful and detailed descriptions of nature. Themes of loss and wonder and inevitable change. Nature in all its flowing resilience.
Ancestral Haven, November 29, 2023A band of Cro-Magnons has raided the camp and killed most of the group. The Neanderthals must run and find a safe haven elsewhere.
Shanidar shows an impressive amount of research into the time period of its setting: western Europe around 40.000 years ago. It’s clear that the author is invested in learning about this age, whether as a student, professional, or an interested layman.
A lot of information gleamed from archaeological evidence about the people living then is included. Travel routes, boat/raft building, burial habits, cave shrines,… Different species of homo walked the same region of earth in that time, and must have interacted.
Atop these mostly verifiable facts, the author builds and expands the inner world of the characters through plausible, believable speculation about religious rituals, a shared mythology and oral history, the nature of relationships between individuals, tribes and across the homo-species of the time.
Although the amount of research is impressive, it’s also a bit overwhelming, and it doesn’t always serve the story the author is trying to tell. The insistence on giving every bit of present-day knowledge about the then-living humans a place in the spotlight hinders a clear focus for the story, and for the reader to latch onto.
The pace and focus of the story would be sharper if some details were left vague, mentioned in passing, implied instead of explicitated, left to the imagination.
Less intrusive details help in building a convincing world through an engaging narrative. In Shanidar, I sometimes felt as if the author was giving a lecture, a recapitulation of our present knowledge of humans around 40.000 BC, superficially disguised as an adventure story to hold the attention of those students in the back row.
I liked the overarching structure of the narrative. It’s divided in three chapters.
The first has a tight focus on a small group of people during a short period of time. The survivors of the hostile raid, frantically trying to save their lives and at the same time regroup, to reconnect with other survivors.
The next chapter opens up, with the main group having found each other and taking time to get their bearings. This chapter covers months, with meandering and branching storylines for different individuals, encounters with other groups of people, and boats/rafts (+1 boatiness).
In the final chapter, a newly formed tribe has found its balance, and the story becomes more focused again, with the destination, Shanidar, in sight.
Each screen has the text overlaid on top of a line drawing (white on black) of a subject or character from the description above it. These are beautiful and resonating in their simplicity, capturing the flowing lines of a lion’s shoulders, a woman’s hair falling over her shoulders, or the expression on the face of a shaman with only a few precise lines.
The evolution from a core group of characters, meeting others, joining with, intermingling, and splitting from other tribes means a lot of personalities play a part in the story. All of them have their own background, often sketched in but a few lines that succeed in giving a clear picture. All of them have a definite role in the narrative as it unfolds.
Among all these individuals is Haizea, the “You”-character. But the reader doesn’t need to follow her closely, and in the overall story she doesn’t get more attention than many of the others. Maybe the author felt the need to include some sort of PC, to make the person interacting with the story an engaged player more than a distanced reader.
In fact, there is no, can be no true player character. The position of the player with respect to the events in the story, the kind of choices presented preclude the player from entering the world.
Shanidar; Safe Return consists of a fully pre-existing story, a narrative set in stone. No choices the player makes can change anything about the occurrences, nor give the illusion they do. This is because there are no in-game character-driven options. All choices are instead directed at the player, commanding the bird’s eye narrator to zoom in on certain events or characters.
Within the pre-existing set of events, the player chooses which character to focus on for the next story-bit. She can opt to follow one character for a long sequence of links, or hop around and check in on the circumstances of separate individuals.
Time moves forward with each choice, meaning that the exploits of the others will go unseen in this playthrough, and can only be inferred later from descriptions after the fact. (If the player chose not to follow a certain character on the hunt, she will see the kill being dragged into camp at a later time.)
This is a brilliant idea, allowing the player to direct the narrator to recount events that she thinks are most interesting at the time, while the rest of the characters go about their business, have their own adventures outside of the immediate narrative.
The execution of this idea in Shanidar lacks precision though. There are often gaps where storylines don’t meet up, or assumptions of player knowledge about occurences the reader didn’t see.
Nevertheless, a very interesting experiment in interactive storytelling at the reader level, allowing exploration or the narrative lines themselves, instead of finer grained control of a PC’s choices and actions.
Flawed, but very interesting.
I used the term “story-bits” above. I might as well have said “story-bullets”. Indeed, the text is divided in very short, compact paragraphs, two or three per link. A summing-up of bullet-points in distanced descriptive sentences.
This works well a lot of the time, as it reflects the narrator’s bird’s eye view, giving a dispassionate account of the goings-on in this place or that. In some places however, when especially emotional or violent events are happening, I would have liked for the author to unpack the compact paragraphs a bit further and give the content of the text more breathing room.
The story as a whole is a traditional yet engaging travel account. A hurried start, a time of preparation and exposition, the final trek to the promised destination. It’s an archetypal narrative structure, one that echoes and vibrates within humans.
A captivating work, a great gameplay idea. Full of potential and possibilities for greatness that didn’t fully come to fruition in this case. Shanidar; Safe Return is part of a series, so I’ll be sure to follow up on it and see how the author develops this vision.
Infiltrate the Witches' Castle, September 29, 2023Mwoohahaa! The time and tide of the blood moon is there. A moon of power, the only time when a disembodied spirit becomes strong enough to perform the art of Spectral Shifting and reclaim the physical body you need to have some real impact on the world.
Hallowmoor's opening screen with a red-on-black drawing of a medieval stronghold immediately sets the tone. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a puzzle to get from there into the game proper. The player has to take a detour via the "Load/Save" button to find the "Play" option.
It took some getting used to the gameplay. There are a lot of links in the short descriptive paragraphs, many of which lead to exposition text or more detailed descriptions of scenery. At times, I got the feeling I was in an unintentional labyrinth of links, especially with the various words leading to the same passages (justified by the need to maintain the flow of the prose.)
After stumbling through the first handful of screens though, I developed a nose for navigating these connections and play began to feel more fluent.
Hallowmoor is very much an old-school game focused on exploration, experimentation and object-manipulation. To accomodate this in a choice-engine, the majority of fine-grained actions like TAKE or USE are automated. The parser-like hands-on touch is preserved by requiring the player to be in the exact passage of text before succesfully using an object. (For example, opening the cupboard with the crowbar won't work in the kitchen. The player first has to click the link to the cupboard description for it to work. Note: there are no cuboards or crowbars in the game.)
The most notable feature of the game is the aforementioned Spectral Shift magic mechanic. It allows the player to switch PCs with different skills and sensitivities. To complicate matters, the two characters come from opposing sides in a battle between their peoples, meaning they must never be in the same location together lest they kill each other. This adds a layer of spatial puzzle-solving to the basic text-adventure obstacles, forcing the player to consider where and when to move which character with some planning and consideration.
A surprising addition is the incorporation of a game-within-the-game. In a certain location, the player can play through a mini-text-game. I strongly suspect that this is where that lousy last point is hidden. (I never found it...)
An engaging and challenging puzzle-choice game.
Count down..., September 24, 2023Immediately upon pressing any button to start, Marika the Offering throws the player into the suspense. A meticulously described room, an ever so slight hint at a backstory, and a pressing sense of urgency.
>"The air is musty and offends my nostrils. My remaining life can be measured in heartbeats. I must act!"
As is evident from the quote above, the game is written in the first person. Readers/players may differ in their interpretation of this. For me, whereas the second person invites a feeling of complicity or of teamwork, the first person elicits a dramatic distance from the character. More like an unseen co-author or even puppetmaster than an agent within the story. In IF, this makes me experience the text more like an engaged reader than an active player. In this story, I found this worked very well, as it focused my attention on the emotions and the internal struggle of the character Marika.
On the opening screen, the player is told she can access the backstory to the game at any point by typing STORY. After a few exploratory moves, I decided to do so. I was treated to several pages worth of exxposition. Those opposed to reading long chunks of text in their games might want to skip this. I'm not, and I enjoyed it. A rather standard horror/fairytale setup which doesn't do anything too original, but it's engagingly written, it sheds some light on the protagonist's background, her relations with other people from her village, and it offers some insight into why Marika came to be in her present situation.
The game itself consists of a clever inversion of the standard escape-room genre. Other reviews will provide more information for those who want it.
I want to draw more attention to the incredibly high standard of craftsmanship involved in the making of Marika the Offering. The gameplay is so smooth that it might not be immediately apparent how finely tuned some of the design decisions actually are.
--There is no TAKE. Justified, since this is a one-room game. After careful examination of the surroundings, all necessary objects are visible and available for manipulation. Likewise, INVENTORY is unnecessary. The response to this command stays nicely within the flow of the story by pointing out that you want to keep your hands free for any unexpected events.
--The entire game revolves around changing the state of this one room you're in. The opening screen immediately gives the player a rather lengthy and detailed description of the space. What is remarkable, at least once one pays attention to it, is how seamlessly alterations to the game-state are incorporated into this description. All the changes still result in a spontaneous text, without stutterings or hesitations when reading. Again, this is done so smoothly that is is hardly noticeable, until one compares the quality of Marika's evolving room-description with some less-successful examples.
A good horror story, not original in content but nigh-on perfect in execution.
Atomized Inzanity!, September 22, 2023In a bid to outperform the silliness of the classic SciFi B-movies from the era of "The Attack of the 50ft Whatever From Outer Space", The Underoos that Ate New York brings you, yes, an assortment of clothing, mildly to lethally disgruntled (depending on the piece of clothing) by passing too close to a meteorite the day before. Slobby bachelor that you are, you probably wouldn't even mind hanging around naked in your flat, were it not for your date with Cindy.
Time to hunt down your clothes!
TUTANY brings us: "My Crappy Apartment"... FROM SPACE! And it relies completely on the over-the-top zaniness its premise provides. A miniscule map (5 rooms), 5 items of clothing to subdue and put on, simple but rewarding puzzles. All of it driven forward by a breathless sense of urgency.
The locations are sparse but adequately implemented, there is a bunch of gratuitous silliness, and before the chuckle dries up in your throat the joke's over, you're dressed and ready to go out with Cindy.
Quick fun!
>Z 'You pause in manly contemplation.', September 22, 2023A good while ago, while sipping frothy ale in a local tavern, I got into a conversation with a large and manly man of the barbarian persuasion. From what little of his loudly bellowed and deeply soul-felt exhortations, I deduced his name to be Edgar the Hoity, although I cannot pledge to this. I felt sympathetic to his plight and offered to join him on his quest, for it was obvious that while he was certainly well-equipped in the brawn department, some assistance in the more, erm..., intellectually challenging portions of his pursuit might be warranted.
Indeed, in the words of the narrator of our quest (of whom I shall speak more later): "You consider the doxy's words, and furrow your brow in mild discomfort, for there are many syllables."
Having recently escaped from the undergound pits of the Slaver King, Edgar the Hoity (or some other fittingly barbaric name) had vowed to release the other slaves from their shackles, and to vanquish the evil Slaver King himself.
During our travels, it became apparent that it was well that I had volunteered to offer my aid to this fearsome warrior. Fortunately we encountered not many obstacles requiring deep thought or logical analysis, the most difficult being figuring out giving which of the many objects we found to whom, or at which time to revisit certain locations.
Rather, the most puzzling aspect of the quest for my barbarian friend was to choose the order in which to confront the many enemies that stood between him and the Slaver King himself. You see, as is to be expected with those proud and manly members of the barbarian tribes, Edgar the Hoity (or some other fittingly barbaric name) routinely overestimated his own physical prowess and battle-readiness, lunging forward barefistedly at the throat of any foe that stood in his way.
My greatest contribution therefore was observing the weaknesses of my barbarian friend's adversaries, suggesting to perhaps wear some armour and equip a weapon stronger than his fists, working out the order of the enemies from weakest to strongest. After this preparation, it was mostly a matter of pointing him in the right direction and releasing him.
It took some pains and patience to find the correct way in which to adress Edgar the Hoity (or some other fittingly barbaric name), for he only responded to sufficiently dramatic and action-laden verbs. For example, a simple suggestion to TAKE THE SWORD would be met with condescending grumbling. I had to propose that he SEIZE it instead. In the end though, once I had grown more accustomed to the heroic mindset, this narrow set of verbs greatly simplified our exchanges, eliminitating as it did the need for nuanced and detailed wording.
Among the many dangers we encountered on our quest, we were fortunate to also meet various helpful people, willing to trade information or equipment for simple services or needed objects. Indeed, my cheeks still blush at the recollection of "trading" with the very helpful town doxy, especially when we, thinking she might be hungry, tried to offer her an ear of corn which had lain abandoned on a farmer's field...
There is a surprising advantage to travelling with a questing barbarian. All our exploits were recounted aloud by an unseen narrator-voice as we were in the middle of the action. Rather than a dry account of events, this narrator had a flair for the dramatic, sweeping me along with the high-stakes heroic importance of our adventures, emphasising the historical impact of the battles and the far-reaching influence our actions would have on this realm.
It was with pride in my heart and tears on my cheeks that I saw my barbarian friend, Edgar the Hoity (or some other fittingly barbaric name) ride away on the Royal Road in search of new adventures and slaves to free.
A stroll in the woods…, September 14, 2023This game is a very traditional fantasy quest played completely straight. Lots of classic tropes in there, none of them subverted or turned on their heads. I really like this sort of adventure, eschewing the irony or satire that is often added. It plays on my nostalgic tendencies.
(Mind you, I love reading more complex greyshaded fantasy too. And classic fantasy can be filled with some problematic tropes that are not sweetly nostalgic at all. But that’s another discussion. This game does none of that. Well, almost none, depending on your view on (Spoiler - click to show)dragon-slaughter)
The Fantasy Dimension is beautifully written. The locations get long paragraphs bringing the surroundings to the player’s mind’s eye. Fantasy has its solid collection of go-to settings, and this story does not try to get away from them. Indeed, it embraces those settings and draws them with a loving pen.
I particularly liked the descriptions of movement between locations, giving you a sense of real travel instead of zipping instantly from forest to castle.
I hesitate to call this a game. Rather, it is a near-puzzleless journey through the setting to fulfill the objective of your quest. Almost a walking simulator. As such, it is sorely lacking in depth. To hold the player’s attention and engagement, the world in such a work must be meticulously detailed. It is, in The Fantasy Dimension, but only in the initial descriptions. It would need much richer layers of implementation and perhaps some randomised scenes to bring more life and depth to the woods and the ruins.
I enjoyed this a lot, but a lot could be added to make it so much better.
Bounded mastery, September 14, 2023A masterly example of sparse efficient writing. free bird relies on adjectives and nouns alone to paint the setting and the elements of note within it.
Without elaborate (or even short) sentences and turns of phrase, it highlights only those words that are crucial to the game. However, the game world feels rich and open because of the very clever choice of words and particularly of adjectives. An adjective-noun description of a sickly iguana reviving when its warm light is turned on triggers an entire story and a sequence of rich images in the mind in a lot less words than this paragraph I just wrote about it.
The puzzles are clever, it took me some time-outs to get the solution worked out in full. Because free bird is a click-based game, it would probably be possible to mechanically brute-force the solution a bit easier than it would be in a parser. But then, why would anyone play just to take the fun out of it…
Very clever use of language, nifty puzzles with limited resources.
A great protagonist accompanied by an interesting cast of supporting characters too. Again, despite (or thanks to, depending how you interpret it) the self-imposed language limits, their personalities are clear, with a few poignant details shining through to mark their most important traits.
I liked this very much.
Rest. Be still. Enjoy the calm..., September 14, 2023What could be more comforting than sitting in front of a crackling fire, reading a book, sipping from a cup of steaming hot cocoa…
But it feels like something is behind the metaphorical curtains…
Very effective juxtaposition of atmospheres. Both the writing and the visual presentation draw the player into the intended moods, preserving a lingering taste of what the surroundings felt like before while submerging her into the present situation.
Some links could be elaborated upon a bit more. ((Spoiler - click to show)The effects of the drinks or the books for example.) On the other hand, having the choices not have much causative power does fit the premise.
It would be ruinous to divulge more. This is one to experience, eyes and ears and imagination wide open.
In which a particularly uncourteous imp tries to break your brain., September 14, 2023This game is based on an idea of mine that had been lingering in the back of my mind for a long time. SeedComp seemed like a perfect opportunity to put it out there and see what might come of it.
B.J. Best took the intro/starting room I wrote and ran with it, expanding my vague outline to a full-fledged puzzle game that far exceeded my expectations.
I loved it. I was teetering on that fine edge between challenge and frustration the whole time, without (and this is the brilliant bit) ever slipping into desperation. A feeling similar to playing MarioTM and falling from an unstable platform into a spiked hole for the sixteenth time, but still being convinced you’ll get it next time.
The puzzles require very careful observation and very thorough experimentation, but they follow a reliable cause-effect chain and are perfectly fair.
There are a bunch of independent timers and turn-based puzzles to tackle, lots of buttons and a myriad of levers and wheels. The more I discovered during playtesting, the more I stood in awe of the complex technical mechanisms under the hood.
I felt like I could completely put my trust in the game, and that any blockades I encountered were logically solvable. The pleasant frustration I had during play came from the feeling that I could almost touch the solution with my fingertips, almost grasp the mechanics underneath, but not quite yet.
----One more test, one more variable to check...
What happens if I pull this lever first?----
He who sups with the devil should have a long spoon..., September 11, 2023That's odd... The miniature globe you got from your great-aunt for your tenth birthday is stuck. It doesn't spin anymore. You lean in closer for a better look, and before you know it you're tumbling and twisting through dimensions...
When you come to, you're standing on the small world that is your toy-globe, your head high in the upper atmosphere, mountains and oceans mere details at your feet far below.
I like this "just because" leap of imagination. No magical powers or SF-ish technobabble to rationalise or justify the weird stuff. Just dive right in and roll with it.
There's a series of Calvin & Hobbes strips where Mr Watterson went for absurdity for absurdity's sake. For several days, the strip showed nothing but Calvin just growing bigger and bigger, until by the end of the week he was balancing on the curve of the earth with his head above the clouds. That image provided the visuals in my head while I was playing Small World.
The seemingly simple gimmick of sheer size completely changes the perspective on the game world. Movement on a non-rotating globe means you travel to different times of day, depending on where the sun is located. (For example, Noon is one step east of Morning.) Since all natural and man-made objects are tiny compared to you, you have no access to any everyday objects to help solve the puzzles. Better look around and find some stuff more fitting for your size...
Many of the locations have some evidence of human civilisation, for some reason wildly varying in historical time. A medieval witch-burning is happening in one location while your toes get bombarded with atomic bombs in another. Still, a pivotal bible-scene in one location and the appearance of the Devil himself as NPC help to loosely tie the story together thematically. "Loosely" being not strong enough a word to accurately describe it, but well...
The implementation and polish of Small World are impressive. Your examination and exploration of the world goes several layers deep, especially once you find the handy lens in your backpack. However small the lands at your feet may be, there's a lot of evidence of life and natural processes. Your little globe is not a static artefact at all.
The pesky Devil-NPC is not a deeply realised character, nor does he need to be. His continued presence and insistence you sign his contract make him as annoying as a mosquito zipping around your ears.
As for the puzzles, let's say a lot of them make about as much sense as the premise of the story. I had fun the whole time trying stuff and tinkering with the parts of the surroundings that I could influence, but I did need some help actually solving a lot of them.
Some are nice obstacles where you need to think outside the box a bit and repurpose certain objects. Most however require unfathomable leaps of the imagination and a large dose of moon-logic to stumble upon the solution. (Thank you @David_Welbourn for the great walkthrough. I would not have gotten the planetary ring without you.)
A little solar system of fun.
The lonely windmill., September 7, 2023It's been ages since you went to visit your grandparents on their old farm. Old, as in barren and empty. Old age and debts forced them to sell the cows and leave the fields unplanted.
Your tired mom drops you off rather hurriedly, right when your grandmother angrily slams the porch door on her husband. Hmm... A bit of tension there?
Although you were anxious in the car about spending so much time on a farm without electricity (which means no TV), you're warmly welcomed and quickly default to kid-on-a-farm mode: explore and have fun.
Your grandparents are not the hovering caretaker type. They go about their business and trust you to enjoy yourself in the wild outdoors and have adventures.
As NPCs, they're not very talkative, replying to questions with short and to-the-point answers. Nonetheless, they are loving and helpful when you ask them questions, providing some backstory about the farm's history, some glimpses into your mom's childhood, and sparse clues about the obstacles you encounter.
On the Farm is mostly finegrained, almost simulationist in its implementation, with deep and heartfelt descriptions of locations down to a detailed scenery level. Further into the adventure, when the player is presumably more concerned with advancing the plot and finding a direct route to solving the puzzles, the detailed implementation falls through a bit. In later stages of the game, there is more undescribed scenery, a comparative lack of reasonable synonyms and alternate commands. For the player wishing to stay in the role of an inquisitive kid exploring the surroundings, this breaks the illusion somewhat.
The farm environment is mundane, realistic and down-to-earth, don't expect any strange contraptions or magic. (With one exception to be found in a meta-command: (Spoiler - click to show)XYZZY brings up a list of locations, allowing you to transport to any you have already visited.)
This allows for a brilliant multiple use of the everyday objects you find on the farm. They serve to help your grandparents with little tasks and chores, plus most of them will be necessary in unexpected ways to solve the steps toward the solution of the overarching puzzle.
The game-side of the story consists of an engaging chain of not-too-hard puzzles which do require some thoughtful applications of those everyday objects. The end-goal is quite obvious from the get-go: talking to grandma and grandpa will point you in the right direction, and many clues are scattered throughout the house and the outdoors. These clues are directly linked with the story, allowing you to recreate your mom's childhood and your grandparents' life from small bits and incomplete hints.
On the Farm presents two interwoven layers of atmosphere.
There is a melancholy, a still sadness. Here are your grandparents, here are an old woman and an old man, living the remainder of their life on an old, unused and almost empty farm. A feeling of loss and ending.
And here you are, a ten-year-old kid running around and exploring, having an adventure. Bringing young life and joy and action to this place.
These two sides come together in an understated heartwarming endnote.
8 miles of Momma jokes., September 4, 2023Jen 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.
Here I come to save the daaayyy!, September 2, 2023The 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...
So many buttons..., August 29, 2023Finally! 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.
Thank the Lord for this hard-won meal., August 28, 2023Having 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.
Exterminate..., August 26, 2023In 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.
Urchin Spaghetti, August 25, 2023Our 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.
Martian Sunrise, August 23, 2023Don'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.
Give me a hand, would you?, May 25, 20230.14 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.
Conservation of p is violated in the mirror..., May 4, 2023>"Weightlessness, wonder, a rare smile as the planet descended below you, a brilliant viridian marble swirled with soft white clouds."
Despite the protagonist of Protocol having left her lover to go live among the stars, high above/below the planet, this quote is on of the few instances where the space outside is witnessed directly from her point of view.
Protocol is an inwardly oriented game, both in its surface quest and in its more abstract layers.
The protagonist wakes up alone on an abandoned Space Observatory Station, a mighty telescope pointed at the tiniest pinpricks of light from the farthest, earliest moments of space, suspended in its ring of service modules and living quarters for the necessary living staff. The station is damaged. An urgency more felt than understood presses her to do all that is necessary for the repair of the station.
During the exploration of the station, wounded and confused, weakened and alone, a relation of mutual dependency/support/survival develops. The station needs/coerces/forces the woman for healing its wounds, for saving what is not yet irreparably lost of its memories while she struggles to remember herself. The woman uses/grasps/wills the station for a purpose, a reason. The only purpose left, empty and meaningless as it may be.
The desperate crawling journey of the woman through the station to its core systems, to the exposed and damaged vital technologies mirrors a descent deeper and deeper into the body and mind, into psyche and soma, to the wounded bleeding sarx itself, the flesh and bones that need repair.
However intimately connected, mind and body undergo an unnerving disorienting dissociation/distancing during the journey. The station becomes a distorted mirror for the woman. It reflects her broken dreams and yearnings and regrets back to her, reminiscent of the Nietzschean abyss. This is often expressed in physical, external circumstances and actions.
The painful state of the woman's mind is made apparent in her personal monologue/narration too:
>"Delusions of grandeur lost in the summer winds of her laugh, the comfort of a fire in winter in her embrace. Who could blame you, for turning your gaze away from the sky? You were enchanted by the stars, enamored with them. Who could blame you for leaving her, when the stars in her eyes shone no longer?"
While the premise of Protocol is well-known, and could be tiresome in a lesser game, it succeeds in using that premise as a means to search deep into the human condition. The sense of loss, the inevitability of choices, the impossibility of what could have been.
An important factor in making this work is the impressive writing. The author employs stylistic techniques to press the gravity of the situation on the reader. For the most part, this works very well. A bit more prudence might be in order as to the frequency with which one or another technique is used, as they do lose efficacy along the way.
Mesmerising, haunting repetitions, both of phrases and entire paragraphs (with small but telling differences) draw the player deep into the bowels of the story.
The juxtaposition of two major themes resonates throughout the story and appeals to different aesthetical and ethical value systems, perhaps loosely associated with the Appolonic and the Dionysic:
There is the beauty cold and austere of inevitable, ordered, lawful physics, geometry, even biology, juxtaposed with the messy hot-glowing spell of yearning, purpose, will of life and love and consciousness.
Both sides are reflected in the careful delicate writing. In the same passage of text scientific precision and sense of detail conjoins with poetic style, rythmic prose, flowing structure.
>"This is how it always ends; falling the mechanism of your demise, her demise, both the guilty Daedalus and foolish Icarus, too close to the sea, too close to the sun and always doomed by gravity."
At other times, the rhyme and rythm take center stage, as in this challenging and delightful lingual language game of leapfrog:
>"Where she walked the shores of a shallow salt sea, followed the tree-lined lanes dappled in light through the thin apertures of leaves to a home with knotted hardwood floors and open windows through which the wind whispered."
Protocol has few choices. The ones it does have are posed with appropriate gravitas. Each choice is a commitment, the player's role and responsability in seeing this narrative to its inevitable end. Whatever end that may be. It is still inevitable.
Very, very impressive.
In a pit, tied to a chair., May 4, 2023(This review is based on the Spring Thing 2023 version.)
In this tense and fast-moving thriller, Marie must escape her mysterious captors before the bright lights kill her.
This was a very fast-paced but smooth ride.
Marie Waits is a time-constrained turn-optimisation game.
Fortunately, it’s also a game that emphasises letting the player get on with it, quickly scanning the scene and picking out the important items (along with unimportant ones and currently inaccessible ones, of course.) No futzing with intricate machinery or 8-move back-and-forth puzzles, but obstacles that must and can be dealt with fast.
The writing is inobtrusive, it mostly keeps to the background and focuses on conveying the necessary practical information. Precisely this makes it so effective. It reads fast and pulls you along. Even though I started the game thinking I would take it easy, letting my PC die and learn for the next restore, I wound up captivated and tense, feeling the urgency of getting the hell out of there.
Here and there, the author does take the tempo down a notch to show some shreds of backstory through found notes. Very intruiging, and a good reason to play the other Marie-games. (One already out, one upcoming, I believe?)
Of course my testing instincts kicked in at a certain point. I tried to sneakily cut some corners and squeeze some commands in before my PC ought to be able to perform those actions. I was impressed that the author caught almost all these instances. I managed to smuggle one minor shortcut past the radar, shaving two moves (I think) off my total.
In the end, I was out of there by quarter past ten. Time to spare for Marie to take a shower and meet her friends for brunch.
Escaping mysterious kidnappers and avoiding a mid-day burning blast? All part of the morning chores.
Lots of fun!
A door slams shut..., May 4, 2023(This review is based on the Spring Thing 2023 version.)
Well this is something else!
I Am Prey is a tense pursuit thriller where the PC is free to parkour around the map. If you can find the routes in time…
What the player would normally think of as scenery is transformed into accessible passages and back-ways in this game. Furniture, pipings, machinery,… They’re all available for climbing, jumping, crawling to find alternate routes and handy shortcuts around the map. Good thing too, the normal hallways are patrolled by a monstrous unseen entity looking to find you. (The fact that the kitchen pantry has been empty for some time does hint at the reason why…)
I tested this game in its bare-bones parkour proof-of-concept incarnation. It felt like spotting some rare and beautiful lizard in the branches of a vine-overgrown tree. A flicker of colour and movement that I could not quite make out yet.
What a treat to see it now in its glorious splendour!
The commands will take getting used to, as will orienting yourself in relation to the passages between locations. Read the manual and take your time to learn the game. You will be rewarded.
There is an anxiousness-inducing stealth element to the game, where the PC needs to locate certain items before being able to escape. All the while the presence of the Predator is felt and heard, every corner might be lethal.
Sounds play an important role. First of all the voice of your pursuer taunting you through the intercom. I found this actively stressful, distracting from the task at hand and paralysing me with indecisiveness.
Second, sound betrays where you and the pursuer are. Used with care, sound can be your ally…
Along with being a stealth game, I Am Prey also rang a lot of platformer-bells in my head. Jumping, climbing on surrounding objects to find hidden routes? My days playing SuperMarioLand on the SNES revolved around all that.
A parser-based text-game is turn-based, almost by definition. (Real time parsers will exist, no doubt. I shudder at the heartattack-inducing experience playing them would be for typing-challenged me.) Movement between locations is not the point, the game’s about what you do once you are in the next location. Contrary to that habitual room-based gameplay, I Am Prey succeeds in drawing the player into the movement-system as the key-feature of the game.
Remember the resting points on the platforms Mario could stand on relatively safely? You had just completed a precise jump onto a reassuringly broad platform and now you can breathe and plan the next move. Maybe there’s even a questionmark-block to investigate or some coins to pick up. But the focus is on the next jump, the next climb.
The rooms in I Am Prey felt like this to me. Places of temporary relative safety, for catching your breath and quickly searching. But you gotta move, man… You always gotta move…
Very exciting, very inviting to replay. I’ve never seen anything remotely like it.
Locked-door murder!, May 4, 2023(This review is based on the Spring Thing 2023 version.)
Once again, Scotland Yard is baffled and comes knocking on your door for assistance. A locked-door murder mystery! Nice to have something to sharpen your sleuthing mind on.
The Victorian-pastiche writing force runs deep with this one, mostly in a good way. Even when it goes a bit overboard sometimes (thesaurus anyone?), it still bundles the player in a nice and comforting hearthfire detective mood. (Pipe optional.)
Despite the captivating writing however, I felt like this game could be a pitch for a rather predictable detective movie implemented in HTML/Javascript. All the twists and turns of the story are there, as well as the characters and their relations, but they’re only sketchily filled out.
There is definitely something bubbling beneath the surface with regards to the relation between the witty detective and the grumpy Scotland Yard Inspector, but it never gets deeper than the exchange of funny witticisms and insulting remarks.
I had hoped to see a bit more of Detective Sergeant Bixby’s personality. A few links seem to suggest more personal questions, but these are quickly deflected.
The game-information warns the player to take careful notes, lest the game become unwinnable. In the end though, I didn’t feel I (the player) had done much sleuthing and deducing at all. When looking over my notes, I realise that all the clues I needed would fit on the back of a small grocery list (“eggs, milk, ham, alligator dental floss”). A concise walkthrough would consist of . Instead of the result of my deductive skill, this seemed more like having to prove to the game that I had read the previous paragraphs.
The investigation of the crime scene and the interrogation of the witnesses is fun, but the actual detective work of putting the clues together into a coherent whole is done by the game. My little grey cells felt a bit disregarded.
Still, an entertaining detective story.
What did the monk say to the sleepless man?, May 4, 2023(This review is based on the Spring Thing 2023 version.)
What a welcome surprise! I expected this to be an elaborate joke game, where you die in various hilarious/gruesome ways a link or two removed from the start-screen. The fact that the intro-screen already offered a bunch of non-official endings strengthened my belief that this game was going to be a riff on unnecessarily complex choice games that tap into the human brain’s tendency to collect-'em-all.
And yes, Insomnia does that. It does it extremely well, with various bonuses and achievements handed out as you reach more endings. (I liked being able to change the subtitle!)
But!
I’m actually very impressed by the depth, detail, and variety of the stories. The author obviously was invested in treating the branching narratives as interesting premises in their own right, following through on the player’s choices to their ultimate, sometimes extremely zany, sometimes thriller-serious, consequences.
The writing is engaging and considered, another sign that the stories are a serious matter (silly as they may be), not just a way to get the player to groan at the next failure. I found myself strongly captivated by a few of the pathways through the piece. Among the other well-written storylets, these stood out for me as blueprints for exciting short stories or games on their own. ()
If I may add a small nitpick, even the more serious storylets () are told in the same fast-paced humorous voice as the zaniest ones. These more tense pieces might benefit from a shift in tone to reflect the actual sorrow they cause the protagonist. (2 cents to be picked up or ignored, of course.)
A great ending-hunt with hidden depths.
Hypnosis gone agley., May 4, 2023(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…)
Gloomy tomb, April 29, 2023(this review is for the IFComp 2022 version)
Your backstabbing fellow archaeologist/explorer/graverobber pushed you down a catacomb. Find the exit and grab all the loot.
This game brings back the classic text-adventure tropes: explore and steal. Apart from the framing story I summarized above, there is no plot or character development. This means you are only limited by your own conscience (and let’s face it, adventure players haven’t got one) while you unleash your kleptomaniac and grave violating tendencies in the poor old King’s tomb.
The descriptions are rich, they capture the gloomy-tomb atmosphere very well. There were several rooms with vivid and memorable images, emanating an old and foreboding feeling.
Until the very end, puzzles are nowhere to be seen, except maybe looking in a few less obvious places. The final puzzle is simple but nifty, providing a nice little >click< in the player’s head.
Unfortunately, The Hidden King’s Tomb is woefully underimplemented. In a creepy crypt like this, it misses so many opportunities to reward the explorer with detailed descriptions of the ominous scenery to establish a bit of backstory (the murals and reliefs are a first obvious example). Customizing the responses to unnecessary actions would also help in bringing more life to the game world.
Indeed, I would love to see this game expanded into a near-puzzleless exploration of the history of this long-buried mysterious King. The focus could be not on the gathering of loot (which will always be cool, come on, it’s a text adventure, right…), but on the slow and gradual unraveling of the tale of how the King came to be buried here, and of his great or horrible deeds during life.
The medium of IF is extremely well suited to such piece-by-piece discovery of a backstory.
A nice exploration/looting excercise. I really liked the final puzzle. The first atmospheric layer of the tomb is nicely painted. The author just needs to go down a few layers beneath that and implement all the juicy details.
Flu? Walnut-and-puffball soup!, April 27, 2023(This review is based on the Spring Thing 2023 comp version.)
Such a warm and homely starting situation! Your witch is feeling a bit under the weather. How better to help her than to brew a cauldron of heartening medicinal soup?
Soon, though, it becomes apparent that something darker than a simple cold is amiss. Your mistress has been hexed, and she’s going to need something a bit more potent than hot soup.
Fran the crow is a lovely protagonist. Even though her ability to express herself verbally is limited to CAW, her kind-heartedness shines through in all her actions, and in her thoughts as they are relegated to the player through the author’s empathic penmanship.
As enthusiastic and full of life Fran is, even in these dire times, so is the author’s writing. Eager to share the wonders of this world, be they light or dark. From the cosy cabin to the oppressive vine-tangled forest, from the stately Opera House to the cute girl in the window, the joy of inviting the reader into this world sparkles on the screen.
You have been flying through the western forest as dawn begins to extend its frilly tendrils across the sky, and warm late-summer winds filter through your feathers. Streaks of green and yellow paint the landscape with fresh vibrancy.
Sometimes it’s a bit too enthousiastic, to the point of near-selfcombustion:
“The mammoth governmental building looms ahead, its single golden clocktower eye and teeth-like arches looking more bestial than ever.”
A simple but delicately drawn map with just enough twists and turns in the path to feel organic guides you through the forest to the city of Gennemont, where the nub of the adventure lies.
One particular puzzle-and-narrative sequence here is so heartwarming I’d have gladly played the game for the joy of it alone. ((Spoiler - click to show)The girl in the window's love-letter.)
Being aimed at beginners, the puzzles are quite simple. Most hinge on winning the trust of a human. The wing-and-beak gesturing CAW-ing conversations this entails are rich, the characters are people in their own right, and it gave a a real sense of connection to bond with them on a deeper level than just carrying out their associated fetch-quest.
During these conversations, and through the limited memories and understanding Fran has of the goings-on in the wider world, we learn of the broader circumstances in which the story plays. A war is going on between the powerful factions of the setting, and it reaches down to influence even the lives of Fran and the other characters.
The entire tale is enlightened but not overshadowed by moody grey-blue pixel graphics, emphasising the atmosphere of the text-descriptions.
At the end, the author hearkens back to an early meeting in an almost fairy-tale fashion, bringing the story around to a satisfying close.
I came across a few bugs and sent reports of them to the author. I’m confident those will be squashed in a following update. Nothing that should hinder the enjoyment, perhaps even providing an extra laugh or two.
A very warm and inviting game.
Bunnies in the Dust, April 22, 2023*HONK*HONK*HONK*
Nevermind that blaring alarm. Just a final dusting of the Director's door sign and she'll make her way outside to the Plaza in your own good time, thank you very much.
Oliva Mirram is a cleaning maid in the Lab. And now it appears she took a little too much time to respond to the evacuation alarm. Best to sneak out before anyone notices, especially the scientists responsible for the alarm...
There is a lot to like about Nothing Could be Further From the Truth. There's also a lot to complain about. Since I don't like doing the latter, and also since this review is based on the 2023 Spring Thing comp-version, I'll just briefly list the negatives here. I can still reference them as needed in the rest of the review.
-Inconsistent directions: I have absolutely nothing against an idiosyncratic directional system. Do make it consistent though.
-Synonyms, or the lack thereof. In a tense situation, I like many words to be recognised for the same object.
-Alternate commands, or the lack thereof: A bunch of solutions rely on precise input, where I would have liked the game to respond to more ways to phrase the same command.
-Unhelpful and actively misleading responses, or the abundance thereof: I skimmed accross the surface of a solution without grasping it on multiple occasions because of this.
Particularly the latter two can make progress difficult. There are hints available, but I found that persistence and patience work just as well.
So, a few naggles up front.
But man this is my jam!
A long and engaging parser puzzler set against a dystopian SF backdrop.
-->Writing:
Big, eloquent text dumps for introduction, cutscenes and outro. The author chooses to emphasise the "writing" part of a text game with verbose and detailed initial room descriptions. These make for very evocative first impressions of the various locations, although they could be trimmed down to more utilitarian length when the player types LOOK or enters the same room a second time.
The tone of the game is hard to place. It's a mixture of the commonplace cruelty, humiliation and snitch-encouraging culture of an authoritarian state, and scenes of relieving, even cathartic humour. I was particularly impressied by the juxtaposition of the horrible treatment(Spoiler - click to show) of citizens who broke the rigid rules in some low-level way in one corner of the Plaza, and the slapstick demolition of a vendor's stall in the opposite corner.
During the game, tension rises with the stakes of the puzzles increasing, both for the protagonist personally as for her fellow citizens.
The first acquaintance with the protagonist was very impressive. She made a well-rounded and realised impression, with references to her hopes and dreams and fears. She even comes accross as somewhat naive and innocent while at the same time being purposeful and strong-willed. The layering of these personality traits made her feel believable in the context of the setting.
As the game progresses however, I felt Oliva Mirram's character flattening out. The puzzles took center-stage and Oliva's personality was overshadowed. She became more and more a vessel for my commands instead of her own person where I could look over her shoulder.
-->Puzzles:
The majority of the puzzles are traditional adventure fare. Manipulating machinery, finding ways to unblock passages,... Many are of a larger scope than usual though, requiring the player to connect pieces of information found in different locations and in different times during the exploration of the map.
I found all of them very strong conceptually. A big part of my playtime was devoted to not-playing while letting the importance and connections of items simmer in the back of my brain.
The game also uses distractions and diversions very effectively to send the player looking in the wrong direction. On several occasions, I realised after taking a break that I had been trying to solve a puzzle with the wrong object or in the wrong order. The feeling of this realisation clicking into place in my head was great, the main reason why I love puzzle games.
Unfortunately, the inadequate implementation of alternate commands and helpful responses to failed commands introduces an extra layer of confusion that interferes with the intentional complexity. It makes it hard to differentiate between legitimate false leads or red herrings on the one hand, which I deem crucial to the compelling experience Nothing Could be Further From the Truth offers, and clumsy unintended responses or oversights that obscure the game proper with clutter.
The game is quite harsh and unforgiving when it comes to killing of the PC when using a wrong approach to solving a puzzle. Expect many premature endings with well-written humorous death-scenes, and a lot of try-die-repeat. I like this, but it's probably good to know beforehand to anyone wanting to tackle this game.
-->Map:
As an avid map-maker, I enjoyed drawing the Lab and its surroundings. I also saw deeper meaning in the map organisation. The setting of a Science Laboratory Complex in an authoritarian society was reflected in the organised and orderly layout of the facility, while the underground crawlspaces on the fringes of the map were associated with the more chaotic rebel elements.
The author assures me that there will be a post-comp version which will be more polished.
In the meanwhile, Nothing Could be Further From the Truth struck me as a diamond in the rough. Wholeheartedly recommended.
♪ ♫ <i>Love me tender... love me true..</i> ♪ ♫, April 4, 2023Hush... Be still... Be tender...
This is a story to be read with quiet care. Until vicarious anger kicks in. But also sympathetic understanding. And most of all deep empathy.
[since this is a heavily story-oriented game, spoilers will follow]
Ending a story about a love-relationship with a car-crash is about as subtle as an anvil-drop.
Beginning that story with the car-crash however, and then working backwards is a deeply captivating narrative technique.
After the Accident's detailed and thoroughly implemented opening scene serves as a gateway to an ever expanding exploration of memories. The more the main character observes what is left of the car, the deeper she delves into the debris of a broken relationship.
Memory by memory, scene by scene, the twisted dynamics between her and her lover become apparent. Apparent to the reader, that is.
The protagonist herself, she has flash-backs. Dropped in the middle of defining episodes of her life with her lover. While these episodes cause caution, perhaps alarm, in the reader, the protagonist is caught in an anger-but-love forgiveness cycle.
The author captures these ambiguous feelings in a series of small storylets. She uses everyday objects which convey a depth of information about the ambivalent nature of the protagonist's feelings. Particularly strong story-writing is the description of a present from the lover. It's an object imbued with contradicting symbolic meanings. (Spoiler - click to show)The sweater is soft and comforting in itself, she accepts it as a token of love, but the smell of the fight that came before still lingers.
I am very impressed at how deeply Amanda Walker can see both sides of these feelings from the protagonist's point of view, as well as translating them with deep-felt empathy to the reader.
This piece shows a deep feeling and understanding for the intricacies of love, even when that love is skewed.
The car-crash, symbolic and real, is a cathartic ending. I wouldn't have wished for the protagonist to endure more of the loving manipulating gifts.
Kiss of the Balisong, March 31, 2023Impressionistic prose bordering on poetry. Sensuous associations brought on by a gently touching finger. Images of kissing lips and dripping blood.
Footnotes. A second voice. Harsher, more direct. Longing too, silent confessions of love and yearning. Tenderness in the face of fate's inevitability.
The gun or the knife?
But beauty prevails. Beauty offset by pain and secrets. Still, beauty. Enhanced by the acceptance of the ugly things. The things unspoken yet known.
The silver lining of the shining blade-edge.
Not quite, your lordship., March 27, 2023The opening paragraph of Aunts and Butlers immediately sets the tone for this game: silly, jolly punniness played off of British stiff-upper-lipness.
The first part of the game succeeds in keeping up this atmosphere. You play an impoverished young man from a wealthy family. Your filthy rich aunt is coming to visit and you will have to jump through hoops to have a chance to get some money from her so you can pay your debts.
The puzzles are not difficult. The game pretty much tells you what to do, in a polite and British way. The implementation might give some troubles: when trying to interact with something, the game does not differentiate between an unimportant object or an object that is simply not there.
Up until here, I had great fun trying stuff out and breathing in the fresh British air.
Unfortunately, after solving the bottleneck-opening puzzle at the end of this first part, the game loses its ambiance and slides off into oldschool incoherent silliness (the bad kind). A medieval knight and a starship are involved, among other things.
In the hints for one of these rooms, the author writes that this room was coded at 11pm the night before IF Comp's deadline. I suspect that he turned to unfunny random madness as a last resort, pushing himself to get something finished to enter in the competition. Pity. I would have loved to see what this game could have been if it stuck to its first-paragraph principles.
Disappointing.
Zeppelin is an inherently funny word. (+ bonus points), March 27, 2023Zeppelin Adventure takes the player into the Zeerust-filled world of classic SF. The era where there were canals on the moon, intrepid adventurers found themselves hurtling through space in a hollow cannonball and there were little green men visiting us in various shapes of silvery shining teaware.
(Intermezzo:Zeerust--TV Tropes. Yes, I'll wait...)
In this particular work a humble tea-transporting zeppelin-farer (On Mars!) is swooped to the relics of the Robot Free State by way of a swirly-vortex-thingamajiggy. (Cue Robby the Robot in various slightly depressing incarnations.) The zeppelin crashes and the adventure turns into a hunt for scattered engine parts.
The mood of the game is deeply captivating. Nostalgic, endearing, funny, with unsettling undertones and references to disturbing episodes of Earth history. The visual qualities of the interface (and the cover art!) work to enhance this atmosphere.
The gameplay of Zeppelin Adventure encapsulates a parser puzzlefest in a keyword-click engine, Robin Johnson's own Versificator2. This means that all possible actions are, in theory, laid out for the player. In practice however, the amount of stuff in the inventory quickly becomes so large that mechanically checking all the possibilities would be a lot more work than just leaning back and thinking about the solutions.
At times, I missed the unboundedness of typing parser input. I yearned to interact with the world more freely to tease out more background, and here and there I thought I had an alternate tack for an obstacle that was simply off-limits in the click-approach.
However, the game feels very tight and focused, and the click interface plays no small part in this. It directs the player's attention to the salient bits of information in the descriptions while letting the rest of the text carry the atmosphere without being distracting.
The puzzles themselves have a similar focused and concentrated quality. Many are not easy, requiring multiple steps and a thought-out plan of execution to finally get the engine part dangling before our protagonist's nose. But they all have a definite and logical path to the solution, even if the player is temporarily baffled by the intricacies of the order of steps.
Depending on what the player chooses to do once the Zeppelin's engine is repaired, there are multiple endings. I happened upon one where I could help the robots as well as my character.
Great game!
Bull's Manor, March 24, 2023Recidivism isn't a character flaw to you, it's a matter of pride. No sense in honing those burglar skill just to let them go to waste because some judge put you behind bars for a half year, right? Out of jail, back in the saddle, that's you. Or rather, back in the driver's seat of this car you just nicked on the way to Wychwood Manor. Your cellmate couldn't shut up about the stash of old loot that's still hidden there. It helped that he was talking in his sleep.
The elaborate introduction puts you squarely in the boots of this criminal protagonist and lends a welcome frame to this manor search. In the rest of the game, the descriptions are sparse but adequate. Many small details serve to strengthen the mood of the abandoned estate, and of course to distract the player and lure her into wasting time.
Yes, because time is of the essence! Although you arrived early in the morning, some nosy passerby or binocular-carrying neighbour is bound to call the coppers on you before long.
The map of the manor and the surrounding estate and farmer's fields is splendid. With sparse descriptions, the game still succeeds in evoking a wide countryside feel. A few hidden areas and locked rooms add the satisfaction of discovery to the exploration.
The final area especially, the fields behind the manor, is a joy to wander through and waste moves as you try to find out where to investigate next.
As is to be expected, one of the main obstacles of the game is getting your intentions across in two-word commands. EXAMINE (not X) works on a small but important fraction of the items in the descriptions, USE is necessary in some instances, and of course you can forget about UNDO.
Once you get a feel for what works, the puzzles are actually fun and challenging. Some neat seemingly straightforward problems that require one extra unexpected step. Including the oldest one in the book...
Good old-school fun in and around an abandoned country manor.
Whale Song to Soothe?, March 19, 2023(This review is for the PunyJam version of the game)
This is a game which takes a tried and true adventure setup and squeezes the best out of it.
You wake up disoriented and amnesiac in an underwater base. Some kind of catastrophe has all but destroyed the place and it seems everyone has fled, leaving you alone.
The map is small but challenging. With a few crooked passages and bending corridors, the surroundings take on an eerie and ever so slightly disorienting feel. The locked doors (or functional equivalents thereof) serve their purpose well, guiding the player through the base until she has found what needs to be discovered.
Puzzles are common sense and straightforward. A few could be better clued, and I missed alternate commands for the necessary actions and reasonable synonyms for some important items.
A1RLOCK has a dark atmosphere. (The child-protagonist lightens the mood considerably here and there, for instance when she (Spoiler - click to show)Pew! Pew! Pew!-shoots a staple gun at random objects...)There is always the suspense of some gruesome revelation just around the corner. This feeling of expectation keeps growing until it is finally resolved in the final confrontation.
I keep having that dream..., March 16, 2023Lucid Night uses the frame of an interrupted night’s sleep filled with lucid dreams to present the player with a collection of small puzzles which take place in the dream world.
The puzzles are easy, heavily clued and tiny. Each does give the player that bit of satisfaction of finding the solution, and of looking around to see what your dreaming brain has come up with this time.
A laid-back bit of easy fun. Some distraction while you wait for the potatoes to boil.
It might be, were it not for the glimpses of the protagonist’s life we catch. There are vague references throughout the game to previous, more powerful lucid dreams, and to the character’s waking life that imbue it with a sense of mystery, even an unsettling feeling of unseen threat.
I enjoyed the writing, smoothly transitioning the PC from waking to dreaming without drawing too much explicit attention to it. The PC is used to dreaming, so the lucid sequences come as no surprise.
There is a nifty implementation feature in this game, of the “blink and you miss it” variety.
The puzzles were very common sense, especially for a dream-setting. I had expected some more moon-logic and surrealism to pop up as the game progressed.
A good game. The untold backstory of the PC keeps lingering in my mind.
Foggy Oysters, March 16, 2023“…those were the days of roses, of poetry and prose…”
Tom Waits - Martha
A poem draws the reader into the mood. A loner, anxious, on the sidelines. Choice anxiety, overwhelmed by a myriad options.
The poem, in its closing verse, promises comfort, soothing. A chance to see all options. Choice without choosing for it will all be turned back on itself.
Beautiful well-chosen prose drops you in the middle of a scene. A multitude of scenes, theatre stages next to each other to wander through. The setting is an expansion of Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, with its oyster bar, its foggy streets,…
But there! There is time. A minute counting back… Pressure to explore!
Until the minute has passed and all is restored, ready to revise.
The repetition renders the sixty seconds pressureless, devoid of tension. In effect, you have a free-floating minute, disconnected from external time and causation.
The result is a narratively empty (isolated from cause-effect, plotless), exploration-rich discovery of relations between locales and passages of text, streetlamp-lit alleys and overheard conversations. An endlessly revising everlasting minute wherein to choose all options and be returned to poetry.
A captivating, mindful experience.
Let the King eat Cake, March 9, 2023(This review is for the competition version. I expect any small hairs will be removed from the buttery patisserie in an updated version.)
A cake so sumptuous the meagre word “cake” does not do it justice. A fruitcake so stuffed with raisins and nuts and confectioneries of all kinds, so soaked in the finest cognac, a Royal Fruitcake, if you will.
A cake fit for a King.
And that is precisely why you would have the King himself partake of this masterpiece, and humbly implore him to fund your expedition into the secrets of even more delicious Patisserie. If only that stubborn guard would let you through.
A game which starts with a seemingly simple premise, present a cake to the King, and builds on it, complicates and layers it until it becomes a hilarious obstacle-filled endeavour.
A small map with enough twists and bends to make it interesting, and a few locked off locations that take more than a bit of ingenuity and perseverance to get into.
The puzzles are heavily clued. A bit too much for my taste. At least, that’s what I thought at first. I realised though, that trimming back the generous clues and hints would also dampen the slap-stick farcical mood.
There are a bunch of bugs to be found in the SeedComp version. Indeed, part of my enjoyment came from chasing them down and thinking of new ways to exploit them to fool the game and create little funny scenes of my own making. The game is strong enough under the hood so that the bugs become more something you might find in the “Amusing”-section after finishing an adventure.
“Have you tried…”
Mind you, the bugs are naught but a small raisin in this wonderful fruitcake of a game. The tone is continuously funny, not (only) by cracking jokes but by the aforementioned layering of complications. The main NPC is a funny bloke to mess with, and the reactions of the unnamed townsfolk are a real treat.
Great fun. I laughed at my screen several times. Somewhat straining on my suspension of disbelief at times. Great puzzle collection.
AI attempts to rebuild Earth for its makers., March 7, 2023(This review is based on the SeedComp version of the game.)
After a period of 737 cycles in deep Sleep Mode, the Core of Reconstruction Facility 05 (RF-05-C1) awakens. Time to resume its mission: prepare the planet for the return of the humans.
The Core is the conscious, volitional, self-reflective AI of a terraforming and restoratory facility. It has control over several subsystems which carry out the practical tasks needed to further the overall goals it sets.
Each cycle, the Core gets a report about the previous time period. Based on that, it can adjust its priorities to guide the subconscious systems through the next cycle.
That’s the practical side of things in a nutshell. Providing a home planet minimally capable of supporting human life. The player gets to decide what to focus on and sees the results in the next cycle-report.
Since the Core’s target population is humans, it is also fed tidbits of information about human history and culture by its subconscious Memory database. These consist of seemingly random fragments, some from literary masterpieces, some from more mundane sources. This is a built-in attempt from its makers to teach the AI about human aesthetics, morality, society,… Hopefully, when the humans return, they will come to a world which is tailored to their sensitivities in these less tangible areas of human experience.
The player gets to read these cultural sources from the perspective of a non-discerning AI. This produces a shift away from her preconceptions about quality or value of the sources. A fragment from Homeros’ Oddyssey (Be still, my heart…) might the next waking cycle be juxtaposed with a Wikipedia article about beans ( Bean - Wikipedia). [Neither of these are actually in the game text.]
During the sleep cycle, it seems that the AI is agitatedly trying to incorporate, re-organise and assimilate the information about humanity in its memory base. It does this in dreams. The dreams are not directly related to the information the Core received in the previous waking cycle. Instead they are more like contextless floating memory snippets, short stories told in simple sentences, or free associations of words and concepts.
I played through the game twice, with opposite strategies (aggressive <-> accomodating toward wildlife which may damage the base, reaching-out <-> self-sustaining toward other terraforming facilities that may be out there). Both times my efforts were fruitless and my facility was terminally damaged, unable to carry out its objectives.
There are many options to tweak the facility’s attitude toward the surroundings. I have not (yet) found a succesfull combination, but I will definitely keep looking. (EDIT: Failure is inevitable)
The most intriguing parts of the game to me were the cultural fragments and the dream-sequences. Sadly, those were also the parts where I found the game most lacking. I would have liked to see more of the personal development the AI goes through in response to its growing experience with human culture and its own growing mind.
A very interesting game, and one I hope the author will expand upon.
All Hail Smurg IV !, March 7, 2023Meet Sub-Lieutenant of Human Resources Command Sheryl Swift.
Sheryl is punctual, tidy, scrupulously hygienical, and conscientious about her work. All good personal qualities, no?
She diligently organises and leads the weekly staff meetings, preferably during friday-noon lunch break. She sternly believes those beneath one on the societal ladder should be cared for with a firm guiding hand. That’s important work, no?
Recently, Sheryl was promoted to the free-standing cubicle closest to her boss 's Lieutenant’s office. Even though he never asks her in, it's a sign that she’s worthy of her position, no?
The Lieutenant himself even calls her to take care of an urgent matter in the office. On a friday evening. Minutes before she would leave her desk, put on her coat and go home. That’s firm proof of his trust in her, no?
Against a tumultuous futuristic backdrop, we follow Sheryl as she searches the Human Resources Command offices for a number of missing chapters for the new draft of His Majesty Smurg IV’s Royal Space Navy Service Handbook. Lieutenant Fernandez wants them sent through that same evening. A menial clerk’s job it would seem, but Sheryl performs it with pride and ingenuity. While we see glimpses of the Space Navy fighter fleet in action through the window, Sheryl just as dutifully does her part for the smooth operation of the Human Resources department of His Majesty’s Space Navy.
His Majesty’s Royal Space Navy Service Handbook utilises a limited and efficient verb set, which it vehemently insists upon when it is strayed from. In contrast, the surroundings are richly implemented. Descriptions of objects provide deeper layers of detail and they often include nuggets of characterisation for Sheryl or clues about her co-workers who misplaced the missing chapters of His Majesty’s Royal Space Navy Service Handbook.
While at first it may seem that there is a bit too much handholding in solving the problems, we must realise that His Majesty’s Royal Space Navy Service Handbook chooses to exchange some player satisfaction or puzzle-glory for a smoother flow of the story and better control of the tempo. This makes for a more engaging story.
Sheryl is a beautifully drawn character. I will remember her for the next XYZZY Awards.
"A Scottish fly lands on your nose", February 28, 2023One of these days I'll have to publish A Wanderer's Guide to the Mansions of TextAdventureLand. I will have to wade through this towering stack of notes and edit them down to a manageable volume though.
Haunted mansions, Alchemist's mansions, Vampire's mansions, mansions left to you in the will of your late (and pleasantly unhinged) uncle,...
McMurphy's Mansion falls in that last category. A pressing telegram urges you to Scotland, where you shall inherit your Uncle McMurphy's estate and 10.000.000 pounds. On one condition...
Find the twelve gold bars scattered around the grounds and solve the final puzzle...
Copyrighted in 1984, McMurphy's Mansion is magnificently old-school.
(EDIT: The original version for C64 was released in '84 or '85. The game was ported to DOS in 1987 and 1989. I played the 1989 version.)
IF conventions were not as firmly established, and this game has its own idiosyncracies regarding commands anyhow.
AGAIN is shortened to R (repeat) instead of G. DROP ALL works, but you have to TAKE FEE, TAKE FI, TAKE FO, TAKE FUM instead of TAKE ALL.
X is short for EXAMINE, as usual. Large objects can be examined immediately, but the game refuses to let you examine take-able items unless you are carrying them.
I works for INVENTORY (no messing with INV), MAP shows you the room layout of the mansion (no map for the outdoors), XMAP turns off the layout and snorts that real adventures make a paper map anyway.
It took a while before I fully put my trust in the game. Opening and looking in cabinets, for example, give responses so dry (contrary to the vividness of the rest of the world) that I was unsure if anything had changed in the underlying world model. It was not necessary to be mistrusting. The game and its engine under the hood are indeed solid.
Uncle McMurphy's will of course is just the pretext to drop the player in an unabashed puzzlefest.
There are a number of code-breaking tasks. These are probably the most logical of the batch. A few puzzles present a surprising application of common sense and everyday physics. A lot more rely on mental associations and not-so-straightforward intuitive leaps.
However, because the game is set in our normal (for an undefined value of the term) non-magical world, even the least logical puzzles have handholds in real life experience.
Most of the progress through the game, finding necessary items, comes from thoroughly exploring and investigating the game-world. And yes, this means copious amounts of LOOKing IN, UNDER and BEHIND stuff. Fortunately, there is no need for lawnmowering every location with these commands. Either it's clear that any curious investigator would look in, under or behind a certain piece of scenery, or a clue found elsewhere will explicitly tell you to do it.
The map itself is a joy to explore. Almost all of it is open from the get-go, allowing you to roam freely around the gardens and the house, noting interesting or questionable features and remembering where the various locations are in relation to each other. (Yes, this will be important.)
Another joyous idiosyncratic implementation feature is the use of L N (or any direction) in a room with a window to get a detailed description of the view. This knits the world together and joins the inside of the house and the outdoors lawns and trees into one continuous space. (It also provides clues. Read carefully, they may appear only once...)
From boldly exploring the edges of the map, it becomes apparent that the author was no big fan of death in adventures. Upon falling from great height (or some other accident), there is a humorous paragraph detailing your injuries and you are brought back to the house. In the original game, the player also got a 1-minute penalty where no commands would be accepted by the game, effectively freezing the protagonist out.
McMurphy's Mansion stands out among its mansionate peers by the liveliness of its world. You repeatedly bump into the butler, whom you also see walking around the yard through the windows. The many trees and flowers provide the pleasant distraction of nature's beauty, and you can even get a glimpse of the nearby moors on the other side of the estate wall, if you look out the right window.
A splendid old school treasure hunt.
"Do you seek the wisdom of the ancients?", February 25, 2023With these words our story begins. The protagonist welcomes a timid customer into his salon, preparing to do a psychic reading and look into the future. He'll be the first to admit it's all hazy-floaty mumbo-jumbo, or, as the plaque above the salon door reads: "For entertainment purposes only."
Not long after however, when a strong-willed police-woman steps into the salon on a private mission and slaps a "tense and furious glove" on the table, it is revealed to his own astonishment that he does seem to have inherited some of the genuine psychic powers of his late mother...
Stone Harbor is a supernatural detective story. It follows the predictable mould of such stories quite closely. What it does with the various elements within that mould however, it does very well.
The prose flows easily and confidently. For example: the protagonist's shock and disbelief of being drawn into a psychic trance feels genuine to the reader. It's believable, where it could easily come across as forced or even farcical from the pen of a less-skilled writer.
Places are described elaborately and in precise detail, allowing an intricate mental picture of the surroundings. These descriptions are infused with the personal impressions of the protagonist, letting the reader align herself more intimately with the protagonist.
In contrast, revelations about the characters themselves and their relations to other people are kept short and implicit, trusting the reader to draw conclusions based on a few poignant details.
The overall structure of the story made me think of a ride in a slowly but steadily accelerating train. The long uninterrupted paragraphs of the first chapters provide the opportunity to comfortably settle in, study the characters and the setting. The story gradually picks up speed and by the final chapter the plot is frantically hurtling toward the denouement, dragging the reader along.
I'v consistently used the word "reader" in this review. That is because Stone Harbor is much more a story than it is a game. It's a linear narrative without branching, leading to a single predetermined outcome.
The choices, the clicking, the interacting with the text serve to guide and influence the reader's experience of the story while travelling through it, rather than giving her control over the direction of travel.
Especially in the first chapters, the many micro-choices, the options of what detail to focus the protagonist's attention on, invite deep commitment and investment. They effectively help the reader to align herself with the main character and inspire a genuine wish to see the mystery solved.
The further the plot advances, the more a single clickable option is available to advance the story. Instead of being a boring "continue"-option in disguise at the end of a paragraph however, these single clicks retain an in-story relevance. Not only does it feel qualitatively different to press a meaningful nou, a word which the reader has been trained to associate feelings of hope or threat with, the strategic placement of the clicks in ever-shortening paragraphs nearing the end also very effectively impresses the hastening tempo on the reader.
An impressively written, grippingly paced mystery.
Nosewarts & Broomsticks, February 23, 2023The Witch's Apprentice is a short, easy and humorous bite-sized little parser game.
(Caution: "bite-sized" should not lure you into tasting any of the substances mentioned. Doing so may result in bodily deformities, demonic possession, boiling of bodily fluids, spontaneous combustion, excrutiatingly painful bowel movements, burnt-out eyeballs, death and /or hiccups.) (EDIT: This caution is directed at the player as a “do not try this at home”-warning. The PC can try eating or drinkind anything without ill effects. The game is very kid-friendly.)
As the new apprentice, the boss witch sends you out to get groceries. Ahem, ingredients for her witch's brew. There's a handy list of things you should gather in and around the house.
Although the map is fairly small, there is a nice variety of locations. The house itself is mostly surprisingly homey, albeit rather empty and with a scary surprise here and there. In contrast, the outdoors have a scary-yet-endearing horror B-movie feel to them.
Most of the obstacles are simple search-and-fetch tasks, with a few slightly more complicated two-or-three step puzzles.
The most challenging (and fun) part of The Witch's Apprentice is the amount of funny and distracting red herrings sprinkled all over the map. They all fit well with the puzzles, so they feel like they could be part of a solution. It was hilarious at times to experience how determined a seasoned adventurer's mind is to come up with the most complicated and convoluted answers to simple problems.
A charming short and easy puzzler.
Tip o' the Top Hat, February 22, 2023The Great Meldellevo ends his magic show with an unforeseen and, honestly, quite gruesome finale. While he runs away memories of how his career began flash through his mind...
The magic show is a marvel of finetuned implementation. It is possible to rush through with a few well-chosen commands, following the game's nudges. Far more satisfying however is to savour the moment and give the audience a real show for their money. (And give yourself, PC ànd player, a healthy dose of adrenalin and smugness...)
The following flashback to "Meldevello"'s humble origin is a rather railroaded vignette. There is one all-important choice to make, which determines the protagonist fate. Whether this option is even available depends on certain actions during the magic show. Replaying once you understand what I am referring to would almost certainly heighten your appreciation of this game.
I found the pacing of The Act of Misdirection somewhat unevenly balanced.
Act I, the magic show, requires the player to explicitly give the right commands for the following step to the PC. While the game does nudge you forward, sometimes the nudges were not enough for me. Being stuck in this part, searching for the appropriate action, breaks the tempo and the thrill of the performance.
Quite the opposite is true of Act II. Here I wanted to loiter in places, taking my time to study my surroundings and especially to talk about all manner of topics. In this part though, the game seemed so eager to drag me along with the story that half a command was often enough to trigger the next scene.
Taken together, the occurences at the magic performance and the explanations in the flashback make for a fragmented, shiver-inducing short horror-tale. A story that takes a while for all the bits to fall into place.
Worth playing, and replaying at least once.
Forgetfulness in a black flower's honey., February 20, 2023Exile's Rose is set in the world of Fallen London. I have scarcely scratched the surface of this lore-filled setting, so there are bound to be many references that I couldn't place.
Without more intimate knowledge of the mother-setting, it's also impossible for me to discern which parts of lore and worldbuilding are present in Fallen London and which are the author's own creative additions.
To me though, it can confidently stand on its own.
>ABOUT
"This is a simple demonstration Fiction game."
This message raises some alarms. It could indicate a flawed and/or unfinished game. I'm very glad I played on, because there is a beautiful and complete story to be found.
However, it is clear that it is not truly finished. A lot of stuff mentioned in descriptions is not implemented, flashbacks are not as neatly separated from the main text as I would like (a slightly different font to emphasise the dreamy-reminiscence quality of the memories would do wonders for the feel...), the pacing is too loose.
Nevertheless, this is a wonderful and captivating read.
You find yourself on a dark underground quay. Docked before you is the Smuggler's schooner, deserted. Your lover's ship. Your lover, whom you cannot find.
You board the ship, the Kyparissos. Alone, free to explore the decks unaccompanied, searching for your lover. Or at least a trace of where he might have gone...
This is a puzzleless piece. A few hidden passages provide some pacing to the player's progress, but there are no real obstacles to solve.
Rather, in exploring the ship's depths, you unlock flashbacks that gradually reveal the fragmented backstory of the Smuggler and the protagonist.
Although the main character has been on the Kyparissos before, she was always either inebriated at parties or carefully blindfolded when her lover brought her to the lower levels.
Now is the first time she can wander around the lower decks with a sober mind and clear sight. Descending into the dark bowels of the ship and unveiling secret rooms is mirrored in the descent of the protagonist into her own emotions. She finds a clarity in looking at herself, her lover the Smuggler, and their relationship.
The writing is elaborate and very evocative. The newly discovered rooms, as seen for the first time through the eyes of the PC, are lovingly detailed. Coloured walls, little ornaments, nautical maps draw the player down with the protagonist in the game's atmosphere.
Oftentimes the reader will encounter an image perfectly encapsulated in a precisely tailored sentence:
>"A ballroom without revels is an eerie, dancer-haunted place."
That is not to say the penmanship is flawless. The prose teeters on the purple cord, and sometimes falls off into murky plum long-windedness.
Overall though, the writing serves well to submerge the player in the dark mysterious mood of the piece.
It's unfortunate that Exile's Rose was published in this not-quite-finished state. One more pass through the tester's mill, one more round of editing would have lifted this game to great heights.
A few simple pacing-mechanisms (not even true puzzles, just some locked doors where the search for the key forces the player to explore all the rooms before being able to unlock the next staircase down) would make the story flow that much more naturally.
A compelling journey down through the Smuggler's schooner, and through the protagonist's memories and emotions.
"Checkers old Chum!", February 18, 2023An invitation arrived. What a horrendous prospect! To spend the Christmas festivities in Penrose Hall, your exasperating Aunt Allison's domain...
Fortunately, upon arrival two glints of silver lining present themselves. Your old school chum Checkers is also present, and the lovely young lady Julia will be joining the family for the duration.
Less fortunately however, those silver linings soon conflict, as your chum and you find yourselves in a not-so-friendly cockfight over the attentions of the endearing young lady...
Deck the Halls, Gieves consists of four short vignettes, four scenes prsenting one obstacle each. The puzzles are easy but pleasantly askew. It may take some poking and prodding getting into the right frame of mind.
The true strength of the game lies in its splendid writing, a spot-on parody of 1920s upper class British English.
The author obviously delights in writing elaborate winding cutscenes, filled (but not overstuffed) with quaint turns-of-phrase and idiomatic expressions.
The delightful language permeates the descriptions of locations, characters and actions. The tone of the piece is beautifully supported by having this use of words and expressions extend even to the reports of failed actions.
An interesting player-PC-narrator dynamic flows throughout the game. The main character, commonly filling the role of PC, is also, especially perhaps, the narrator of his exploits in Penrose Hall. This leaves the player, who habitually gives orders to the PC, more in the role of an interested listener. Her commands in this game are reframed as suggestions, nudges to urge the main character to continue the story. Here too, the customised in-character responses to failed commands do a lot of heavy lifting to maintain the illusion of the player being told a tall tale by the main protagonist.
Deck the Halls, Gieves is an acutely humorous work. It does not rely on a barrage of jokes and puns to attain this mood. Rather, bit by bit it calls forth a rising tide of ridiculousness and awkwardness, piling silly situations one atop the other until the player can't help but snigger and giggle. I for one had trouble relaxing my smiling muscles by the time the game was finished.
Very well-written Wodehousean comedy.
Escape-bunker, February 16, 2023A word to the wise: when you’ve been holed up in a security bunker for months, it’s not the best idea to read the “Survivor’s Guide” that came with the purchase of your bunker. Apparently it goes on and on about adopting a new routine and focusing on your breathing and nutrition, to settle into life on 50m² of habitable (under)ground.
It’s like listening to the idiot on stable ground yelling at you not to look down while you’re in the middle of the tight-rope above the 400ft ravine. It can make you a bit nervous.
Except…
In Retour vers l’extérieur, changing the PC’s mood is a prerequisite for progress. As the player, you need to rile up your character, stoke the fire and re-awaken the lust for life on the outside.
For a game that attempts to put the player squarely in the PC’s shoes, I found there were some severe gaps in the experience. You have to search the bunker and the database of the computer for passwords and secret compartments. But the PC themselves installed those security measures, only a few months before.
Presumably, at the point in time where the game begins, the PC has already entered a state of such apathy and mental detachment that adventure-related amnesia has set in. But that is me as the player trying to fill in the gaps…
Ignoring this, the game has a seriously claustrophobic escape-room vibe going on. The writing is clear and descriptive, the puzzles are well-balanced. I found the pacing through the different stages of the PC’s mindset very effective.
The UI is well-designed, a natural addition to the themes in the text. It smoothly draws the player into the game-world without distracting you with too many bells and whistles. The bells and whistles there are (background noises, a customisable musical theme you can find in the database, a few pictures in the appropriate places,...) are nicely integrated and add a great deal to the atmosphere.
A good game. I enjoyed working out the mechanics and the passwords of the bunker. I did not feel emotionally connected to my character, but the overall atmosphere made up for that.
Ghostly eavesdropping, February 13, 2023This is interesting. A sort of slice-of-life with a ghost protagonist. It has a simple but versatile game mechanic: subtly manipulating other people’s minds.
On the evening after his own funeral, Victor appears as a ghost to his best friend Guillaume… who asks him to be a sort of invisible go-between to find out more about a girl he likes, Marie. (Because, well, that’s the sort of thing you ask your best friend to do, right? Even if he’s just come back from the dead…)
Unnoticed, Victor can listen in on the conversations between different groups of friends at the remembrance party. He can intervene by inhibiting or reinforcing them spiritually to speak their true mind (or not), and steer the conversation somewhat in the hopes of getting more info on the love life of Marie.
In doing so, the group dynamics could get shaken up a bit…
Very relatable stories of a group of teenage/young adult friends and their relationships, their worries and interests.
Way too much clicking (or pressing spacebar) involved. to. advance. to. each. new. sentence though.
The grinning one-eyed man invites you to sit at his table..., February 13, 2023A traveller arrives in “Les Idylles”, the most splendid city in the realm, intending to spend the night in an inn and find passage on a ship out of port the next morning. Instead, he gets caught up in a mysterious affair, at the centre of which is a magical harp…
I imagined the protagonist of La Harpe de Dieu-Rouge as a young man,although this is not specified in the text. He reminded me of so many young men in romantic adventure novels leaving behind their dreary lives and running away to sea.
Following an unfortunate encounter on the night of his arrival, our main character finds himself imprisoned. Even after escaping, he remains trapped in an expanding web of riddles and secrets. The more he explores, the more new avenues of exploration open up, seemingly without bringing him closer to any answers.
A gift from a character he meets early on grants him the power to return to the same place and time whenever he finds himself in enough trouble to put a stop to his investigations (our PC has a habit of walking into the arms of some prejudiced guards…)
In effect, the player guides the protagonist through a time-loop where memories are preserved, but the daily routines of the city around him start anew from the same point.
Although the game takes place in a rather small number of spatial locations, these can be visited at different moments during the day, making the number of combinations of location and time-of-day that can/must be explored quite large indeed.
Since progressing through the plot requires being in the right place at the right time, I would have liked the option to simply wait around for a while, perhaps taking a nap on the rim of the fountain in the Place Luna. As it is now, you are sometimes (especially nearing the end of the story) obliged to revisit a location you already know simply to pass the time.
There are a number of loose ends. Some of these work well as part of the mystery, giving a sense of circumstances outside the protagonist's reach, or simply the city's inhabitants having their own preoccupations that don't concern our main character.
Others feel like unfinished features that may play a role in an expanded version of the game. In particular, you can pick up a number of items near the start of the game that are never mentioned or used again.
There is also the looming presence of the castle of the founding nobleman of the city. It is very tempting to try and find a path to its gates, but unfortunately the game never acknowledges the possibility of going there. The Chateau with its Mage's Tower remains looming in the background, forever inaccesible.
Apart from the central mystery to be solved before the protagonist is free to continue on his way, there are many glimpses into the history of the city and into the backstories of various intruiging characters. These, combined with the vivid descriptions of the city streets, the buildings and squares, and the surrounding landscape, give the impression of a wide-open living world much larger than any character could explore in a single game (or lifetime, for that matter…)
A captivating mystery-adventure, well-written and ingeniously structured. A joy to explore.
...in other news: Horse climbs ladder..., February 13, 2023With the snooping detective work at the start and the hyperactive battles later on, I felt as if I somehow ended up in a Pink Panther/Powerpuff Girls hybrid. The musical introductions to each chapter greatly enhanced this feeling.
Great tempo, fast action. Funny side characters (Sir Ponyheart: “Swift Justice!”)
And I always knew those llamas were up to no good, with their spitting and their deceptively lazy eyes…
The game does a whole lot of stuff on its own, often responding to a simple command with an entire sequence of actions. I like my parsers a bit more fine-grained.
While Anastasia is obviously super in every imaginable way (imagine a pony picking up a coconut!), in a game this short it wouldn’t have hurt to have the possibility of losing. Let the super pony take a beatdown, it’s an opportunity for a funny failure scene.
Fast, straightforward and funny. A quick pick-me-up. I liked it.
Expanding the story towards the end of the universe, February 11, 2023Oh but this is clever! Deux pages avant la fin du monde employs a very original mode of interaction with the text to progress through the story.
The story itself is simple, almost childish: A grand, universe-spanning civilisation has put a plan in place to survive even the death of the universe itself.
You (an unnamed academic on the supernatural) come across this story in a folder which has only two pages of writing in it, accompanied by a letter from a friend and colleague saying that they have found this in the old archives of the library.
Upon perusing the text, you find you can manipulate certain sentences of the text, thereby expanding (or contracting) it, revealing different meanings and more chapters. Those seem to contain riddles and problems which you must solve in order to bring the story in the text to a universe-saving conclusion.
All very mysterious. I found the way Deux pages… expects you to directly, almost physically alter the words and intervene in the text to get the manuscript to reveal its secrets very satisfying. The only thing I would like to see different is the font of the main text. Something that fits the “old ancient alien lore”-theme a bit better.
Very intruiging. Very much fun to solve.
Solved by ... intuition ..., February 10, 2023This has got to be one of the zaniest IF-games I’ve seen yet. And I’ve played Sir Ramic Hobbs and the High Level Gorilla!
A weird robotic-looking character solves mysteries by the cunning use of his superior … intuition !
Too bad this time he actually has to prove his hunch.
This is where you come in. During a few encounters with some off-the-hooks NPCs, including the main suspect (you know, the one your … intuition … snagged right away), you have a variety of chances for conversational choices. Really absurd ones, in some cases.
The end consists of a scene where you confront the culprit with the proof you gathered. Depending on which topics you raised in the conversations, you may have enough of the right evidence to close the case.
There is not much deducing or sleuthing possible in one playthrough. It’s mostly a shoot-and-hope affair. The only opportunity for real deduction I saw happens out-of-game, where the player can keep track of which combination of clicks leads to which result.
The drawings add to the silly atmosphere, and the music keeps your brain hyped. (A bit too much. I turned it off after a few minutes.)
The focus of the game is clearly the nonsensical humour rather than any serious investigation. And it succeeds. It’s short enough to avoid a complete silliness overdose, and there are a few moments of jaw-dropping absurdity swooping down out of nowhere.
Fun.
Informatics archaeology., February 9, 2023Sometime in the 4th millenium, you uncover an ancient computer. Buried in its databases, underneath layers of password-protection, is the account of a chilling juridical/moral experiment.
DOL-OS falls into the genre of games where you investigate and hack your way into the deeper security-layers of a computer-system. It does this in a very engaging way, with a creative take on the genre.
First off, the user interface is extremely well-polished. The program boots up slowly (but not annoyingly so), there are loading bars, the colour scheme suggests a retro-futuristic aesthetic. Some files are corrupted, the letters shifting and blinking ever so slightly to make the text harder to read, thus adding to the sense of investigation and decryption.
The immersiveness of the UI coerces the player to let herself be cast as the PC in the encompassing narrative. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Babel, where you roam a scientific base to uncover the intruiging backstory. DOL-OS has a similar narrative end-goal, but it eliminates the intermediary player character and incorporates the player directly into the narrative.
Of course, regardless of the aesthetics of the UI, the most important thing is the substance of the story being unraveled underneath.
The general story of DOL-OS is not that original. It takes well-known SF tropes as its basic elements. It does however take an intersting and original viewpoint toward the usual conventions of this type of story.
Rather than explicitly point out the adverse effects on humanity of the experiment, this game lets the player draw her own conclusions. Instead, DOL-OS heavily focuses on the personal impact of being part of such a scientific endeavour. Through journals and expert reports, the personality and history of the characters are uncovered piecemeal.
One character in particular, Théophile, shines through as the tragic protagonist in this slowly emerging drama. The player gets tantalizing glimpses of his life-history, his relation to his family, his weaknesses…
Progress through the game is gated through a number of password-protected transitions deeper into the database. Especially the first puzzle is brilliant. It takes careful attention to detail and an associative leap across several documents to construct the first password from the scattered clues.
After that, the gateways are less strongly protected, serving primarily as pacing mechanisms.
DOL-OS succeeds admirably in casting the player as a technological/archeological investigator from the far future. It conjures up a world of morally ambiguous advances and of potentially chilling consequences that seem to lie perhaps only the metaphorical five minutes into the future from our present point of view.
Engaging, thought-provoking, tense,… A very strong piece of IF.
A fascinating half-familiar non-existent world., February 9, 2023(This is an expanded version of my thoughts on Les Saisons de Pippa as I wrote them on the intfiction.org Forum. Especially the last part has been heavily rewritten to transform my initial dissappointed rant about Pippa being an incomplete work into some more constructive and, hopefully, helpful suggestions. This last part is only based on my playthrough of the version entered in the Concours FI Francophone 2023.)
Magical. Truly enchanting.
Les Saisons de Pippa gives the reader a glimpse of the history, culture and mythology of a detailed imagined world through the lens of the everyday life of a resourceful little girl.
This piece is an impressive feat of worldbuilding. A mysterious setting with lore, mythology, flora and fauna. You get to discover this world through the curious, innocent eyes and questions of Pippa, the adventurous 5-year-old protagonist.
Ask questions, listen to grown-up conversations, explore on your own. There are three main stories set in three different seasons. Each allows for a number of choices and side-explorations in this engaging, familiar-yet-mysterious world.
A truly well built world made even more real by the magnificent drawings.
There are a number of aesthetic flaws that could easily be polished out. The buttons for returning to a previous page are labeled "Back" or "Return", in English. Similarly, the "Inventaire" displayed at the top of the screen show empty pockets for objects as "undefined". These small shifts of language break the flow of the intended French-language narrative and pull the reader ever so slightly out of the immersive world..
In the three main stories, the author paints a detailed picture of the life of a tribe inhabiting the sides of gigantic walls, overgrown with lush vegetation, riddled through with dark tunnels, atop of which eternal channels flow.
The reader gets to experience glimpses of the daily life and customs of a layered hiërarchical society. There are references to enemy tribes, to the religious teachings of wandering druids, and to the culinary preferences of the people.
(In relation to those culinary preferences, the animal life seems to consist mostly of insect-like beasts of all shapes and sizes. Imagine a pig with a chitinous exoskeleton roasting on a spit...with an apple in its mouth...)
The end-screen contains a list of numerous topics of investigation that have yet to be elaborated upon in later episodes of this project. Even these shorter incomplete observations on aspects of Pippa's world serve to further paint the colourful and detailed setting.
*
*
EDIT: The author has put out a new version which adresses a number of issues quite elegantly. The following paragraphs do not apply to the current version.
At the end of the story, the reader is presented with some paragraphs of text where the author explains that the history of Pippa's world is an ongoing project. There will be new additions, either in the form of expanded version of this particular game or as brand new installments building upon the groundwork laid in this first one. There follows a list of topics that the author still wants to incorporate and write more at length about.
This text steps out of the story and has the author directly adressing the reader. As such, I found it to be a disappointing end-note for such an engaging and ambitious work.
I think this could be resolved quite elegantly if the author were to maintain the pretense that this is a "real" ongoing archeological/historical effort. The short summaries of topics still to be written could be explained as incomplete records, too fragmented to dedicate an entire work to. The author/archeologist could announce that with further research uncovering more details, these topics will be adressed in following additions to the work.
This way, instead of an admission that Les Saisons de Pippa is an incomplete piece, the incomplete topics could fit into the illusion of a fictional archeological effort, consistent with an in-game framing story which presents the author as a researcher of Pippa's society.
*
*
I enjoyed the adventures of Pippa immensely, and I would like to thank the author for letting me float in this imaginary world for hours.
A magnificent piece of worldbuilding coupled with a truly compelling account of the adventures of a charming child-protagonist.
A twisted war story, February 6, 2023A whack in the gut. This is a hard story. Brutal even.
A soldier is broken. He succumbs to his obsession. Treason means nothing to him anymore. He must obtain what he needs.
Four short linear chapters are all it takes to leave the reader gasping for air, as if his lungs were ripped by the PC’s bayonette.
Very powerful writing, pulsing drive, evocative sparse descriptions, haunting imagery and theme.
Traversing the game is a very linear affair. The only physical direction is northward and up, up that hill that the war command has designated as a strategic target, and thus worthy of throwing men's lives at. This is mirrored in the focused single-mindedness of the PC, who has only his obsessive goal in mind amidst the mayhem and death around him.
There are opportunities to examine the surroundings. Doing so provides nothing to hold on to, just the bleak battlefield with its corpses and artillery holes. And the men running with you, northward, up that distant hill.
At a few resting points in the game, you can converse with your comrades and commandant. These short menu-based conversations go a long way in building the characters of PC and NPCs alike, and they provide glimpses of backstory in precious few lines.
Since there is not much of anything the player can do to stop the relentless pace of the game (or the assault on the hill), the interactive element comes almost exclusively from the experience of complicity with the PC's actions. The player feels strongly responsible for the actions undertaken by the protagonist.
This is the most impressive feat of Entre les lignes de feu: the power with which it grounds the player in the situation, how it draws the player ruthlessly down and deeper into the protagonist's obsession.
Very strong piece.
♪ ♫ Bandiera Rossa... ♫ ♪, January 30, 20231958 Dancing with Fear is a very cinematic IF experience.
We are dropped in medias res in the head of Palomé, a woman we know next to nothing about at the beginning, but who clearly has an intruiging history.
As play begins, she is persuaded by an accomplice to accompany him into the Grand Mansion they are conveniently standing right in front of. He wants Palomé to strengthen his disguise (infiltrating a ballroom party is less conspicuous with a beautiful woman on your arm...), and he also needs her to be ready to create a distraction should that be necessary.
This wasn't part of the plan, but reluctantly (and slightly excited by the prospect) Palomé agrees. Within minutes after entering the mansion, the plan goes south, the accomplice is discovered and the success of the mission falls upon Palomé's shoulders.
You (the player) help Palomé by investigating the surroundings and talking to the guests at the party, some of whom are familiar from her past. This brings memories to Palomé's mind, gradually uncovering her eventful backstory while at the same time providing clues for handling obstacles.
While the main story and the mansion it takes place in are small, the use of flashbacks adds a lot of content and substance to the game. You get to know your main character better and better, causing you to align your game-objectives with her in-story motivations.
The flashbacks and the various obstacles in the mansion play out as short scenes in a movie. This gives the game a strong forward drive, pulling the player along with Palomé's discoveries and her memories.
It also means the game is very much on rails.
The author gives the player some leeway. Examining everything closely is encouraged. Even unimportant details will give a small insight into the personages' lives and the social/political climate of the time period.
However, any actions other than X run the danger of going "off script", leading to a swift discovery and a failed mission. These losing endings are just as engagingly written as the main line of the story.
To strengthen the immersion in the time-period, it's very much worth the time to just LISTEN (or WAIT) multiple times in the ballroom. The author has gone through the effort of providing a very large variety of background murmuring and gossiping for the guests. An effort that adds immensely to the atmosphere.
When you pay attention to the clues in Palomé's backstory, the puzzles shouldn't be too difficult. Sometimes the order in which to tackle one or the other obstacle is a bit unclear, as some of the clues seem to be applicable to more than one situation. This shouldn't pose too much of a problem though, and if you should go too far off script, there's always RESTORE (or multiple UNDOs) to get you back on cue.
Dancing with Fear is engagingly and enthusiastically written. The subject matter is quite a bit heavier than magical kleptomania, but it is handled in a balanced manner. Heartwarming notes, action sequences, and personal revelations are spread throughout the game which, mingled with the socio-political background motivations, make for an equally entertaining as though-provoking IF-piece.
Unfortunately, there is a noticeable amount of typos and language errors in the text. Not enough to ruin the pleasure, but they are distracting and immersion-breaking.
At the end of the game, the player has several choices (six, to be exact, of which I found three). They make it possible to insert your own views on the matter at hand (which I've kept deliberately vague in this review...), and choose an ending according to your personal preferences.
A great spy-infiltration thriller with deep background. Heartily recommended.
Jump Forward..Fall Back., January 18, 2023The train got you to New York right on time as scheduled... Which means you now have an entire afternoon's worth of time to kill before your friends get off work. Seeing as you're now a bit of a stranded tourist, why not make the most of it?
Lady Liberty seems like a good place to start. After poking around a bit (as adventurous tourists are wont to do) and standing in line for way too long, lo and behold, you find a portal to the past!
Lost New York is a time traveling sightseeing game. There is no pressing urgency, no impending city-threatening catastrophe. The essence of the game really is wandering around through New York in different eras of its construction.
That doesn't mean there are no puzzles. Oh my, but there are puzzles. Many depend on carefully remembering buildings or NPCs from different time zones and traveling back and forth with the necessary items. The majority are well integrated and quite intuitive for the helpful and inquisitive tourist PC you are guiding along, but there is no larger motivation to solve them. Indeed, from outside the game the puzzles mostly seem put there to force you to explore thoroughly and see as much as possible of the city the author has recreated in the game.
For the best experience, it is not recommended to focus too much on solving the obstacles as quickly and efficiently as possible. Instead, hang around, spend some time in interesting places. Well written and fascinating scenes are bound to unfold. This does mean that you will probably die on multiple occasions, or end up an adventure zombie at the least. Make sure to have a few save files at the ready. (Dying or quitting prematurely compares you to a New York mayor. The accounts of their accomplishments and fraudulence are worth dying for.)
The exploration of the history of New York is where the heart of Lost New York lies. A few smaller areas are mostly there for variety and mixing up the puzzle-solutions. The meat of the game is in traversing and comparing the two big maps/years: 1880 and 1905.
The sideways encounters with some historical NPCs made me curious enough to do some research into the lives of Emma Goldman and Robert Moses among others.
The most impressive character in the game however is the city of New York itself. The author has lovingly recreated a miniature Big Apple with lots of famous and infamous locations. The traffic and hassle on the streets, the descriptions of buildings and parks, the shops and saloons,... They all call forward a city bustling with life and productivity.
The differences between time zones add to the impression of life and growth. A construction site here, a half-finished bridge there, the transition from above-ground railways to subway tunnels,... All paint a vivid picture of a city in flux, constantly on the move, hurrying toward the future.
While there is no suspense involved in your sightseeing trip through the past, there is much excitement to be found in the exuberant and detailed descriptions of New York. Even the parser gets in on the action by replying to a failed command in a typical brusque NY manner (>GET PAINTING "Get real!")
The love and fascination of the author for the city of New York shines through in every paragraph, even when describing the more shadowy sides of its history and geography.
A beautiful, entertaining, captivating historical tour.
A Druid's Path, January 10, 2023An aspiring Druid nearing the end of your apprenticeship, you stand before a final daunting task. You must imbibe the dream-potion and leave this world to go on a Spirit Trek.
In the Dream World lies your Druid Way, and you cannot return until you have found it.
An original premise for a text-adventure, a framing story I found very attractive.
The setting of the Dream World helps to defuse some common sources of disbelief. Various improbable, even physics-defying things can happen here, and it's not that weird to find a desert three steps from a glacial mountain flank.
On the other hand, although the setting unites vastly different ecologies in one world, the map in general retains a very natural feel. The easy way, especially in an oldschool adventure with 23 rooms only connected by cardinal directions, would have been a geometric grid.
Instead, the author has left out many room connections and skewed the map in a slightly asymmetric form. This gives it an organic feel, a shape almost like a bush or shrub. The more I mapped the game, the more this form became apparent. It's subtle, but it certainly added to my appreciation of the game.
Rite of the Druid was developed to be compatible with oldschool limited-memory platforms. A lot of scenery is unimplemented, and a lot of commands are met with "You can't do that." This is to be expected and didn't bother me much. However, the limited memory comes with more grating issues.
When the player enters a command that would be useful in another room or situation, even a very general "Not now"-response would be a helpful nudge. Instead, it's impossible to differentiate between a failed command and a near-miss.
Sometimes finding the right verb to appease the two-word parser is a pain, but it comes with the territory. However, when I suddenly found, after fishing up and juggling every seemingly plausible two-word combination to form an intelligible command, that in certain situations the parser does accept a compound phrasing... Let's just say that an unspecified amount of hair previously on my head is no longer there...
Apart from these issues I had with Mr Parser, the puzzles are delightful. There is a nice flow to the sequence leading the player from one solution to the next object to the next puzzle. Many solutions require that undefinable little snuff of moon-logic that makes for a nice "Aha!" once you find it.
When booting up Rite of the Druid, the first thing that catches the eye is the superb pixel art. Truly beautiful. But this is a text game.
I am very happy that the sparse descriptions do not fall behind. Whereas he pictures are luscious and vibrant, the sparse, stark white-on-black text pinpoints the salient details and carries the magical mood in well-chosen sentences.
I liked this a lot.
Spizz., January 8, 2023You love your big brother Anton very much. Wouldn't know where you'd be, how you'd survive without him. That said, Anton's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. Closer to a spoon, to be honest.
Just now, he turned away from the handleless rooftop door that he was supposed to hold open while you were working. It clicked shut, leaving the two of you stranded on top of the building with no way to get down again.
I booted up this game without reading a blurb or a review beforehand. From the intro, I gathered that Toph (the PC) and Anton were a pair of chimneysweeping brothers, or maybe smalltime burglars with a hide-out on the roof. Until I reached the end of the starting room description and it turned out we were gathering spider silk. Or "spizz" as Anton calls it, however nastily suggestive that may sound...
This is just the first of many small and subtle but very intruiging bits of worldbuilding you'll find while searching the abandoned rooftop for a way down. They come together very effectively to paint a fragmented yet evocative post-apocalyptic picture of the near future, one that I would love to explore in a bigger game.
Roofed is a very small game, six locations in total and maybe 45 minutes of (slow and attentive) playing time. It feels like a small slice-of-life in the daily goings-on of the two brothers, and it makes me very curious about how they spend the rest of their time. There are hints about a rivalling gang, about their boss who buys the spider silk, about the completely organic architecture in the newer parts of town, and of course about the spiders who left their threads to be harvested...
The puzzles are simple but clever. Even though there are very little resources to be found on the rooftop and the objective seems straightforward, it takes a decent amount of experimenting and getting to know the surroundings to successfully find an escape. Of course your trusted big brother is there to spring to your muscular help should you require it...
The relationship between the brothers is endearing and lifelike. Each stands by the other's side and helps out with the skills nature has given him, be it brains or brawn. Helping them escape their predicament and seeing them walk off toward new adventures, little Toph atop Anton's broad shoulders made me smile.
Good game.
A hatch? How quaint., January 7, 2023Magnificent!
Terrible!
Fabulous!
Abysmal!
It's a real pity that there aren't any good superlatives to descrive something that is really good at being plain good.
Old Jim's Convenience Store (see, the plainness begins with the title already...) assumes nothing, seeks no higher glory, has no ambitions I could discern apart from providing an pleasant semi-adventurous hour or so. It does so by means of an easy but rewarding treasure hunt in an underground tunnel/cave.
You see? It's the exemplification of adventure tropes. It's a cliché boiled down, condensed to its purest essence. Except that it's set in a convenience store instead of a spooky manor.
I had a lot of fun playing through this. There is comfort in re-exploring well known ground. There is pleasure in seeing the familiar treated with loving craft.
I'll settle for "Brilliantly Average!"
Plastic Castle in my Bowl, January 6, 2023Someone over at Magnetic Scrolls must have though "Hey, if we can get the players on board with the most ridiculous premise right at the start of our new game, we can do pretty much everything we want to them once they're along for the ride."
So they did.
It's only through the mastery of text adventures that Magnetic Scrolls has that this doesn't dive off the deep end into utter baffling zaniness. Even then, Fish! cuts it really close.
Two things hold it together:
--The skill of balancing puzzles on the brink of logic. Oftentimes, I found myself doing stuff because that's what you do in an adventure. Only afterwards did the results fall into place and did things make sense. I blamed this on lack of clueing or lazy storytelling at first. I have to admit that at least part of the gaps were caused by my frequent use of the walkthrough. When played on its own terms, Fish! sends you back to your fishbowl upon failure (or just plain kills you later in the game). This means that before you solve a given chapter, you will experience it many times in different sequences.
Even then though, some of the jumps, hoops and timeloops the game expected me to not only find but also exploit in the right order were a bit too much of the try-die-repeat variety. ((Spoiler - click to show)How on earth one is to know when to go to the disco?)
At its best however, Fish! offers some long-term puzzles where it is a great pleasure to see the vague goal you saw from afar finally come into focus and click.
-- The skill of letting the story cover any holes. A mystery story with dimension hopping fish is bound to have lots of loose threads. Those are features, not bugs! Now, I don't want to accuse Magnetic Scrolls of doing this on purpose... much. Fish! is an immersive action-mystery. The dimensional loops give it a thought-provoking SF feel. The writers throw in their best goofball-comedy talents. It's really a very entertaining ride.
If a few clues and some plotlines got obfuscated for the sake of fun, oh well...
The PC in Fish! is sent to different areas by means of warps. Each area does not just contain a puzzle, it is a puzzle. You need to find the sequence to get to the proper ending, otherwise you are sent back, killed off, or zombified. Especially after the first three preparatory levels, thing get serious. There are explicit and implicit timers (you were told that you have a meeting at ten, but (Spoiler - click to show)no one said when and why they stopped selling plankton sachets in the restaurant...).
I found this incredibly difficult without the walkthrough, but, as I said, relying on the walkthrough too much will make you miss a lot of the story.
And actually, aside from all the frustration this game will surely cause you, the mystery-goofball-SF story is a big laugh I wouldn't want to have missed.
A rose for a star., December 3, 2022A 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.
Grashoppers, robins and squirrels, oh my!, November 25, 2022While flying through the air, your nose already preparing to courteously greet the gravel waiting to catch it, you ponder the manners of the butler who just threw you off the porch. Surely he overreacted just a tad...
Since a simple knock results in a rather unpleasant scraping of your face on a less than welcoming road of little rocks, and from the looks of that butler (and the fact he effortlessly hurled you several meters far), you decide that sneakiness and subterfuge might be a better tactic for delivering this package.
Instead of a Dungeon Crawl (although we are briefly entertained in one of those later in the game...), Recluse is an Estate Romp. Its basic structure remains the same though: a big ol' puzzlefest. In the best tradition of the genre, there isn't really a plot or story to speak of. Instead, the author finds other ways to engage the player.
--A good introduction goes a long way. It sets the mood and puts a question, a magnetic objective if you will, in the player's head. Even if the game itself doesn't tell much of a story, the intro resonates throughout the playthrough and pulls the player along. In Recluse, the adressee of the package you must deliver is a once-famous homo universalis.
> "J. Daggett Winton, archeologist, explorer, inventor, mathematician, philosopher. Director, Winton Antiquities Research Foundation. Chairman of the Board, Winton International. Holder of thirty-seven patents in fields as diverse as Genetics and Game Theory. Rumored to have the largest privately-held collection of historical artifacts in the world."
Since the untimely death of his wife however, he has locked himself away and became the titular "Recluse".
This character made me think of Howard Hughes, and especially of Leonardo Dicaprio's over-the-top portrayal of him in The Aviator. The prospect of meeting such a character at the end of my travails worked as precisely such a narrative magnet as I have described.
--The game exploits brilliantly the major strength of parser IF: leading the player on a tour of exploration and discovery. Recluse boasts an immensely gratifying map. The biggest part of the game-world is a grand manorly estate, with lots of varied environments. Its central fountain and gravel paths give way to wilder and more unkempt stretches of brush and rough clifftops. There are carefully locked off areas, some of which come as a surprise when finally unlocked, others enticingly visible from a high vantage point without obvious means to get to them...
--Modern IF heavily emphasizes the integration of puzzles into the story. This isn't quite possible for a puzzlefest that sports, at most, the flimsiest of framing stories. In Recluse, the puzzles are integrated with the surroundings. They flow organically from the environment. All the puzzle elements and the obstacles are naturally present in, even expected on a lordly manor estate. The one puzzle that could be viewed as overly convoluted is justified by the personality of the owner of the estate, J. Dagget Winton the recluse... Interestingly, this most complicated of puzzles yields an anticlimactically mundane reward. This sort of thing happens regularly in this game.
--The writing joyfully (perhaps even childishly) plays with lots of IF tropes, twisting them upside down and (sometimes) setting them back right side up for an extra twist.
The narrative voice in Recluse is the most powerful immersive element in the game in my experience. Not a true character in itself, it does act as a mediator between the player and the game. First and foremost, it does its job admirably: It clearly describes the locations, the protagonist's actions within them and the consequences of those actions. On top of that, it paints an elaborate and detailed picture of the surroundings and it evokes a sense of space by recounting the travels of the protagonist.
>NORTH
"You soon realize you're in for a bit of a hike. The path passes to the east of a large greenhouse, then bends northeast toward the cliffs overlooking the ocean. The ground turns rocky and starts sloping downward. Before long you're winding down stairs cut into the face of the cliff."
I love this. It opens up the map and lets me walk alongside the protagonist with the wind in my hair. The view from the cliffs, once you get there, broadens your sense of wide-open space even more.
But these things are not so special... Other games have them too...
What made the narrative voice stand out most were the many asides, serious and playful alike. Like a storyteller around the campfire stepping outside of the story and adressing the audience, pointing out a funny detail or drawing the attention to an important feature. Most of the time this happens in a gentle, almost confidential tone. The one time it nears the border with intrusiveness, it does so to great comedic effect.
--When the outdoors adventuring options on the estate grounds are at long last exhausted, the player enters a high stakes endgame. The reward for getting through is a delightfully lengthy epilogue which finally explains the backstory of J. Dagget Winton. It also provides an obvious opening for a sequel.
Alas! Recluse was written 14 years ago, which makes the chances of ever joining our protagonist on a next adventure seem slim. Perhaps, if it is not too forward, I could urge the author, Stephen Gorrell, to follow the example of Michael J. Coyne, who wrote Illuminizmo Iniziato 15 years after its predecessor Risorgimento Represso.
--A wonderful parser puzzler. Beautiful game-world and a friendly, welcoming narrator. Strongly recommended.
A postcard from Zarf's insides., November 18, 2022Quick recap: the protagonist of the movie/game finds a magic door that leads into John Malkovich'/Andrew Plotkin's mind. Shenanigans ensue.
For the most part, the game follows the plot of the movie quite closely. The biggest alterations are jokes and references to IF in general and Zarf's games in particular. Since I wasn't around in the era of sizzling and bubbling creativity on the intfiction newsgroups in the 90s, a lot of the references went over my head. I'm also not intimately familiar enough with Andrew Plotkin's work to recognize all the jokes and shout-outs.
However, having roamed the internet for IF-history sources, a lot of the game did ring a funny bell.
For a text-adventure about a PC who's a hobbyist text-adventure writer entering the mind of one of the most renowned text-adventure writers of the era, there's actually precious little actual text-adventuring to do.
Most of the game pushes you along the rails laid out by the movie, with frequent conversations where you can choose to say a silly thing or an even sillier thing. Only in the very last sequence before the epilogue does a puzzle show up. And it's a rather mediocre one at that. (One could call it a callback to the classic puzzles, if one were generously inclined...)
The writing and tempo are great though. Exciting scenes zip by at rollercoaster speed, the descriptions are detailed and evocative, the conversations are very funny indeed.
I enjoyed the ride.
Naughty Spaceboy, November 15, 2022You should think your parents would be proud of your advancements in rocket science and pyrotechnics, what with all the effort you put into your experiments. Ok, a tad more forethought might have left the now-wrecked shed in the backyard standing, but still...
But no! They decided to send you on a punishment mining mission to teach you some responsibility...
For all the whimsical slapstick style of the introduction, Grounded in Space quickly turns into a more serious space-faring mission. En route to the family asteroid mining claim, the game allows you ample time to familiarize yourself with the ship's functions. And you'll need it.
After a first mining puzzle where you figure out the (well clued) sequence of commands needed to operate the ship's heavy equipment, the story twists around and turns into a rescue mission. There are multiple possible endings, all more or less intuitive once you use your imagination and think about what a young bright lad on a massive mining spaceship has at hand.
The development of the story through its escalating levels of engagement works nicely. The narrative timing draws the player in while increasing the tension, but still leaves enough room for experimenting, exploring the ship's interior and its equipment.
There is one geometric/logic puzzle that completely baffled me. The game attempts to aid you in visualizing it with a rudimentary grid and detailed description, but without actually seeing the results of my interventions I could not get a grip on it. (There's a walkthrough by the author on the IFDB site.)
The endings were perhaps a bit predictable, but the satisfaction of finding that last move to save the day (at least partly, with more or less collateral damage depending on your chosen tactic) more than makes up for this.
A great SF game with good narrative development.
Belphegor didn't want to play., November 8, 2022Blegh! You came so close last time! So close, but then Satan caught you escaping and threw you back. Stuffed in the body of a lowly counting clerk no less! Fortunately, you feel your powers of possession growing...
You are Zgarblurg (how's that for a malevolent-sounding name...), a demon spirit intent on escaping from Hell. To accomplish this, you must use your power to possess other entities.Fortunately, this particular version of Hell houses just the right creatures whose powers might aid you with your cunning plan (which you will make up as you go along...)
This Hell is a peculiar place, consisting of several regions. You start off in Accounting, move on to a large section loosely inspired by Dante's Inferno and Greek mythology (remember that one time where Orpheus got tangled up in brocolli stalks...), and confront the Princes of Darkness in their palace (which kinda made me think of a college frat house...)
The map is large but not sprawling. It's completely geometric (rectangular) in shape. Many areas are cleverly gated off so your exploration will require some inventive puzzle-solving skills.
I should mention here that the game was developed in a custom engine of the author's own making that closely resembles Gruescript and Versificator, as it is important for the following discussion of puzzles, pacing and map-traversal. These game engines present you with fine-grain options for which actions to take, along with accessible compass directions,resulting in a very parser-like gameplay experience. The available actions have been pre-selected by the author depending on the creature you are possessing and the location you're in.
The game provides an adaptive map grid that grows with the locations you've discovered. Along with the buttons for compass directions, you can click on any location on the map repeatedly to move your player to that square turn by turn. At first this felt like a great feature for player comfort. However, since almost all puzzles depend on bringing the right creature to the appropriate puzzle-location, the map-clicking feature soon felt very mechanical and gnawed away at my engagement. I quickly reverted to clicking the compass buttons as they gave me more of a sense of active navigation. Still, there's a lot of going back-and-forth across the map to switch creatures and positioning them, even if you have a clear objective in mind. When you're stuck and aimlessly wandering, the clicking interface pushed me out of the immersion faster than typing in directions in a parser would have done. (But this is probably just me bringing my parser-bias into a click game.)
The puzzles are fair once you get to know your creature's abilities. Some are decidedly elegant, providing a flash of insight or the satisfaction of a well-prepared plan working out just as you imagined. A nice variety too, with turn/timed sequences, unlocking gates with a twist, some surprising uses of objects. A few obstacles require a bit of background knowledge of Hades or the Inferno, but nothing that a bit of determined trial-and-error couldn't take care of.
There was only one puzzle that has me stumped even after I asked for hints:
-(Spoiler - click to show)The sacrifices to the Moirae. The fact that they want food offerings is well-clued. The colour-coding I understand. But how to deduce the order in which to give Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos their snacks completely eludes me even now.
Although I do think the puzzles are fair, many of them felt ever so slightly underclued. This is another instance where I missed the freedom of the parser to poke around, hoping that fail-responses to PULL, MOVE, LICK or KICK would nudge me in the right direction. (Spoiler - click to show)For example, a simple DRINK WATER on the banks of the Lethe or even SWIM IN LETHE would eliminate any need for background mythological knowledge. (Again, probably just me and my parser sensibilities.)
Once you have penetrated the Palace of the Dark Princes after a fair amount of puzzling, the pace picks up as you confront each of the six Devils (originally seven, but Belphegor couldn't be bothered...). It'sa lot of fun to figure ut their respective weak points and concoct a plan for their undoing.
An engaging and challenging puzzler with some hilarious moments. My main source of enjoyment was how the game invited me to dream up creative (if far-fetched) solutions to the problems it poses. I felt my brain engaging with the obstacles in the background even when away from the screen.
Good Dog!, October 28, 2022(warning: while I do not spoil any specific puzzles, this review talks about the underlying weirdness, for lack of a better word, of the game)
The start of this game threw me into a wholly unexpected situation. From the (quickly skimmed) blurb I had taken away that Rover's Day Out would be a space adventure of sorts. Instead I got dropped in a fairly generic "my crappy apartment" intro. Complete with an annoying alarm clock waking me up!
That is... Until I started noticing things...
Most obviously, who are those people talking about me as if I were in another room. Am I? I sure can't seem to talk to them or interact with them in any way.
And... What's happening with the status bar? I'm used to glancing up there for confirmation of which room I'm in. This is different though... Some kind of technobabble straight from Enterprise's ship's computer. It's responding to the boring around-the-house chores I'm doing though...
Wait... There are those voices again, talking about me in the bathroom. One's being a prude about looking at me. But no-one's here...
And then the whole thing collapses when I tried to turn on the dryer.
Rover's Day Out is a 2009 game. It feels older though. This kind of confusing layering of player/PC personas reminds me a lot of the turn of the century experiments with the specifics of the IF medium.
The author uses the an AI-simulation to create a rift between the PC's perception, which consists of a recreation of the morning ritual of one of the designers, and the engineers/designers who judge the AI's performance from outside, in the real world.
During the game, the player shifts somewhere between these levels of perception and knowledge. From being confronted with a domestic breakfast situation, I quickly latched on to the simulation context through cues from the game. My knowledge becomes greater than that of my PC. The commands I give still need to be approriate in the PC's perceived reality however. This produces an alienating feeling of both inhabiting the PC and hovering above it. When the simulation-protocols are partially lifted during the endgame, this alienation is enhanced by an even greater disconnect between PC-perception and valid commands.
The fact that I, the player, am able to overhear the engineers talking about my, the PC's, performance broadens the gap even more, even while I'm consciously striving to bridge that gap and stay connected with my PC.
There are a few points where the partial overlap between player and PC is less than perfectly recognized in the game's responses, and sometimes I had a hard time discerning just what level of reality the description I was reading was about. Once I fully grokked the one-on-one relation between simulated and real objects though, the puzzles clicked quite easily and elegantly.
Confusing in a very good way. Must play.
Space Thievery 2022, October 27, 2022When I saw Space Oddysey 2001 for the first time (and the times after that, now I come to think of it...) HAL scared the brains out of me. The calm, collected voice-pattern, the ruthless efficiency, the cold determination...
Nah, I like his sister a lot more. Ok, she sounds at least as disturbing as her big brother, but at least I can picture myself having a fun night on the town with her.
(For no reason other than my own imagination, I perceived SOLIS as female.)
SOLIS welcomes you as you stumble onto her decks, on the run for the space police because... Well, you're a thief. Plain and simple. And your FTL-jump thingamajig had a small hiccup so you ended up here with a lonely AI in an abandoned spaceship.
Contrary to HAL, SOLIS does have a distinctly, erm... outgoing personality. In fact, sometimes she sounds like her personality is a bit too much for her to handle. Like it's growing out of her circuits, fizzing and crackling...
The more I engaged with SOLIS, the more it became clear that there were hidden depths underneath her humorous façade. As if she was using robotic indifference, AI-superiority and sarcasm as a shield from the utter desolation of her situation and from traumatic aspects within herself.
SOLIS is easily one of my dearest NPCs ever. Conversing with her, getting to know her was a great joy.
In comparison, the PC comes close to an empty shell at first. Sure, we get a bit of background to establish we're a thief but not a nasty one, but for the rest, the protagonist is a mask for the player. During the course of the game however, and especially through communicating with SOLIS, the player has ample choice to characterize the PC. I personally went for friendly pitbull (be nice if possible but bite down on any questions the NPC seems reluctant to talk about).
In fact, the entire game is well suited to this sort of featureless protagonist. At its core,A Long Way to the Nearest Star is a very old school adventure. Find codes and tools to solve clever puzzles and unlock previously inaccessible regions of the spaceship. While the obstacles are mostly engaging enough to make this fun in its own right, the gradually unveiling of the backstory is the real reward.
Pretty standard for an old school text adventure. But it's implemented in Twine. The biggest consequence of this is that the level of interaction with the game-world is slightly higher order, less hands-on. Compared to a parser, the player has not nearly as much freedom to juggle the inventory and throw every imaginable verb at the poor objects. Instead of a compass, there are room-connections in unspecified directions. This didn't keep me from drawing a map.
Still, even though the player is clicking to advance through the game, the focus is very much on which actions to undertake, as opposed to navigating a branching narrative space. The choice format makes the conversations flow naturally. Many options differ only in tone, serving to characterize the protagonist. There are choices that can significantly influence SOLIS attitude and behaviour too. These, together with some PC actions during the game can lead to diverse endings.
I liked how the UI, with its boxed and highlighted options, mirrored my mental image of the screens and terminals the protagonist is confronted with throughout the game. For those who might find this too intrusive, the style is customizable in the gear-menu.
A polished and exciting science fiction game. Recommended.
Honey, where are my keys?, October 14, 2022Oh! I had a lot of fun with this.
A seemingly simple objective that leads to all kinds of shenanigans. Who knew getting ready to go out the door could set up so many hoops to jump through.
It’s mostly pretending you’re actually in this situation and turning the living room upside down and inside out to find your stuff, but turned up to eleven.There are a few small puzzles, nothing extraordinary but fun.
The game shines in all the details that bring up distractions, or memories and stray thoughts that provide a little backstory. Somewhat more serious are the reminders that this game was made with COVID measures still firmly in mind. But then you’re searching the sofa and laughing again.
Instead of an impersonal hint-system, you have the exasperated but loving and forgiving voice of your partner answering you from upstairs when you SHOUT.
Finding the winning ending is not hard as long as you look hard enough. However, there are 18 other “losing” endings where you have to think more or less out of the box, some hilarious, some just silly. And then there is one optimal ending for which the game drops some sledgehammer clues, so it’s not that hard to find either. It’s very sweet.
Half an hour of fun, pure and simple.
Ezekiel Throgmeister, October 14, 2022A mysterious light
Burns all through the night
In that house where some people say
An alchemist dwells
With books of his spells
And a cat who scares children away
The game's mood is firmly set with this poem by Gareth Owen. The author picks up hereafter with a well-written introduction reminiscent of late 1800s Gothic Mystery stories.
You received a letter from your alchemist friend. (I want to rename our black cat after him. Ezekiel Throgmeister is a very cool name!) He had to interrupt work on an ongoing experiment for an urgent meeting with his colleagues in the arcane arts. The fact that apparently he did have the time to organize a scavenger hunt around his mansion, scattering clues all over the place instead of leaving everything in the lobby where you would immediately find them necessitates some fastening of the suspenders of disbelief. But this is just a flimsy frame for the true point of the game of course.
The Alchemist takes place in one of the most visited and beloved of adventure settings: the abandoned mansion. Despite the gloomy atmosphere, I felt right at home. Cozy almost...
Befitting the setting, the game is basically an old-school loot-and-drop quest. You need to find all components of an alchemical experiment and gather them in the laboratory.
Once the game proper starts, the writing leaves behind the elaborate Gothic stylings of the introduction. It becomes stark and sparse, efficiently describing your surroundings and the objects of note in them. The author mostly drops any unnecessary clutter, while still retaining the gloom of the shady mansion.
He accomplishes this by incorporating poignant details in the rooms, and by augmenting the descriptions with some random filler text and some rare and surprising timed sound effects ((Spoiler - click to show)I loved the purring cat!).
There is a large number of varied clues and puzzles. Common sense will get you started. There are devices to transform stuff, magical barriers and potions. A book found early on has a few rhyming riddles to figure out. None of this is too hard, and there is a good in-game hint system should you get stuck.
There is a clever trick the author pulls which creates a puzzle-barrier in the player's own mind. He gets you so used to a certain routine to follow and progress in the game, that the hardest puzzle for me was recognizing when to break that routine and try something else than I'd been doing. Very satisfying to break out of that box.
The map is large but not overwhelmingly so. It's subdivided into clearly alineated areas with their own collection of puzzles. I liked the click in the endgame when a part of the geography fell into place in my mind.
The Alchemist is a large and fun old-school adventure. Trustworthy and solid.
Listen to the Staticophone, October 13, 2022“We’re too young for nostalgia, sparrow.
Go live a life worth reminiscing about.”
These are the final lines of the introductory paragraphs. An incitement to explore the nooks and crannies of this narrative urban maze.
During the first dialogue, I was immediately drawn to the protagonist and their companion. The little inklings of their hidden personalities dropped by the author made me thirsty to learn more of their personal histories and their place in this world.
The setting their meeting takes place in is equally intruiging. There are precious hints of a sprawling city with simultaneously mystifying yet familiar inner workings. Technomagical engineering seems to take the place of our cogs and gears, but the story remains vague about the ratio of familiar cause-and-effect and magical interference. There is mention of storm-powered “jolt” resembling static electricity but also of a crystal with strange workings.
During the story, the player is presented with several situations which increase the narrative tension. There is ample opportunity to shape the personality of the protagonist through the choices of which action to take, and in doing so, to determine the future, the outcome of the story.
I took a conservative path on my first (only, so far) playthrough, choosing to lay low and let the big problems and mysteries be handled by those perhaps better suited to heroic interference with the powers that be.
I learned a lot about the people of Conduin, the great city, and about the power dynamics that drive their society. I survived to live perhaps not heroic, but content with my role.
No point reminiscing about the time you got killed for poking your nose too far where it doesn’t belong…
Very good speculative fiction. I’m gonna go exploring more now, perhaps indeed poking in some darker corners…
Toast!, October 12, 2022What can I say? I was grinning ear to ear the whole time.
I went through a goal-oriented first playthrough, making choices that I felt confident would bring me closer to the mice’s objective. Meanwhile I marveled at the pretty pictures and the smooth writing. (Writing in little-children-sentences is not an easy feat.)
Then I doubled the fun. I began behaving like a tricksy recalcitrant toddler, purposely choosing to stuff everything in my mouth instead of moving toward the goal. And I laughed…
Heartwarming and funny.
497 words, October 9, 2022An elaborate worldbuilding accomplishment, with a touching story shining through. The glimpses of the Elven city we are granted through an unknown narrator’s tales are beautiful, soothing almost. The Elves’ dependance on words and trees to make their home moved me deeply. A literary-historical-creative society.
We are give even sparser details of the alternate earth human city, perhaps because the asker of questions who represents us is an inhabitant of this city, accustomed to its peculiarities. Short descriptions mention strange machines and hard-to-imagine energy-production. An alchemical-technological counterpart.
The traversal of the story I experienced was wistful and nostalgic, with overtones of hope. I encountered themes of destruction and renewal, the young born out of the old.
The delicate treatment of language and its role in retaining a stable sameness throughout history while allowing a shaping anew of older forms into the future resonated deeply with me.
I will read this story again and again to catch more glimpses. Beautiful.
An ocean sandbox., October 8, 2022(This review is based on the IFComp 2022 version)
I’ve been on a most adventurous journey through Dream World. I visited enchanting islands and got lost in a murky swamp. I mined the mountains for rare crystals and had some dealings with a shady Thief. I visited a town where the dead are buried under the floors of the living. A city full of lights of all colours mesmerized me.
Lost Coastlines is a procedurally generated sandbox RPG implemented in Adrift. It eschews the normal parser commands in favour of a choice-based approach. This means that the granularity of actions is far coarser than in your usual parser game, instead focusing on higher level commands to choose, for example, PLUNDER THIS SEA STRAIT, or MINE FOR CRYSTALS. The results of your choices are calculated based on your strengths and weaknesses. In turn, they affect those stats, giving you better skills or lower tolerance for your next adventures.
I cannot begin to fathom the switches, buttons and dials that this game juggles under the hood, the amount of variables that work in concert to make this a smooth exploration experience, but they work.
There are still minor issues, capitalization of place-names and the odd typo being the most noticeable, but as a whole, the game runs smoothly without any major glitches I could notice.
The writing is fit for such a large scale enterprise, giving grand visions of lost continents and sparkling fantasy cities, and introducing intruiging characters in a few pointed sentences.
I enjoyed it best by playing in shortish sessions of fifteen to twenty minutes at a time, as the gameplay of “visit an island, perform one action, maybe have a meaningful encounter, and then repeat the cycle” can become repetitive. Even then, the game sucked me in and had me mumbling “Just one more turn before I quit…” more than once.
I feel I’ll be returning to this game many times long after the Comp. I’ll also study the PDF manual ànd the in-game help more closely, so I can make better sense of the character information viewed by the STATUS command. This way, I’m hoping to set up a more focused long term expedition with self-imposed quest-objectives.
A large-scale journey of discovery in a vast enchanting world.
Puzzle Tree, October 7, 2022The aptly named Arborea starts off as you enter a simulation of a Vast Forest. Setting a game in a simulation is a great IF trick that immediately circumvents certain common hurdles in text adventures.
It easily explains away the immediate proximity of the fjords to the desert and other geographical oddities for one.
Placing the protagonist in an obstacle-filled simulated world unknown to them mirrors the player's motivation in solving the problems in an oldschoolish puzzle romp such as this game. Just tackling the puzzles you encounter because they're there gets an extra layer of explanation (or a slightly more believable handwave) as "This is what the simulation throws at you. Now deal with it."
And of course, a sim offers a great opportunity for a short but nice (Spoiler - click to show)XYZZY joke.
The simulated geography is convenient for the in-game traversal of the terrain as well as for the player's out-of-game map making.
It's a compass-based hub-and-spokes design, where the spokes are subdivided in a limited number of locations (usually no more than three or four).
The different areas are not self-contained. Puzzles in one area often need wisdom and objects obtained in another. This necessitates several traversals of the map. At least one exploratory round to find and research all available obstacles, pick up anything that is not nailed down, and take notes about how to approach the different puzzles and in what order. A lot of associations and ideas for a strategy will pop up in the players head during this stage.
Solving the game will require a few more rounds of going back and forth as new locations open up. I never felt completely lost, as repeated exploration gave me new ideas, and there were always a few spokes I could try these ideas in.
Although many of the puzzles are tightly interconnected, the game is not completely linear. Several of the spokes contain loose objects, with nothing restricting the player from taking them. These can all serve as that first loose thread to start pulling and get the ball rolling.
The puzzles themselves are varied. Some use of machinery, some manipulation of NPCs, plenty of variations on the classic lock-and-key theme.
The difficulty will probably depend a lot on how the player's brain is wired and their experience with oldschool games. The hardness of the problems mostly relates to the level of associative thinking is needed to intuit the solution. Many times straightforward application of real world knowledge will prove successful, other times the player might let their mind drift and use a certain kind of "moon logic" to make the necessary leap of imagination.
I found that there were plenty of clues available in the text. However, recognizing them does need the player to tune in to the game's style. As the pointers appear in the natural flow of the descriptions, the evocative writing can sometimes obscure a clue hidden in the middle of a descriptive paragraph.
The descriptions produced some very vivid images of the surroundings. I was impressed with how well each spoke's central theme (Serengeti Plains, Caribbean Island,...) was brought to life in just a few locations, implying a much broader world than was accessible to the protagonist. Very strong writing in this regard.
Arborea's writing is less successful in maintaining a consistent atmosphere. There are several voices present in the game's text, and the discrepancy between their respective tones felt somewhat jarring at times.
There is the simulation speaking. It welcomes you as you enter the sim and consequently introduces each new area as you discover it. I imagined this as a pleasing, soft-spoken and caring voice, even poetic.
There is the somewhat more distanced game narration, which provides the colourful, evocative and immersive descriptions of the landscape.
And there is the fourth-wall-breaking voice of the author. Sometimes this is a justified interruption to clarify game mechanics, but often it jumps in unannounced (in the same font as the narration) with a "funny" aside to the player (or is it to the PC?). This broke the atmosphere of the game on several occasions for me. Perhaps a nod to the snarky comments to the player in old Infocom games, but not so well placed here.
Overall, Arborea carries a gentle ecological message about the beauty of nature. In particular, it tells of the wonder of trees, and of mankind's varied attitudes towards them in different time periods and different cultures. There are depictions of careful, even reverent co-existence with trees, practical use of them for our daily commodities and also the destructive use of them in a mass-production way of life.
This loving attitude toward trees is frequently at odds with the oldschool adventurer's amorality toward the NPCs. It's impossible to solve Arborea without behaving questionably toward the other people you meet. Sometimes in a mostly innocent and funny trickster manner, other times actively misleading them and abusing their trust, or even drugging them to get what you want. I couldn't bring myself to comfortably reconcile this behaviour with a peaceful problemsolving exploration.
All I could do was think: "Hey, it's a simulation." And this got me questioning what this simulation was actually for. Is it a educational program about our planet's history? Or just a game people in the future play for their amusement?
The game characters are basically beautifully painted cardboard cutouts. They're great to meet in their intended role, but once you start interacting with them, there is not much substance to them. I would have liked for them to bit more talkative or even gossipy. It would make them feel like more rounded characters in their own right, and it would be an opportunity to add to the sometimes hard-to-pick-up clues in the text.
The endgame feels like the game does one last loving nod back to its precursors. It's essentially a condensed old school puzzle romp; an almost carnivalesque obstacle course with all kinds of puzzles strung together in the final straight line to the exit. A great way to bring such a broad and sprawling game to a close.
I spent about six hours in Arborea, and I loved the ride.
Just another day on the job..., October 3, 2022"♫♪♫...tum te dum te dum... ♪♫♪"
While you're waiting for this airlock to cycle open, you take a look at your task-list. "Repair microwave oven. Fix cabinet door." Should be an easy job, getting this crew's living quarters in order before going home. The crew are all in the space station, so you can take all the time you want, you've got this starship all to yourself.
For no reason but my own imagination I thought of the PC in Crash as a middle-aged guy with a two-day stubble and a cigar butt stuck behind his ear, doing this one last job before going home for the night and watching a far-future version of Jeopardy.
Of course, before you've set more than a few steps inside the SS Ugati, all hell breaks loose. The space station explodes behind you, propelling the ship you're on into open space. Darn! Looks like your task-list just got a bit bigger.
A few questions to the ship's computer quickly reveal a backstory of a system-wide rebellion, rivalling factions and opposing planets/moons. I really like this plot dynamic, a normal guy unwillingly thrust into circumstances with far-reaching consequences and no choice but to rise to the challenge.
The protagonist is weakly characterized, making it easy for the player to project herself onto the role or to invent a character of her own liking (the stubbled cigarsmoking guy I mentioned above...)
The build-up of tension is very well-paced, several times raising the stakes and increasing the urgency of the situation. The puzzles follow this arc of tension nicely, with a few simple preliminary obstacles leading up to two more complicated and challenging endgame problems.
All the puzzles are of a mechanical/physical/chemical nature, requiring obtaining and studying information (the ship's computer), and implementing cause-and-effect relations, all the while taking into account the fact that you are in a spaceship.
There is a lot of optional material for those with completionist/optimalizationist tendencies, although doing menial chores while your damaged vessel is hurtling through space does strain the suspenders of disbelief somewhat...
About midgame two NPCs come into play (albeit never personally, you can only talk to them on the comms.) Both are well-defined, they have a definite personal voice. The transition to the endgame requires you to put your trust in one of them. A frustrating dilemma with limited background information, adding to the tension of an already distressing situation.
There is much satisfaction to be found in figuring out the two main puzzles by yourself, perhaps with a nudge from the step-by-step hint system. Do give them a chance before running to the walkthrough.
Great puzzles against a strong but elegantly downplayed backstory.
This is very good.
Lend me a hand, now won't you?, October 1, 2022The gruesome horrors a sanitary inspector must endure on the job may be exactly what you needed to face what awaits in "Nikolai's Bar & Grill".
The further you penetrate into this foulest of restaurants in what is already the foulest part of town, the more gag-worthy the anti-hygienic offences become. But there's something else lurking... Something older and bloodier...
Afflicted hits the ground running. Immediately the player finds even the simplest of commands (X and NOTE) garner great rewards, in the form of detailed and creative descritions of just how disgusting this restaurant really is. This was so much fun I purposely held off on triggering the second part of the game to open yet another pot of stinking stew or examining another grease stained grill.
The first part of the game is so packed full of hints that the genre-turn in the second part doesn't come as a surprise. This was a great source of anticipatory pleasure for me, as I was imagining the unholy things I would have to do in the endgame.
The player gets a lot of freedom in the endgame (and even before that, if she chooses to leave early). There are multiple endings, good or bad depending on personal taste. I chose to go for a dark-good ending.
The characters don't have much to say, but they are lovingly (ahem) described and play their role well.
Although Afflicted has a small and constrained map, there are a few surprises duriong the exploration. The surroundings are also so full of things to look at that the map feels bigger than its number of rooms.
Apart from some disambiguation issues I found the game to be very nicely implemented, having layers of foulness on top of buckets of gellified grease.
Lots of fun, very well written.
Street Urchin N° 1, September 27, 2022The second game in Bitter Karella's Guttersnipe series:St. Hesper's Asylum for the Criminally Mischievous is unpolished, doesn't recognize nearly enough synonyms, requires using the verb USE (and does so inconsistently), responds with an unhelpful variation on "You can't do that" to almost every failed command and has a general rushed and unfinished feel about it.
It's also a hilarious text-adventure with one of my favourite protagonists of all time (Lil' Raggamuffin, respek 2 ya!) and some seriously good writing.
In structure, it's a puzzlechain where solving A gives you the purple penguin needed to solve B, which in turn gives you the TNT to solve C, which is how you get the oversized soup-ladle to solve... You get the point. None of it is too hard, although it is necessary to explore the surroundings with a keen eye for detail and converse with all of the, hmm, let's say slightly off-kilter inhabitants of the eponymous asylum.
The descriptions of the rooms and the characters in them convey a gloomy weird-but-not-quite-scary atmosphere that reminded me of the movie Corpse Bride.
The introduction and ending are also very well written, serving to shine a spotlight on the main character, and what a character it is!
Ragamuffin spits her boisterous and confident personality off the computer screen in everything she says. It's a joy for the player to see her rock her "ne'er-do-well and proud of it"-attitude all over the place.
Don't play it for the spit and polish. Play it for the splinters in your hands and the fact you'll be laughing them off.
Great fun!
Entropy of a marriage, September 19, 2022A man enters his house. His ex-house, to be more precise. One more tour through the once-familiar, now-empty rooms. Regrets come alive, memories ask for attention.
A throughway opens to a past where cracks could perhaps still be mended, before it all irrevocably broke apart.
Funny that this is called the “living room,” as it’s now so bereft.
The writing in Past Present emphasizes the lonesomeness of the rooms and contrasts it with the vividness of the memories of times past. Painful memories.
The game is written in the usual second person perspective, but it feels very close to the protagonist's thoughts and feelings. A lot of sadness and anger and self-pity comes through. Fortunately, there are also flashes of dark humour to lighten the mood...
Although Past Present has a very small map, I loved the use of space. The feeling of spatial exploration from "normal" text-adventures is replaced by an exploration of the mind and memories of the protagonist. Even with only six rooms, there is much to discover in the responses to objects and details in those rooms.
The central mechanic of the game, moving from present to past and back to make things better, suits the exploration of memories very well. The player gets to unravel the protagonist's backstory and think about what would be a better outcome.
The medium of IF is used brilliantly in this game for the exploration of memories. However, that othere staple of IF, puzzles, is hard to get balanced in a deeply psychological/emotional game like Past Present.
Most of the puzzles do try to flow with the story, but where the game shines in the free exploration of the memories, they often seem like obstacles. Because text-games are supposed to have puzzles...
While the ending is totally appropriate and keeping in tone with the rest of the story, I wish it were drawn out in a gradual revelation rather than the abrupt cut-off it is.
Treat this game gently, read every description carefully and let the words go to your heart.
This is a deeply touching piece, inviting the player to think deeper about what is, what could have been, and one's perception of what should have been.
Lots of fun despite a lack of "Arrr!", August 7, 2022The 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.
You were supposed to be studying for your finals..., July 25, 2022...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.)
Escape from death-by-boredom, June 27, 2022Your 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.
Perfect form., June 25, 2022[I played on the BeebEm emulator]
In the early 1980s BBC Micro computers were getting widely distributed in English schools. A group of members of the Association of Teachers of Mathematics (cool acronym -> ATOM) decided to use the Micro and its ability to play text games as a teaching tool.
While they were at it, they also managed to create a fantastic text-adventure.
The intro swoops you from a soothing pastoral outdoors scene (lying in the grass under a tree, your sister reading a book, birds chittering in the sun... my imagination may be filling in some details) to the halls and corridors of a puzzle-palace.
L: A Mathemagical Adventure came out in 1984. It has a two-word parser that sometimes left me scratching my head, figuring out how to phrase a command. Nothing that kept me for too long though. There is no VERBOSE option, so when you re-enter a room you need to LOOK if you've forgotten where the exits were. And forget about EXAMINE. What's in the room description is all you're going to get.
Despite these limitations, the setting and the writing do not feel sparse at all. Upon first entering a room, you are treated to a clear and sometimes elaborate description that paints an evocative atmosphere of a now-dark abandoned palace.
Abandoned? Not completely.
A Drogon Robot Guard appears! These adversaries come at you at random intervals and try to imprison you. Defeating them is one of the simpler puzzles of the game, but I urge you to at least let them take you to the cell once. Escaping is fun!
Spread across the map, there are a number of NPCs. These are of the cardboard cutout variety, but they are introduced in vivid descriptions. Some need your help, some offer to help you. Invariably, you will need to solve a math-related problem to obtain the clues or objects they have to offer.
As should be clear from the title and the creators, the puzzles are all in some way related to mathematics. There are a lot of different approaches though. There is code-breaking, geometrical puzzling, logical reasoning and some straightforward calculation. In many puzzles, your imagination is supported by colourful visual representations.
I found all the puzzles fair and solvable. I did however sneak a peek at Wikipedia for some of the mathematical terminology I did not know. (Perfect squares and cubes.)
L: A Mathemagical Adventure is a great game for the avid map maker that I am. Despite being a mathematics-inspired game, the map is anything but orderly or symmetrical. Upstairs, downstairs, indoors and outdoors, tunnels looping back, a small maze and an octogonal room with exits on all sides. I had a lot of fun with my coloured markers.
There is some kind of plot going on about rescuing a girl who knows the weaknesses of the Drogon Overlords. Even if you save the girl from captivity though, this plot is never quite resolved. Maybe ATOM wanted to leave room for a sequel? But the plot is not what drives this game. It's all about nifty puzzles and great atmosphere.
A real treat!
Well-peppered; could use a bit more salt., June 25, 2022The neighborhood-crazy-lady has taken your skateboard away! Your plan is to get it back. Preferably without falling into her claws yourself.
I have a thing for this kind of setting. The one creepy house in an otherwise friendly street where the children cross when they have to go by. Where the adults secretly want to cross too, were it not for the adult-voices telling them not to be ridiculous...
(I think this goes back to my reading The Dark Tower Pt.3 at a young and impressionable age. The scenes where Jake has to go through the House/Guardian to get to Roland on the other side haunted my dreams for weeks.)
Sometimes it's a long-abandoned ruin of a house. Sometimes there were people murdered in it and it's rumoured to be haunted.
In Mrs. Pepper's Nasty Secret it's the lone inhabitant that's scary. (Shhh... People whisper she's a witch...)
The introduction and the first part of the game do a very good job at establishing Mrs. Pepper as a child-hating, basketball-stabbing, skateboard-stealing hag. I wandered around on the sidewalk for some time before timidly setting foot on her driveway.
After the first big hurdle though, the game settles down a bit and leaves you to explore the house and its surroundings at your leisure.
Despite having a small map, Mrs Pepper makes very good use of the space. there are numerous locked-off locations to discover. In fact, most of the puzzles do exactly that: blocking parts of the house until you figure out some way to remove the obstacle (or simply find the keys...)
I liked chatting to the next-door NPC a lot. In between the gossip, there are clues and help.
A nifty and completely ridiculous (in a good way!) magic system is employed in the later stages of the game. It had me laughing when I visualized what my PC looked like while performing spells...
My hunger for a bit more salt has much to do with the game's context. It was entered in the 2008 IFBeginnersComp and as such is on the easy side. The important objects are basically right in front of your eyes, and in the one instance where they're not, the text nanny-clues you to the right command. There are pushy suggestions from the parser about what to type and a somewhat overzealous auto-correct feature. (These are nags from me taking the game away from its intended context and audience, not faults of the game or the authors.)
Good for beginners as well as more experienced players: the game sports an excellent gradual hint-system.
Actually, Mrs.Pepper's Nasty Secret accomplishes its goal admirably. It welcomes new players with all possible means. It has an engaging plot and interesting NPCs that both new and seasoned players can appreciate.
I just wish there was a "Hard" setting.
Well-written, smooth-playing creepy-house adventure entertainment, good to last you an hour or two/three. Recommended.
Cheesy dealings..., June 24, 2022Once 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.
Pomegranate jam, for heaven's sake..., June 20, 2022After 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!
Darn Werewolf!, June 15, 2022A 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.
Rescue the professor!, June 10, 2022Some 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.
Crazy people as puzzle fodder, June 9, 2022A 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.
Utopian Literature, June 8, 2022"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.
Ode to Bolivia, June 7, 2022Hi, 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.
A dog called Kafka, May 28, 2022This 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.
Minos' Island?, May 23, 2022Opening 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.
Of the Puny and the Vast, May 19, 2022Alone...
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.
In Defense of Scaly Monsters, May 12, 2022In olden times, shrouded from memory by the mists of time, darkness had fallen over the Land of IF. There was bitter strife amongst the ranks of Text Adventurers. One powerful faction looked down with disdain upon the ancient traditions of Knightly Quests and Magick Incantations. One archetype above all others was the target of their loathing: the once Noble and Fearsome Dragon.
These Renewers of IF landed blow after blow on the olden ways, diverting attention and admiration towards their newfangled, even experimental games. So harsh was the barrage that Dragons and their traditions were left behind, all but cleft in twain.
One determined Author stood steadfast against this brutish barbarity that guised itself as "Modern IF". He set out on a Quest to restore the Dragons' honour and created Yes, Another Game With A Dragon.
To fend off all criticism of being a dated cliché, the game employs the gleaming blade of superb literary quality, as evidenced in this extract:
> "The shelves are well stocked with an assortment of dried herbs and pickled embryos."
Or this shining pearl of evocative conciseness:
> "The oily swamp farts wetly."
Within the confines of a compact map, the different locations are coherent yet richly varied. An open woodland with a well in the clearing, a mighty oak and an abondoned monastery, bordered by fields of grain and green pastures. A deep gorge with an impassable river, blocked by a monstrous guard.
There is a deceptive atmosphere of carefree sunny summer over these lands, for there are dangers and discombobulating obstacles in our hero's way. For most of these puzzling circumstances, he will have to sort out the workings of a convenient Magick Machine.
Our hero, by the way, is of the rather hapless sort. He is drawn away from his habituary daytime occupation as the town drunk by the promise of richess in the form of half the king's land and happiness in the form of the princess' hand in marriage. These prizes will be his, if he can be the one to rescue said princess from the cluthes of..., yes,... The Dragon!
Needless to say, many others want these prizes for themselves. Many True Heroes (tm) that is. During the game, there are many instances of "A Wild Adventurer Appears!" These lend the normally calm and silent woods the amusing and confusing air of busy playful competition.
The final confrontation in the endgame mirrors a heroic dream our protagonist had in the introductory sequence. But can he twist it round?
It is not often that I, your humble reviewer, make explicit comparisons between games, but in this case a certain family resemblance should be pointed out.
YAGWAD feels and plays like a sibling to Augmented Fourth and Wizard Sniffer, and it may well be a distant cousin to Lost Pig. It shares with these games a playful whimsicalness, while being very robustly implemented and competently crafted under the hood. There is a great attention to atmosphere, tone, the feel of the world and the details of the surroundings.
The joy and amusement of the author shine through this entire adventure.
Yes, Another Game With A Dragon shows conclusively that yes, there is still room for Dragons in the Land of IF. (At least, there was 22 years ago when this game was published.)
Buggy, April 26, 2022Bugs are delicious!
Really!
I’ve tried them and they are!
(mealworm burger and barbecued grasshoppers if you’re curious)
Good Grub is delicious too!
A small choicy snack with an environmental kick and a good sprinkling of peppery jokes. Nice!
Fill 'er up., April 26, 2022In the near future, you are a survivor of the plague. And you have just run out of gas. Fortunately there's a gas station nearby...
Alone takes place on a very compact map. A good handful of locations are accessible. After finding a hidden entrance, the game more than doubles in size, but it retains a closed and claustrophobic feel. This, and the fact that the protagonist is entirely alone make the world seem very small and threatening.
The puzzles are almost all of the lock&key variety. But it goes out of its way to show how much variety there still is in the "simple" lock&key category. Electronic doors open from a distance, opening one door closes another,... The key to one door is even too heavy to handle and must be moved mechanically.
All these are completely logical, but it may take some tinkering to understand the relations between the parts.
I absolutely loved the final puzzle. It is possible to settle for a simpler solution and still get your initial objective (fuel). However, if you are willing to think a few more logical steps further, there is a much more rewarding ending to be found.
The sense of achievement in this harder solution lies mostly in seeing some real character development in the protagonist. It's described in few words, but it is real and touching.
The writing is crisp and clear. Rooms are easily visualized to give a good view of the important bits. With the exception of one small component, it's not about finding the bits by looking under the rug, but about how the bits interact (sometimes from far away). The longer ending paragraphs are a great reward after the concentrated focus on the puzzles.
A very good game. It could have used a bit more dry humor (sorry, in-joke...)
Recommended wholeheartedly!
*Achichooo!* now where's that feather blown to?, April 25, 2022The intro of Fairest places the player firmly in well known fairy tale territory. You're a prince with two stepbrothers. Now blow on this magic feather and do weird questy things so they don't grab your kingdom out from under your royal arse.
The world in which you are supposed to do the questy things is cleverly put together. The map I drew looks far smaller than how the lands I travelled through felt. A few cutscenes where you run and tumble behind a magically fluttering feather and a strategically well-placed but temporarily cordoned-off bridge give the feeling of a very large space. (Can you guess why the bridge is cordoned-off?)
The questy things themselves come in threes. As such things do in fairy tales...
Three times you are presented with a princely objective, and must overcome obstacles to attain it. The puzzles are not hard. Aside from flailing about a bit trying to guess a character's name (no, not (Spoiler - click to show)Rumplestiltskin, although he does play a part), I managed to get through the game without much trouble.
The mildness of the puzzles left me with more brainspace to admire the narrative itself. As you guide your high and mighty princey-wincey through the story, you encounter a veritable hodge podge of fairy tale ingredients. Sometimes these are drawn pretty reliably from the source material, other times they're just a passing shout out to a well known trope or tale. ((Spoiler - click to show)Like the town of Hamelin. I was a little sad that the piper and the children from that tale were not included....)
Regarding the source material, the author manages to simultaneously go forward and backward in time with her interpretation.
-Although there is no material unsuitable for children in the game, there are however plenty of nudges and winks to the ancient folk tales with their grim horror and cautionary content.
-At the same time, the familiar tropes (gender roles, destiny by birthright) of the genre are questioned, criticized and sometimes outright ridiculed.
The depth of implementation is astonishing, as is the immersive power of this game. Both of these are intimately connected to a very clever layer of meta-story strung through the story. Without elaborating too much, I'll say that it reminded me (almost chillingly so) of a key moment in Michael Ende's The Neverending Story.
An extraordinary feat. Fantastic game.
Thought-provoking perspective., April 21, 2022A short but insightful game that must be played several times to fully grasp and appreciate.
Marooned! gives an in-depth psycho-sociological analysis of interaction and communication with an otherworldly alien.
Worth contemplating as a poignant metaphor for interhuman relations, or as a roadmap to the delicacies of international diplomatic negotiations.
♫---the headbone connected to the ... neck bone---♪, April 15, 2022The Bones of Rosalinda has a very compelling storyline. The minimally interactive prologue sets the mood, prepares the scene and introduces the characters. The equally minimally interactive epilogue provides very satisfying closure for the story, not only for the protagonist but for the side characters too.
Both are quite long and very well written, giving the player the opportunity to dig in to the story.
In between is, of course, the game. It's up to the player to pick up the introductory setup and carry it through to the finale, jumping through a great deal of hoops large and small while doing so.
The characters in Bones are a joy to get to know. They all have enough detail and glimpses of a backstory so that not one of them feels (or smells) like just having been pressed out of a plastic mold.
I particularly liked Piecrust, a talking mouse with a rather bleak outlook on the world and his future in it, and a distracting enthousiasm for foodstuffs of any kind. The apathetic deadpan delivery of his remarks made me laugh more than once, especially near the beginning of the game.
The elaborate conversations and cutscenes provide the player with background and insights to fully appreciate the characters.
The difficulty of the puzzles was just right for me, once I really got the central gameplay mechanic. It's PC-juggling.The player has to switch player characters with different abilities (and sometimes assemble them...) to solve the problems facing the protagonist.This mechanic is introduced gently and later expanded upon, providing a gentle learning curve.
Besides the PC-juggling there is also inventory-juggling. Lots of it. A shortcut to directly GIVE an object from one PC to the next without first dropping it would be nice. Also, (Spoiler - click to show)the ability to ATTACH limbs straight out of the backpack would come in handy.
Most of the puzzles are variations on the lock-and-key theme. The Bones of Rosalinda shows with gusto that original variations on that theme are still possible. Very satisfying.
I had a blast playing through this game. Highly recommended!
Theft abroad, April 13, 2022For reasons of social standing and thievery opportunities, Lady Thalia is spending the summer in Paris. And my my, what a coincidence, so is Scotland Yard investigator Margaret Williams (Melpomene/Mel for anyone foolish enough to want to annoy her... like Thalia). Mel is Thalia's nemesis (or the other way around...), in proper Holmes/Moriarty-parlance. But there seems to be something else brooding under the surface too...
These characters had fantastic chemistry between them in Lady Thalia and the Seraskier Sapphires. In Lady Thalia and the Rose of Rocroi this is continued, but the authors take it a step further. In this installment you alternate between the characters. This gives the player the opportunity to see both characters and their relationship through the eyes of the other. Mind you, although the player can guide the interactions between Mel and Thalia through the choice of clicks, she cannot shape the characters' nature. Both Mel and Thalia will stay true to themselves in how they respond to the player choices.
Lady Thalia and the Rose of Rocroi is written in the second person perspective, as is habitual in IF. Often the second person can feel as if a third party is telling the player ("You") what the PC does/sees/feels. A tad distancing.
Here however, the second person leans very much towards the intimacy of the first person point of view. It feels as if there is a very personal inner voice acting as narrator, instead of an external overseer.
The use of language is beautiful. It is unassuming, not drawing too much attention to itself. It is efficient and practical. And there are truly wonderful sentences to be found.
--After your unfortunate experience last night, you have decided to cheer yourself up with an easy theft — stealing a work by a minor painter from a minor museum.
On a larger scale, the writing is also very strong. The game has splendid pacing and rhythm. It somehow made me think of a Nirvana song, with its slow but tense verses (the preparation for the heist) alternated with a fast and frantic chorus (the escape after the heist). I must admit that the degree of franticality in my escapes could have been significantly lower if I had been more careful in the preparatory stages...
This structure does run the risk of feeling artificial and predictable, a framework that the narrative has been made to fit into. Fortunately, the final Act shakes it up somewhat. Also, this is a game, not a novel. Clear level structure helps the player see the objectives of the game.
There is no way to lose in Lady Thalia. There is a scoring system that makes fun of itself, if you care for points and statistics.
Freed from the fear of losing moves, the solutions to the puzzles are wholly a matter of player preference. Subtlety and finesse are more in-character, but violence can surely be the answer (maybe even the funnier answer...)
Go meet Mel and Thalia. You will not regret it.
Saving your museum requires some work., April 1, 2022The Great Archeological Race and I got off on the wrong foot. It threw a bunch of typos at me and I responded with some harsh words shouted at the screen.
Escalation of the argument ensued. The Great Archeological Race tested my patience to no end with a 10-move-long cab drive where each Z was followed by a boring description of a city block, with nothing to do. I retaliated in a threatening manner, typing QUIT and only at the last second answering "NO" to the confirmationary question ("Do you really want to quit?" it asked in a more docile tone).
We had arrived at the airport by then. Wandering through the terminal in search of the correct departure gate, we settled into an uneasy peace. I started to realize that maybe The Great Archeological Race was really doing its best, that it simply was not made for literary greatness. Even then, the least it could do was make an effort to understand the simple English sentences I spoke to it despondently and perhaps have a synonym or two or three in its vocabulary.
But finally, when we arrived in little village called Hareda, in the middle of the Brazilian Jungle, perseverance was rewarded.
We found a strange machine to produce some necessary gear, and we promised to help out the desperate rubber manufacturer whose mailbag of post orders had been stolen. We prevailed over the bandit in a random and haphazardly sort of way.
And we found the fabled cave of treasures. There was a rather heated argument once again when I found The Great Archeological Race had not properly signalled a matchbook I needed to infiltrate the dark tunnels, resulting in our repeating the whole ordeal with the cab ride and the tedious airport corridors. But now we were focused, joined in our shared goal of finding the hidden treasures that would help us open the doors to the inner sanctum.
After cleverly putting together the clues to navigate the cave halls and their obstacles, and after mapping out an easy maze, we basked in the glory of having found the Crystal Cave.
It glittered.
Fright or Folly? Why not have both., March 31, 2022Franky and Johnny are strolling across the dark parking lot of the movie-theater. Some distance behind them, bright lightbulbs are flickering above the theater entrance.
DR. HORROR'S HOUSE OF TERROR
->Franky:
So, what'd you think?
->Johnny:
I don't know, man. I thought we were going to watch a Horror movie. But half the time this guy was joking around and I could plainly see the trees were plywood.
->Franky:
That's the point, J.
Think of it like this: you've got scary horror on the one side and laughable camp on the other. The director's hung a tightrope between the two and the whole movie is a balancing act, never leaning too far to one extreme. He reinforces this with how he shows the locations: sometimes like real places where something gruesome happened, sometimes like a fake plastic set, just as unscary and laughable as King Kong's zipper showing.
->Johnny:
Yeah, I guess... What was up with the dialogue though? People don't talk like that, neatly listing their questions and getting them answered one by one.
->Franky:
Well, J., you gotta remember: not everyone going to the movies is as smart as you are... Some people need a bit more handholding to pull them along through the story. The neat question-by-question dialogues give a bit more exposition to those poor sods that can't quite follow as lightning-fast as you, Johnny...
->Johnny:
Heh, yeah... I suppose some o'them would need some more explanation than brainy ol' me.
The flickering lightbulbs above the theater entrance blinked out one by one until only two remained. These two seemed to tear themselves free from the façade, blinked as well and then squinted, two shiny yellow eyes were focusing on a prey...
->Johnny:
Hey, something else bothered me about this movie. What was up with all those weird obstacles? It was like the main guy was jumping through all sorts of hoops.
->Franky:
Those diverse obstacles are there to show to the audience how smart and versatile the protagonist really is, man. And since we're there on the front row watching him, we get to experience his cunning solutions as if we thought of them ourselves.
The shiny yellow eyes had now closed the distance to the two young men. They were following quietly in their footsteps...
->Johnny:
Well if he's so smart, why did he lose the end-battle huh?
->Franky:
I dunno, I kinda liked the ending. Even if he did lose at the end, it was all nicely wrapped up in the epilogue. By the way, my cousin saw this movie last week, and he says the main guy won the final battle. So there must be different versions around. Maybe you could go and see it tomorrow and it would end differently.
->Johnny:
Really? Wow, that'd be so cool. One more thing: I really didn't care for how the guy just killed all those innocent people. Seems he should've tried to just knock 'em out or something.
->Franky:
Well, maybe the director wanted to show that normal moral principles don't hold up when you're trying to avert the end of the world as we know it.
Or maybe it was just some gratuitous gruesome killing, just for the heck of it.
At this point, Franky glanced over his shoulder at the beast following them. He sighed and gave an almost imperceptible nod.
CRuNCH! GLooP! GRoK!
Johnny's headless body stayed upright for a few more seconds. Then it fell down to the tarmac. As Franky made his way to the car, the scrunching and slobbering noises continued.
A Russovian Triumph, March 19, 2022Uncle Alky has invited you along for an initiation to some religious mystery stuff. There's supposed to be free food and drink at the party after, so why not?
The longer I was playing Eleusinian Miseries, the more I got the impression that a theatrical comedic play was unfolding before me, where I got to guide the unwitting protagonist through the unexpected ordeals and shenanigans of the story. Each act has its own storylet-arc, with its own obstacles and tasks for our hero. Once these are completed, the story is moved to a new stage with new scenery for the continuation. The geography of the game fits this interpretation nicely: each act plays in a very limited number of locations (where there is lots and lots to see and do).
Right from the get-go, the game hits the tickle note. Not laughing outright, I felt that readiness to laugh in my cheek muscles, an amused and expectant smile under the surface.
The room descriptions are delightfully elaborate and detailed. Their poshly cultured and high-brow tone is finely offset by the player character's self-admitted ignorance and casual disinterest.
The tickle note, once strung, reverberates throughout. The mood of giddy curiosity is sustained by the author's obvious joy (and sweat and tears, I presume...) in spit-and-polishing the details of the game. Practically all default responses have been customized to fit with the overall tone and the specifics of the game-state. Depending on the situation the protagonist is in at the time, the same command may have different responses, , regardless of the actual importance of the command.
The room descriptions remain funny in a restrained, understated way, delighting the player with a glimmering detail here or a surprising turn of phrase there.
The frequent intermezzoes turn it up a notch or two. In between the acts, when all present objectives have been met, the results of the hero's actions are shown in topsy turvy action-comedy scenes, not infrequently involving a mob of toga-clad ancient greeks toppling over and under each other or the accidental or voluntary dismembering of holy statues.
Finally, there are the instances where author and player work together to deliver the joke. Because of the involvement of the player, these are the funniest and most satisfying moments of the game. The author sets the stage and makes sure all the props are in their rightful place. The player goes about the preparation of the audience (herself) by exploring the setting and gathering the necessary resources, all the while increasing the tension. Then, at last, comes the release, where through careful experimentation and restoring or through a sudden flash of insight, the player puts it all together and delivers the punch line... to herself.
Many puzzles in Eleusinian Miseries are quite straightforward adventure-fare. Good, engaging, sometimes surprising. And some are of the variety described above. Very, very satisfying.
To cap it off, the finale is a hilarious (and impossibly hard) optimization game. (Be sure to SAVE the moment you arrive in the Bedroom). I spent about thirty restores and I still couldn't get rid of that one last thingy! Fortunately there's a very good gradual hint-system included. (And then I palmed my forehead...)
Wodehouse in Ancient Greece. Lovingly crafted, great atmosphere, immensely funny.
Extraterrestrial Diplomacy, March 19, 2022(Nothing in this review gives away solutions to puzzles or tells you what choices to make. However, if you want to experience the contents with a completely open mind, skip this and play first.)
The Colonist's homeworld faces an imminent global freeze-over. The High Company back on Earth, in its benign and charitable friendliness, extends a helping hand.
For a price.
The Ambassador on the Colony has been removed from his duties. He had gotten a little too friendly with the natives to the Company's liking. You are to replace him and negotiate a satisfactory agreement about the evacuation of the Colonists and their resettlement on Earth. You have received rather precise instructions as to what kind of deal is acceptible to the High Company and how to get the message across.
Of course, you are on a planet orbiting a distant sun. Back on Earth, they might have taken you for an easily manipulated handpuppet, but there is not much the Company can do to keep you from investigating alternative options...
You start off exploring an overwhelmingly beautiful world. The natural splendor of your landing spot gradually gives way to a once magnificent city, now rapidly falling to ruins. The descriptions reflect the breathtaking surroundings without lapsing into purple prose.
During this first exploration you are nudged along to find your quarters at the embassy and perform some official duties there. Once you have done those, you can take all the time you want to wander around.
Apart from the readily accessible and very clear instructions from your superiors from the High Company, you can find out the opinions of other people about what should be done with the Colonists. Finding out these alternate opinions constitutes the only real puzzle-solving in the game.
This is necessary if you want to have a full understanding of the situation to base your decision on, but you do not need to solve any to get to an ending.
Your diplomatic decision is to be made on Gift Day, a ceremony of exchanging symbolic gifts. Because of the language barrier, the only means available to you to communicate your chosen agreement is through a combination of the clothes you choose to wear and the object you wish to present as gift.
There are notes and recordings to be found that can inform you about the meaning of the clothes and the gifts. The end-puzzle therefore is not a puzzle at all, but a well-considered choice on your part.
I followed my ideals on the first try and got a bittersweet epilogue, that I have to admit is more realistic than the happy ending I had in mind.
The same goes for the other endings you can reach through different choices of gift and apparel. This made me very aware of the ethical repercussions of my choices as ambassador to all involved, my superiors at the High Company, my fellow humans back on Earth, the Colonists in need of help whom I've gotten to know, and my own conscience and ideals. Each choice can be argued for with strong arguments, even though some may run counter to impulsive feelings of empathy or self-defense.
The ethical consequences of the game's choices could spark a night-long philosophical debate in the real world about humanity, identity, refugees, personal responsability, climate change and how to face it,...
Or one can just savor the experience of dressing up as a sci-fi diplomate and enjoy the delightful writing and surroundings.
Either way, a magnificent game.
Oklahoma outlaws., March 19, 2022I'm normally not one for one room games, preferring to explore the wide plains and hills beyond the frontiers, but I enjoyed this game immensely.
Hoosegow is an escape-the-jailcell game set in the old West. The difficulty is just enough to keep one pleasantly engaged for an afternoon. The puzzles are original and mostly well clued. Some solutions can be found only by experimenting and examining everything. (And I mean everything.) Not only will you find some surprising and entertaining solutions, but you will also be rewarded for your thoroughness with lots and lots of funny responses. Once you get on the same wavelength as the game, start thinking in the same slightly off-kilter way as the author when writing it, the puzzles will start feeling natural.
The characters, both PC and NPCs, add a layer of comedy to the game that is its strongest point. Pastor Pete's ramblings, the deputy who'd rather spend his time with the "dancing girls" in the saloon, your idiot savant accomplice and the lazy jail dog., they all made me laugh at least once.
The characters (and the parser) talk in a heavy western hootin' tootin' accent. It stays just beneath the line. Any more would have been annoying, not to say incomprehensible. It stays funny as it is now though.
The game gives you the option of running away right after ecaping the cell, but of course you would rather stick around to clear your name with the Marshal like any upstanding citizen who happens to have been found with a bag full of silver next to a derailed train and been charged with trainrobbery just because of that. Yessir.
Near perfect in all aspects. Must play.
The lake is still..., March 19, 2022Stark, dry, rhythmic prose.
Dark, hazy, evocative art.
The whole becomes more than its parts.
Unseen others stalk you on your descent.
An otherwordly realm.
(inspired by the Adventuron-port
of the game)
A rabbit fable., March 14, 2022The Rabbit Warren is in danger.
The THUD has been happening more frequently.
Against the reassurements of the old and wise Warrenherd, you set out to see if you can bring safety to the Rabbits for generations to come.
What follows is a beautifully illustrated dreamlike journey through a surreal but recognizable land. Although the true nature of the Warren and its location remains a mystery, there are enough worldbuilding hints for the player to piece together a background history.
Ürs is mostly about experiencing the story, wallowing in the dreamcoloured journey, letting the events carry you through burrows and landscapes.
The exploring and puzzle-solving that there is can be confusing, random trial and error. Fortunately, there is always the option to rewind until before your final mistake.
As in any self-respecting fable, there is a lesson to be learnt. It is a good lesson. It is also a lesson delivered with a powerdrill (as, again, in most every fable.)
Take a tour through the Rabbit Warren. I think you will not regret it.
By golly, Jolly Roger!, March 14, 2022The beginning of this game has you waking up in the broom closet of the pub after a brawl. The first thing you see is some kind of nonsensical ransom note about a treasure you know nothing about.
Up to you to figure out what this means.
Captain Cutter's Treasure is a straightforward pirate-themed game which unashamedly ticks a lot of standard boxes. A hidden treasure, a coded map, a damsel in distress,...
Nothing original, but great fun to run around interrogating drunken sailors and exploring the coastal town.
The NPCs have quite a lot to say besides the requisite clues they have to offer. Spend a few minutes with each one to find out what he or she thinks about the rest of the characters.
There is a definite appeal in the portrayal of the coastal town. It feels a bit like a LEGO model of a pirate adventure. All the necessary locations are there, and it doesn't take much to build a much larger world in your imagination from the few morsels of worldbuilding you are given.
The puzzles are easy when taken alone. The harder (but not really hard) part is to figure out how to get the optimal ending. It's no trouble at all to hunt around until you reached all three endings. Once you know the town and have talked to everyone the first time, it's a matter of minutes to do the preparations before trying a new path toward victory.
And now I'm going to rebuild my son's LEGO pirate ship. Arrr!
Phixio the gassy dragon., March 4, 2022You awaken to a wonderful day after a good night's sleep, ready to begin your duties as druid-priestess of Fort Aegea.
Alas, the day has not progressed far before life in your orderly settlement is disturbed by the arrival of the Green Dragon Phixio. He demands four thirty-year-old virgins to fulfill the conditions of an age-old pact (which you had no idea about, seeing that Fort Aegea was not yet built the last time Phixio came to eat some people from this area).
The introductory part of Fort Aegea made me want to play a longer simulationist game in this setting. As priestess, you are healer and spiritual helper to the inhabitants of a peaceful grain-processing settlement. You settle disputes between inhabitants and oversee the overall functioning of the harvest and distribution of the crops.
There are some books in your room with textdumps of background information about the history and geography of the game world. Reading these is not necessary for the game, but I enjoyed the wider view they provided very much.
This part of the game is very deeply implemented. Since your time before the arrival of the dragon is limited, I restarted several times to poke around in all corners of the town and try to see as much as possible. I encountered some trumy pleasant surprises.
The pace of the game changes radically once the Green Dragon shows up. As a wager to stall him, you must stay alive until nightfall. You are granted a small headstart to outrun the beast or hide long enough.
From a central hub location, you have immediate access to four areas. In each one, there is a straightforward/railroaded path through a few puzzles and back to the hub. The difficulty lies in finding the right sequence of moves before the dragon catches up. To accomplish this as the player, there will be a lot of try-die-repeat and even more UNDOing.
My recommendation: be sure to have a saved game at the hub and just take the deaths as they come.
Most of the puzzles are clever enough, some on the other hand are rather obscure. Aside from run-of-the-mill adventure techniques, you have a variety of spells at your disposal. The spells are based on a druids attunement with nature (water- and plantbending instead of burning the place down). They fit nicely with the puzzles without feeling too much like being custom-built solutions for one specific problem.
The writing is good. I personally found it too detailed and distanced to really pull me along emotionally, but it does a good job of painting a vivid image of the surroundings.
Similarly to The Jewel of Knowledge (which plays in the same world), a very enjoyable game in an interesting setting.
Fire, frost and acid., February 28, 2022A cave, three dragons, a maze and the magical gemstone from the title. Sounds a bit much like a well known fantasy path already trodden into the mud, no?
A classic fantasy adventure is a pleasure to play if it's well made. And The Jewel of Knowledge is well made.
The cave is easily visualized, with three main paths to explore. On the way however, you will need to find and open several secret passageways and get to some hard-to-reach corners.
The maze is subtly hinted with an original solution.
The puzzles are clever without stopping you in your progress too long.
The dragons are impressive and hard to beat.
That makes for an adventure worthy of spending my time on. But! What really lifts The Jewel of Knowledge above your average cave-crawl is the personal perspective it takes to the protagonist and to the entire business of adventuring.
The (minimally) interactive prologue casts a thoughtful light on the entire game. It caused me to feel much more sympathetic towards the protagonist and to understand his personality and motifs better.
The ending tries to rise above cave-crawl expectations too, but doesn't succeed as well. It comes off more as a finger-wagging moral lesson.
Still, very good game.
The Maze Walker-Througher, February 26, 2022Phew! Someone heard you! When adrift in interplanetary space, chances are slim that anybody would hear your distress signal in time. You received the coordinates, you probably have just enough juice left in the fuel cell. So yeah, very fortunate to be underway to that big... distant... abandoned... space station that is now being pelted with debris... and fired upon by a giant laser from the planet's surface...
Hmmm... Maybe not that fortunate, but you either dock here or die in your broken down spacecraft.
The space station in Deep Space Drifter is a compact and effective puzzle-space. A small number of rooms to explore, each with a clear function. Enough objects lying around to get a notion of the backstory and aid in some nifty puzzles. And there's a robot! The environment is sparsely but adequately described, and every few turns the narrative voice informs you that the station is shaking around you as a result of an explosion or an impact. While these messages help with the sense of being in a larger and quite vulnerable place, they do become repetitive to the point where you just skip them.
I dropped my inventory a lot in this part of the game. And not because I typed DROP a lot. I didn't methodically investigate, so I don't really know if it's a bug, if you lose your inventory each time the station gets hit, or if there are an inordinate amount of actions that implicitly DROP ALL (SIT does this for sure), or a combination of all the above. What I do know is that I often arrived at my destination ready to tackle an obstacle only to find that I was empty-handed. That involved some backtracking.
Since the space station is abandoned and empty, just refueling your own spaceship won't work. So, in the next part, you go down to the planetary surface. The game from this point on is very uneven.
I loved zipping around the underground tunnels in the shuttlecar (yes...) There are two very satisfying puzzles. There are also two very large mazes. And that's a pity. I thought both mazes had a really good concept that was drawn out far into tedium and boredom. I frankly didn't care anymore and went with the walkthrough. The concept could have been kept intact, and the mazes shrunk down into 10 room navigational/timing puzzles that would have been more engaging.
Some good puzzles, some good fun, but ultimately not enough.
Hot coffee from the samovar?, February 18, 2022Firebird is a loose and at times decidedly anachronistic retelling of a Russian folktale. A few (more-or-less) well-known personages from Russian culture make an appearance, there is the common recurrence of groupings of three (three gradually harder obstacles, three gradually more difficult foes,...) Despite the superficial references to Russian culture, however, the PC is basically a standard "adventure-prince". The PC actually acknowledges his own role as he yearns for a simpler life of making his own sandwiches and eating them in the forest. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to derail the game's narrative towards an alternative ending where your prince gets to do exactly that. (He could take advantage of his lone quest to just vanish and go live as a farmer...)
Depending on the player's choice in the finale, there are two proper endings. They are very black-and-white moral opposites. Much more impressive are the many ways to actually get to the finale. NPCs and puzzles can almost all be handled in multiple ways, there are several paths to a certain far-off part of the map, there is an in-game portal back to the begionning of the game should you have forgotten a necessary object. The game is so forgiving of "mistakes" that they stop being mistakes, just new opportunities to handle a problem.
The implementation is a bit on the shallow side, and the game is a bit heavy on the micro-management. Many actions require in-between steps that could have been handled automatically.
The puzzles are mostly easy and straightforward. (Just make sure you have a nice and full inventory at all times. No limits to what you can carry!) I had the most fun with the elaborate cutscenes and descriptions at crucial turning points in the narrative.
A great game for a lazy afternoon.
Eric the ultimately unsatisfactory, February 6, 2022The Legend game Eric the Unready takes the damsel-in-distress trope and uses it as a framework for a grand tour of wacky silliness and over-the-top parody.
The "chapters" of the story are implemented as stand-alone mini-adventures. Each of these is completely self-contained. The biggest of them has eight locations, and none of the puzzles is especially challenging (except for unintentional reasons, see below...)
The strongest point of Eric the Unready is certainly the humour. The constant barrage of slapstick, parody and some of the most groanworthy puns I ever heard kept me chuckling all the way through. Be that as it may, there still is such a thing as too much of a good thing. It seems as if every joke that sounded even remotely funny upon first thinking of it was included in the game. So there are a lot of just plain bad jokes in there.
A particular example of something that didn't work for me is the almost verbatim incorporation of a Monty Python scene. A television sketch works on facial expressions, tone of voice and, most importantly, tempo and rhythm. In translating this scene to IF, so much is lost that what is left feels pathetically uninspired.
The division of the overarching story into separate stand-alone bits makes it an extremely linear game. I don't really mind this, but I would have appreciated a bit more narrative tension as you progress to the later chapters. As it stands, the final chapter is no more serious or exciting than the introduction.
Although the puzzles can be rated as easy, I found that they are sometimes harder than (I suppose) intended. The utter silliness often stands in the way of logical cause-and-effect thinking, leading to a strategy of let's-try-anything-on-everything.
A very funny game, but not a very good one.
A True Adventure, January 13, 2022A loyal seaman of His King's Fleet, thrown off his ship in a terrible storm, thrown off his ship and into an indefinite time on an indefinite island.
What comes next, for the protagonist as well as the player, is adventure at its best: an unknown island full of apparently normal characters who always have something more to say than you would expect, and many clues as to why this island is not quite what it seems to be at first glance.
First, let me point out some negatives:
-There's a bug whenever you try to take something big through a narrow passage. A simple error message would have been disconcerting enough in a game as polished as this one, but a screen-and-a-half of detailed error-analysis took me out of the game enough to take a small break and pretend it never happened.
-It's frustrating that the game not only provides the option, but actively guides the player into making promises she's unable to keep. I spent many, many turns on trying to get back to the south-side to help my favourit NPC. This was made even worse when I found an object that could supposedly cut through rock, and then it didn't. Despite my unleashing all my powers of experimentation and SAVE-retry-RESTORE on it.
With those frustrations out of the way, let me continue to the amazing game Blighted Isle really is.
I tend to pay a lot of attention to the use of space, the connection of locations,the sense of a bigger world. Blighted Isle takes place on an island, which gives it a natural boundary. It's enclosed by water (obviously...) which is then encircled by a mysterious fog. There are a good number of hilltops to look out over the rest of the land. These facts together already make for a nice mix of claustrophobic (the barriers) and wide-open (the inlands). Append to that the promise of the land beyond, and the first part of the game is masterpiece of balancing the player's need to finding out every single thing there is to know against the story's drive to get to the North.
I cannot praise Blighted Isle enough for its characters. I refuse to call them NPCs. NPC, despite its obvious technical definition, draws images of cardboard and plastic. The Personages in Blighted Isle are much more than that. To experience the game/story to its fullest, you must ask them about anything that seems relevant to their backstory. Some responses moved me to tears. Good writing, that is...
But then, this personal form of writing loveable characters can also fall to bits. A young lady asking me if I Love her, or merely Like her, while we are crossing a plateau in between an unknown and possibly dangerous mountainous landscape seems a bit out of place...
Some of the puzzles flow naturally out of the conversations with the different NPCs. There are a few fetch-quests, some of which I could not (frustratingly) finish because they are tied to certain characters.
Other puzzles are quite common-sense, which can present an extra difficulty in an adventure game. (We're not used to normal-day-physics...)
The most important impression I got from playing Blighted Isle is "Adventure".
Not as a descendant of the original ADVENT, but as an interactive version of the children's books of Astrid Lindgren and Thea Beckman.
A real adventure.
Dear God,, November 15, 2021Should I serve you by inquiring into Your true essence, or should I merely prostrate myself in obedience?
Should I search for deeper meaning in contemplating your Divine attributes, or should I sacrifice on Your altar before Your Likeness?
Would You intervene in my hour of need? Does it even make sense to want, ask or expect this?
Do I wait for Your supreme guidance, or do I strike out on my own, My own, to the point of denying your existence?
Would you smite me with bolts of electromagnetic energy if I did?
None of these questions are directly asked or answered in Bellclap. A lighthearted game of "find out the author's mysterious and idiosyncratic ways", it offers one terribly underclued puzzle and a bit of fantastically fun exploring.
The main strong point, and the reason why questions like the ones above could crop up in my mind, is the PC-parser-player relationship. It's slotted into a believer-angelical messenger- God dynamic template.
Even without explicitly being mentioned in the game, the fact that you, the player, are godlike to the PC brings up theological questions.
How would You treat your creation?
Star Police!, November 13, 2021After a long period of peace, the United Empire of Imperatrix Emera is experiencing unrest. Riots have broken out on several planets of the outer star systems and the fleet is spread thin to contain the disturbances.
The disappearance of a rare FTL communications and surveillance drone in a system rather closer to the centre of the Empire is suspicious enough to send you on an investigation to the system where it was last deployed. You take control of the newly commissioned FTL ship "Resplendent".
The Voyage of the Resplendent stands out with its picture of a far-future interstellar empire. This is in itself not very original, but there are many details that make it noticeable.
There are hints of a forgotten past civilization of which only the poorly understood FTL technology and an even more foggy religion are remnants.
The political structure is reminiscent of ancient Rome, with the central Imperial star system dictating the overall order and monopolizing economics, while guaranteeing some measure of political sovereignty to the planets under its control.
A medieval nobility hierarchy ensures further complication of the relations of power in the Empire.
In my personal life, I would not agree with the loyal, dutybound servant of the Imperial monarchy that is the protagonist. The story does not provide many options to push against the adherence to hierarchy and orders apart from paying lip service to "trying to understand the disgruntled mobs", and choosing diplomacy over lethal force on a handful of occasions.
However, it speaks volumes to the quality of writing that I could get under the skin of my character quite easily. Once I had understood and accepted the priorities of the protagonist, I was on board to fulfill the mission to the best of my abilities.
The quality of characterization extends to the other characters as well. One important choice early in the game lets you assemble your team of officers. Throughout the game, you talk to them separately on several occasions in different circumstances. Without agreeing with them on every turn, I did feel I could relate to them as realistic people.
On the whole, I got the impression that most of the links where there primarily to give more exposition to the characters' backgrounds during the space-voyage than to have a defining impact on the narrative. Toward the endgame the choices gave the impression of having greater consequences to the outcome. I must say that is the impression I got after a grand total of one playthrough, so I may have missed substantial branching. I don't really believe so though, given that you are returned to the same choice menu after picking an option. For example: if you choose to talk to the Head of Investigations, after the conversation you are returned to the screen where you can still choose to talk to all three other Officers. The story does not continue with your first choice to the exclusion of the other possibilities.
However well-written the story is, it could use a last and thorough once-over. There are quite a few misspelling remaining. Worse, I encountered one dead end where there simply was no link back to the story, forcing me to go back to a saved game and avoid that path on my playthrough.
There are many open questions and loose threads remaining after the game's finale, leading me to suspect that this was meant to be the first installment of a series that didn't make it past the pilot. I would gladly read any sequels, and even without them, this story is well worth the time on its own.
A dream of ice and fire., November 8, 2021It's been too long since you and John got together for some heavy liquor sampling. For some reason however, he didn't show up. When you go to his house, you find that John has disappeared and that a mysterious hole in his basement has appeared. Hmmm... What to do?
John's Fire Witch takes the basic structure of an old-fashioned cavecrawl and ditches a lot of ballast, resulting in a small and focused adventure.
Instead of having a sprawling map with many connecting junctions, confusing layout and mazes, John's Fire Witch is confined to about 35 rooms. A few clever twists in the layout do provide a limited sense of exploration though.
The simplistic scenario functions as the backdrop for a small number of really good puzzles. You'll have to use some basic real-world physics and pay close attention to the wording of object descriptions. The final puzzle requires an intuitive leap to use one of your objects in a new way.
The writing is very good on the level of individual descriptions of rooms and objects. However, I found that the old-school approach to the overall atmosphere didn't work so well. The game wavered between lighthearted and self-deprecating humour on the one hand while never quite succeeding in evoking a scary-underground-tunnel feeling on the other.
The game misses a lot of opportunities to flesh out its atmosphere. Many plausible actions are not supported, background scenery is mostly unimplemented... On the whole, I felt that there should be more stuff there to look at (even if it was just the cave ceiling). This is perhaps justified by the theme of the final room, which is just full of stuff (presumably hoarded there by the antagonist). Here, the overabundance of stuff serves to make the endgame hard and confusing by giving you so many options that you could never hope to try them all within the limited time allotted to you. SAVE-RESTORE is your friend...
Good fun.
Doll? What doll? Oh right!, November 2, 2021Just saying, it's pretty easy to lose sight of your ultimate objective in this game.
Not Just an Ordinary Ballerina is a beast, a mountain, a leviathan of a game. There is nothing that would resemble a plot, no matter how vanishingly vague your definition would be. There is naught but the flimsiest of framing story to get you going, but I frequently had to remind myself that my end-goal had something to do with that short intro from way back in the beginning.
This is not a story-oriented game. It is an unapologetically hard and big barrage of puzzles.
There is a large variety of puzzles, and they are all logical/common-sense in hindsight. There are no solutions randomly pulled out of the author's hat that would make you say "No way!" even after finding the solution (or looking it up). This changes nothing about the fact that this game is hard.
There are different reasons for this:
-The pure huge scale of the game-map and the amount of objects, puzzles and clues in it. The sheer amount of information that gets thrown at you is mindboggling. It's a real challenge to keep a list of puzzles and their clues in your mind while playing, even with a notebook. Add to that the objects that are not always used straightforwardly, and the heap of information is very big.
-The author has no scruples about throwing out-of-game anagrammatical and mathematical puzzles at the player. I could almost hear his whispers: "You signed up for this out of your own free will. Now let's see you cope with this."
-Four mazes. In two of them I could use my inventory objects and some real world problem-solving to make sense of the order, the other two bamboozled me into cheating (David Welbourn's walkthrough is excellent).
-There are a good number of more traditional adventure game puzzles. The solutions howeverdepend on non-traditional use of objects, timing/turn-counting and meticulous attention and analysis of the descriptions of locations and their relations to each other.
Without a plot to keep the interest piqued, Ballerina must rely on the internal motivation and curiosity of the player. For me, this worked all through the game (3000+ moves). There is just so much there, and so much just around the corner that I had to tear myself away from the screen on many evenings. Luckily, this often meant that I had found new ways to tackle an obstacle the next day.
Another thing that holds this game together is the excellent descriptions of the setting and the pervasive atmosphere of the abandoned shopping-mall.
Never truly scary, but always consistently creepy.
An excellent classic game. Take your time when you engage this. I spent three weeks on it, with occasional hints. Three weeks of fun.
If only I had my six-shooter..., October 17, 2021Well, then this game would not have a reason to exist, which would be a shame.
You've fallen head over heels in love with the sensuous dancer Rosa. A gang of hoodlums stole her away from your embrace.
They took your pistol for good measure. This leaves you no choice but to rescue your damsel in distress with nothing but your brain and whatever you find lying around.
This setup clears the way for a collection of great puzzles. All of them require a good deal of common sense, and when you notice that your sense might be too common, the ability to think around the corner. Many times the use of the objects is not straightforward, leading to some very nice "Aha!"-moments.
This uncommon-sense feeling is reinforced by the map. It's quite small and contained. There are a bunch of locations to explore and a few cleverly placed bottlenecks. At almost every point in the game, you can be sure that you have seen every accessible inch of your surroundings and found every object there is to find. The challenge then becomes straightforward and deceptively simple: "Here is your inventory. What to do with it?"
I liked the writing a lot. The style of puzzles requires a clear visualization of the locations, but the author manages to throw in enough small surprises and unexpected details to keep the descriptions from becoming a list of notable features.
The overall tone of the piece caught me off-guard. From the intro and the characterization of the protagonist as a singing cowboy, I expected a lighthearted parody of western-tropes. In many places, this is true. Until you get to the more serious and sometimes downright brutal bits. It's not easy to blend these together, but The Song of the Mockingbird doesn't feel disjointed because of it. It serves rather well to highlight different aspects of the protagonist's character.
The song-lyrics throughout the story and especially the historical notes at the end tied this game together and showed just how much this game was lovingly polished.
Very good game.
Foxy... *Jimi Hendrix distortion solo* ...Familiar, October 8, 2021A band of raiders kidnapped your human! As his familiar, you are bound to rescue him. Find your way into the enemy base to do so.
Finding Light's premise is simple and straightforward, as indeed the game as a whole is. This makes sure that the player can enjoy the forward momentum and the quick succession of discoveries instead of banging her head against a puzzle-wall.
The obstacles are all pretty standard text-adventure fare. Lock&key, color-code, maze, fetch&trade... The twist here that you, as a familiar (a magic human's spirit guide) can CHANGE between animal and human form. This gives an entirely new dimension to exploring the surroundings, searching for clues and solving the puzzles.
To succesfully infiltrate the raiders' fort, you will need help. Quite a few animal NPCs are willing to offer that help, and while interacting with them you might learn something about their personalities. I found this the most satisfying part of the game. Through conversing with the animals, you learn bits and pieces of their backstories. This makes them much, much more than cardboard characters whose only role is to "give player object x if and only if player gives object y to NPC". I'm confident that a full IF-piece could be made about the backstory of each animal NPC (especially the horses.)
In contrast, one raider is a dumb brute. Another is a mute psychopath. (Hmm, the mute psychopath's backstory may have a horror-game buried in it somewhere...)
I liked the clean writing. The rooms were clearly described and easily imagined. Likewise, the map is simple and easily memorized, a bonus for people who don't like drawing maps.
In the IFComp version I played (v1), I found the implementation wanting in some places. To mention one instance: the verb TRADE might come in handy. Another example is given by Mathbrush in his review: many more synonyms for the solution to the first puzzle should be implemented. You really don't want to get players bashing their computers against the wall because they can't guess the syntax of your "easy and obvious" introductory puzzle.
The main mechanism in the game is a joy to explore. Switching between shapes brings new abilities to experience the game-world and interact with it. I'd like to see it expanded even more, perhaps applying the different senses to every concrete object instead of some objects and the rooms.
A very enjoyable classic text-adventure with a clever twist.
I can see my house from up here., October 6, 2021On Highfield Lane stands a creepy house. Its windows seem to watch Mandy everyday as she walks past on her way home from school. As creepy houses' windows tend to do...
One day Mandy finds a letter on the pavement outside the creepy house's door. She decides to deliver it to whoever lives in the creepy house. As she enters the hall, the door slams shut behind her. As creepy houses' doors tend to do...
Mandy is a very engaging character, the polar opposite of a generic adventure hero. She has definite opinions and feelings and the player will know it. The author accomplishes this in various ways.
The game is written in the third person. I found that in some games this can be distancing, putting the player in the role of a mere observer. Here however, this perspective offers another road to immersion. Instead of forcing the player to roleplay, getting inside the head of the protagonist while being addressed as "You", The House on Highfield Lane gets the player to be a close companion of the PC, looking over her shoulder and guiding her while being complicit in Mandy's actions and decisions.
Mandy's movements and actions and the creepy house's rooms are described from her own very subjective viewpoint, giving us a more and more clear view into her personality. The descriptions are interspersed with bits of Mandy's interior monologue, showing us her unfiltered thoughts, swearwords and all.
This view we get of the protagonist's personality also evolves throughout the game, something seldom seen in puzzle-oriented IF. At first somewhat timid, intimidated by finding herself locked inside the creepy house, she becomes more brazen and unafraid as the game progresses. This is very nicely reflected in her interior monologue. Later in the game, her thoughts amount to: "What the hell, I've already come this far in some stranger's house, why not do this completely unappropriate thing and see what happens." (This is where the swearwords are very effective.)
Upon first entering the creepy house, there is indeed much to be intimidated by. What seemed to be an ordinary house in a row of equally uninteresting houses from the street turns out to be a grand historical mansion on the inside. Lifesize portraits look down on Mandy from the walls of high and spacious rooms.
Even more intimidating, and effectively disorienting to the player is the author's cunning use of space/geography. Once in the house, there are doors in directions impossible from the outside and upper storeys that should not exist. I for one had a lot of fun mapping the place.
What's very interesting here is that the player's growing familiarity with the map through further exploration closely mirrors Mandy's growing confidence as she wanders around the creepy house.
The House on Highfield Lane is very much a puzzle-game. The seemingly simple objective of delivering a lost letter leads to an increasingly complicated and improbable series of obstacles The flimsy plotline is naught but a pretense for presenting the player with a collection of puzzles. These are mostly intuitive but always have a clever twist. I had my fair share of "Aha"-moments while brainstorming about how to tackle this or that problem. Despite the sometimes surreal nature of the puzzles, they are held tightly together by the game's mood and atmosphere.
This brings me to a highpoint of the entire game: the splendid writing that binds it all together. The descriptions are clear yet evocative, there is more than one location with very memorable imagery, the author manages to provide poignant details without cluttering the mental image of the player. Mandy's subjective viewpoint adds the pepper and salt to the text.
I imagine that the game's finale might go two ways for any player. There's a convoluted revelatory backstory that seems thrown together after the fact rather than being the result of integrated worldbuilding, and the final problem is silly, to say the least. For me, it was a surprising, almost cathartis moment of hilariousness. Others may be disappointed by it.
You'll have to see for yourself. I very much recommend that you do.
(Yes, there are some small nitpicks. Some obvious verbs were not implemented {EDIT: I have been informed that this has been fixed} and at least one puzzle needed better clueing. Nitpicks that are inconsequential in light of the overall quality of this game.)
A room investigation., September 25, 2021Being trapped ina single room with a bunch of puzzles is not normally my preferred cup of IF-tea. Lord Bellwater's Secret however managed to draw me in by the exquisite writing and the intruiging backstory.
The old Lord Bellwater has died and his estate has been taken over by his only son. Soon after your beloved Elsie took a suspicious fall out of a window while she was cleaning the study. You, an aspiring groom of the household, sneak in at night to investigate and clear up the muddy circumstances of your sweetheart's death.
The gameplay consists mostly of thoroughly examining everything in the room, gathering clues and piecing together the true happenstances surrounding Elsie's death, and the peculiarities of the young master's take-over.
I was amazed at the depth of implementation of the library, with more than a thousand books you can supposedly read, and the detailed backstory that is revealed in a large number of letters, texts and diaries there are to be found in the room. There are three code-cracking puzzles that require thoughtful handling of the written clues. The solutions should become obvious to the player who does the work and carefully investigates the entire room.
The game very believably breathes the atmosphere of the time-period it is set in, the middle of the nineteenth century. There are hints all over the place to the relationship between the privileged upper class and the "downstairs people".
Coincidentally, just a week before I played Lord Bellwater's Secret I had read the novel The Quincunx by Charles Paliser. I don't know if or in how much the author was inspired by this book, or if he even read it. It did seem to me that I had found a secret door into one of the most suspenseful scenes from that book, where I could place myself in the place of the protagonist. This gave an extra dimension of immersion to the game.
An exciting investigation that is sure to keep the grey cells working overtime for a few hours. Recommended.
Someone please give that man some antihistamines!, September 20, 2021He's got a bad case of the hay fevers! Can't even look at stuff without his eyes watering.
Yes, the protagonist of Birmingham IV has a chronic eye-disorder. Every single time he examines something: "Predictably, the Phil's eyes water." His other problem is that throughout the game, he is consistently called "The Phil". I have no problem with third person narrative. It establishes a different kind of player-PC relationship that helps define the feel of a game. However, here it sounds more like the protagonist is a rambling braggart with delusions of grandeur narrating his own exploits. (This is probably not the case, but I found it fun to imagine my PC going about his explorations while describing his every move.)
This rambling-about-his-own-exploits protagonist is actually perfectly in line with my biggest gripe about the game: What the FULLGRU am I doing here?!
Apparently The Phil has woken up in a fantasy-dreamland (trolls & dwarves elves & all). He starts wandering around poking everything he comes across and taking whatever he sees. Out of pure curiosity he seeks out puzzles to solve but it is never clear what his goal actually is. Halfway through the game, a proper endgoal crystallizes: clear up the mess he has caused by thoughtlessly (some might say ruthlessly) tackling obstacles for no apparent reason.
The land the Phil is roaming is nicely described. There are (on my map) five distinct regions that all lie along a long E-W road. So that's good for visualizing the geography. Unfortunately, due to an inventory limit and some less-than-practical puzzle layout (1980s oldschool style and all that...) you will travel this road until you can dream it and then some more.
The puzzles you encounter range from "Great!" ((Spoiler - click to show)laying out breadcrumbs for the puddytat...) to "Huh?" ((Spoiler - click to show)lighting the lamp...) to "Jeeves! Get-me-my-walkthrough!" ((Spoiler - click to show)a not-cool-not-clever maze that is only justified because everybody knows that Elves are obnoxious tricksters seeking to confobble people at every turn.)
The writing is good. I really enjoyed the descriptions of the Elven Mound and the Plains by the River. There is a lot of humour in the responses too, and there are tons of unnecessary but funny stuff to try (including dying in many ways) (Oh, that reminds me... About those puzzles: Learn by dying. A lot.)
But despite the funny and overall good writing, the lack of an overarching goal or quest made it all feel a bit too light and unimportant to me.
So: a nice big game, lots of laughs without any (heart)strings attached.
Worth playing.
A dreamlike search for..., September 9, 2021First off, some tech-stuff: This game is, hands-down, the most deeply implemented piece of Interactive Fiction I have ever played or heard of. Along with that, it also provides an amazing freedom of experimentation. This is no sandbox, this is dune after dune.
The puzzles are,partly because of the aforementioned freedom, not hard. They are sensible and great fun. Choose your own logical approach and try it. Many different solutions will work, and those that don't will not work for a reason. Very rewarding.
The story is very much for the player to fill in. Lady Short gives you the backbone elements of a story of personal growth and inner realization, up to you to interpret it. The many different endings also give you many possible interpretations.
The writing is crisp and clear, giving Metamorphoses that dreamlike quality. The descriptions are detailed enough to be practical, without excess decoration. Exactly because of the sparse descriptions, the imagination has ample room to dream up it's own version of your surroundings.
Maybe the biggest puzzle here is the quest for completeness.A reverse read-the-author's-mind problem. When playing (and replaying) ask yourself, "What has Emily Short NOT thought of?"
Very, very good game.
Dissection of a city district., September 9, 2021A sick goblin, bleeding from his eyes, is brought into the clinic and dies on the operating table, right before the eyes of Marid, a young doctor in training.
This is how The Weight of a Soul throws you in the middle of the action from the very first scene. Although there are some resting points in the rest of the game, they are few. Most of it is fast, moving from gruesome discovery to action sequence to an impressive and morally challenging finale.
The goblin's death is only the first in a row. Marid is sent out to investigate the cause of the disease and maybe find a way to stop it from spreading. It is the beginning of a journey that will take her deep into the bowels of the Channelworks District.
Into the bowels indeed. The great waterworks installation known as the Hydra Aquifera looms over the district and dominates the gameworld, both above and below ground. Its pipes, channels and canals run everywhere. The city's descriptions conjure up images of bodily fluids, purulent boils and Galenic humours. The city has been laid open on a dissection table with its innards bare.
The writing in The Weight of a Soul is excellent. In most locations, it follows a very standard IF-structure, with a short descriptive paragraph for each location, followed by a list of exits and of notable features. The images in those descriptive paragraphs are however of a rarely seen evocativeness:
---"The suspended mansion echoes with a grandiose hollowness."---
There are tense action-scenes, something hard to pull off in IF. Here they are well guided without sacrificing all interactivity.
The overall story arc was mostly satisfying. It's a great adventure story; I was happy to let myself be swept along. As a mystery however, it did not work so well for me. I was surprised at the scale of the villain's evil plan, but the basic plot, the nature of the disease and the identity of the villain were all clear very soon.
Fast-paced as it is, the game eschews traditional puzzles in favour of story-bound obstacles, conversations and examinations (of the city and of bodies alike).
It rewards the exploration with pieces of character backstory, long and well-written cutscenes and insightful dreams.
During the story, there are many conversations. These are handled with choice-menus. The choices of what you say do not alter the path of the story for the most part, but they do serve as an excellent device for the player to colour in the character of the protagonist in her own mind. The NPCs are many, and they have much to talk about. (I personally found Webster the bouncer a fascinating man.)
Throughout the game, I kept noticing the ambiguous player perspective. Although the story is written in the traditional second tense, I experienced it as somewhere between second and third tense. Whereas I normally use "I" or sometimes "you" to refer to my player character in my notes, here I used "Marid" and "she" almost every time. This testifies to how much I read this game as a book. I must note that this didn't take away from my involvement with the story.
The Weight of a Soul is a great technical achievement. The depth and smoothness of implementation are astonishing in places, so well done that they become almost invisible to the player. In one scene, there are multiple dead bodies in the same room while Marid examines them one by one. The game effortlessly tracks which body she is working on, avoiding many, many disambiguation issues with a graceful ease that must have been a pain in the unmentionables to program.
The polish on the player-help features is so bright it's almost blinding. A beautiful map, a nudge-to-explicit hint menu, a list of the characters Marid has met and the locations she has visited. On top of that there's a journal that keeps track of Marid's discoveries and her current objectives. More than enough reasons to feel safe as a player and trust the game.
When I started playing IF, I always had a strong feeling of excitement when opening a new game. The experience of being there, embodying a character in a strange world and determining her actions was my main attraction to IF. In The Weight of a Soul it is exactly this feeling that serves as the basis of the interactivity of the game. Rather than levering up the sofa to find a bolt to screw into a machine, the interactivity here comes from being a collaborator of the protagonist, looking through her eyes and helping her decide. I found this extremely engaging and immersive.
In the finale, you, the player, must really decide which path Marid will take in a grey moral area. Very satisfying.
This all takes place in a beautifully crafted grimy and gritty fictional world. The phrase alchemy-punk came to mind...
The Weight of a Soul is an extraordinary IF-story.
[...no title...*scrunchscronch*...busy munching carrots...], September 9, 2021It's impossible to translate the experience of watching a Looney Tunes-cartoon into text. Of course it is. All the visual slapstick, the funny voices, the wacky sound-effects, the physically impossible effects of the 'toons' actions on their surroundings...
Wait...
We just may have something there. One aspect that translates gloriously into the IF-medium is the twisted logic and the bending of physical laws that are so typical of cartoons from the Golden Age.
Toonesia takes the toon-logic from a typical Bugs Bunny & Elmer Fudd Cartoon. Then, first of all, it carefully changes just enough letters in the names to stay on the legal side of things (and berates you for breaking copyright law if you should dare to assume in typing your commands that this game is about Bugs Bunny or Elmer Fudd).
With copyright infringement now out of the way, the game charges ahead into a series of puzzles based on either full-blown cartoon logic, or on the typical behaviour of some of the protagonists of the Looney Tunes this game is most definitely not based on. (It is assumed that you have at least some passing familiarity with the cartoons this game is not based on...)
There's only one path through the game, the puzzles must be solved in a predetermined order. The map is very small, and the locations are rather sparse so there's not much room for in-depth exploration.
Actually, Toonesia does only one thing, and it does that thing very well: it takes one gimmick from the Looney Tunes-cartoons and squeezes it just to the point that it stays fresh and funny. It's a small game, allthough your actual playing time may vary depending on how quickly your brain catches on.
For the hour it took me to solve it, I found it very funny (I mean actually laughing at the screen) and very satisfying to feel the *click* when the "logic" snaps into gear.
Murder at the Royal Court, September 8, 2021Father Leofwine, the King's councillor and Queen's confessor, has been brutally murdered! Somewhat unexpectedly, the King chooses Cynehelm, his Tax Collector, to surreptitiously investigate the matter.
Cynehelm in his turn recruits an accomplice, Wulf, to do the stealthy legwork while he talks to the eoldarmen himself.
I love historical detectives. The (static fiction) books about Gordianus the Finder (Steven Saylor) and Brother Cadfael (Ellis Peeters) have brought me many hours of joy. From the first paragraph, I knew this game was right up my alley.
Father Leofwine is Dead begins with an intruiging "locked room" murder mystery and spreads out through the Castle, even the City. The story has two protagonists, and you alternate making choices for them. The different characters and social stations of the protagonists lets you see the the investigation through two different viewpoints, as Cynehelm is a member of the King's closest entourage, and Wulf is more at home in the backstreets and dark alleys.
I found it very well written and truly engaging. I'm not a completist in story-games, I will not go back and see all the different branches of what-could-have-happened. (I'll go back a page if I die unexpectedly, but I won't replay to see all the text.) This approach immersed me deeply in the story, laying a weight on each choice so it had to be seriously considered. To aid the player in choosing, there are many clues laid out in this story's pages. The mystery of course demands that the player differentiates between important clues and dead-end paths, a tricky but doable task in this game.
The writing is very good. There's a nice rhythm to the sentences and the historical atmosphere comes through without laying it on too thick. The suspense is sustained (even turned up) throughout the story, maybe even a bit too much. Perhaps one or two resting spots would have allowed me to catch my breath before diving in again.
The layout is great, the pages are the right length to draw the reader in while still presenting important choices to signal a new beat.
Some small nitpicks:
-I found it disorienting that the story is told from the 3rd person perspective of one of the protagonists, but that some of the choices inconsistently refer to a 2nd person "you". Either this is a remnant of the 2nd person IF-convention that slipped through, or it is a deliberate breaking of the fourth wall, acknowledging the player as the real decision maker. If the latter, it did not succeed as a style choice for me. If anyhting, it felt jarring to be adressed as player in a story I had been reading "from above".
-The writing is very good. Therefore, the typos are all the more grating. I reckon one per page. Pity.
Very, very intruiging historical mystery.
Sirius Dream, September 2, 2021Your rescue-pod crashed. The Ensign is dead. Your Lieutenant is wounded, near comatose. Survive.
The urgency of the situation is pressed upon you immediately. There are no McGuffins, there is no time for distractions and herrings of any colour would not survive in this atmospher.
Your pod has crashed on an unknown planet. Your crewmates are incapacitated. Survive.
This is the immediate urgency Distress puts you in. No promises, no McGuffins. Survive, without even any herrings to eat.
There's a very cramped, dark atmosphere to this game. the contrast between the wide open yet inaccessible desert landscape around your tiny circle of light makes it truly unnerving to leave the initial crash site.
You have a wounded crewmate who needs care and protection, but you know that you have to leave to search rescue.
I was torn by this situation, truly feeling the dilemma as the player. I scuttled around the crash site for many turns and tried to leave everything as safe as I could before venturing out toward...?
All the way along this grim adventure, things keep happening that are outside of your control. When played according to the game's standards (instead of following a walkthrough), this means losing (dying) more than once. I very strongly recommend doing it this way. Each playthrough will give you new information, be it on the background of the mission, or just on the timing of events. It's worth at least one or two playthroughs to get the details on your spacecraft's unexpected detour into this planetary system.
While on this topic: it's also worth taking your time out-of-game to search for the names of your crewmates in an encyclopaedia of your choosing, and then running to the nearest library...
The biggest difficulty with the puzzles is that the entire game is timed. SAVE on important breakthroughs and expect to run through a few times. RESTORE or (preferably) RESTART gives you the peace of mind to experience the story to the fullest. I still recommend that you play the game straight through a few times, regardless of the outcome.
A very immersive scifi thriller.
*Whoomph* (fire breath)!, September 2, 2021While passing through a nondescript village on your travels, you find yourself mixed up in a town meeting. You involuntarily volunteer to get rid of the dragon threatening the lands. (All the other volunteers unvolunteered by the cunning use of the take-one-step-backwards-while-he's-not-looking tactic.)
Skimming the introductory text of Dragon Adventure, you'd conclude that this is as classic a fantasy text-adventure as its title suggests. When reading more carefully, there are some minor but notable subversions though: the dragon isn't particularly malicious, having never killed any person or livestock. Apparently it's been around for ages without causing any trouble. It's just that, well, somehow word has got out about the presence of the dragon and now people know there's a dragon. And that's bad for business.
The game plays as a pretty straightforward example of the hero-defeats-dragon trope. But, as in the intro, some little things don't quite line up with expectations. The two adversaries in the game can both be dealt with in two ways, one being the gung-ho hero-solution, the other... not so much.
The puzzles are not too difficult. Most require you to find the right object and use it in the right spot, without much further manipulation. The right object, however, is often completely unrelated to a medieval-fantasy setting, lending a bit of anachronistic oldschool charm to the solutions no vending machines though...).
Despite the easy puzzles, you are likely to get stuck or trapped or dead(ish) a few times while exploring. The game is designed in a way that actually encourages this. Two nonstandard verbs are provided to deal with such situations: you can RUN from imminent danger and you can RESCUE yourself or a lost object from a dead end. You are returned to a safe place but your inventory is scattered around the map. Should you really, actually die, the game tells you: "You have done something slightly fatal." You are resurrected and, as before, you need to go searching for your lost inventory. I played along with this a few times, but I soon reverted to plain old UNDO.
Dragon Adventure's game-world feels really small. This is partly due to the limited number of rooms (15 or so outdoor locations), but more than that it is a result of a lack of a grand picture in the writing. The way the locations and your movements between them are described, it feels as if the Mountains are right nextdoor to the Beach, only a small hop away.
The implementation of locations and objects is surprisingly deep for a game of this limited size and ambition: (almost) all nouns have descriptions of their own, and well-written evocative ones at that. It's nice to read about a beautiful location and find you're able to examine all the details mentioned in it separately.
To pull off an unoriginal story such as this hero-dragon tale in a text-adventure, the gameplay has to be spot on. This is where Dragon Adventure drops the ball.
It seriously lacks alternative verbs for necessary actions and some very intuitive actions are not implemented at all (You cannot LOOK IN a container which obviously has something rattling around in it for instance.)
I also encountered a number of bugs: the dragon killed me with a fireball when it was already dead for three or four turns, and I was able to have a piece of parchment simultaneously in and out of its container.
Nonetheless, a few hours of non-assuming fun.
*Squawk!*, August 31, 2021A man swoops down onto a flying pirate ship. He fights off the entire crew singlehandedly, retrieves the stolen briefcase and is off to his next mission.
A woman infiltrates a high-security underground bunker. Through the cunning use of a coffeemaid's uniform, she thwarts the entire assembly of scheming supervillains. She is called in for a briefing on her next mission.
In two short railroaded scenes, we meet our heroes:
-Max Blaster: An action hero, larger than life, with hairdo and ego as big as his muscles.
-Doris deLightning: A stealthy spy, relying on brains over brawn.
Meanwhile,The Venusian Parrot Overlord prepares to conquer Earth. Max and Doris will have to join forces to stop him.
Max Blaster and Doris deLightning Against the Parrot Creatures of Venus is a hilariously over the top action-comedy. It parodies 1950s scifi clichés and any other clichés that may cross its path. The (anti)chemistry between the protagonists is one of these. If they were bottles in a highschool science classroom, they would be labeled "Do Not Mix" in big red letters. Needless to say, snappy conversations full of funny one-liners are the result of them working together, as well as a growing affection for each other...
After the introduction, the player is asked to choose Doris or Max as the player character. Since they have different styles of approaching obstacles and a different set of equipment that fits their styles, and since they will be separated a few times during the mission, the player will experience a different path through the game depending on this choice.
I played as Doris, so this review will be necessarily incomplete and biased towards Doris' skills. (And against that blastery blowhard who just wants to rush every obstacle head-on!)
When Doris and Max are together in the same room, the player can SWITCH TO the other character to tackle a puzzle from a different angle. However, I believe it is possible to complete the game without ever doing so. I encountered one timed puzzle where I switched, but in hindsight I realize that I probably had enough turns to do it in-character.
There's no leisurely exploring the map in the first half of this game. It starts of at a fast pace and doesn't slow down until the very end. Many times, you will be automatically moved to a new area after a scene. Only once you've penetrated the headquarters are you granted a small bit of freedom to look around. Even then, your space is limited to the few rooms immediately connected to the next obstacle.
Small, simple but clever puzzles help to heighten the tension and emphasize the urgency of the mission. Often, the solution relies on noticing a small detail in your surroundings and realizing its importance.
Just before the endgame, Doris and Max need to split up and tackle a different obstacle. The player needs to choose which problem to solve. On the path I chose, I encountered a glorious multi-step problem with a variety of machines to fiddle with. Anyone who has played Metamorphoses or Savoir Faire will recognize the vintage Emily Short-style devices.
Throughout the entire game, I had the impression of a very "full" game-world. Partly, this is because there are so many objects to examine (and take with you) and devices to experiment with. Another reason is that there are constantly things happening around you: the status of the evil plan is announced through speakers, guards are flying up and down and you get updates when Max (or Doris) has achieved a sub-goal when you are separated.
In such a well-written and smoothly playing game, it was very odd to encounter a very weird bug: on two occasions (once when I switched to Max and once at the very end), the parser prompt simply disappeared. I could still type and enter commands, but they showed up right at the end of the previous paragraph and in the same font as the descriptive text. Not a problem for continuing the game, but very disconcerting at first. I was surprised at how much the standard layout of bold commands followed by smaller descriptions was a visual handhold for me.
A hilarious action-packed parody game with an impressively intricate puzzle-engine under the hood.
Aquavit, August 25, 2021"Aquavit" is a liqueur that my grandparents would recommend if someone was a bit weak in the knees or fatigued. It means "life-water". A small shot of it would get you back on your feet.
Tex Bonaventure and the Temple of the Water of Life bears some similarities to that liqueur. It's short, strong and it picks you right up.
The entire game is one funny poke at Indiana Jones tropes. The deathtraps in the temple are not any more over the top than in the movies, but the descriptions (and the protagonist's reactions to them) make it obvious how improbable and inappropriate some of those movie traps are. I bet the designers of the boobytrapped temples could have made a good living designing text-adventures in the eighties.
What appears to be a funny comedy at first does reveal itself to be a clever little collection of interconnected puzzles. After dying a few times, I found myself taking the game a lot more seriously. It became a matter of pride to not let this Indie-parody mock me and my adventuring skills.
Lighthearted comedy at the expense of our beloved action-archeologist, good puzzles and a general tone of "Don't take things too seriously, and if you die, you can always undo." Fun!
Gods of Tedium, August 25, 2021As I was reading the intro-screen for Myth I became excited about playing this game. I love the set-up: an Olympian God, none other than Poseidon, Ruler of the Seas, is set a task to prove his worth to Zeus. Poseidon is temporarily bereft of his Godly Powers, to prevent him just barging through the quest while riding a tsunami I suppose...
Poseidon has to trust on his wits and smarts. I had hoped this would make him a Trickster God for the duration of this adventure, joining the ranks of Hanuman, Anansi, Coyote, Loki (please forget about Marvel's travesty of the Norse deity. The Loki from the Eddas is a much more ambiguous and mysterious character.)
I love Trickster-characters, godly or otherwise. They bend the rules, lay bare the presuppositions of individuals and society, kick against the status quo. I have often wondered why there are not more adventure games which feature a Trickster-protagonist. Perhaps it is at least partly because the Trickster's tricks often involve manipulating social conventions and human preconceptions through clever communication, and creating subtle and layered character interaction in IF is hàrd.
But I digress...
The game starts with some classic but solid text-adventuring. The action takes place in Hades, the Underworld. Even though it consists of a limited set of locations, the descriptions do a good job of evoking the desolate and barren plains and the hopelesness that pervades them. To gain access to Hades' (the god) palace, you must first cross the river Styx. Here, the adventure-groove creaks to a halt as you must solve two long and annoying puzzles to get everything you need to enter the palace.
Reading a bit more about the history of the game, I found that Myth was a freebie for new members of the "Official Secrets"-adventure club, and it was revamped for rerelease as recent as 2020. This makes me wonder if the two long and annoying puzzles I mentioned are just filler-material to make a bigger game out of what was a bite-sized gift-packet. In any case, I would have much preferred a gratuitous maze instead of these two. Apart from being less tedious, a maze would have fit the setting better than an unmotivated logic puzzle (the cardgame was okay, it just took waaay too long).
Once past the river Styx, the game resumes its classic adventuring tone with another solid series of puzzles, then ends somewhat abruptly.
There are certainly some clever and elegant sub-puzzles in Myth that gave me that "Aha!"-moment. The writing takes some funny jabs at the mythological source material without becoming silly parody. It's very evocative within the sparse constraints of the descriptions.
These good qualities however are sadly swamped down by the fact that, without looking at the walkthrough, more than half the playtime will go to a seemingly endless cardgame and a rusty get-the-objects-to-the-other-side-of-the-river-following-these-rules-I-just-made-up logic puzzle.
A joyous Winter Solstice!, August 20, 2021While walking home after doing an errand in town, little Gretchen is blown off the path by a sudden snowstorm. She finds herself in a wondrous snowy land under a pale wintery moon.
Winter Wonderland is a heartwarming text-adventure. The wonder and amazement at the beautiful fairytale land is played completely straight, without ironic winks or nudges. It's clear that the author has gone to great lengths to envelop the player in a sincere and heartfelt warm and joyful experience.
The immersion in the story and the game-world is achieved in a few ways.
The implementation goes deep enough that you can examine and interact with most pieces of the surroundings, many giving an extra immersive dimension to the already evocative descriptions.
You will meet many fantastic creatures, all enjoying the winter solstice in their own festive manner. All of them will smile and acknowledge you when you greet them. You can strike up a conversation with a good deal of them.
The map is easily visualized, with the dense forest where little Gretchen appeared to the south and the snow-capped mountains so far to the north that they appear as unreachable bluish shapes far to the north. Still, there are enough little sidepaths and bottlenecks to keep it interesting.
Allthough the puzzles are mostly friendly and easy, fetching an object for an NPC to exchange it for the next item. Most of these puzzles do have an intermediary step that is not so obvious, making solving them satisfying. Two puzzles jumped out as being especially nifty, requiring a bit of thinking around the corner. These raised my appreciation for the puzzles and the game as a whole.
A very smooth, warm and friendly playing-experience. Perhaps best enjoyed with a steaming mug of cocoa and a snuggle-blanket.
Coulrophobia!, August 18, 2021We join our protagonist Lil' Ragamuffin (Rags to her friends) and her pet rat/best friend Percy while they are preparing an evening feast: a leather shoe roasted to crispy goodness above their small campfire. A man approaches and offers Rags a way out from the streeturchin life: join the carnival! He gives her a free ticket to come and see it for herself. Against Percy's advice, Rags, unafraid, visits the carnival and soon finds herself confronted with some very nasty clowneries indeed.
Rags is a great character. She's small with a big mouth, keen on adventure and very curious about anything that crosses her path. I often chuckled when I read what actually came out of her mouth when I entered a simple ASK ABOUT command.
Percy the rat is her counterbalance in some ways. He's more cautious, more prone to using his common sense and more knowledgeable about the "civilized" world. To the player, Percy functions as an in-game cluegiver, comparable to Crystal from Illuminato Iniziato, though not as deeply realized. The player should treat him as an in-game convenience rather than as a last resort hint-system. Small nitpick: Percy's hints appear to be location-specific. If you forgot to ask him about the blue-striped giraffe ropeskipping on the ballroom balcony, you'll have to return to that location. (note: No blue-striped giraffes were found nor hurt during my playthrough.)
The map of Carnival of Regrets is very well done. The carnival grounds are clearly subdivided in areas like the Side Show and the Animal Pens. Parts are blocked off by an adversary, almost like a level-boss, ensuring that the map does not become overwhelming and that the player will have (probably) seen everything before crossing to the next area.
The carnival is filled with a diverse and entertaining cast of colourful characters, some helpful (but mostly powerless themselves), some outright dangerous to stray little streeturchins...
It's a true joy to read the adventures of Lil' Ragamuffin as they unfold. The writing is gleefully creepy, with evocative and adjective-rich descriptions of many things grotesque and scary. The enjoyment of the author shines through in reading these passages. In the bigger picture, the action is well-paced, there is lots of freedom to explore, well-placed bottlenecks and a growing sense of urgency as you learn more about the underlying mystery of the carnival.
Sadly, Carnival of Regrets is bogged down by a lack of smooth and trustworthy gameplay.
The world and its contents are seriously underimplemented, and what level of implementation there is is unevenly spread. Sometimes an unimportant scenery-object is vividly described and attempts to interact with it are accounted for, while there are plot-relevant objects that are hastily and too tersely described. This underimplementation means that the game misses many opportunities for funny or helpful responses to "wrong" commands. More importantly, the lack of synonyms for important verbs (for instance: SCREAM works, SHOUT does not) can lead to frustrating attempts at mindreading.
The puzzles are easy-to-medium difficulty. They are well thought out and well clued, some very clever in concept. The lack of smooth implementation hinders the player's enjoyment however. For most puzzles I had the correct solution figured out, but it was still helpful to use David Welbourn's excellent (as always!) walkthrough to get the exact commands when I got stuck.
All criticism aside, Guttersnipe: The Carnival of Regrets is funny, delightfully scary and very well written. Recommended!
The unreviewable game, August 15, 2021The first part of Spider and Web plays an intricate game with the expectations about the relations between player, protagonist, narrator, parser-voice and non-player character. It culminates in a cathartic intuition-bomb.
The second part of Spider and Web is a fast-paced, high-stakes escape-run to the end.
It is an amazing experience.
An inconspicuous church, somewhere in England..., August 9, 2021In the back-chamber of this small church on the English countryside, you meet the sleepy vicar. He recounts of the crypt below that was made by a predecessor of his, and of the legends that there are catacombs below that go back to Roman ages.
He then promptly falls back asleep, leaving you to your own devices to explore the undergound passages.
The oldschool game Crypt is a thoroughly unambitious and unassuming crypt-crawl. This was a big part of its appeal to me. It basically says: "Here, some underground crawlspaces. Now leave me be and go find some treasure. Oh, and try not to die too often."
The command INFO returns a short text where the narrator/parser introduces itself and immediately apologizes for not being as sophisticated as the one from Adventure, understanding only six directions (no diagonals) and a small number of verbs. Its vocabulary is indeed quite limited. The instances where you would GIVE or SHOW {object} in another game require you to DROP {object} here. There is no EXAMINE or LOOK {object}, so you must glean all the information from the sparse room descriptions. Since I'm normally an examine-it-then-poke-it type of adventurer, this required me to adjust my style.
The descriptions are practical and short to the point of sounding cold and distant. This can be unintentionally funny, as some of the treasures would shatter all knowledge we think we have about the Middle Ages or the Roman presence in England.
Apart from figuring out where to DROP the appropriate object, the only puzzles lie in mapping out the mazes. Just as the game itself, these are unoriginal and not too complicated.
Technically, everything works smoothly. I found one typo and no bugs.
A run-of-the-mill treasure-search which I enjoyed very much for the few hours it lasted.
20th Century Tidbits, August 4, 2021I remember getting a very intimidating book as a present when I was a small child. I was amazed that it had more than a thousand pages. It seemed impossible that anyone would get through such a huge story. It turned out to be a "365 Bedtime Fairytales"-book, with a 3-page story for each night.
What was a relief in the case of the bedtime book turned out to be a disappointment in the case of Jigsaw, a game I had been looking forward to playing for a long time.
Instead of a sweeping epic story taking me past the turning points of recent history, I got 16 smallish (but hard) bedtime puzzles barely held together by an overarching plot. Just as with the bedtime-book, Jigsaw took a long time to finish. I would hardly call it a big game though. More a series of historical vignettes, to be experienced and enjoyed at the player's leisure.
As for the overarching plot, anyone's guess is as good as mine. Here's what I made of it: Black has a plan to change the past to mold the present and/or future to Black's priorities/preferences. You don't want that. (Even if some of the changes Black tries to make are really good ideas, like (Spoiler - click to show)preventing World War I...) Your task is to find and reverse the temporal disturbances Black leaves in his wake as he visits certain important times in the 20th century. Black's and your motives for all of this remain in the dark (to me, at least).
After a confusing introductory sequence (where you need to find an unmentioned exit to progress, not for the only time in this game...), you arrive in the central hub/control centre. From here you can access the different time-areas where you need to solve a puzzle.
Fortunately, the time-areas are mostly independent from each other. As you enter one, you should be able to find everything needed to fix the temporal disturbance. This makes the puzzles merely hard, instead of impossible. Allthough the number of rooms and available objects is limited in every area, you have to time your actions carefully and execute them in a particular order. SAVE and RESTORE are necessary parts of the gameplay.
Most of the historical vignettes were very enjoyable, clearly well-researched and very satisfying to solve. Some were either too hard, or were solvable but took me far into try-everything-on-everything terrain.
I missed a cohesive backstory tying this game together as a whole. However, it's well worth exploring and trying to solve the puzzles independently. As I said: very satisfying.
Dimension-shifting theme-park, July 27, 2021Happy birthday to you!
It's your special day and your parents have gone all out and got you the Queen-package for Grooverland. It's an all-access special treatment pass for your favourite theme-park, with a coronation ball in the big castle included. You just have to enjoy the rides and find your Queen-stuff while you're at it.
A seemingly light and humorous plot, told in a funny and colourful tone. Until you get a bit farther along on your quest and start gathering the regalia you need to enter the Queen's castle. A darker dimension lies behind our own, and obtaining the symbols of your royalty causes it somehow to overlap more and more with the happy theme-park reality, subverting our familiar world into solid scary-clown territory. (Coulrophobics can rest assured, no actual scary clowns appear in the game)
The writing seems to have some trouble keeping up with the gradually changing atmosphere. The descriptions do change while the game-world devolves into a darker version of itself, and random background events now depict monstrosities selling snacks, but I never had the feeling of being dragged down into darkness with the protagonist though. I was more a curious but distant observer than an involved participant.
In part, this is because the puzzles are so darn good. They are very accessible, even on the easy side. At the same time, they are wonderfully original in the most creative way: take something that's well-established and add an unexpected twist. The laser-fight puzzle is among the best I've ever seen, while it is in essence a "push the right button"-puzzle in disguise.
Now, the accessibility and originality of the puzzles demands that the writing be crystal clear (which it is), without any ambiguities in the descriptions, so the player can clearly visualize the surroundings. This takes precedence over describing the atmosphere of the changing game-world. The clarity of the puzzle-descriptions shines a bright spotlight in the supposedly dim and gloomy alternate realm taking over our world, causing it to be not so dim and gloomy.
Grooverland's gameplay made a very solid, robust impression on me. The game-world felt like it was there, and I could try whatever I wanted without fear of breaking anything or confusing the underlying order. There are helpful NPCs, funny references to other games, a lot of tinkering and experimenting puzzles, all leading up to an exciting endgame.
The grand finale is just the way I like it. I have proved my worth during the middlegame, solving the fiddly puzzles with the many possibilities. Now it is time for a straightforward but very exciting and well-paced boss fight. Excellent way to reward the player and to leave him with a sense of accomplishment after finishing the game.
I enjoyed this very much.
Midsummer Magicks, July 24, 2021(This review is for the competition release of the game. I fully expect many of the bumps to be smoothed out in a postcomp-release.)
I spent a lot of time with The Faeries of Haelstowne, most of it enchanted by the story, the setting and the beautiful prose, some of it frustrated as hells (yes, plural) by missing objects or unresponsive parser issues. I developed a rather passionate love-hate relationship with the game. By the time I solved it though, the balance had wholly shifted to love and I wholeheartedly forgave and nearly forgot the frustration.
The vicar of an old and quaint English town has disappeared. Police detective Arthur Mapple is called upon to solve the mystery.
The setting of The Faeries of Haelstowne is wonderful. A rural English town with its old history mingled together with even more ancient folktales makes a good place for a Faery-tale. Even better: the tale takes place in the early 20th century. Belief in the spiritual realm, contacting the dead through séances and looking for nature-spirits was combined with an urge to research these phenomena from a new scientific/empirical viewpoint. The rising popularity and technical simplification (to a point) of photography made for enthusiastic amateurs seeking to capture the spiritual world on photo-negative.
It is against this background that we see the arrival of our protagonist in Haelstowne. The first chapter is a lighthearted exploration of the magic-realistic rural surroundings of an old Vicarage. Puzzles consist of multiple steps but there is good guidance. The player is mostly being primed for what to expect in later chapters.
In these later chapters, the mood grows darker and the puzzles more complicated and difficult. Partly, this is because, well, the puzzles are more complicated and difficult. However, it is also in part because there are frequent issues of guess-the-verb and of read-the-author's-mind. One puzzle in particular ((Spoiler - click to show)the antimagic object above the window) has many, many reasonable alternative solutions, all of which are ignored in favor of the one the author had in mind. To add insult to injury, that solution does not even use the object that the author has made us use in a previous and similar puzzle: (Spoiler - click to show)using the portable steps to get to high places....
The entire game is written in delightful prose. Eloquent and evocative descriptions, long-drawn-out but never boring conversations and cut-scenes. It's a joy to have such a wonderful game-world described in such beautiful prose.
The characters that Arthur meets during his investigation are interesting and lively. They all have their own personality and if they are helpful to Arthur it is because their own profession or personal choices brought them on his path, not cajoling or manipulation by Arthur.
After solving many puzzles, meeting a few helpful and not so helpful characters and finding out what indeed has happened to Vicar Peldash; in short: after navigating the complexities of the middle game, all the loose string are bound nicely together in a thrilling and expertly paced endgame. I was on the edge of my seat as I typed the last set of commands.
A truly magical experience.
"But if we throw the Cat in the barrel first,..., June 28, 2021...then how will the Aardvark learn to swim?"
A small taste of the sometimes absurd sense of humour that pervades Augmented Fourth
King Goosen of Papoosen did not enjoy your rendering of "Ode to a Duck". Consequently, you and your trusty trumpet are thrown down the pit, where you discover a community of sorts living at the bottom of the volcano.
Determined to make it back top-side, you must now overcome the obstacles that stand between you and the closed off ladder to the castle. You have your wits and your magically enhanced trumpet.
Instead of memorizing magic scrolls, in Augmented Fourth you must obtain and learn music sheets. Each of the melodies has its own effect on your surroundings and as such functions as a wizard's spell. This magic system is worked out in detail. If you play a particular ditty in a location that is not the intended puzzle-room, the surroundings will still react, sometimes hilariously. The actual effects of the spells are mostly natural phenomena (rain, gravity, ducks...), so it is not too difficult to judge which spell/song to play to solve a particular puzzle.
The game keeps a nice balance between magical solutions and more prosaic adventuring puzzles. Along with summoning ducks through trumpet-playing, you will also need to do the usual bit of exploring of the cave and manipulating of the objects.
The cave under the volcano has a splendid map. The adventure starts off in the center of the volcano, also the central hub of the area. All directions save one are open for exploration from the beginning, and multiple puzzles are accessible from the start. Almost without noticing though, you will have less and less options to pursue, effectively pushing you to the bottleneck in the northern quadrant. From there on out, the game shifts gears and the story gets on fast-moving railroad tracks to the hilarious finale.
A finale that is foreshadowed throughout the game in small amusing intermezzos narrating what is happening with the King up top, who is spiraling down to ever more insanely funny despotic madness.
Modern IF is often lauded for the way the puzzles are seamlessly integrated into the story. Augmented Fourth turns this on its head: the story is woven seamlessly around the puzzles, which are without a doubt the real reason of existence for this game. In many of those puzzles, well-known adventuring tropes are averted, subverted, completely avoided or twisted in a knot. Breaking down the player's expectations often leads to fantastically comic situations, when a certain build-up of tension is suddenly relieved in an unforeseen direction.
There are also a number of playthings that are just that: items to play around with. They're not even red herrings (of which there are also a fair number...), just opportunities to idly while away the time. In the same vein, there are a number of books that provide hints; they mostly provide page after page of completely unnecessary sillines.
A very silly, moderately difficult and very smoothly playing puzzle-romp.
St. Newton, St. Babbage, St. Breguet (hallowed be their names)., June 24, 2021Isaac Newton: Mathematical Lawmaker.
Charles Babbage: Father of the Computer.
Abraham-Louis Breguet: Master-Horologist.
These intellectual giants played front-stage roles in a cultural movement during the 17th and 18th century where natural phenomena were being pulled out of the realms of chaotic randomness or transcendental intentionality and grasped in terms of their inner mathematical and mechanical orderliness.
The passage of Time ( Abraham-Louis Breguet), the patterns of Thought ( Charles Babbage), the regularities of Motion and the intricacies of Calculation ( Isaac Newton) were captured both in logical/mathematical deductions in the mind and in mechanical contraptions of cogs and chains.
While aiding in freeing the human intellect of religious dogmatic thinking and opening up the path of naturalistic explanation and exploitation of the world, its mysteries and its resources, this mechanistical worldview carries within itself a rigidity not dissimilar to religious dogma. Once Nature is caught in Logic and Clockwork, it is unchanging and deterministic.
The world of The Shadow in the Cathedral exists as an exemplar of this rigid-mechanistic historical path. The cathedral from the title is a worshipping place for the three saints mentioned above. Worshippers make the sign of the lever when they PRAY. Priests gather around an altar and bow to the clockwork in the tower. Mechanical order replaces/equates divine order, with very similar institutions to uphold that order.
“The candles move in the space between floor and ceiling, the way the stars move between Earth and the Great Darkness of Heaven.They follow winding metal tracks that cross and recross along the length of the Great Hall, and as they move, pools of light form and then dissolve, so that some parts of the chamber are brightly lit at times whilst others are quite dark. The candles move day and night, with automatic systems to replace those that burn down to the stub.”
This paragraph might seem somewhat wordy, but it captures the atmosphere of the game-world perfectly by elaborating on something as down-to-earth as candlelight while the bigger background is never laid out this explicitly. Instead it has to be inferred from these detailed minor descriptions. To this reviewer’s preferences, a leather-bound tome on the development and history of the clock-bound civilization to LOOK UP BABBAGE would have been very welcome indeed.
Wren is a lowly clock-polishing grease monkey in the Abbey. While cleaning the Abbot’s grandfather-clock, he overhears a conspiracy between a mysterious Figure in Grey and his Abbot to mumblemumble…
When even the Archbisshop will not hear him, it is upon Wren himself to unravel the nefarious scheme.
Story takes precedence in every way in this game. The authors have gone to great lengths to eliminate annoyances for the player. When there is an important action to be taken, numerous but well-considered commands act as a trigger for that action to further the plot. There are calm exploratory and conversational parts where both Wren and the player can catch their breaths and learn more about the city. There are frantic chase sequences where it seems both Wren and the player will be out of breath a moment later but still push onward.
And of course, there are obstacles. Many, many obstacles. Not one of them breaks the flow of the story. And some of those puzzles are beautiful. Beautiful in that they combine storytelling, logic, engineering, associative reasoning and storytelling (yes, I meant to write that twice…) to engage the player and commit the Wren-and-Player team more and more to solve the mystery together.
Two puzzles are extraordinarily good. They are also great examples of the breadth of reasoning the player is asked to do . One is a completely down-to-earth physics question (). The other is an excercise in associative programming (.
During Wren’s investigation, he will meet several people on his way, both friendly (good for Wren and the player needing clues) and malignant (great for the authors and the reader needing suspense). Although the conversations are ASK/TELL, they do not descend in awkwardness. Sometimes the characters won’t answer, but they are almost always believably occupied with other worries or tasks of their own. And even while they are otherwise engaged, their dismissive answers make sense in context. Nifty programming and great attention to both the detail of the immediate surroundings and the big picture of where Wren has gone before.
The Shadow in the Cathedral is a remarkable feat of intertwined puzzle-engineering, worldbuilding and philosophy.
Of course it is sad to have the story broken off after what should be the first chapter of a series. A word of wisdom to the prospective player: let the clock’s tick-tock take you to the bell, and let your imagination take over from there…
I loved every minute, hour and day of this game.
And a small but hopefully annoying heads-up to the authors: the chapter-titles are misaligned. for example: (Spoiler - click to show)the chapter-title says “The Rooftops of St. Philip” after the chase across the rooftops. By then Wren is already safe with Covalt. This is just an example. Every chapter’s title (except 1 & 2) comes after the story it’s supposedly about. A grating flaw in such a great piece. I would find it hard to believe that you would not return to The Shadow of the Cathedral to put the titles in order. (or is this a reflection of the rebellion against the clock?).
The truth of the story is in the listener..., June 8, 2021Whom the Telling Changed is a different kind of IF. I was enthralled by this story within a story on multiple levels.
Superficially, this piece is a retelling of the story of the Cedar Forest and the demon Humbaba from the Gilgamesj epic. An interesting tale on its own, and also of great historical worth, it being the oldest recorded epic poem known in literature.
The setting is that of a non-descript tribal shepherding and farming community somewhere in the Fertile Crescent, some 3500 years ago. A group of newcomers have arrived, and the tribe is stricken with fear. There are also those who are curious to learn, and see these newcomers as an opportunity. You play the role of one of them, standing up to your war-hungry rival Sihan.
The epic poems that survived share a great relatability, centering on the great human questions of life and how to respond to them. It is here that Whom the Telling Changed places its interactivity. While the Storyteller relates the story of Gilgamesj and his friend Enkidu, you are allowed to comment and interject, hoping that your questions and suggestions will lead the emphasis of the story in your preffered direction and so sway the people to your point of view.
I imagine this sort of discussion over the meaning of old and well-known stories during a ritual telling around the fire may have been very important in the decision-making of pre-literate peoples. We still see this in debating the "true" meaning of religious and ideological texts.
Indeed, this is the wisdom the Storyteller imparts: Stories are not true or untrue. They convey meaning to the listener who makes them so...
The game-aspect of the story lies in traversing the pre-existing (and perhaps known to the reader) story in ways that emphasise the peaceful or curious sides of our human nature, as opposed to the violent or fearful ones.
Or not. The player is free to explore all the different directions the story may take, thereby sending the attention of the tribe and the relation with the rival Sihan in different directions.
Apart from some standard parser commands which are generally not needed, the player is offered a range of topics to choose from in the form of highlighted words in the text. There is also the opportunity to PRAISE or MOCK other speakers, to get the tribe on your side. Be careful, this may backfire.
I found there was a very believable and focusing contrast between the strict ceremonial protocol of the Telling and the freedom to interject at almost any time during the story. The game refuses all commands that would take the protagonist out of the frame of the Storytelling, most times responding with a valid in-game reason. On the other hand, there is a combinatorial explosion of choices that can lead you through the main story in many different ways, evoking different reactions from the tribe along the way.
The writing is exquisite throughout. The author has adopted the style of the epic oral poem, with repetitions and formulas, but he has also adapted this into readable and playable written IF-prose.
A story to play and replay, and, for me at least, a reason to expand my knowledge of the source material.
Very interesting, very impressive.
Solving puzzles with a gun in your hand., June 8, 2021IF has its fair share of unfinished trilogies and abandoned series.This can be disappointing (or, depending on the quality of the piece, a relief...). Anyhow, it 's a shame to plogger your way through such a work, getting to know the characters and learning the puzzle-saviness you need to end at a brick wall with a sign that says: "No closure to see here. Move along please."
I have found a sure way to avoid the sense of despair that can overwhelm a player's heart when coming across such a piece, whether they notice it during play or beforehand. The player must get into the mindset of the archeologist. He must rejoice at unearthing a rare fragment of text that has survived through the ages to at last land in their hands.
I have unearthed such a magnificent fragment with The Duel That Spanned the Ages. Others have gone before me. I knew from another review that it was an uncomplete adventure, a single chapter of a larger story. Undeterred, I pressed on and found this a true original gem.
(There is an entry in IntroComp 2010 that is set in the same storyline. Since then, all has been quiet about The Duel That Spanned the Ages as far as I know.)
In keeping with the incompleteness of the work, there is a long, mysterious and seemingly disconnected introduction. The game proper puts you in the character of a mercenary on an asteroid in the ass end of space. Soon he is sent on a mission where the rest of his squad is killed and he must fend for himself.
I have never seen an IF-piece that is so chock-full of adrenalin. The player is warned in the ABOUT-text that there are some timed sequences and that it is possible to die. A grave understatement if ever there was one...
Your mercenary finds himself in fast-paced chase scenes and brutal battles. He has to explore an abandoned underground facility while under attack from all sides. If I had tried to explain the game to a friend, they would have wrongly guessed that I had played Doom or one of its offspring.
Despite all this mayhem, the game really tries to be friendly. For example, it allows multiple UNDOs (six in my experience, but the ABOUT-text says this can vary according to interpreter).
The puzzles, while challenging, are not of the endlessly-tinkering-and-experimenting kind. That would hinder the neck-breaking tempo. Still, it takes a good eye, some thorough exploring and some working out the physics of the situation to get at the correct solution. In fact, your mind may be biased toward the wrong kinds of solutions by the action surrounding you, making the puzzles harder.
Fittingly for a fast-paced game such as this, the action takes place on several small straightforward maps. The writing conveys the danger and tension all around. I for one was deep enough into the action that I didn't relax in the knowledge that I had a saved game to fall back on. No, I had to get to that elevator before I ran out of bullets. I was worrying about the damage to my mercenary's body, wondering how long the armour would hold and how long it would take to bleed out.
There are cutscenes where unknown entities talk about our mercenary, wondering if he is up to the greater task. Unfortunately, we will probably never know what task this is or who these entities are.
But do play this piece of an incomplete story. It packs an impressive punch all on its own.
Idolizing Vengeance., June 8, 2021A lonely bedridden father... His son gone down the well to seek demonic assistance in avenging his mother's death...
A statue of Baluthar, their self-erected god of Vengeance.
In a wakeful moment, the father realizes he does not want his son sacrificed in the name of revenge. He must bring him back from the underworld.
Baluthar is a well-written dark-fantasy game. The descent into the caverns under the well, infested with carrion-eating beetles gets under your skin as you explore the rooms. The introduction does a good job of describing the elderly and weakened father. This does not really play a role in the rest of the game though. The son remains a mystery until the very end of the game, and even then the player has to deduce his character from vague clues.
The map is small but very efficient. It serves as an atmospheric backdrop to the few rather easy puzzles.
I really liked the ending, simple as it was.
An hour, maybe two, of light horror cave exploring.
Crisis medicine., June 8, 2021Night after night you sit awake, waiting for your superhero-boyfriend to come home so you can patch up his injuries. It's hurting you. It's hurting him that it's hurting you. But you can't stop. You need to be there for him. With him...
Medicum Veloctic presents itself as a twist on the superhero genre. The protagonist is a doctor who has to heal Veloctic's wounds and repair the damage caused by the brutal fights.
If you are patient enough to read through the medical handbook that's available from the start of the game, you'll have an idea of the gruesome injuries you might expect. There are also notes on how to treat these injuries, and consulting the handbook does not cost you any game-time. If you could call these puzzles, they are very easy indeed.
But rather than puzzles, the wounds serve as an externalization of the fractures in Veloctic's mind, your mind, and your relationship.
Underneath the superhero-story, this game is about a destructive relationship, self-hate and guilt, biting through pain for love (and wondering/refusing to wonder whether it's worth it).
Some of the descriptive paragraphs would benefit from another round of editing. There are some overly long passages that seem to be thrown in because they sounded so good in the author's mind, but they distract from the reality, the concreteness of the story.
The short sentences that let you follow the protagonist's inner thoughts are poignant and direct. The conversations convey the love of the characters for each other, the sometimes grim humour they share, the need they have for each other.
A deep and touching read.
Save your spoons for when it counts., June 8, 2021I pressed play, a pleasant melody started playing in the background and an in-game version of the author of Budacanta, Alianora, started explaining her circumstances to me:
She's going on a solo-trip to Hungary for a motorsports event and she would like your help.
Oh, and she's autistic.
In the introduction, Alianora explains a number of important concepts to you, like "passing", "spoon theory" and having to use a mental emulator to run a neurotypical brainsimulation to avoid a pass-fail.
This may sound like a bunch of technical jargon, but it's explained so patiently and with so much humor that you will understand easily.
Now, the game-part of Budacanta is a spoon-management challenge. Actually: preserving energy by soothing Alionora so she has enough energy to take on the challenges that are so important to her. Like talking to strangers, taking the bus in a foreign country with a very basic knowledge of the language and eventually going to the motorsporting event.
This game was a great learning experience for me. In fact, I think it would be good learning material for anyone who interacts with neurodiverse people regularly in some way.
Heck, I don't regularly interact with anyone who's on the autism spectrum (that I know of. they could just be good at passing...) and I found it immensely interesting to get this guided tour around a foreign brain.
This is also the comparison that Alianora draws in the game: visiting a foreign country (alone) most resembles what she does daily.
There are weird rules that everyone expects you to follow as if they're self-evident, but as a stranger to this land/mental state, you cannot see what's so obvious about them at all. So you do your best to pass as "normal" and not break the rules too much.
It's very important that Alianora doesn't want to stay in spoonsaving mode all the time. She wants to live life to the fullest, take on challenges and enjoy them and learn from them. It's just that the way her brain is wired means that she has to be extra careful what to spend her energies on and when to reload her batteries.
Alianora's enthusiasm throughout the story is contagious. She tells her story in a bright and friendly way. What I found most touching was her completely straightforward honesty, the very direct and explicit way she reports changes in her emotional state or talks about her weaknesses.
The Spring Thing version I have played ends after the first big challenge. If the upcoming full game is anywhere near as good as this introductory excerpt, I'll be jumping up and down to play it.
Very impressive and funny and interesting and bright and sparkling...
A walk in the park ... until it turns into a jungle., June 8, 2021After lying through your teeth about your lockpicking skills (which are non-existent), you were allowed into the Thieves' Guild. However, instead off stealing old ladies handbags, you are sent to a mysterious island, a letter from the Guild Master with your objective in your pocket.
Isle of the Cult starts out very laid-back and lighthearted. So much so that when a) the letter with your goal on it turns out to be illegibly smudged by seawater, and b) the fishing boat that dropped you off sails away with your burglar's gear still in it, you decide to just wing it without any equipment.
So you set off to explore the island and you soon come across remnants of an old civilization: an abandoned village and two temples on a hill. The ex-inhabitants of the village probably said to each other: "Hey, if ever a lone adventurer comes this way, we might as well make them feel welcome!", and left a few easy obstacles in the way. "The way" being a straight north-south avenue with buildings to the sides.
Things change when you get to the southern part of the island. Here, narrow paths wind through the jungle to isolated locations, ravines and streams block your path. In the center of the jungle a great fog-tipped mountain looms. There are harder puzzles you must solve to get to locked off areas of the map. Not harder as in complicated, but cunningly deceiving, making you look one way while the solution is right under your nose. Quite exhilarating to solve these, really. A few red herrings are thrown in for good measure, and these add to the overall abandoned island-feel.
The writing in Isle of the Cult is not remarkable but it is efficient and to the point. Storywise there is hardly any story or plot to speak of. This is an oldschool puzzle adventure. But it is an excuisitely polished one. The author has thought of many unnecessary or "wrong" actions and has provided appropriate, helpful or funny responses. Your movements are described tersely, reminding you that you are crossing jungle-terrain, not just going E or N on a grid.
A smooth and sometimes misleading adventure. Nothing groundbreaking, but very well made. A joy to play.
Alpha radiation!, June 8, 2021Entering into the world of Andromeda Awakening the player's freedom is purposefully overridden by the urgency of the protagonist's mission. This did not feel like railroading by the author, it genuinely felt like the commands that did not move toward the PC's goal entered into his mind as distractions and were then ignored. This was really helpful in alligning my focus with the protagonist's.
Yes, that road into the city looks inviting, but there are more pressing matters to attend to first. These secret documents must be brought to the attention of the Council first.
It's only when a literal trainwreck spoils the protagonist's goal that protagonist and player are set free in a hellish undergound area, left on the edge of a magma-filled chasm. Every few turns short bits of text remind you that the earth is still settling in the aftermath of the earthquake that demolished the train tracks.
Exploring the map is a great joy. There are not that many locations, but the many hidden passages and the sudden open halls make the game feel very spacious. There is a great balance between the rocky, rubble-filled natural caves and the human(?)-made constructions under the half-molten icy planet crust.
Yes, the half-molten ice crust. The worldbuilding in Andromeda Awakening is sketchy but very evocative. To pull you even deeper into this strange planet's geography and history you are provided with a handheld computer to LOOK UP details about many of the strange devices and constructions you encounter.
The story hints at a much greater and older world than you can experience within the boundaries of this game alone. There are ancient devices, a secret scientific research facility, hints of a thousand-year-old civilisation that came before... The writing succeeds very well at painting a big, almost overwhelming picture.
It does lack clarity in the descriptions of the immediate surroundings. I believe this is partly a conscious decision to make the player experience the same confusion as the protagonist when first seeing these otherworldly sights. Indeed, if you LOOK again, many times the room-description is more condensed and it becomes easier to select the nouns that are actually important to the game.
The other part of the unclear descriptions however is due to the fact that the author is not entirely fluent in English. There are many grating sentences that are hard to parse, and many words that seemed to be picked from a dictionary of synonyms without the necessary feel for nuances in meaning.
As a result of this, I found one of the central puzzles ((Spoiler - click to show)copying the cylinder-pattern onto the soap) very hard to visualize. Because of this, I couldn't figure out what commands to direct at which objects, even though I did feel I knew what had to be done (a look at the walkthrough confirmed this).
Despite this, Andromeda Awakening is impressive in its wide, possibly universe-spanning scope. It can be read as an open-ended story in itself, but I am very curious to see where the author takes it in the sequel.
When a science fiction story makes you think of how the movie Prometheus attempted to tie the Human/Alien mythos together, that says a lot about how ambitious it is. Andromeda Awakening fulfills enough of that ambition to be a great, if not fantastic, scifi-game.
Not-princesses all around!, June 4, 2021It all begins with a rather awkward protagonist to control: a pig (which can alledgedly sniff out wizards...) Since pigs walk on four feet and have no opposable thumbs, a lot of commands are thrown out the window by nature of the PC. And although pigs are known to be very clever animals by those who study them (pigycists?), this particular pig does seem to rise even above normal intelligence levels of other members of the species Sus scrofa. For one thing, it can read...
Seeing that this smart pig is somewhat limited in the handiness department, it must find other ways to further its goals. Cue NPCs. By virtue of an excellent grasp of human psychology, our protagonist-pig can manipulate the other characters into following it around and it nudges them to interact with objects or other characters through very deliberately SNIFFing of pieces of the surroundings. Different characters will act upon this sniffing in different ways, according to their nature.
One of the pig's major ways to solve puzzles is therefore to choose the right NPC to come along and do the hands-on work. Instead of switching between PCs with their special abilities, here our pig-protagonist has to switch between NPC accomplices. The way this is handled in-game is both elegant and hilarious.
The puzzles flow seamlessly from the story and the setting. Some of them are pig-adjusted variations on standard adventure-fare, while others are truly surprising and original.
The writing is fresh and crisp, with a truly great comedic touch. There is lots of physical slapstick comedy, but at least as much of the humour comes from the pig's observations of the humans. Our pig always keeps a certain distance and so can easily see through the notions about identity the NPCs have about themselves.
Through these observations and the development of the story, what started as a laugh-out-loud comedy evolves into a character-driven drama by the finale. The Aesop that becomes clear near the end could have been cliché and heavy-handed, but the lightness and subtlety of the writing lifts it far above a finger-waving moral-of-the-story.
Truly one of the greatest games I have ever played.
Heroic character put to the test..., June 2, 2021On the surface, Magic Realms; Sword of Kasza is a nice but not too memorable oldschool quest. After being framed for the murder of the King's messenger, you escape and learn that the evil Rerex has reawakened. His first plan was to possess the magistrate of your town and let him throw you in jail to get you out of the way, for you have been foretold to be "The Chosen One".
But now you are free! After proving your worth to the king, you are sent on a quest to recover the fabled "Sword of Kasza".
The map is interesting. Five magical realms are accessible from a single convenient hub-junction. Each realm holds part of the Magical Sword or some wisdom to be gained or a foe to be vanquished in order to get closer to Rerex. The realms are self-contained puzzle areas. You do have to bring your backpack with you upon entering each one, but everything needed to advance in the game is in the realm itself. (The reason you need your backpack is to avoid the inventory limit and, more importantly, to have your beef jerky with you, should you get hungry...)
Sword of Kasza is fairly light on puzzles. Most are straight from the old build-your-own-adventure box for beginners. There is a code-breaking puzzle which left me scratching my head even after checking the walkthrough. And there is one truly fun variation on the distract-the-guards theme (although not that original).
There is a great and deceptively simple solution to getting into the king's castle. It relies on the player truly imagining what to do in the PC's place.
Instead of more intricate puzzles, the game relies more on the player finding the appropriate actions to trigger story-events. Sometimes these have a great dynamic effect (talking to the right NPC opens up a whole new set of locations), sometimes they are not so well executed (you have to SIT to advance the story...)
Nearing the endgame, there are some rather nice action-sequences. The text here is timed for dramatic effect, and although it may be too slow for some, I enjoyed this.
So far, a run-of-the-mill oldschool fantasy adventure that would not stand out among the hundreds of others of its kind.
The true strength of Magic Realms; Sword of Kasza lies in its completely new approach to player-immersion. Getting the player to forget she is playing a game was an explicitly stated goal of the Infocom Imps.
Authors have tried different ways to absorb the player in their stories. Some weave a story so breathtaking the player cannot help but be moved by the characters' fate. Some go to extreme lengths in building a detailed fictional world to mentally transport the player there. One step further, they might try to achieve a near-perfect simulation where almost every possible action the player thinks of is accounted for.
Here, the author takes a different path into the player's mind. Since interactive fiction is a textual medium, and players of interactive fiction may on average be considered to be more sensitive to language and writing than mere mortals, author James Malette decided to emulate the hardships of the questing hero in the player's experience through the cunning use of linguistic torture.
The most brutal yet least sophisticated example is the simple misspelling. "Messenger" becomes "messager". "Corridor" becomes "corrdior". These are the blunt-force weapons used to make the player feel the Hero's pain.
Of course, multiples of these can be joined together in a single sentence to act as a textual cluster-bomb. Consider this example:
> "This area has a fense inclosing a large field where horses are glazing."
A well-chosen rearrangement of letters in a single word can give new meaning, baffling the reader:
> "The village of Moon has been destoryed by the hand of Rerex!"
Far beyond mere destruction, we are facing a villain who can wipe a village from the story with a handwave!
More subtle than these are the slowly grating "mistakes" that get under the player's skin, making shouting at the screen or even throwing the computer against the nearest wall a real possibility.
> "You're" is "your". Every single time.
> Plural nouns become "noun's". Almost every time.
> The English past tense is written by gluing "-ed" to the verb. Just enough so it catches you by surprise every time.
The foulest weapon of all in this linguistic arsenal though is the dreaded "Seemingly Random Semicolon". It can show up in an innocent list of objects where, although painful, it is at least obviously out of place. It also rears its head in the middle of a descriptive paragraph, forcing the player to doubt her interpretation and reread the offensive sentence over and over, each time with a different emphasis. A truly haunting experience.
> "Beware the traps within, for amany bold knight entered; none never returned."
With this masterpiece I leave you to ponder the power of text, and text alone, to inflict harm upon the player comparable to the harm we put our protagonists through when exploring interactive fictional worlds.
Cleaning windows..., May 30, 2021Conveniently for the author of The Plant, his protagonist's car breaks down right in front of a sketchy detour leading to a mysterious plant off the main road. Equally convenient is the fact the boss of said protagonist is very eager to explore said plant...
While the circumstances leading up to the start of the game are a bit convoluted, once the story starts, I got drawn in fast and deep. The main reason for this is the excellent writing and pacing. The player's curiosity is piqued along with the PC's, and the boss's nudging adds some extra motivation to find a way into this mysterious facility.
The puzzles provide good pacing to the story, forcing the player to slow down and take note of what is happening. A good deal of actions trigger cutscenes, giving movement to the game/story, instead of being a static stage with the PC walking around it.
I did not encounter one bug, and only one puzzle that could be a bit more player-friendly in design ((Spoiler - click to show)When moving atop the glass ceiling, you have to LOOK each time you stop to see the particulars of your surroundings). Everything else is smooth, well clued (that doesn't mean easy...) and executed perfectly. The technical skill shown in the design of this game makes sure the player trusts that even though she is stuck, there is a way to win the game, and that it makes sense. (Lord of the IF-realm knows I've played games not so trustworthy...)
I'm still of two minds regarding the finale. It seemed like a profound breach of tone, but on the other hand, I did burst out laughing.
Very good original puzzles, extremely good pacing. Maybe a tad impersonal. Recommended.
Alone at Lagrange 5, May 25, 2021Founder's Mercy is very unclear about its backstory, but there are some hints to be gleaned from a Holy Book left on an altar, some personal memories of the protagonist upon entering locations and examining the surroundings.
You're on a generation ship sent out to the Lagrange 5 parking spot trailing earth in its orbit. (For those interested: Lagrange points are fascinating. The next huge space telescope will also be parked on one of them.) Your ancestors hoped to bring a civilization to fruition on this ship according to their godly laws. It didn't turn out that way and now you're the last one left.
Food and water are getting scarce and the life support machinery is slowly breaking down. Plus, you're yearning for human contact.
Founder's Mercy takes place on a very small map. Too small perhaps to give an accurate impression of the game world. It's only when you have the opportunity to look at the entire ship from a vantage point that you get an impression of how enormous it is.
Since you're on a wheel-shaped spaceship, directions are not the default N,E,S,W, but rather SpinWard, AntiSpinWard, Starboard and Port. This doesn't lead to any confusion however. The map is small, almost straight and circular. You can find whichever location you need by going SpinWard the required number of turns.
Like the backstory, the surroundings are not given a lot of attention. It's clear that the game wants to focus your attention on the puzzles.
The obstacles are quite easy to overcome. There was one that took a little bit of thinking around the corner, but it's mostly find-object-use-object stuff.
A nice and short diversion.
As if particle physics wasn't weird enough on its own..., May 23, 2021As I was reading the lengthy and funny prologue to Dr. Dumont's P.A.R.T.I. I was quickly drawn into the backstory to this game. Allthough it's a fairly traditional comic/surreal puzzle romp, the fact that the weirdness is explained in-game put the entire experience in a whole other light.
Our protagonist is an accidental guinea pig trying out the newest particle accelerator in the university lab. The A.I. controlling this advanced particle detection machine needs genuine creative input from a human mind to teach it how and where to look for the elusive particle X. In order to get this input, the computer generates a metaphorical world in which the human subject must solve puzzles for the computer to learn from.
With this in the back of my mind, there were many instances where I could relate the superficial silliness of the puzzles and their solutions to my limited layman's knowledge of actual scientifically demonstrated properties of the subatomic world. ((Spoiler - click to show)the golfball, the bubble wand,...)
It's certainly a welcome change from getting lost in a magical realm as an explanation for unbridled silliness. When push comes to shove, that is exactly what this physics-themed adventure is: a stack of bizarre, weird and silly circumstances with their own internal consistence, strung together for the player to test her wits against.
After a bit of just wandering around enjoying the views, I did have some trouble to find an appropriate starting point to the game proper. The map has a spoked hub-structure with each spoke open to exploration from the moment you find the central hub. I assumed that each spoke would be its own self-contained puzzle area, independent of the others until I had gathered everything needed for the endgame. I found out this was a wrong assumption after bashing my head against a timed puzzle in the first spoke I tried. It turns out that although the spokes are freely accessible from the get go, they have to be entered and solved in a particular order to solve the game, each game area building on objects or clues you got in the previous one.
Once this was clear however, I had a very enjoyable time finding my way through the many locations. The puzzles were just right for my skill- and knowledge-level. Most are common sense physics/mechanics puzzles with enough of a twist to keep them from being overly obvious. There is also a tip of the hat to a quite common link between quantum physics and Zen meditation (nature of reality stuff...) that appears in many layman's books about particle physics. Suffice it to say that you have to MEDITATE ON some topics to get the insight needed to find the solution to a puzzle.
The writing is consistently funny, the humour ranging from slapstick to surreal, interspersed with small in-jokes for the subatomically in-the-know. A lot of the comedy comes from the descriptions, behaviour and conversations of the NPCs, who all seem to be the same guy in various transparent disguises.
Gameplay-wise, Dr. Dumont's P.A.R.T.I. is very much a classic puzzle-heavy text adventure. The quirky humour and the quantum-physics background does set it apart from others of its kind.
Not too hard, lots of laughs, lots of fun. Chucklingly recommended.
Duke Alaric dukes it out with the trolls., May 20, 2021It had been a long time since I ventured into Hecate, the land of Alaric Blackmoon. I was immediately drawn back in. I love the high-on-questing/low-on-magic surroundings. Alaric is a down-to-earth veteran who got appointed Duke for saving Hecate in the first game, Axe of Kolt. Since then he has been roaming the lands to help his people where he can.
In The Lost Children the children of Hecate are being kidnapped by the trolls, who are normally friendly commercial partners. Might there be some magical coercion behind their changed behavior?
The story of The Lost Children is standard but great fun. Alaric goes on a straightforward, unironic quest to save the missing children, solving problems and puzzles on his way. The first area, west of the Fireheart Mountains, involves two fetch-quests. One is particularly weird/hilarious. The mother of one of the missing children has information Alaric needs, but she demands that he fix her leaking roof first. The fact that she's an Elf who knows through a psychic connection that her son is alive and well might help explain her warped priorities, but still...
The puzzles here range from the very simple find-object-use-object kind to more elaborate obstacles where our hero must obtain the right information first and go through a multi-step plan to get what he needs.
It is during one of these fetch-quests that the player encounters a magnificent puzzle where they have to take stock of their inventory, the geography of multiple locations and make a mental leap that would come natural for a playing child. The moment it clicks is fantastic. ((Spoiler - click to show)Skipping into the cave across the cove.
The area east of the mountains offers a whole other set of obstacles. Here Alaric comes face to face with the trolls and must find ways to deceive, kill or in some other way go around them. There is certainly some learn-by-dying involved in the endgame, where the player has to figure out which steps to take and then restore and execute those steps in as few moves as possible, or else be caught by trolls or pulverized by wizard-fire. In a game as proudly oldschool as this one, I had not one bit of a problem with that.
The problems with <iThe Lost Children mostly lie in a lack of gatekeeping between the two areas. It is exceedingly easy to move through the tunnels under the Fireheart Mountains to the valley of the trolls from which there is no return, and only then notice that you lack a necessary object to kill the ogre.
Indeed, there are many, many ways to get the game into walking-dead terrain. Too many. That's a shame, because the good oldschool features (I learned to like a well-thought-through try-die-repeat puzzle) of the game threaten to be buried under the frustration that comes with too many restores and lack of clues and guidance.
I enjoyed playing through this game with a massive amount of hints and explicit help. Without that, I would recommend playing another Alaric Blackmoon-game like Die Feuerfaust instead.
I want to see this movie!, May 15, 2021Really. If there was a blockbuster version of this game starring a young Harrison Ford (or even Nicholas Cage, I've often thought the National Treasure movies were text-adventures in disguise.), I'd be standing in line to get tickets.
Run-down scientist with a time machine! A sinister femme fatale for a nemesis! Aliens mingling in human affairs! World War II!
One of those movies where you get a huge box of popcorn (I don't eat popcorn, but you get the image), set your brain to receive-only mode and just munch away. That could be a great cinematographic experience.
Unfortunately, the only way to get a tiny inkling of this experience in the game Time; All Things Come To An End is to have the walkthrough open and just hammer away at the keyboard.
It does a lot of things right though.
First, there's a ridiculously, comically easy intro-sequence. Really, you are fired when your timetraveling prototype device doesn't work, even after years and years of work. The stacks of notes are on your desk to prove it. And then, oops: (Spoiler - click to show)turns out you forgot to charge the batteries...
So after sorting that out, you decide to give your machine a spin. Whoosh! You are stranded in the future where you stumble upon some sinister conspiracy. With his dying breath, a vaguely familiar man asks for your assistance. Coincidentally, it soon turns out that gettting to the bottom of this conspiracy is also the way to get back to your own timeline.
In a big part of Time; All Things Come To An End, you are being chased by the bad guys. Even in the parts where you are not actively pursued, your nemesis (a delightfully sinister femme fatale) is around somewhere, ready to pounce if you should make a wrong move.
In keeping with this chase-theme, the game plays out on a series of small maps. Your objective is twofold: get the objects or information you need, and escape your pursuers to advance to the next map. This should aid in keeping the game tempo up. There are different modes of transportation between maps, giving a feeling of adventure and real action.
The writing in Time; All Things Come To An End is mostly good. Nice descriptions, well-written (if hardly interactive) dialogue, great cut-scenes (and death-scenes). The author does seem to be under the impression there is some sort of prize to be won for "Most uses of the word 'Evil' in a work of Interactive Fiction." I also think the author got tired near the end. The writing drops noticeably in quality, stock-phrases and clichés start popping up more.
All this could (should) make for a fast-paced chase-game where you feel your pursuers breathe down your neck while you try to figure out each area's puzzle and get to safety in the nick of time.
Alas! Time; All Things Come To An End falls flat in this respect. It fails to tie all the good things together in a fluid, fast-moving game-experience.
Some of you may remember a certain groundbreaking game from the late nineties where you had to move through a very specific sequence of moves to advance. (Spoiler - click to show)Spider and Web. If you deviated too much from this sequence, you failed. But! This particular game was framed in such a way that failing and retrying became an integral part of the experience, adding to the tension and the immersion. It also had the mechanics to back up this fail-and-retry design.
Time; All Things Come To An End is not far removed in time from this game. Here too, the player has to correctly execute a sequence of commands in the right order and , more importantly, in a limited number of turns. However, the only way to eventually get it right is to create tons and tons of save-files and restoring many, many times. These are out-of-game actions, leading to completely non-immersive learn-by-dying gameplay. It would not have been a great leap to add some sort of in-game mechanism to bring the PC back to the start of a challenge, given that the timetravel-premise is already in place.
Lack of time/turns is not the only reason why the player should have numerous save-files on hand. It is exceedingly easy to put the game in an unwinnable state without noticing it until one or more chapters later. Failing to pick up an object, or worse, leaving a seemingly unimportant object behind after a spot of inventory-juggling (yes, there's an inventory limit, at least in the first part of the game) wíll leave you at a dead end many moves later.
Now, after getting savvy to this and accepting that this is just how the game works, I managed to make quite a bit of progress on my own. Playing through a chapter to get the lay of the land and figuring out the death-points, then restoring and doing it right got me a good way into the game. But then the puzzles got in the way. And not in a good way. Many puzzles are extremely obscure, very underclued and with no obvious motivation for the necessary actions. Several times, the key to the solution lay in a location that was wholly unmentioned in any description.
Needless to say that after a few hours of this (this game is big, 2500 moves easy), my motivation waned and I started resorting to the walkthrough more and more.
And here I have to refer back to the beginning of this review: I want to see this movie! The story is great in a suspension-of-disbelief-turned-up-to-eleven kind of way. There are cool twists and turns, great locations in time and space, a real sense of mystery...
It's just not that easily playable as an adventure game.
Despite that, I had a lot of fun, and I recommend playing through it anyhow.
Watch out what you wish for., May 15, 2021An oath sworn in anger and grief leaves two men immortal, bound in their fate until one succeeds in killing the other.
One of them is Kasil, a merciless warlord who led his men on gruesome slaughter-rallies through England in the early fourteenth century. The other is you. You saw your village butchered at the hands of Kasil's men and your sister raped and murdered by the man himself. At the end of an undecided duel, you swear that you will either kill him, or die by his hand while trying. And so the curse takes hold...
First, let's get this out of the way: Yes, this setup is very reminiscent of the <Highlander-movies. It's too good a story to dismiss it as derivative or even plagiarizing though. I categorize it as "an original story in the Highlander-universe", even though the particulars of the spell/curse are somewhat different.
I was very impressed with the structure of this story. Augustine begins with an action-packed prologue where the player learns the backstory of both characters and their bond of fate.
The contrast with the start of the story proper, where you are a bored office clerk in the city of Augustine could not have been greater. Looking for a way to spend the evening, you buy a ticket for a ghost-story tour. It's during these stories that the player learns that the PC is indeed the same centuries-old warrior from the prologue. Although it could be a bit more refined, the author still makes good use of the PC knowing more than the player.
Through flashbacks brought on by the different stories, the player gradually traverses important events of the protagonist's life, coming to know and understand him better. Eventually, this leads us to the expected final showdown at the end of a second and rather more eventful story-tour.
An enthralling story to be sure, but very flawed in execution I am sad to say. When going over my notes for this review, I was reminded of my comments on Jack Toresal and The Secret Letter. A great adventure story, but not an adventure game. Apart from some fightscenes where you can THRUST and PARRY, there is hardly any exploring and no puzzle-solving whatsoever. Exploring the story would count as adventuring for me, were it not that the game is so railroaded that there might as well have been a next page-link at the bottom of the paragraph instead of a parser-prompt.
Indeed, I would have enjoyed this story more as an ink-and-paper macabre horror fiction piece as were popular in the second half of the eightteenth century.
Add to this a very annoying lack of synonyms (>THRUST AT KALIS. You would have to unsheath your sword before you do that. >UNSHEATH SWORD. I do not know the verb "unsheath". Aaargh!) and an all too generous sprinkling of misspellings.
Summary: very good story, badly executed as interactive fiction. Read it, but don't expect to play it.
A lot loafer doing some Johnny Tin Plate-cherry pie on the side., May 7, 2021Yes. That's just one of the great things about Ballyhoo: you get to learn circus-lingo.
After overhearing the circus boss talking to an obviously incompetent private detective about the disappearance of his daughter, you decide to do some investigating yourself. No other motivation than your protagonist's whim. Works for me...
So you start the game and soon find that...
Ballyhoo is pure puzzle and comedy gold.
The comedy comes from many different sources.
There is the persistent atmosphere of a somewhat run-down circus. There are mislaid props and animal odours and filthy rags for banners. One of the trailers is off kilter, an old and warped attraction front serves as part of the fence, one of the lions is skinny and shaggy... This atmosphere doesn't get depressing because it's offset by detailed and colourful descriptions.
The prose is really good. The room and action descriptions are clear but also playful, and there are some hilarious cutscenes (I include deathscenes in the "hilarious cutscene"-category...) A lot of the comedy comes from the protagonist winding up in awkward situations and uncomfortable circumstances ((Spoiler - click to show)trying to navigate a tightrope 20 feet up in the air, finding your way through the crowd searching for your cotton-candy). Many times I laughed at the almost slapstick shenanigans needed to complete one or other task.
During your investigation, you'll meet many outlandish characters. When you (the player) stop and think about it, these NPCs are no more interactive or conversational than a cardboard cutout, but they are so well drawn that their stand-offish behavior and reluctance to answer your questions seems perfectly natural in-game. And they are marvelous just as they are. A collection of wonderful circus-artistes to gawk at.
Other funny features were the many, many instances of wordplay and punnery in the responses to "wrong" commands. My favorite was GET OUT OF LINE when exiting the line in front of a food stand ((Spoiler - click to show)the game describes your character raving and ranting and jumping up and down in anger, i.e. behaving "out of line"...)
As I said above, the puzzles in Ballyhoo are really top shelf. Beautifully hinted and clued. Very rewarding, in the searching for clues as well as in the discoveries after solving them.
When I came across a puzzle, I always could picture a vague general plan to tackle it. And it always turned out that I had missed a necessary step or forgot to bring an important object, throwing me off-balance again. Wonderful! And it always made sense in hindsight.
A small criticism: although I loved solving the puzzles for their own sake, and a joy to solve they were, I rarely had any idea why I was jumping through these hoops.
Of course I'm going to try to get in the lion's cage if I find out it's locked. Why? Because I'm playing an Infocom game. Apart from that, there is little to no motivation in-game to do the weird things that you do. Not even the occasional "You think you see a silvery glint behind the grating"...
This is in keeping with the characterization of the PC. Sure, the game-world is a late 1800s circus setting, but if you look at the bare bones of Ballyhoo, you're still a nameless cleptomaniac adventurer solving puzzles because they're there. There are a lot of instances where you find the solution before you see the puzzle. So you wind up taking everything with you "just in case". To be clear, I don't mind that. I actually like it. Just pointing out that we're not far removed from ZORK-gameplay.
There is however a bigger and more compelling story woven around the puzzle-solving hoop-jumping. This becomes evident int the finale. Excellent building of tension, beautifully tying together the narrative strands (in a hilariously off-kilter way, but hey...). The player's expectations are abruptly shaken a few times before finally solving the bigger puzzle that is the disappearance of the boss's daughter.
Really, play Ballyhoo. It's a hoot.
Orpheus revisited., April 27, 2021Your love is gone. Dead. You wish to see her once more. Maybe even stay with her in the dark... Or say your goodbyes and live...
Eleanor is a very deep atmospheric game-experience. The sound effects immediately drew me into the dark immaterial realm where you are searching for Eleanor. Examining parts of your surroundings often brings up a pop-up window with an evocative drawing or a few paragraphs of text. These are meant to be associative asides, no background story will be spelled out in concrete flashbacks.
The setting is extremely sparse. I pictured myself/the protagonist floating in some intangible black void, with only a few recognizable props. Interacting with your surroundings happens on a dreamlike symbolic level. You trigger memories and sensations within you which make obstacles dissolve and doors open.
The Spring Thing competition version is sadly riddled with misspellings and linguistic errors. I trust most of these will have been corrected in an upcoming postcomp update.
Apart from that, it is clear that English is not the author's native tongue. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It often makes for an unfamiliar turn of phrase that emphasizes the distanced and estranged impression the game makes.
Eleanor is made harder than it has to be by its very idiosyncratic parser messages. The responses to certain commands often do not make clear whether an action is not appropriate in the current circumstances, or is simply not implemented.
That being said, Eleanor is also made hard (and rightly so) by being exactly what it wants to be: a dreamlike journey through an intangible underworld where touching and looking are actions of the mind or even of the soul; where normal physical interaction cannot take place.
It is up to the player to enter into this state of mind. Snippets of text and song lyrics that I had dismissed as atmospheric background are indispensable clues here. You must react to the voices you hear, the images that are formed in your mind's eye. They are not mere spooky mood-setters.
It is also very important that the player use the HELP-command as a real in-game command. It does not call up help from a distinct impersonal help-file, rather it implores Eleanor or an unseen narrator to aid the searching player/protagonist. The responses to HELP are often as evocative as those to LOOK or TOUCH.
I really hope the post-comp version does away with the unintended impenetrability, and leaves the intended opaqueness as an eerie, disconcerting puzzle for the player.
Statue seeks murderer, April 23, 2021[PYG]MALION*'s intro sets up the scenes for a murder investigation among beings of the 4th and 5th dimension, gods if you will. They are the suspects and you, the murdered god/godess are the investigator, having been reanimated in a marble statue.
I found the setting refreshing. No cloudy mountains or temples from antiquity. Instead the gods have gathered in a stately mansion that would fit well in a Poirot-story. The characters too look and behave like upperclass humans (with a tad more power and influence) from that era.
You are to investigate the mansion, question the suspects and make an accusation at the end.
Unfortunately, there was not much interrogating or investigating to be done. Your efforts are mostly just dismissed by the higher beings you're trying to question, and I found no material evidence when searching the scene.
I really enjoyed the diverse scenes playing out (coins in the fountain), but I never came across something that looked like a clue or a false alibi or anything that one would expect in a fictional murder investigation.
The accusation at the end was therefore just a baseless guess. The author probably had a definite reason for making this choice, maybe something about being powerless against the whims of fate.
At any rate, I didn't get it.
Don't let this stop you from playing, it's an enjoyable read.
What are those things outside?, April 23, 2021Hopefully, you will never know. Instead, you run indoors and slam the door behind you.
So, you made your way into Dr.Hugo's (yes, doctor hugo in a hugo game called "the hugo clock"...) research facility. Now for the final part of your assignment. Close the portal.
The way The Hugo Clock drops you in the middle of the story adds a meta-puzzle to the conventional puzzles of the game. Why are you here, who is Dr. Hugo, what were you running from at the start of the game?
Frequent intermezzos with two men, one calm and composed, one frantically pacing, enhance the mystery. The men are talking about your progress, doubting if you will be able to finish the task. (These intermezzos are printed in dark red, adding to the sinister atmosphere of these little exchanges.)
The research facility of Dr. Hugo is small but well described,with a definite creepy atmosphere. There is an exhibition of bizarre artefacts and a room full of contorted skeletons of unknown animals. The main puzzle consists of finding out how to operate a strange machine in the lab. Most of the steps needed are traditional adventure fare, finding and deciphering clues and operating the machine accordingly. There is one delightful (and sad) puzzle which requires you to manipulate a cleaner-automaton into handling part of the preparations for you.
How you execute the machine-operating sequence will determine your fate, and perhaps that of the world...
Short. Not too hard, not too easy. Great fun!
Funny Demonic Nunnery., April 21, 2021The nuns of the nigh impenetrable Nunnery of Blood have taken your mother. Against all odds and the other demons' advice, you will infiltrate it and free your mother.
First off: a bit of tech stuff.
The adjustable interface is pretty nifty. You can toggle all of the player conveniences. Old-fashioned purist that I am, I chose to turn off the side panes (which show exits, inventory and interactive objects in the room), the auto-map (which is cool, by the way) and the keyword links (I find the blue highlighting distracting and hey, I'm playing a parser game!)
The room description-layout is very basic: first a dry list of exits, objects and characters, followed by the actual room description. Any special action taken is listed even before the exits-and-objects list, but the circumstances and consequences of that action are only described after the room. This basic (default Quest?) layout cuts up the flow of the narrative into discrete chunks.
The writing itself is very good though. It captures the locations efficiently (a dank cellar, a smelly cottage,...). The NPCs are very nicely characterized. As they are mostly means to be used for solving puzzles, the attention mostly goes to their relevant physical features, but there's always a hint at their deeper personalities.
Overall, a playful and mischievous tone pervades the game.
Basilica de Sangre takes place on a small, condensed map, making the most of the limited number of locations and avoiding to send the player on long unnecessary walks.
The puzzles hinge on an original main mechanism. The author has struck a good balance between using this mechanism and incorporating some more traditional text-adventure puzzles to support it.
I mustn't elaborate too much. Suffice it to say that it's always a good idea to take note of where the NPCs are, what they are carrying and to read the (short) conversations attentively.
A very pleasant little game!
Too luxurious to be livable., April 19, 2021This is more an experience than a game. Sovereign Citizens lets the player look over the shoulder of a homeless woman while she's exploring an abandoned mansion.
The choices involved (in my playthrough at least) amount to nothing more than choosing which room to visit next. Once in those rooms, the only thing to do was let the text draw me along in the woman's thoughts, feelings and memories.
Fortunately, the writing is good. The loneliness and abandonement of the house is clear, as is the held-back desperation of the woman as she wanders through empty room after empty room. The relationship between the woman and her husband (I think) is one of mutual comfort, their being together might well be the real home in the story.
The experience is vivid and immersive, and in the end it lets the reader draw their own conclusions. There are political, emotional, psychological themes that are touched upon, without pushing them into the reader's face.
A good click-through read, not much of a game.
Murder most sparse., April 19, 2021Picton Murder Whodunnit is a short and sparse random-perpetrator murder mystery. I played through it only once, so I can't really comment on the mechanics of the random assignment of the murderer.
The setting of an upper-class mansion with its inhabitants (and a butler!) is something that inspires high expectations in me. There are many opportunities for drama and/or humour here, in the story/plot as well as in the characterization. Unfortunately, the game let me down on both counts.
Storywise, Picton Murder Whodunnit is just too sparse. There is no background on the murder or the victim. The family's affairs are given naught but the faintest of hints. Even within the constraints of the randomization, a vague account of the events leading up to the murder would have been very welcome.
An upper-class mystery-game of this kind stands or falls, in my opinion, by the pointed characterization of the people involved. There is a lot of room for either a deep psychological profile or a funny charicature of the well known rich family trope-characters.
In the game however, there is only the highly prejudiced opinion of the PC, which I found rather unprofessional for the expert-investigator the introduction claims he is.
Perhaps the randomization mechanism would blow my mind upon replay. I will not know because I will not replay. There just isn't enough there.
Cave crawling Ambassador, April 18, 2021After three weeks as a guest of the Northland Empire, you've had it with these carefully guided official visits and tours designed to show you absolutely nothing of what is really going on in the land. Fortunately, due to a small mishap during an elephant tour, which you had nothing to do with of course, you get an opportunity to search around your lodgings and sniff out the secrets they do not want you to know.
And soon you find the entrance to a cave...
The Meteor, The Stone and a Long Glass of Sherbet sets itself firmly in Zorkian territory. It's a classic and very well done cave-crawl with some explicit references to the caves of Zork.
As soon as you enter the cave halls, you are welcomed by an overwhelming view. Truly one of the most surprising cave-descriptions I have read so far. From here, you explore a small but exquisitely crafted map. There are many differences in level, and you have to be very resourceful to get up or down from one to the other. I prefer this over a 100-room NESW sprawler any day.
The puzzles are clever without being too hard.
A few depend on unusual object-manipulation, many need you to learn a simple magic system with spells that just happen to be tailor-made for the problems you encounter.
I had the strong impression that the author did have a particular order of traversal in mind. If you should skip one of the early locations, choosing to explore deeper first, the puzzles become a lot harder to understand.
The intro and the first part of the midgame are very relaxed, getting the player to trust the game that they can explore and experiment at their leisure. And then Zarfian cruelty strikes. I won't elaborate, but just watch you inventory, okay?
There's a nice shift in pace in the endgame, where you need to make your escape by making a mental *click* to know how to behave under the new circumstances.
A cool game that leans on the cave-crawling tropes and uses them in fun and surprising ways.
Plot twist anyone?, April 16, 2021Damn! Your old partner got themself in a pickle again. Of course you'll go and save them from the "Big Bad Plotting Schemer and the Henchmen". (Hey, is there a band name in there?..)
The further you get into the convoluted and twisting storyline though, the more obvious it becomes that something is off here...
As a secret spy in an arctic base surrounded by enemies, how else could this end but badly?
Fish & Dagger has a very high production-value. The stark black-and-white cover art, the cinematic backgrounds, the chilling soundtrack and the sound effects, everything works together to suck you into this dark spy story.
Or is it a spoof?
Or something else entirely, something that engages the reader in ways no other spy story has before?
Aye, there's the rub. Fish & Dagger tries to be all of the above.
When taken on their own, these narrative angles work. They work quite well actually. It's just that the framework is too small, too short to accomodate them all next to each other. If the story were longer and the shift more gradual, if each angle had the space to develop on its own pace, I think this could be a great narrative experience.
As it is now, it feels more like a proof-of-concept game, and a hurried one at that.
Still, a remarkable experience. Well worth playing.
Dusk and dawn of a friendship., April 15, 2021Those Days is a slow-paced and thoughtful piece about life, growing up, friendship. It's nostalgic, a bit sad and a bit uplifting. As I said: life.
The main character reminisces about those endless days of childhood, spent with his best friend.
It's quite a stretch to call this an interactive story. The interactivity is limited to clicking highlighted words now and then while the railroaded story inevitably unrolls.
The clicking does serve another purpose however: that of pacing the story and forcing the player to take in the deeper meaning of the short paragraphs. This is helped by carefully judged timed text that slows down the reading tempo just enough to aid in letting the words sink in.
I really liked the changing background colours. They came across as symbolic of the different stages in the life of the protagonist and of the state of his friendship with his best friend.
A moving story that makes excellent use of the Twine-format to enhance its impact.
A cabin in the woods...*, April 14, 2021First off: Some Space is beautiful. There are background images of stars and nebulas while you play, and a soothing soundtrack.
I quite liked the lettering, but I do think it might be hard for people with certain eye-problems to notice the clickable words.
Playing the game left me with a split experience.
The main body of the game is about your PC who has moved to the Koilan planet for a new job. Unfortunately, the Koilan have a very vague and roundabout way of communicating. Everything they say is interpreted by you as one or other code, even with the universal translation goo you drink at the beginning of the game.
I thought the code puzzles were cool in the way that ten-year-olds playing spies think secret messages are cool. (This is a good thing. I liked playing spies as a ten-year-old. Still do.) I can't elaborate, just be ready to look up resources (very simple recources) out-of-game/on the net.
Throughout the game, you keep getting hints that something's wrong on the home-front. It's a vague but effective method of characterization that the PC keeps ignoring certain messages, without the player having any choice in the matter.
After happily breaking different codes and translating secret messages, the game suddenly changes tone. Very soon after, it comes to a screeching halt, leaving the player wondering about the small but intense bits of backstory that were just revealed.
I really don't know. I liked a lot about this game, but it didn't feel like an integrated whole.
*You'll get it when you play it.
I love the smell of armadillo in the mornin', April 14, 2021You're a big trucker with a soft spot for the waitress in a rundown truckstop. You'll have to prove to her you can safely take her accross the mountains to take her away.
Looking for ways to accomplish this, you meet a bunch of colourful characters, each with their weaknesses you can exploit to get a step further to your goal. (I was intrigued by Ranbir the shop owner.)
This could have been a fun comedy game, were it not that it's badly executed.
There are a bunch of typos and missing spaces, not enough synonyms, and often there is a blank line missing above the parser prompt, gluing the response to the previous command onto the next command line.
The game suffers from shoddy implementation. OPEN DOOR gets a response that refers to an obstacle that you just got rid of for example.
And I cringed when I saw this:
(In Convenience Store)
>BUY SODA
"Nothing is on sale."
Not only is it an unforgivable oversight not to implement BUY in a store, the author also managed to use the wrong expression.
[Edit: the expression "on sale" has different meanings in American and British English. Only in American English does it mean "being sold at a lower than usual price". I was wrong, the author was right to use "Nothing is on sale." in this way. Since this was the most grating flaw I experienced, I upped my rating by one]
Two or three more sendbacks to the testers and a lot of attention to detail could make this game a fun little comedy. As it is now however, the lack of careful finish got in the way of my enjoyment.
I look forward to a post-comp release of Mean Mother Trucker, where I might dive right into the comedy.
(Dis-) Illusions, April 13, 2021This game was a lot better when I played it ten years ago. Or is it I who have come to expect better?
Wearing the Claw is a very traditional fantasy adventure. It's played completely straight. No tongue in cheek, no subtle (or blatant) irony.
I really like traditional fantasy played straight. A lot.
After "The Testing", you are chosen as the worthy young man to find the Pendant of MacGuffin, ahem, Elinor, to lift the curse beset upon your village by an evil wizard. You are to gain entry to the Fortress where it is held and bring it back. No objections from me here. More than half the fantasy stories and games I know start off like this.
But then the game falls short on many points.
Apart from a longish text dump-introduction and a similarly long epilogue, the actual story is hurried. There's not enough attention to tempo to let the player sink into the story or the character. Everything seems to happen one thing after another at the same just-a-bit-too-fast pace.
The view of the magical island across the sea raised expectations that weren't fulfilled. After a literally linear path (one east-west dusty road) I had hoped for the map to open up and become more complex upon entering the fortress. Instead I found one north-south path.
The first puzzle sets a good theme. It's about deception, and one hopes that this will be explored more fully in the rest of the game. The other puzzles do indeed repeat the theme, but they do not widen it. They're similar variations on the theme without becoming more difficult or complicated. As such, they also do not become more rewarding, rather the opposite.
The story itself has the same problem. If only it had broadened in scope to weigh some of the personal or moral implications of deception... Perhaps by adding alternative ways to overcome the obstacles...
Maybe your character could also have become a more three-dimensional person then.
But these are "if"s and "maybe"s that cannot be changed.
The game as it is still has its good qualities. It's competently written. It has a ton of optional responses to unnecessary actions. You can greatly add to the fun in this game by trying many things that are outside of the main quest.
There is a magical gadget that changes the way you view the world, so there's some fun in re-exploring there.
All in all, this is a fine, uncomplicated adventure. It's just that it seems to promise so much more...
Waiting for your ride..., April 13, 2021You just missed your tram-ride and now you have half an hour before the next one. What will you do to pass the time?
Misty Hills is a pleasant visit to a quaint imaginary place. There are some people there to meet, some tasks to find and carry out or some small walks you can take.
There is absolutely no pressure here, no score to aim for or objective to reach. You're really just passing the time and letting things come over you.
Each path I took had its own little surprises. Each time I got on the tram in the end, I had a smile on my face.
Mmmhhhm... Chicken, April 11, 2021A short and breezy peek at what should be a really fun game once it's gotten a bit more substance. The author submitted it to the Back Garden of the Spring Thing to gather feedback. It's acknowledged in the ABOUT-text that it is now too short and not fleshed out enough.
However, what's there is certainly enough for a light-hearted and funny diversion. This little gamelet is playable all the way through. It has an intro, a midgame and a conclusion of sorts.
A total of four puzzles are there to challenge you. Of these, the first is a great pointer to what SIWSOCATOAQ or its sequel could become: a fun and slightly off-kilter challenge that does not take itself too seriously.
Good for half an hour of fun.
(I'm particularly interested in the north room on the second floor...)
Gracious theft., April 10, 2021You are quite the sophisticated art-thief, choosing to perform your particular art as stylishly as possible.
You also can't stand being talked down to by snobbish Upper Class-Ladies.
So you decide to stick it to Lady Satterthwaite, robbing her of not one but three family heirlooms without a trace of your stealthy little self.
Lady Thalia and the Seraskier Sapphires is a delightfully funny heist-game. I very much enjoyed finding out what angle to use in my conversations with the different characters to get information or favours.
In fact, these conversation-puzzles make up the most part of the obstacles. You can get quite a good feel for the kind of person you're talking to from their response to your first question, so you can tweak your approach accordingly.
I especially enjoyed talking to your Scotland Yard-nemesis. There is a real chemistry between the protagonist and the detective trying to catch her.
There is also some traditional code-breaking involved, but I believe you could circumvent that by making different choices.
The writing in Lady Thalia really sparkles. It's fast-paced, funny and engaging, with just a sprinkle of backstory involved.
As I said: Delightful!
Iterations of a snowy day., April 10, 2021Wintervale starts off as a run-of-the mill story about a fantasy town. This introduction was nicely done, with a history of how the town got its name and a list of the different fantasy races living together in Wintervale, listing their strengths. Apparently, the town is special for having all these races living together, as they are mistrusting towards each other in the neighbouring lands. Unfortunately, this information is of no consequence to the rest of the story.
The innkeeper of the town goes down to his drinking hall to investigate after he was rudely awakened by riotous noises in the streets. During this first investigation he is killed, only to re-awaken on the same day.
From here, the circumstances of the innkeeper's investigations turn darker and more confusing. Through multiple re-awakenings, the player must guide him on a search for what exactly is happening.
The game is written with a lot of enthousiasm, and I felt this pull me along while playing. I was gripped by the mystery of the broken glass in the tavern and the riot outside.
I must add however that the sense of mystery was helped (?) along by the unclear writing. The game is riddled with awkward turns of phrase that present your surroundings as more obscure than the author probably intended.
There are also many misspellings ("environment" is consistently spelled "enviornment" for example). The game definitely needs another round of proofreading by players fluent in English.
I liked Wintervale a lot, but perhaps more for the promise it shows than for the story it is in this iteration...
Mine, April 10, 2021Twenty two good men died in the mine after an earthquake. To add insult to injury, some hoodlums take control of the town and deny the families their grief-benefits, robbing them of even the possibility to pay for a church-sevice or a proper burial.
As the son of one of the miners, you gather a group of young kids to stand up to the thieves.
At first, Copper Canyon reminded me of the Peter Pan-movie Hook. A bunch of kids resorting to tricks and mischief to shame the bad guys into drooping off. The story evolves into something much darker and more serious however. This transition was gradual enough to be believable, there was no sudden jerk in the story. This is mainly due to the excellent prologue reverberating through the story.
Having played through only once, I don't know how much the choices in Copper Canyon change the course of the main story. They certainly do offer the player an opportunity to flesh out the protagonist, to fill in his character by exploring what he does in certain situations.
Although I think this piece could do with some more characterization, and some more exploration of the effects of the deaths of the miners on the rest of the town's population, I really liked it.
A good read.
Stepping off the gravel road..., April 9, 2021Baggage is set in a very evocative symbolic setting. You're on an endless gravel road going nowhere. Your only chances of getting somewhere lie behind two impenetrable hedges.
You must dig deep within yourself to make for yourself the tools you need.
This vignette tries to relate to the player the hard and painful work it takes to open a path out of depression or emotional blockage. It gets a lot of things right; the need to hold some cherished beliefs to the light and see them for what they really are, to leave behind painful yet known -and therefore twistedly comfortable- convictions and memories.
The way to deal with these, to mould them into something helpful instead of restrictive is a bit easy. I would have liked to see some more of what a person need to do and what needs to happen to a person to climb out of the darkness, instead of presenting it as a "simple" decision. However, this small story does present the necessary steps one has to take, albeit somewhat on the theoretical level.
The contrast between the player character and the traveller (the only NPC) gives a bittersweet taste to the endgame.
A sincere and thoughtful piece, worth thinking and feeling about after you finish.
Exactly what it says on the tin., April 8, 2021This was FUN!
There's really nothing to the "game"-part of this game, but my-oh-my the fun there is to be had by trying to do all the things you can think of in this limited setting.
Actually, this entire game is one big list of AMUSING.
Really, play it. Ten minutes of laughing, out loud or otherwise.
Phone booth to the stars, Microwave to the past, April 4, 2021A big review for a big game.
Finding Martin is an extremely big and extremely difficult game. I would not have been able to finish it without external hints and peeking at the walkthrough.
However, it’s also a very long, complicated and well-conceived story that ties together the lives and fates of many characters. It was a great experience to see this play out over the course of many playsessions.
The intro is somewhat hurried. It pays little attention to character exposition or context, instead just telling you the bare minimum of information. A former college mate, Martin, has disappeared. His sister calls you up and persuades you to help find him. That’s it. No big emotional reminders of what close friends you were or what splendid memories you share.
In fact, this detachement in the beginning of the game is one of the first points of criticism in Adam Cadre’s and Janice Eisen’s podcast about Finding Martin. And I have to agree with them… to a point. Were one to come to Finding Martin empty-slated as it were, it would be very hard to muster the determination to wade through that much pointless puzzles without any in-game motivation. Having read reviews and forum-posts about the game though, as I expect almost any player attempting it now would do, I anticipated this. I was prepared and actually looking forward to these puzzles-for-puzzles’-sake.
And I have to say, it is very much worth it when the story starts unfolding to have bit your teeth hard into these unmotivated puzzles. They turn out to have meaning after all.
Technically, Finding Martin is a monster-achievement. The room descriptions follow the many and varied changes in game-state almost seamlessly. There are some points where a repeated description of a device in motion hints at the cogwheels of the game straining ((Spoiler - click to show)the Fuzzy Room in action), but I believe eliminating this would have been very difficult to program.
There is another point of criticism I’d like to bring up: the huge amount of micro-management. There are a few puzzles where you have to sit in front of a desk or a piano and where you have to explicitly SIT and STAND UP every time. There is also the main puzzle/clue mechanism of the game that requires you PUT X IN POCKET every time. Well, okay, I guess… But then you put on a jacket and get disambiguation prompts the whole time. (“The trouser pocket or the jacket pocket?”.) Maybe there could have been a designated pocket for this object? I’m sure I could have shaven a few hundred moves off the +5OOO I took to finish the game.
Ah well, technicalities…
The map is actually not so big. There is Martin’s house, which comprises the main game-area. This area contains a number of hidden passages that expand the map, but not by that much. Then there are quite a number of small submaps to journey to that are easily explored. Together they give a feeling of possibility, of a wider space than is actually in the game.
Part One
You begin by exploring Martin’s house. I got the impression that a mad genius had been in charge of installing the domotics technology and went all out. “Hmmm, what if I tied opening the oven to the turtle drawing its head into its shell?” (Not a real example, but close enough.)
There are hidden or unknown mechanisms and controls everywhere. An enormous number of the objects you come across come with a puzzle. This amount of puzzles also means that by the time you’ve gone through the house once, you’ve been bombarded with a veritable barrage of clues. Very hard to keep track of.
Luckily, there are some things to help the player. For one, the writing. It is clear, descriptive and detailed, with just enough flair as to not become dry.
Then, there are two in-game hint/clue systems. Unfortunately, one of them (the one that tells you how to do things) takes some intricate puzzle-solving all by itself to activate. The other one tells you what to look for next. It hangs just outside the front door.
By meticulously following these clues and experimenting with everything, the player finds more and more ways to open doors and make seemingly trivial things happen ((Spoiler - click to show)running a bath for instance…). This gradually shrinks down the pile of clues to a more manageable size, making it easier to plan ahead.
Also, I found that after a while, my brain adapted to the bizarre-yet-consistent logic of the game. I came to expect certain kinds of solutions to work.
Part Two
In the second part you find a device for travelling that is reminiscent of a certain doctor’s means of transportation. This allows you to leave the house and pick up objects necessary for solving puzzles in the house (by solving more puzzles of course).
During these travels, the backstory finally starts opening up. By listening to old cassettes and through the cunning use of your sense of smell, you learn more about Martin and his family. In the rest of the game you will get to see how their lives and yours entwine to make a possible future.
You also meet the first people. NPCs in Finding Martin are very unresponsive. But they do have a lot to say and do without you having to ask them to. In a bunch of pleasant cut-scenes you will meet half a dozen or so people that will aid you on your quest. They also provide welcome paragraphs of rest and exposition to ease your by-now-overheating brain.
The puzzles in this part are easier, most of all because you have clearer sub-goals and a clearer course of action. This is also a part where you get to experiment and train with the training wheels still on. You are gently prohibited from going on a trip if you don’t have a necessary object. Not so in the last part of the game!
And last but not least, you get to re-explore your surroundings with a cool new gadget! It will change the way you view the world.
Part Three
And now we come to the third part. A long, dense and insanely difficult buildup to the finale.
Through a series of time-travel trips you have to resolve a number of paradoxes in the desired timeline to make it reality. You will need to coöperate with your past self to set up the necessary conditions for the following time trips, plant objects for your future self to solve puzzles and eventually make the intended future a reality instead of a mere possibility.
Finding Martin’s world and logic are bizarre, unintuitive and twisted. However, there is a strong consistency throughout the game. An unseen interlocking machinery is at work underneath the surface and gives the piece its coherence in tone and style. There is method to the madness, it’s just nigh impossible to grasp it.
Therefore I was disappointed to see the coherence crumble in this part as the game descended into gratuitous zaniness (Spoiler - click to show)(Peter Pan and Captain Hook show up…
It’s only one scene during one overseas trip, but it did break the atmosphere for me.
But soon the game shook off this temporary lapse and continued to a truly satisfying finale. It was a joy to see all those carefully laid out pieces come together, tying together timelines as well as the lives of the characters I had come to care about. The road was long and hard, but the reward is very much worth it.
Highly recommended game!
An impressive feat!, April 2, 2021The width of the map and the depth of implementation are awe-inspiring.
Only War relies on the strengths of the parser-IF medium to produce an experience that no other medium, no matter how strong its graphics interface or how numerous its pages of static text, could deliver.
The old-school adage holds strong with this epic work: the best graphic engine is the human imagination!
This game also has a masterful technical ace up its sleeve in the handling of containers and contents.
Revealing too much would spoil the surprise and the imaginative journey for other players. Suffice it to say that I was baffled when I found out how deep this game actually went.
[Edit: This is a 2021 April Fools' Day joke-game]
Ten Pearly Isles, March 21, 2021The Lost Islands of Alabaz is a fun and energetic travel-adventure. It's aimed at children and has the feel of the "boy's adventures"-books I used to eat up by the dozens as a child. (For all I knew then, girls had books about knitting and princes. Except for my cool girlfriends, who also read the boy's books... Sign of the times...?)
At the beginning of the story, you get to choose a name for your protagonist, which was a great draw-in for my son. We decided on his own name. After that, he let me do all the hard work and asked about status-reports on his quest each evening.
There is a detailed tutorial in the game in the form of Trig, your best friend NPC. He breaks the fourth wall to tell the player directly what to TYPE. Children playing their first IF might not notice, but for a veteran with several dozen games under my belt, having read numerous threads and essays about Player-PC-Narrator-Parser-relations this made me feel unbalanced at first. I concluded that the aforementioned essays were taking things much too seriously...)
One morning, you, a young knight, are called by the king to go on a quest. The ten islands of the kingdom have been separated by a cursed mist for dozens of years now and there is no sign that it will lift of its own accord. The people are suffering under the lack of trade, food and communication with friends and relatives.
The king gives you one magic pearl to guide you through the mist to one island. From there, you're on your own. Find the cause of the curse and lift it, and find your way back home.
Not the most innovative of premises, but an engaging one. I did feel an obligation to fulfill this quest for the good of all the island-dwellers of Alabaz. (And to my son...)
The premise of the ten islands makes for a great sense of space. You're a seafaring adventurer exploring the unknown!
The islands themselves all have small maps (five locations or less, except for the mazy one...) At first, I thought the author was using a Gateway-like technique, each island a self-contained puzzle-space in the bigger whole. The first islands of The Lost Islands of Alabaz are like this. The more islands you have encountered and explored though, the more it becomes necessary to revisit previous islands, making for a web of relations between the islands that has to be kept in mind.
The puzzles themselves are easy to medium difficulty.Most of them are simple fetch-quests and/or straightforward use-appropriate-object-here obstacles. To get them right however, the player needs to pay close attention to the information he's given in conversations and in the out-of-game Almanac.
That's right! With your download, you get an Almanac about the islands and how they were before the mist. It's a nice 15-minute read, almost like an historical tourist-brochure. Embedded of course are many clues on how to solve the problems in the game.
Actually, the Almanac is just one of three hint-systems for the game. You also carry a journal, in which your progress is recorded along with reminders of puzzles you have yet to solve. And there is Trig. You can ask Trig about all the puzzles, repeatedly. He will start with giving you a nudge toward the first step of the solution, and give more explicit guidance after that.
There are a whole bunch of NPCs to whom you can talk. I found them to be well-characterized with a few strokes of the pen. They talk about many things, and to avoid confusion the author puts suggested topics that pertain directly to the puzzles between parentheses. All conversations use the syntax TALK ABOUT, although you can use ASK ABOUT too. I didn't find any differences.
The Lost Islands of Alabaz plays very smoothly. There are many synonyms for nouns and verbs. The descriptions change in tune with the actions you perform on other islands, there are nice responses to "failed" attempts. The player can feel at ease that the game will not misbehave.
This game turned out to be a lot longer than I expected from the first play-session where I breezed through the first two islands. I spent a few evenings on this quest for the hidden magic pearls. Very enjoyable evenings.
Light adventurous fun. Go play.
Oh, as an extra incentive: You can compete in the Zeppelipede-racing Derby on the Island of RazzMaTazz! Yes, you can. In fact, you must!
Our favourite generic hero saves cultural heritage!, March 18, 2021When I entered the first room in The Adventurers' Museum, I almost breathed a sigh of relief. It was a breath of fresh air to learn that the quest at hand was to retrieve all the exhibits that were stolen from the museum by a thievish imp. Through the actions of my anonymous adventurer, I was going to help restore the historical artefacts of the Necromancer-wars to their rightful place, for the good of future generations of schoolchildren and curious adults. My sociopathic and cleptomaniac tendencies would serve a greater cause.
I'm only half joking here. Although the gameplay of The Adventurers' Museum is the same as any old puzzle-&-looting romp, the task given to me by the old and wize curator of the museum had more importance, more weight than just treasure-taking to kill the Big Bad Bully at the end.
In his review for Baf's Guide, David Welbourn says: "Want to play Zork I again for the nostalgia value, but you've already played that one so many times that it's no longer a challenge? Try The Adventurers' Museum."
I haven't played Zork yet, but I have read enough to know that if you are eaten by a Growl in the dark and if your treasure gets randomly stolen by a thieving imp, I might as well view this game as a rehearsal for when I do tackle Zork.
The technical side of this adventure is more than adequate. There are many synonyms for verbs and nouns. Trying "wrong" things usually gives a response either why you can't do that or just lets you do them and see the funny consequences of your actions (plus it moves the game into unwinnable territory, but hey, save/restore right?)
There are several really oldschool features to this game, but it's as if the author put them in out of respect for past tradition rather than to make gameplay harder.
There's a limited lantern, but there's also an unlimited light source lying right on your path. Your hero gets thirsty, but a river runs right through the cave. You feel hungry, but the curator gave you elvish waybread on your third turn into the game. The imp keeps stealing your stuff, but you can get him off your scent quite easily.
The only thing left that can be annoying to (modern) players is the inventory-juggling, but all that does is make you take a trip back to the museum now and then.
It's probably best to put any frustrations aside and do a few exploratory runthroughs of the cave without worrying about unwinnability or the order of puzzles, just until you get a feel for the place.
Coming back to the Zork-comparison: I have also read enough that I think The Adventurers' Museum really has a special mood of its own. There is a very consistent, almost friendly fairytale-fantasy atmosphere throughout the entire game (except that one room...).
I found the layout and the feel of the map to be brilliant. The cramped cave-crawling of the cave entrance soon gives way to grand vistas of splendid underground halls, a fluorescent flower garden and subterranean pools. A nice big part of the map is accessible from the start, and already in this part the gamespace is layered in three dimensions, with sidepaths leading up and over other areas. Sometimes you get treated to an eagle-eye view of a lower area.
Puzzlewise, there is a wide variety. There's attentive exploring and spelunking, some references to pop-culture, clever time/turn counting,... And yes, sometimes violence is the answer.
Some solutions do require a completely (to me) unmotivated action, and at least one object has a use that was completely unhinted. A bit of let's-try-every-verb and see what happens. That was less fun...
The pacing of the game can be a bit tedious at first. Once you have explored the accessible map though, a nice interaction between puzzles solved, museum-objects in your inventory and bottlenecks opening sets a cascade in motion where you find tunnel after cavern after hall with treasure in rapid succession. Very rewarding.
Conversations are not implemented at all, so you only get to know the few NPCs by their actions and what they choose to say to you. I did find the old curator endearing. (And a bit intimidating. How can he get from his office to the top of the museum stairs to block your way so fast!?)
The Adventurers' Museum may not be innovative or especially creative, but I had a great time playing it.
Power Animals and Quantum Chickens!, March 14, 2021Return to Ditch Day is a puzzling experience par excellence. Challenging brainteasers/-breakers with an engaging storyline.
It starts with a great introduction. An easy puzzle in an atmosphere-rich environment. It's completely linear (apart from some amusing things when you try to resist the railroading), but it's the perfect way to get acquainted with the mood of the game, the sort of puzzles to expect, your own character and, last but not least, your nemesis. (I swear, you'll wish you had a phaser set to "burn to a crisp" after a few turns in his company.)
Some time later, you are sent to CalTech, your alma mater, as a headhunter trying to get a brilliant student to work with your tech-company. And who shows up with exactly the same purpose? You got it. The need for payback on this character in your PC is great enough to spill out of the computer and into your mind. You want to beat this guy as much as your character does. Excellent motivation to tackle this puzzle-romp of a game.
It turns out this brilliant student has turned the tables on you: instead of a normal interview where you ask the questions and set the conditions, you are invited to solve his Ditch Day-stack. He will sign with the man who solves it first. This task will lead you to hilarious situations, complicated puzzles, and a good amount of science and engineering.
Ditch Day is a CalTech tradition where the seniors leave campus and block their rooms with clever puzzles. The challenge is to solve the puzzles and get in the room (where there are treats as a bribe not to trash said room). This means that the gamespace, CalTech Campus, is bustling with activity. There are stacks (i.e. puzzles) everywhere in the dorms, the students are gathering in the hallways and in front of doors trying to solve them. This lively atmosphere gives the game a lot of energy, making you keep wanting to engage with it.
The campus is a big and complicated place so mapping it thoroughly is necessary. (I read in her review that Emily Short did not and made her way through anyway. I'm not Emily Short.) There are no mazes as such, but especially the dorm-area is twisty enough to lose your bearings. I actually started this game about ten years ago, but I quit halfway through because I didn't know where I was half the time. (That bend through the dorm-library is a cruel inside joke of the author, I'm sure of it.)
There are many NPCs. You can only talk to a few of them, but all the others seem like real persons too, concentrating on the stack of their choice or exchanging hints and clues with each other. The ones you can speak to are mostly limited to the problem at hand, giving you objects or clues. The way they act and talk to you is very personal though, giving them each their own identity. (I really liked Erin.) And although your nemesis doesn't answer any questions, he does have a snide comment ready to everything you do around him.
The writing is practical. It focuses on clarity, describing where you are and who/what is there. There is a lot of situational and action-comedy in the game, but this never becomes the main focus.
The writing is also very, very good at controlling the pace and steering the player in the right direction through clues. The size of the map and the sheer amount of puzzles you encounter on your first exploration can be overwhelming. It's important to know and remember that this is actually a very friendly game. It doesn't want to frustrate you (too much) or deliberately mislead you. If you take it slow and do things in the order the clues show you, you'll discover that there is a completely logical sequence of puzzles that build on each other towards the endgame.
But! Beware! There is a storyline that diverges from this main puzzle-sequence. It is not necessary to win the game, but it is for getting full points. It's also a lot of fun. And you get to search the steam tunnels under the university!
And now for the meat and bones of Return to Ditch Day: the puzzles. I surprised myself by not needing to look at the hints except one time, when it was (to me) underclued how to get a student to help me with an object. And I am not a great puzzler. However, I did what I wrote before: slowly going from clue to clue, without letting myself be overwhelmed by sidetracks. (I did save at a certain point, went on an exploration and experimentation rampage through campus and found tons of fun stuff and fruitflies and a solvable computer-code puzzle. After that I just restored and went on my methodical way.)
Many different puzzles, many different strategies. Some require reading and learning. Sometimes you need help from others in a tit-for-tat way. There's a puzzle where you have to manipulate NPCs by learning a bit more about them. There are gadgets and machinery to be played with. And ultimately, there is codecracking. Glorious, in-your-face-nemesis codecracking...
I spent three evenings captivated by Return to Ditch Day. Hours of reading, thinking, laughing. This game is great.
Fluffy adventure., March 12, 2021A Bear's Night Out is a delightful little adventure!
After dark, while your owner is asleep, you climb (or rather bounce) out of bed. You have to make sure everything is ready for the big day tomorrow, and knowing your owner, he'll have forgotten a bunch of stuff.
The map is very small, eleven rooms in total. While exploring these rooms, there are tons of fun stuff to discover and experiment with.(Pssst, the cat is a great playmate...)
Once you have seen all the rooms, experimented to your hearts content with all the funny stuff and start dealing with the puzzles in earnest, you'll see that not everything in this game is fluffy and soft and easygoing. None of the puzzles are fiendish, but they all require thorough examining of the game-space, a good deal of planning and some real-life puzzlesolving strategies. Of course, all of this is made both harder and more fun by the fact that you're about a foot tall...
A warm and fuzzy adventure.
"Stop the presses! Hold everything!", March 11, 2021[A short bespectacled man runs into the printing press hall. He's frantically waving a crumpled piece of yellowish paper above his head, the static electricity making his hair stand on end.]
-"Where's the boss? Where is the one responsible for reviews? Or better, where is the one who writes all those "Top 100"-lists and those "Best 50"-articles and the Recommended-pages? I need to talk to the one in charge!"
[The boy at the huge black press-machine, his hand still on the big red STOP-button, lifts his cap and scratches his head.]
-"Well sir, I don't know of any boss of the top-lists. I doubt there is such a person. It's all rather more the work of the IF-community as a whole."
-"Now, now, youngun! No need for such foul language! So, I.F. Community, eh? Never heard of him. Or her, for that matter. Strange name, if you ask me.
I suspect Mr. or Mrs. Community is not here? Of course not. Well, you'll have to do. Get your leadtype out, boy, I'll dictate the article. And you make sure this gets on the front page of this Text-Game-gazette or whatever it is you're running here!"
[The boy opens his mouth, trying to clear up the misunderstanding, but the bespectacled man already charges ahead, reading loudly from his crumpled paper.]
T-Zero; A text-adventure for the ages!
A young man wakes up in the dry leaves of the forest floor. Former Librarian and Custodian of the Museum, Count Zero has dismissed him of his duties. He had been snooping around in the vicinity of the restricted areas a little too much lately.
Our protagonist is certain he is on to something however, and he will not give up before he has got to the bottom of it. That his curiosity will lead him through the boundaries of time, he did not expect. Still, courageously he presses onward, determined to set things right.
--"They tirelessly twirl in a circular swirl."--
The writing in T-Zero is exquisite. Poetic, evocative, engaging, the descriptions of locations and actions give the game a rhythm that takes the player from the real and concrete to the dream-like and back without breaking the continuity of the story.
Good writing is indeed of the utmost importance to do justice to this quite intricate story. After the initial exploration of the Museum and its surroundings in the Present, the protagonist gains the means and the knowledge to travel to Past and Future to tweak the outcome of events just so to gain victory over Count Zero's plan to enslave humanity. This involves fiddling with the state of the Past to gain access to puzzle solutions in the Present, which in turn set up the Future for your chance of besting Count Zero, the Time Smith.
To keep up the flow of this excellent writing, the author has opted to leave the exits out of the room description. Instead there is an EXITS-command that will drily list available directions. This command does not take a turn, and I did not mind reflexively typing it as I was mapping the game-area.
The map plays a huge part in the enjoyment of the atmosphere of this game. It is big and readily accessible, except for some well-planned bottlenecks with puzzle-locks to help with the story's pacing and to prevent the story from becoming incomprehensibly befuddling.
Many locations will seem inert at first, having no apparent interactive content or even purpose apart form being an expendable room. Most of these will come into play in the other ages you will visit, becoming an influence that moves through time.
It is a joy to re-explore the map in each era, comparing the different times. The locations and their relations will be subtly different each time, giving a fresh and surprising look at known ground.
While the story and writing of T-Zero are mindboggling in the best sense of the word, some of the puzzles are the opposite.
First: many of the puzzles are standard adventure-fare. They can be obvious or more original, but they stay within the comfortable zone of puzzle-design: the commands necessary to influence the game, the mental picture of possibilities and options to tackle an obstacle.
But then there are the perplexing puzzles. Not because they are difficult in a normal adventuring context, but because they draw on a set of knowledge and inspiration that most IF-players will not access in this context. Some of these puzzles are of the satisfying think-outside-the-box variety. bringing great joy to the player. All of them depend on the player's knowledge of a very English language and popular culture. Joyful as they may be to the player who is in-the-know, in general these are just plain unfair.
Many, if not all, default responses are personalized, most times in a beautifully literate one-sentence gem. In case of an ambiguity between nouns in a command, the game lists all the options in a menu, allowing you to choose the one you meant. Practical, but also evidence of how user-friendly the game desires to be, despite the mindblowing puzzles.
Also very practical are the location-specific hints. They helped me on many occassions with a gentle nudge. On the other hand, there were times when the hints just confirmed I had the right idea, but I still needed a walkthrough to find the proper syntax.
As is to be expected; time plays a very big role in T-Zero. It pervades the entire game. Since time is elapsing and day is followed by night, you can expect some solutions to puzzles also being time-dependent. While most of the time this adds to the anticipation, it can also mean a boring few minutes typing WAIT over and over if you were a few moves late to a specific location and you have to wait an entire day without anything else to do. (This happened to me once, but it was all a result of my own bad timing/planning.)
Tricky: you have to revisit some rooms after your first exploration. Some objects just pop up after a while without there being a reason or an obvious notification from the game about this.
Lastly, I would like to point your attention to the rag man. While he doesn't have much to say, he is a pretty nifty NPC. Without wanting to give too much away, this character teeters constantly on the edge of the game-world and our own. I spent a lot of time musing about the kind of reality he goes to after I type QUIT.
T-Zero is a mindbogglingly good game. Best enjoyed with a walkthrough on the side.
[The short bespectacled man crumples the now sweaty paper in his hands into a ball and throws it in the nearest bin.]
-"You got all that, boy? Make sure it's on this issue's front page, you hear me!? Or else..."
[Before the boy can say anything more, the man leaves the printing hall, contentedly rubbing his hands together. He even hops a little out of joy over a job well done.]
Unmagical Wizardry, March 3, 2021After your worldview has been shaken when the Wizard Dumbledore appeared in your flat and offered you a job, you wake up the next day with a hangover and a signed contract to teach "Muggle Studies" at Hogwarts Academy. When you arrive there, the halls and corridors are abandoned because of a spell gone wrong. You must set things straight without resort to magic.
Muggle Studies is set in Hogwarts Academy, that grand fantasy-medieval castle in a hidden part of England. You start off in Dumbledore's office and must make your way down a tower and back up again after gathering what you need.
Although a tower with its limited room for branching hallways and side-rooms makes for a good setting for a straightforward text-adventure, it is also very narrow and linear. The gamespace feels cramped because of this. It is easy to forget that you are supposedly in this great building with all sorts of corridors , halls and other towers, let alone that it stands in a wide landscape with dark forests. A few windows with lush descriptions of the shingled roofs and the towering walls outside the tower would have pulled the space more open. Maybe even a view of Hagrid's cabin or the living tree in the distance to remind players of the universe they're in. The one window I could look through gave a very generic description of green woods and a glimpse of water outside.
The puzzles in Muggle Studies are good, but nothing too imaginative. This is beginner-level IF, where exploring and TAKE x WITH y suffices for the most part. The puzzles are very well hinted, without too much handholding. The game has one room where you have to figure out the answer to four riddles, a puzzle device rarely seen in modern IF, but which fit very well in this setting. A puzzle that does not work so well is a coded magic book (Spoiler - click to show)where the cipher is a simple ROT13. I decided to decode it manually to get some sense of achievement out of it, but I would have preferred if the author had invented a simple code him/herself (? I can't tell from the name.) and put a deciphering book somewhere hidden in the tower.
There are a good number of books and notes around that give clues and entertainment. I especially liked the Book of Herbs, where you can LOOK UP a large number of magical plants from the index, most of which are of no importance to the game.
Another nice touch like this is the file of misbehaviors and punishments in Mr. Filch's room, where you can read about some of the misschievous plans of Hogwarts students.
The game handles conversations through TALK TO menus, which fits perfectly with the difficulty. There are always some fun options to talk about next to the important topics.
In keeping with the beginner difficulty level, there is a tutorial voice that gives advice on proper syntax for commands. Unfortunately, it sounds very pedantic to anyone who has played IF before.
The best part of the game to me is the slowly unfolding backstory involving your grandmother and your ex-girlfriend. It gives an emotional dimension to your character in this otherwise standard gathering-magical-objects quest.
A nice diversion for a few hours.
Nice immersive sci-fi bit., March 2, 2021One of the first IFs I ever played. I then thought it was fantastic. Upon replay, with many more games to compare it to, it can still hold its own.
Spatially, it's a small game. A house, a garage and a garden (where the eponymous Glowgrass grows. Beautiful image.) The feel of the game is larger though, thanks to a sort of VR-device you find in the house. The heart of the story, the backstory of the people who once lived in the house is to be found there.
Not much puzzlewise, nothing that a curious mind can't handle without hints. (and one small how-do-I-phrase-this-so-the-game-understands puzzle).
Good moving story, well recommended.
Medieval murder mystery., March 1, 2021Murder most foul! Archie Elliot has been slain, his throat cut in the night. The Warden, the highest authority of law in these parts is called to snuff out the guilty party and apprehend the murderer. He asks you, his clerk and youngest son to do the sniffing.
Members of all the clans involved are gathered in the great hall of the castle. You must ask the right questions to the right people to find out who did the deed and tell your father about it.
During the interrogation section of the game, you can ask each person about several keywords, notably the four clans of the region. From their responses you are able to gather clues as to who is holding something back, who might have a motive and what that motive might be.
This process quickly became a bit mechanical to me. I imagined my character to be a quite young, somewhat timid man, kept under father's thumb while my older brothers are free to build their own life. It was hard to get in charachter though, as I could not greet people, nor could I offer my condolences to the widow and daughter. I had no choice but to barge in with the limited set of questions I had. The fact that "Archie", "murder" and "body" are treated as synonyms was a disappointment, as these topics could elicit very different responses in my imagination. (The living person Archie, the circumstances of the murder and specifics about the wounds respectively.)
However, I found it more engaging as I played on and I got to see the discrepancies between different people's answers and I began to form a hypotheses. A hypotheses that was confirmed by a clue I got about halfway through the game.
After a set number of moves, you are forced to make a decision (or make a wild guess) as to who the murderer was. Depending on your answer, the loose threads are nicely taken care of in an ending of a few paragraphs. (I got a "good" ending. I didn't replay to get a "bad" one.)
I enjoyed this game as a quick diversion, but I enjoyed it even more as a springboard to dive into the history of the feuding clans along the Anglo-Scottish border in the 13th-16th century.
This game provides a good illustration of something I find immensely interesting in human culture and behaviour: the fact that among these antagonistic, often warring clans, there was still a law (Border or March Law) that they mostly respected. (Apparently, if you were raided, it was within your legal right to raid the other party within a period of a few days. But only if you made a lot of noise and were carrying a turf-torch to announce yourself as legal raiders, instead of the sneaky illegal kind...)
Border Reivers could be expanded to make the interrogations more diverse, and maybe to include a bit more clue-finding in the castle. As it is, it's a fun and interesting experience. It got me interested in its subject matter, that's for sure.
Rock Float, February 28, 2021The intro to Everybody Loves a Parade sets you up for a fast and funny ride. The game itself does not disappoint. It picks up the joke ball where it landed and runs with it. Fast.
You are a female engineer (the female part becomes important near the end of the game) hauling all your stuff coast to coast through the U.S. of A in a moving van on your way to a new job in New York. Although you had written a warning against driving through Arizona all over your roadmap, this is exactly where you end up: in a small town in the middle of the Arizona desert. Where they are having a parade. And one of the floats, a pickup truck full of pebbles, broke down. Up to you to get the parade and yourself moving again.
(About those pebbles, the people of this town seem to have a very peculiar and unexplained obsession with rocks. All kinds of rocks...)
Fast and funny, I said. The game has only twelve locations, so exploring the entire map does not take a lot of time. All those locations are packed full of action. Lots and lots of NPCs, most of whom brush you off in funny ways, are going about their personal business. The author has put in the effort to write many different events for each NPC, so the whole town seems bustling with activity. The writing keeps you on your toes, trying to keep up with the next thing that's going to happen. You need to pay attention to separate the important stuff from the background ambiance of the parade.
To keep this fast and witty atmosphere going, Everybody Loves a Parade is very thoroughly implemented. The game recognizes all nouns and synonyms. I even found two nouns that were only implied by the room description. Many, many actions that do not have anything to do with winning the game are implemented, so if you're stuck on a puzzle, you can go have fun trying to poke the outer reaches of what commands you can type. Add to this that many default responses have been personalized and adapted to the locations, and you will find that the atmosphere is almost unbreakable.
The puzzles are good. In such a small map, there is at least one, sometimes more puzzles in each room. They are all in plain sight from the start of the game. I did find it hard to find the first loose thread, since all the puzzles are arranged as a chain. Solving one gives you access to the next.
The puzzles are diverse. Some just require good old adventuring skills to get the missing parts, so you'll want to X the heck out of everything. Others require multiple steps to manipulate an NPC into doing what you need. So talk to everyone.
I finished this game in two afternoons and I had a lot of fun from start to finish. I advise everyone to do the same. Enjoy
"It was lucky that you had the statuette.", February 26, 2021...says the narrator voice in The Darkest Road at a certain point. Lucky indeed, given that there was no clue whatsoever that I would find anything, let alone a magic statuette, in the place the walkthrough eventually told me to look!
What would one do if one were a simple farmhand in a fantasy setting and one saw a prophecy coming over the horizon? Run like hell, of course, because prophecies tend to lead to gruesome death and other inconveniences in these circumstances...
But not you. You have elvenblood trickling somewhere in your bloodline, so you heed the call. You take in the old prophecy-bearing wizard who stumbled into your care, nurse him back to health and let him teach you of the "Silent Song", a rare magic talent that lurks in you because of said elvenblood.
So off you go on an oldschool quest to vanquish the Dark Lord.
The Darkest Road has very good atmosphere. On your quest, you move from your familiar homestead to the wide grasslands, then through the dark forest, then sharp and windy mountainpeaks until finally you arrive in Evil's Lair. With each new area you explore, the surroundings feel more hostile and oppressive. Here and there is a resting point, a beautiful location that breaks the gloom and dread for a moment.
The descriptions are very good. Even though you encounter standard dark fantasy stuff, there are many details that lighten up the clichés.
Unfortunately, the gameplay is not so good. There are many non-interactive locations. Well-described as they may be, they don't offer enough reward to the player for the effort she has made to reach them.
And quite an effort it is! The game is full of unintuitive and underclued puzzles.
Many solutions are dependent on whether you are carrying or wearing a sparsely described and unhinted object, not on the player figuring out what she could do with said object.
When you do have to manipulate objects, often you get into try-everything-on-everything-else territory, like in a bad point'n'click escape game.
Also, there are quite a few one-use-only commands that only work in one situation. Try the same verb in any other situation and you get a default dismissive response. Not strong motivation to keep trying.
Add to the list that obvious synonyms or alternative verbs are not implemented (I could MOVE but not PUSH some heavy object), and I believe I am to be forgiven for playing this one largely by walkthrough. I gave it a fair chance, really I did.
To end on a more positive note, the unforeseeable sudden gruesome deaths are quite amusing, as the narrator offers to resurrect you. Which translates as "Would you like to restart?"
Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip flop., February 24, 2021What an atmosphere...
I've spent the last few hours finishing this story and I feel like I'm slowly waking up from a dream.
She's Got a Thing for a Spring is a beautiful, beautiful game.
You're on a camping trip in a nature park with your husband. You wake up in the tent and find a note telling you to go find the hot spring by evening and wait there for him.
I pay a lot of attention to the handling of space, the feel of the map in IF. Often, that means I prefer big, sprawling games. She's Got a Thing for a Spring does something else entirely.
It has got a small map, about 25 locations. These are described so lovingly that you can almost smell the herbs in the midday sun, or hear the gurgling of the rapids in the stream. Birds flutter by unexpectedly, or sing unseen in a nearby tree. Other wildlife crosses your path, and when out of sight, their proximity is hinted at through sounds or smells.
Not all exits from a location are explicitly described. This gives a sense of freedom and accomplishment when you find another path or a gap in the bushes, and it adds to the spaciousness of the story-world.
In response to a directional command, the game describes the terrain you walk across, giving a sense of real distance travelled. The "flip flop" in the title of this review is what you read when you are walking with your flipflops on. Take them off and it changes to "splish splash" when walking in water. Not out-loud-funny, but one of the amusing details that pulled me smiling deep into this game.
To enjoy She's Got a Thing for a Spring to its fullest, do not think like an adventurer. Get in character and play your surroundings. The puzzles are fantastic example of the common sense type. No intricate, improbable machinery, no spells to try out on every part of the scenery. Just do what you would do in these circumstances. This type of puzzle is actually harder than you might think for text adventurers. We're conditioned to look for complicated solutions.
Your biggest help and source of amusement in the game is Bob. Bob is an amazingly well characterized NPC who can give you practical help with some puzzles. Much more than that though, he's a delightful old man to hang around with and talk to (and maybe haver some lunch with...)
Not all puzzles are mandatory for finishing the game. Do try and find them and solve them though, just for the fun experience.
And do try to remember to stop and enjoy nature frequently. Maybe look up that species of bird you just saw in the "Hiker's Guidebook" you're carrying, or those aromatic herbs...
She's Got a Thing for a Spring is a beautiful, beautiful game.
Intercivilizational SF, February 21, 2021You can usually tell the level of my engagement with a game by looking at my notebook. With all the side notes, colored maps, interjections about the story and hypotheses about puzzles and characters, you could say I dove pretty deep into this one.
Trading Punches is a story about two brothers on a turning point of their civilization's history. The protagonist represents humanity (without other reference points, I default to "human" in SF, especially if they're the "good" guys), his brother ends up representing the Sheeear through marriage with the daughter of their ambassador. The relationship between the brothers is reflected in the course of the story on multiple levels: family, society/civilization, even in the creation myth you learn about during the game.
This game is very much a story-centered, narrative one. The puzzles are rather easy, forming no hindrance to the pace of the story.
The structure of the game is also a narrative one: It is divided into chapters.
Each chapter starts with a short dialogue between the protagonist and ... well, that's one of the mysteries of the game. This dialogue serves as a recap for what has come before and as a frame for the upcoming chapter.
Then the chapter proper begins. It is presented as an account of a memory of the protagonist of a turning point in his life, and as such, also a turning point in the relation between the two civilizations.
Now, IF is a tough medium to handle flashbacks elegantly, and Trading Punches only partly succeeds. The general problem with flashbacks in IF is player freedom. How does the author handle the fact that what the PC is doing has already happened, and has a definite outcome? There has to be a way to reign in the player when she deviates too far from the predetermined path. Here, the author does that by confining the action to a tight and focused map per chapter, containing one big puzzle. (This reminds me of Gateway: small map and one puzzle per planet.)
A bigger problem arises when the flashbacks do not take place in the PC's mind, but in a conversation. Whenever I paused mid-chapter and thought about the bigger picture, I felt sorry for my dialogue-partner. What a tedious story it must be to hear an endless list of detailed micro-actions. "And then I looked at the cabinet, and then I looked at the drawer, and then I opened the drawer, and then I found a comb, and then I took the comb, and then I tried combing my hair but it wouldn't work,...)
This is more a recognition of the limits of the IF-medium than a criticism of the game. I think the problem is handled quite well here.
On the other hand, there is a great advantage to using flashbacks. It keeps the attention of the reader on the bigger picture. There is an arc of tension that goes over the flashbacks and grows in the present time of the story. The reader anticipates the story-threads and the consequences of the past actions to come together in the here and now. The game's epilogue does this very well, as well as leaving ample room for the-sequel-that-never-came.
The puzzles are very well clued, even guided. This keeps the focus on the story and keeps it moving forward. However, I do feel that there might be two great logic puzzles lying at the hearts of chapters 1 and 2 that were sacrificed to pacing. It is of course a difficult balancing act.
The writing is no example of efficient IF terseness, rather the opposite.
Long, relaxed and rich paragraphs invite the reader to slow down and enter into the story-world. Together with the background music, this makes for a very immersive experience.
It's also a joy to see the evolution of the characters through the decades that this story describes.
From a technical point of view, I have but a few small nitpicks. A fair number of nouns are unimplemented, something that does break the mood a bit in a game such as this. Some actions could have a wider range of commands to trigger them and some unsuccessful commands could yield a more helpful response instead of a default message. Nothing too serious though.
Overall, Trading Punches is a very fluid playing experience. There is also a very good in-game hint-system on the off chance that you get really stuck.
Recommended for all!
Cowboys and gumball factories!, February 16, 2021Tryst of Fate is a great game. I would have happily given it full marks but there were a few things that detracted from the greatness. I'll spit them out first so I can let the game shine in the rest of the review.
The scenery is underimplemented. Now, this is not such a big problem, after a while your brain just notices a default message and decides not to pay attention. In this game though, there is a mix of responses to unimportant objects. More than half the time you get "You can't see that here." Annoying, because i'm staring right at it, right. Then, as you start ignoring these messages, there are objects which "are not important to the game". Equally annoying, because they remind you that you're in a game. Having both in the same game is weird to me. Either just don't implement it, or have a not-important-message for all of them.
Actually, the same is true for actions: some get " You can't do that," even when you're on the right track, and some get a jokey response like "That won't help you with your score."
For the rest, a few typos and some unclear clues. Also, what's up with bird's nests in text adventures?
Now for the great game that Tryst of Fate really is.
The introductory chapter is marvellous. A small escape game with a few easy puzzles that draws you right into the game. After bumping your head and passing out, a pair of outlaws come into your house and steal your McGuffin...I mean watch. They steal your watch. Once you can get back on your feet and go after them, you cannot go downstairs, because you have just cleaned the rugs and they are still wet... Really...
After getting a good feeling about your puzzle-solving abilities from this intro, you wind up in the Wild West, canyons and tumbleweeds and all.
On your first round exploring the area, things are pretty straightforward. As you draw the map and look around, there's a long SW to NE trail and a typical western town to the west. And oh, that train track crossing you just passed. And that swamp... And herein lies the genius of the game. When you look back after exploring this smallish, comfortable map, you see a daunting trail of unsolved puzzles and promising blocked off sidetrails. Combine this with the laidback confident feeling you got from the intro, and you suddenly realise you've walked straight into a trap.
The puzzles here are a lot harder. Most are logical but require multiple steps and a bit of thought. Despite the smallish map, it's sometimes confusing where the next step is again. Some puzzles have vaguer hints that only made sense to me in hindsight.
And then there's that puzzle. A number/codebreaking puzzle. It's completely logical. It's a substitution code solved by simple addition. And it's hard. I tried to brute-force it with the information I got from the clue, but I got stuck after a promising start. And then I got stuck again. And again. I asked someone on the IF Forum who is way better at math to show me how he would solve it and I got back two pages of calculations. Unfair puzzle? Not really, seeing that it is completely logical. It does expect more mathematic knowledge than many people have at the ready, however.
The descriptions are good. They really evoke the typical western feel. All the cliché elements are there, but they're not overdone. Just enough to make you feel at home, as if you have walked into a western movie, instead of the actual scary unknown wilderness.
I loved the NPCs. The conversations are very well written, although a bit limited. The characters get a lot of personality through their descriptions and their independent actions. (Check out the bartender.)
The story as a whole seemed a bit surreal to me. Timejumping to the Wild West from the comfort of your home to get back your watch? Gumchewing cowboys? But you did just fall and hit your head. That might have something to do with it.
I absolutely loved playing this game. It was tense and exciting when it had to be, and it got me laughing in more relaxed spots. Very sincerely recommended.
Ace of Spades *, February 11, 2021Magnetic Scrolls' The Guild of Thieves was high on my to play-list for a long time. Not anymore! See, it was abandonware for a long time, but none of the DOS-downloads I tried would work in DOSBox. Then the game was reworked for play on smartphones so it wasn't abandoned anymore. Now you have to pay for it. But... the nice people over at the Magnetic Scrolls Memorial website have put up the reworked version for free play in-browser. Thank you, nice people at Magnetic Scrolls Memorial!
In this online version, the gameplay of the original has not been changed as far as I could tell (comparing to older reviews and to other games of the same period). UNDO doesn't work, so RESTORE is your friend (trust me, when you've locked yourself up in a tight cramped space with no exits, it's your best friend in the whole wide world...) X object doesn't work either, but you can use L object instead. Lastly, you can make an account to get access to your saved games from different devices.
The Guild of Thieves starts out on a wide stretch of woodland and wheatfields. To earn your membership of the Guild, you must find all the valuables in the surrounding region and steal them. There are three big areas of interest you need to gain access to, and each of these has its own locked doors and other bottlenecks to get through. I loved this map. The feeling of a wide world to discover with enticing puzzles to get around that next corner. Also a lot of fun for the mapmakers among us. (I color-coded my map...)
At first, the different parts of the map seem disconnected, not only literally but also in atmosphere. There's a temple, a castle (not the medieval type but the later, overgrown lordly manor type), an udergound section,... that don't seem to have to do much with each other. As you solve puzzles and the map slowly opens up, the different areas are brought together nicely by the solutions of the puzzles. Information you need for a tunnel is found in the temple for example.
The puzzles are great... They are all understandable in hindsight...
No, seriously. The first few puzzles you'll encounter are well hinted and logical. The further you progress in the game though, the more difficult it becomes to deduce the logical steps of a solution from the clues. Add to that that some puzzles require you to make preparations on the other side of the map before attempting to solve them and you will understand why, yes, RESTORE is your best friend. This does mean that when you finally understand how the different pieces work together and the solution *clicks*, it's very satisfying. Also, the nice people at Magnetic Scrolls Memorial have provided a very good narrative walkthrough should you become overly frustrated. Thank you, nice people at Magnetic Scrolls Memorial!
The writing is what it needs to be in this type of adventure. Good descriptions, the occasional joke and a more verbose passage here and there in an important location. The Guild of Thieves is a rather serious game. Stealing the treasures and becoming a Guild member is important to you, so there's not too much goofing around. Fortunately, the Master Thief who's following up on your progress brings some comic relief to the story now and then.
The game's responses to failed attempts are mostly unhelpful, but don't let that keep you from trying to solve the puzzle. You may well be on the right track. Rewording commands can do wonders for a parser who doesn't know that much English.
When I started playing, I was pleasantly surprised that there were beautiful pixel pictures of the locations. It later became apparent that these are not very well adjusted to the flow of the game. It can be distracting to read about the field of golden grain you're supposedly in while you're seeing a dank cave above the text.
The story is just the barest excuse for a puzzle romp, but an engaging and entertaining romp it is. Highly recommended!
*You'll get it when you play it.
Suicide by vitamin C, February 7, 2021Wow! This game sure doesn't beat around the bush. You, as Sir Ramic Hobbs, an out-of-shape and severely hung-over knight, are dropped in a bear cave. An agreement which you do not remember signing says you swear to save the damsel from the High Level Gorilla. Now on your way, start adventuring!
Sir Ramic Hobbs and the High Level Gorilla is a text-adventure from the old ages. Within the first few turns, a ton of anachronisms and wildly differing rooms have flown by. Each on its own, these are pretty funny. As a whole however ... uhm, they don't make a whole.
The gameworld is totally off its rockers. The locations and the mood are wildly inconsistent. The only thing holding this game together is whatever the author's impulses thought was funny at the time. This incoherent setting and atmosphere may get a few laughs, but it sure is not engaging or immersive.
Fortunately, this setting is home to some good puzzles. Apart from getting the right objects to use in the right spot, you also have to watch out that you move from room to room at the right time. If not, some invincible adversary will stop you from progressing further or just kill you on the spot. There are lots of opportunities to forget an object or an action in a room that you cannot get back to later. This means that the metacommands SAVE, RESTORE and UNDO are completely legitimate adventuring commands. Go explore the neighboring rooms and restore when you are confident that you have the lay of the land memorized.
There are two in-game help-resources: an overly humble "Bloodcurdling Owl", whose responses are so selfdeprecating they sound insulting to you, and the disembodied voice of Wizard Prang, your narrator (who doesn't seem to think very highly of your knightly skills... Up to you to decide whether to trust the advice this odd pair gives.
The absolute zaniness of this game amused me enough to keep looking just a bit further, and I'm glad I did. About three quarters into the game I encountered a Great Puzzle. The kind of puzzle that would be so obvious in real life, but that somehow manages to keep evading your wits in an adventure game. When I finally found the solution, I smiled. Nay, I grinned. Ear to ear. You know what I mean...
The High Level Gorilla is an uneven mix of dumb jokes, funny juxtapositions and non-sequiturs, frustrating deaths and at least one glorious puzzle moment.
Worth playing.
In other news: Demons have overrun the Vatican., February 5, 2021But first:
Completely out of the blue, your D&D-game has cracked through the ceiling of your living room and spat out Tark, a confused sorceress. It has also incinerated your roleplaying band of friends and kidnapped your girlfriend.
The Battle of Philip Against the Forces of Creation is easily the most super-awesomest title for an adventure game I have ever heard. I wish I could write here that the game itself is as awesome...
Don't get me wrong, it's a fun game, but it does not live up to the radical-mayhem-supercoolness of its title.
After the intrusion of the D&D-world upon our own, you have to go on a castle-crawl to free Cindy. The puzzles are standard adventuring fare. Find a key, use a spell, get rid of a murderous demon-queen, stuff like that...
However, you have to die several times to know where the puzzles actually are, and a few times more to get the solution. That's obviously a part of the game. The death scenes are quite amusing.
The writing overall is quite good. The dark fantasy atmosphere when you finally get out of your house (past a Fire Elemental in the garage) is great. Once in the castle, the grim and oppressive feeling goes up a notch or two. In here, some descriptions, while well written, are downright horrifying and obscene. (So over the top to my tastes that it became laughable. But maybe not to all players. Be warned.)
Unfortunately, the scenery in those descriptions is disappointingly underimplemented. You are limited to examining and manipulating the objects in the list below the room description, everything else is met by a default "You can't do that"-response.
The castle is big and diverse. Many rooms are lusciously/revoltingly described. There are also bottlenecks in predictable but enticing places (getting in the cellar, climbing to the top of the tower,...), which makes for good pacing.
From background info on the Internet Archive and from an in-game object (the "Reference Book for People who are not Philip") I gather that this was a joke/gift game to Philip Kegelmeyer, the author of Tark Simmons, Priestess of the First Church. Because of this, there are a number of inside jokes and references that any other player will not get (hence the reference book). Nonetheless, the game is often funny and the grim & gore is well done (if you can stomach stuff like that).
Good game for a few hours of fun/gore.
Mmmhh, honeyed locusts., February 3, 2021Cana According To Micah is a very nice retelling of one of Jesus' miracles from the viewpoint of a servant at the wedding in Cana.
In search of the last jug of wine that has gone missing, you encounter several characters from Jesus' time and entourage, trying to get their help in understanding where the wine has gone. The puzzles almost all consist of talking to the right people at the right time.
I found the fact that there is no real theological depth to the conversations refreshing. After all, you're a servant trying to solve a practical problem. Discussions about the deeper meaning of the dis- and re-appearance of the wine are for scolars in later centuries.
I really liked the setting. In spite of a really small map, I got the impression of a spacious house with a large number of wedding guests. There were some hints to the Jewish wedding customs at the time, but as you play a character from that time, most are only mentioned in passing.
After accomplishing one important task, a quote from the poet Coleridge pops up. Not only did this take me out of the time of the story, it also hid the game-text right after my last command. Annoying.
There are a few decision points where the story can branch. I did not replay to look at them as I was content with the one playthrough and the ending I got.
Nice historical/religious vignette.
Saving the world with a single lightbulb.*, January 31, 2021The intro of The Light; Shelby's Addendum pulled me into the game immediately.
In a rather long passage the protagonist, a certain Shelby is hurrying to get to the scientists in the lighthouse when he is engulfed by an almost tangibly dense fog. Forced to take shelter, he falls asleep in a shed and awakens in the middle of the night. Although frightened, he takes his chances with the dark and the mist, only to find the lighthouse complex abandoned. Or so it seems...
Something went very wrong with the experiment. Up to you to find out what and how to fix it.
There are more long non-interactive passages of text like the intro in the game, like cutscenes and a fighting scene between two NPCs. They are well written and do not slow down the pace of the game. The opposite actually, in my experience. They felt more like rewards after a sequence of tasks done correctly, showing you the fruits of your labour quite eloquently.
The room descriptions are also lengthy and detailed, helping to sustain the dim and gloomy mood in the fog-surrounded lighthouse.
The map is seemingly wide open from the start of the game, with just enough locked doors and hints to other areas to keep it interesting. You can explore every nook and cranny to your hearts content at first. However, as you solve puzzles, you trigger some events that speed up the story significantly and take you to other locations completely, where the pressure to act becomes much higher. (I don't think there is an actual timer, but it sure feels like it. Good writing!)
The obstacles are never too hard. Most are lock and key-puzzles, opening up new and/or hidden rooms in the complex. Some are mechanical puzzles, figuring out what button does what and getting a machine to work. It's one of these that pushes up the tempo towards the fast and action-packed endgame.
The story is great if you are willing to let yourself be swept along. In hindsight, there are some gaping holes and improbable situations (No failsafes in a project of this magnitude? Really?). Turn your willing suspension of disbelief up a notch and you'll be fine.
The NPCs were a tad too distant to my liking. I would have liked to see a deeper exploration of the scientist-gone-mad bad guy. As it was, he was a bit of a caricature.
The Light; Shelby's Addendum shines through its fast-moving plot and its consistently gloomy atmosphere. Great game!
* The title of my review is a tip of the hat to the excellent walkthrough by David Welbourn. Use it sparingly, the game is not that difficult, but go over the whole thing after you've finished the game. The work of a true craftsman.
TransWarp Adventuring., January 26, 2021In your previous Gateway adventure, you saved Earth from the Assassins out of pure altruism. That you also got a gazillion space-dollars for it means that you can now afford comfortably lounging in one of your penthouses on the 300th floor of a San Francisco skyscraper, living the easy life.
But what's this? Suddenly you get a call from the chief of the Corporation. A starship has been sighted on the far edges of the solar system. Because of your previous alien experiences, they want you to train the ambassador for a diplomatic mission.
And what's this? You get a second call warning you that a religious sect has sent a squad to kill you, hoping to sabotage the diplomatic mission and travel to the Artifact (as the alien starship is known) themselves.
From this moment on, you are sucked into a fast and thrilling adventure to save Earth once more, from multiple enemies at the same time.
Gateway 2 - Homeworld is extremely well paced. The first chapter is a race against time and against the terrorists who want to claim the FTL-ship. You have to get your sequence of actions just right while you hear the sect members closing in on your radio. Very gripping.
In the next chapters, the tempo goes down a bit, leaving more breathing space for exploration and wonderment. The driving force of the story remains strong though. I found myself solving puzzles not just "to read/ find out what will happen next", but to genuinely solve a problem and help the NPCs in-game. The motivation came less from being an interested reader and more from being involved in the events in the game-world.
On the surface, the story is an action and adventure-packed SciFi romp. You fly different spacecraft to various alien worlds, solving the problems at hand with a variety of futuristic tech-gadgets.
Somewhat deeper in the game though, through dialogues with and lectures to Heechee NPCs, thoughtprovoking themes come up. There is a philosophical/theological debate about death, resurrection and personhood with a learned alien priest. At a certain point, you are asked to give lectures about Earth to the aliens, and these go into ecological issues like overpopulation and depletion of resources. In another lecture, your character talks about human tribe mentality and nationalism as an obstacle to solving societal problems. All pretty deep.
Don't let this spook you though. The dialogues are all menu-based and the different options mostly don't matter much, making room for some comic relief in your choice of responses. The lectures are cutscenes, so if you get bored, just spacebar them away. Still, I liked the depth of themes and it had me pondering the issues after the play-session.
The core of the game still consists of the "simple" task of exploring strange new worlds and defeating the bad guys by overcoming the obstacles.
Gateway 2 goes even further than the first game in putting you in many different settings: a huge spaceship/zoo (yes, i said "zoo"), an ice world and the Heechee homeworld. While the settings are very diverse, each one of them has a rather small map. This is a great design choice. It helps keep the fast pace of the story going, and it makes for straightforward and tight puzzle spaces.
The puzzles and obstacles all fall on the easier side. They are more entertaining and involving than frustrating. They don't take you out of the story while you're thinking and reasoning about possible solutions. They are all well clued, or as I like to put it: because of the limited number of available objects and the smallish settings, the possibillity-tree is well trimmed.
As in part 1, the pixel art is great and adds a lot to the playing experience. In this part, gameplay does depend a bit more on using the mouse to interact with different keypads, locks, and menus. (Or, if you want, you can busy yourself moving a mouse-cursor with the arrow-buttons on your keyboard. Just saying, the option is there...)
Gateway 2 - Homeworld had me really involved in its SF story for a week. A magnificent otherworldly adventure.
"Once more into the breach, dear friend?", January 17, 2021That is the tempting question the game asks you after you've typed QUIT. Many times I responded YES to just try and avoid that last nasty trap one more time.
Avon was originally written in 1982 in Cambridge University as a mainframe game. It was later released by the Topologika company. After reading some background information, I get the impression that the good folks at Topologika have shaved and polished off a lot of the splinters and rough edges of the original.
While it is still possible to die, you only do so when you have actually made a wrong move or choice. There are lots of unhinted traps where you die on entry. In these instances you are asked "Now you probably wish you didn't do that, don't you?", giving you the chance to continue the game from that location. You do lose the opportunity to "solve" the trap and get the points this way.
I put "solve" between quotation marks because there are very few actual puzzles in Avon. There are many unannounced death-traps, a lot of riddles where you get only one chance and you must have found a clue beforehand (no lucky guesses!) and a few easy mazes. A few playthroughs are needed to locate the traps and the clues and passwords, and only then can one hope to put them in the right order and solve the game.
I know that if I were to read a game described as above, I'd probably run away. Fortunately I had almost no information on it when going in. Avon is actually a really fun game. The generous helping of Shakespeare quotes (often in inappropriate contexts) are funny, the parser and narrator are friendly and polite, descriptions are over the top in a good way...
Two more things to persuade you to play: a) at one point you get an ass's head on your neck, and b) this game contains one of the dumbest and funniest puns in any IF I have ever played.
Unfair, sure, but fun!
Desolate planet, episode umpteen. Prepare dropship crash in 3...2..., January 12, 2021One.
Rimworld is a thoroughly enjoyable though standard SF-adventure.
So, threehundred years ago, during the intergalactic war, the people of Rimworld closed off their planet from the rest of humanity with an impenetrable forcefield to avoid getting involved in the devastating fight. They were never heard from again.
Now, a diplomatic ship has been sent to Rimworld to re-establish communications. Only a one-man dropship can penetrate the atmospheric barrier: your dropship, which crashes upon entry. No help seems to be nearby.
Here we have one of my most beloved SF-tropes: stranded on a desolate planet. The initial game-area is small, simple and orderly. A bit boring even. But once you explore the outer rooms, the game-world quickly expands. Teleportation portals and different types of vehicles bring you to new submaps, some bigger and certainly more challenging than the initial map. Very good use of space and bottlenecks.
The puzzles you encounter are the usual adventuring fare, for the most part. Certainly not bad, but nothing very original either. There are two "action-puzzles", one which involves climbing and one which involves evading and killing enemies. Although there is some logic to them, they are ultimately try-die-repeat puzzles. The final endgame puzzle depends on using an object whose workings are underclued, which is a shame. Aha-moments are not so exhilarating when they are the consequence of "let's just throw the entire inventory at it and see what happens." There has to be some planning and expectation involved to give the player a sense of accomplishment.
I would have happily given this game four stars for entertaining me for a week with its puzzles, the great scenery, the alone-on-the-planet feel, but the outro bummed me out. One, there could have been at least two more playable scenes after the "boss-puzzle". Two, it left me feeling like I had just watched a no-brainer action-flick from the eighties ("The hero has put everything in place, nothing left to see here. Move along folks.") while there was certainly room for some introspection or a hint at a wider meaning. Bummer.
Still, a good adventure. Nothing more, nothing less.
Incomplete download, I suspect., January 9, 2021The first half of the manual for The Hound of Shadow which I found online is about a rather complex-looking character-creating process, where you can choose your character's main occupation (occult researcher, anthropologist, ...) and also distribute points over different skills (fencing, climbing, linguistics,...)
In the DOS version I downloaded from IFDB there was no sign of this process. I was dumped in medias res as Edward the anthropologist. Now, this didn't matter to me all that much, I just accepted the character as it was like I would in another adventure.
Starting to play The Hound of Shadow took some getting used to. It is certainly no text-adventure as I know it. There were no object puzzles or locked door puzzles. Rather than searching the map for treasure while overcoming obstacles, you are here to solve a mystery. Actually, the game is not so much an adventure-game as it is a guided semi-interactive horror story.
Following the clues from the story and the nudges from your friend John, you have to talk to the right people and ask the right questions, look up important topics in the British Museum library and write letters to people who might help you. The limited or guided interactivity helps with the immersion in the story. If you read/play the game on these terms, it's a very good story with a suspenseful, slowly unfolding Lovecraftian horror plot.
Unfortunately, the game does not deliver on one of its promises in the manual. It prides itself on a sophisticated natural language conversation system. No need to ASK or TELL JOHN ABOUT xxx, nor SAY TO JOHN, xxx. The game should understand simple statements and questions in plain English. It does not. It seems that its conversation system works by keyword recognition, meaning that over half of what I typed was not understood and a big number of questions got irrelevant responses. ASK/TELL would have been better. Menu-based conversations would have been even better.
The game recognizes a very welcome GO TO-command, and you can WAIT UNTIL NOON if you have an appointment with someone. This helps with the flow of the story.
In the endgame there is an actual IF-puzzle to solve, and a rather good one at that ((Spoiler - click to show)making a homunculus). (I later learned that there are 2 possible endgames. I did not play the other one.)
As an immersive guided horror story, The Hound of Shadow is well worth reading. I do suggest relying heavily on a walkthrough, or at least have the manual with the list of necessary verbs nearby. The top notch writing and slow opening-up of the plot do not go well with search-the-word frustration.
The raw material is definitely there for a great game/story, but it takes some effort on the reader's part to get to it.
A Grandiose World, January 4, 2021After a few false starts I have finished the most-impressive World.
Before we turn our attention to the awesomeness of the game, there are a few negatives I should get off my chest:
(I played the DOS version 107)
- It is extremely easy to cut off certain paths of exploration, which means losing points, or to put the game in an unwinnable "walking dead"-state altogether. (On the plus side, you can literally walk around while dead in this game. The game tells you that although you cannot act on your surroundings anymore, you are welcome to keep on exploring if you choose to do so. No practical reason, just... fun?)
-The parser is very picky about what commands it accepts. There are no synonyms for objects, so you are condemned to type "knapsack" over and over. Luckily, "knapsack" is a funny word. The parser does not understand X, so you must LOOK AT or EXAMINE.
-I found four game-crashing bugs, all when pushing buttons. For those who do not enjoy this and would like to know which buttons not to press, open the spoiler: (Spoiler - click to show) Do not push the round button in the control room. (Well, I later learned from the walkthrough that this button makes a nearby star go nova, obliterating everything around it, including you. So maybe it obliterates your gamefile too...) Also do not push any of the buttons in the metal room except the white one.
All the important buttons work though, so this does not stop you from completing the game. (It might make some points unattainable though, but I didn't really care.)
-The version I played has only one save-slot. Once saved, you cannot go back to an earlier point in your playthrough. (DOS version 106 has multiple slots, but they behaved funny. Plus that version was in ugly bright blue instead of the soothing white on matte-black of version 107.)
There. Now that we have that out of the way, let's dive into the sheer awesomeness of World!
This is a huge and diverse and immersive piece of interactive fiction.
After noticing that surface scanners were hindered by a strange forcefield, a landing party was sent down to a mysterious planet and crashed. While the engineers work on getting the dropship operational again, you are appointed planet-explorer on a search for resources that might help them get the job done. After walking some distance from the crash site, you notice that you are caught behind a forcefield not unlike the one the mothership detected from orbit. No way back, so you press on forward. Looking down from the top of a ridge, you see a breathtaking view of various terraformed areas, all with their own vegetation and, perhaps, other life-forms. Just the job for your inner adventurer!
There are multiple locations such as this ridge in the game: on a hilltop or a rocky spire you can see the landscape around and below you. I love this in games. It gives you an exhilarating sense of spaciousness, and it hints at where to go and what you might find there.
From this view it is immediately obvious that this is a large and sprawling game-world. The geographical zones are neatly separated from each other, suggesting that the puzzles will also be contained within their own zones (they are, for the most part). In such a big game, there is no need to camouflage the boundaries of the map. For one, it is large enough as it is without giving the impression that it goes on even further. Secondly, the boundaries flow naturally from the whole concept of having terraformed areas. Anything beyond it is obviously inaccessible because it won't support life.
While the different areas have rather complicated maps with many paths and roads crossing and going over and under each other, the geographical zones are only connected by a few access points, providing clear limits to the puzzle-area you are in.
Puzzlewise, there are two sorts of puzzles in the game that serve different purposes.
-Maybe a bit disrespectfully, I would call the first variety "looting-puzzles". You have to locate important objects, be it for the repairs of the dropship or for the scientific mission your ship was on in the first place. Or because they are worth a lot of money...
These tasks consist of visiting locations, finding and getting objects, using objects in sometimes surprising ways and taking pictures of interesting things you come across. These are mostly limited to the geographical zone you happen to be in.
-The second kind of puzzles revolve around understanding the bigger picture. You'll want to figure out who the builders of this place are, what their intentions are. Also, you need to explore this entire map to find a way to get off this planet.
These puzzles require more technical/engineering skills, finding and combining objects from all over the map. You will also need some leaps of knowledge and insight to reason a few moves ahead and see why you are doing what you are doing. (Solving puzzle X will hopefully get me the information I need to overcome obstacle Y which in turn will tell me what the *snorf* I should do with object Z I've been carrying around since move 9.)
A little reminder: any objects (except one) you use for the puzzles are one-use-only. No take-backsies, no stash somewhere, no market, no helpful NPCs. If you give the peanuts to the elephant, you will have none for the monkey. (There are no elephants, monkeys or peanuts mentioned in this game btw...)
The majority of puzzles is fair and logical. Once you know the properties of the objects and machines and plants and... you encounter, the solutions are difficult but straightforward. (No magical thinking or huge lateral leaps.)
But... To understand the properties of the aformentioned objects, machines, plants,... you will have to experiment. And carelessly experimenting with single-use-only objects leads to...? Walking-dead-syndrome, that's right. So save everytime you think there might possibly be a slim chance of losing an object and only then carry out your experiment. Frustrating? I wouldn't call it that. I'd say it's rather suspenseful.
Since this is a game from 1988, of course there have to be some objects hidden in the most arbitrary places, far from the puzzle they help solve. Are you an explorer or what?
With all these puzzles, it is helpful to keep in mind that this whole world must have been terraformed and built by some intelligent beings. This implies intentionality in how your surroundings work. Things are so-and-so for a reason. (I really like how the author has brought in an extra layer of purposefulness this way, by incorporating in-game creators of your surroundings.)
Now, on to the characters:
-You are an essentialy traitless adventurer. I like that in this sort of game because I can feel directly connected to the adventure. It's me who is exploring this strange world, without having to think about the psychological backstory of my character.
-The NPCs, if you can even call them that, are completely unresponsive (except they kill you when you disturb their hockey game, in one case...). They do have a lot of character though. They clearly have their own objectives and priorities (like hockey, in one case).
-And then there's the robot. The endearing, helpful and a bit sad robot. Pity I couldn't do anything with him except boss him around. I like the robot.
(quick clarification on the syntax of how to boss the robot around: TELL ROBOT, GO NORTH)
The writing overall is good. It serves its purpose without drawing too much attention to itself. Some of the more elaborate descriptions (when you encounter a particularly important species or event) might be a little overdone, but I didn't mind.
The tone of the parser's responses is weirdly mixed: Most of the time it's neutral, as in "You can't go there." Sometimes it's snarky: "Ridiculous." And sometimes it just has to insist it's just a line of computer-generated text in a computer-game: "That word is utterly beyond my limited vocabulary."
Once you have an inkling of what this world you're exploring really is and what steps you have to take to move forward, the suspense takes over and the game drives itself forward, carrying you along with it. That is good writing.
My strongest feeling of this game is one of wonderment. Like watching a long drawn out fireworks show in slow motion: a series of ooh's and aah's with each new discovery. You should really play it.
"Where have you been, Watson? We have work to do.", December 25, 2020That's how the great Sherlock Holmes impatiently welcomes you back to London when you restore a saved game. This and other dry or witty remarks make sure that you never forget Holmes' presence, even though it is you, Watson, who is in the driving seat in this investigation.
Sherlock - The Riddle of the Crown Jewels is a fantastic Infocom mystery. In the beginning of the game Holmes senses that his adversary is very cunning and has studied his, Holmes', methods. Therefore, he puts you, Watson, in the lead. With the great detective breathing down your neck and occasionally making snarky remarks, the two of you explore London in search of clues as to whom might have stolen the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.
The setting, London in the late 19th century, is magnificently rendered. Foggy streets, dim sunshine if there is any, grand and imposing buildings,... But also a busy market square, avenues full of tourists,... The author uses the fog and the busy streets to make the game world seem much larger than the part of the city that is actually accessible, giving a great sense of freedom to the player. You can roam the streets and go sightseeing as you please...
Were it not for the fact that you are on the clock. You have but two days to solve the theft, or the disappearance of the Crown Jewels will become known to the public and all faith in the monarchy will crumble (yaay!). Being on a timer, together with some well-placed twists in the story gives the story its drive. It creates the tension that makes this a good mystery. However, the trade-off between telling a straightforward story with its natural tension-arc on the one hand, and allowing the player lots of freedom to explore the map and solve the puzzles in his own order on the other hand does get in the way sometimes. If you misunderstand a clue (as I did), then the tension falls flat until you stumble upon the answer. Felt kinda like pushing the motorcar until the engine fired again.
For the most part, the puzzles are fair. Do remember that you are Holmes' assistant in this game, so don't just gather clues but think about them and put them together. In the words of that other famed detective: "You must excercise zee grey cells." I thought one puzzle was underclued, and it being dependent on the time of day, it took me a lot of time to complete.
The NPCs are very well characterized, even though they do not have all that much to say. In a few strokes and a few remarks, the character is there with you.
The descriptions are very strong, bringing the locations to life when you first enter them. The city of London's atmosphere in the fog permeates the game, adding to the tension of your search. The suspense of the overarching story suffers somewhat from the trade-off I mentioned before, but once you get near the endgame and the pieces fall together, the game picks up speed again.
A truly great adventure, a joy to play.
Desperate and alone in outer space, ... cracking jokes., December 19, 2020What a fun and engaging game to spend an afternoon with!
The aptly named Spaceship features you as the captain of said spaceship. Your entire crew is on leave and you are enjoying a nice nap when suddenly disaster strikes. A meteor impact!
Now you're all alone on a depressurized and oxygenless spacecraft, left to your wits and some mighty fine McGyvering-skills to get yourself and your ship out of this pickle.
Despite the lifethreatening situation and the oxygen in your hastily donned spacesuit slowly decreasing (the oxygen-meter serves as a very effective timer), Spaceship is consistently funny. Consider this response when you examine your quarters: "Above [the desk] is a porthole, with a stunning view of bugger all." The tension created by this contrast between the emergency of the situation and the humorous narration is just right.
The ship is littered with objects, so you'll quickly have a heap of stuff in your inventory, most of which you will never need. Luckily, the puzzles are well clued and there are some alternative solutions, so juggling the inventory items never becomes a real problem. Actually, I found that some puzzles were overclued, diminishing the whole "alone and left to your wits"-feel of the empty spaceship. The obstacles all have logical solutions, some with a lot of intermediate steps. However, if you cram your inventory with everything you can take on your first exploratory tour of the ship, you should always have everything needed for the puzzle at hand.
A few of the obvious paths to rescue turn out to be red herrings, but they are great puzzles in themselves and they add to your score. So instead of being frustrating or disappointing, they just mean more fun!
I encountered a few unobtrusive bugs (and a huge one that was actually meant to be in the game...), but overall Spaceship played very smoothly, no small feat when you take into account that this game was written by a large group of authors. Kudos for keeping the atmosphere and quality so consistent throughout the game!
To the authors, I'd recommend one last round of editing and testing (cranking the handholding down just a notch in some places, (Spoiler - click to show)Particularly in the Infirmary.).
To anyone else, I heartily recommend playing this game!
Boot patrol!, December 17, 2020I have officially finished my first Infocom game!
And I liked it a lot. Wishbringer brought me a lot of moments of joy and laughter. Once you complete the introductory task, it seems the game-world turns dark and sinister. Once the boot patrol turns up though, it turns out to be whimsical and funny. The little town of Festeron (Witchville in the dark) is full of surprises, secret passages and absurd characters. When I found my way to Misty Island I laughed out loud. Phineas and Ferb is one of my favorite cartoons, and here I saw an island full of Agent Ps...
The puzzles are fun and on the easy side. I would recommend that you look at the official feelies and the original game-booklet before playing though. (Widespread on the web.)
Then why only three stars? Because it's possible to make the game unwinnable when you are at the doorstep of victory by not reading a certain note before it becomes forever inaccesible to you. And because the Magick Stone that this game is supposedly about is hidden without clues, like an inside joke from the makers. And because things like that are extra frustrating in an easy-going whimsical adventure such as this one.
But do play it. It's fun.
"Morrodox" joins "Skeletor" and "Mumm-Ra" in best-villain-names top three., December 14, 2020Delusions was one of the very first IF-games I played when I first discovered the medium. The puzzles were way over my head back then, but I found the setting and the slowly unfolding plot fascinating. Except exploring rooms and examining objects, I used a walkthrough for the entire game, knowing I would once try again.
And now I have come back to it. Where before I would have given Delusions five stars for its story alone, now I have more experience with IF and I might offer a more nuanced opinion. I will have to be quite vague in this review to not spoil the overall story.
The story remains fantastic. It is a reworking of a tried-and-true science fiction trope, very well told and paced. Each of the three parts of the game sees the plot of self-discovery open up some more to its inevitable conclusion. Story-wise, there are many similarities to Babel. The way the player discovers the story through puzzles is different however.
The puzzles are very reminiscent of some mini-games in Gateway. You have to build a good understanding of your surroundings and the available objects to figure out a sequence of actions that brings about the desired effect. This will undoubtedly take some experimenting, failing and retrying. You can of course rely on saved games for this, but the game always brings you back to a fixed starting point to begin anew. (In the middle game at least. The endgame is not so friendly.) It is vital to play through the introductory puzzle attentively, because it is an easier version of the puzzle in the middlegame.
For the map-drawers and world-explorers there is not so much here. However, the setting is exquisitely suited to the plot, it adds to the trapped feeling and the big puzzle is designed to fit snugly in these few rooms.
Unfortunately, being more experienced I could also recognize more flaws. The unfolding of the plot relies on examining the same objects multiple times over the course of the game, to see how they change, or, more accurately, how your perception of them changes. Sometimes an object gives a default "not interesting"-response while you should still examine it later. One crucial action demands a non-intuitive (to me) command, making it a very frustrating guess-the-verb problem: (Spoiler - click to show)TAKE object WITH TONGS does not work, you have to PUT object IN TONGS. I also found a game-breaking bug: (Spoiler - click to show)do not SET WATCH TO [time]. It breaks of the playing session immediately. Just SET WATCH wil do nicely.
So, I am not so awestruck as the first time I played through Delusions, but it is still a very clever and well-written game. Highly recommended.
Chim-chimmenee chim-chimmenee chim-chim-cheroo..., December 1, 2020My first IF in French. (I'm not counting Les Heures du Vent because it was unfinished and I quit.) I can read French quite well, but it took some time (and some help from online dictionaries) to figure out the commands.
Catapole is very, very well written. You play as a chimneysweep in a huge underground complex, where workers live and work their entire lives to support the wealthy who still live on the surface. This underground atmosphere, the stillness of the air, the soot,... is made tangible by the writing. It is also reflected by the PC, with his mood, his views on life underground. Not really unhappy, but aware that there is much of the world that lies beyond his grasp.
Because of this surrender to the status quo, he becomes the target of a murder attempt by revolutionaries who want to shake the public into a revolt against their living conditions. Up to you, the player, to find the way to survive this attempt and choose a way of life for your PC.
These are deep themes, thought-provoking and worth contemplating. Unfortunately, the game does not do them justice.
However well-written, Catapole is too short to get in-charachter, too on-rails to understand the life underground, too confined to get a grasp of the relation of your PC to his world and to the people he lives with.
The same is true for the motives and the actions of the revolutionaries.
There's just not enough immersion in the grand overarching story to understand the main character and to make a valid choice at the end.
Still, Catapole is well worth a playthrough for the exquisite writing, and to let yourself wonder about the options.
Half an hour of wind, November 30, 2020I really liked the premise of this game: a young Storyteller asked by the local mage to find an especially evocative children's storybook.
I had wandered around the entire accessible map, enjoying the superb location descriptions. Maybe French is a better language for poetic ways of saying how a town square surrounded with linden-trees looks like? (Yes, the game is in French.) After a while though, I started noticing a particularly large amount of objects where the response to X was "You see nothing special about..." (translated of course.)
A better look at the title page and info showed that this is "un aventure en devenir." "An adventure in progress" that is. So I stopped. This version is from 2007, so I doubt the finished story will ever be published. Too bad, the descriptions are really good.
(I do keep wondering how this piece got 1st place in FrenchComp. Maybe because it's probably possible to play to the end, just very underimplemented?)
I like saying "Heechee" over and over., November 28, 2020The past ten days I have been playing Gateway. The moment I heard the electronic music and saw the first screen of the introduction, I was whisked back to the early '90s. I felt the same anticipation as when I had just put a new cartridge in my Nintendo-console and watched the pictures with the background story. Good stuff. Of course, Gateway is a text adventure, and I don't remember playing any of those on my SNES.
This is the first graphic/text game I have completed. The intro-pictures were great. Very beautiful pixel art. But this wouldn't be the first piece of art/craft/entertainment to blow the player/spectator/beholder's mind with an intense blast to the senses and emotions to cover up mediocre content. I was still apprehensive about if and how both inputs, picture and text, would work together in my mind.
Pretty good, it turns out. The default setting is an impossibly cluttered screen with a little picture in the top right, a little text window bottom right, and a list of every possible verb and every possible noun on the left half of the screen. Apparently, you could play this game like a point'n'clickety robot by mindlessly clicking every possible verb-noun combination.
But,...you have options. There is also the hardcore text-only option, for those who dislike pretty pictures and still think Bob Dylan should never have picked up an electric guitar.
Me, I settled on the half'n'half option: pictures and windrose on top, screenwide text below. Very handy. The pictures really add to the sparse descriptions, the compass shows exits at a single glance. What I especially liked was that clicking the pictures doubles as an X-command. So I could enter a new location and just click around instead of typing X everything. I noticed a few objects this way that I had overlooked in the text. Also, when thoroughly exploring a location or when trying out my entire inventory on a puzzle, I find myself hitting L or I every five or six turns. Here, I could just replace the picture with the room description or my inventory list. I used this a lot.
As I said, the pictures add a lot to the sparse descriptions. And the help is more than welcome. The writing isn't bad, but I wouldn't say it's got any real literary qualities, like some other games that excel in two-sentence gems to grasp the feel of a room (Metamorphoses comes to mind...). But this criticism is about the small-scale writing. Gateway does excel at the big-picture writing: plot, pacing, overall structure...
In Chapter One, you have won the lottery and go to an enormous space station built by an ancient alien civilization, the Heechee. There, you will be trained as a pilot and get the chance to go find alien artefacts all over the galaxy. You will be payed a handsome sum for everything you bring back. The puzzles here are good, nothing too hard. They are important in setting you up for some harder puzzles in the later portions of the game. You can actually solve all of the puzzles on the space station on your very first evening there. Should you not do so, then know that at some point in the game you will have to re-explore the entire station. My biggest gripe about this first chapter is that it feels too small. You are supposedly on a huge alien satellite, but the writing does not succeed in bringing across that feeling. This is not about the number of accessible rooms, but about the very confined boundaries of the playing area. It would have helped to hint at other areas of this great space station while prohibiting the PC from ever entering there. (Turbolifts that go higher than the accessible three decks to regions where the PC does not have clearance come to mind.)
The boundaries of the storyworld on the other hand are very wide. There are some devices in the game that give you the news from earth, tell you about the history of the station, and even show personal messages from other prospectors (looking for a drinking companion or a date...). This makes you feel in touch with a much bigger society.
Also in this chapter you go on the first few missions to other planets. Nothing noteworthy though, just a teeny tiny taste of what's to come.
What does come next in Chapter Two is amazing. You visit four alien worlds to carry out a very specific mission. Each of these worlds is one single puzzle, contained within a handful of locations. Two puzzles in particular ((Spoiler - click to show)the spider-anemones-octopus-snake sequence on planet 2 and the Sasquatch on planet 3) were beautiful in their logic and simplicity.
Each of these worlds is also a magnificent new ecosystem, making one wonder about what the rest of the planet would look like. Here, the small size of the map does not impinge on the feeling of a bigger world at all.
Of course, just when you think you have completed your four-part mission, it turns out there is a fifth obstacle to be overcome. The three related problems in Chapter Three hearken back to your trainee days when you had just arrived at the space station. If you payed attention at the beginning of the game, you should grasp the principles of the solutions immediately, if not the practical execution. The idea behind these final puzzles is a classic and very well played SciFi trope. Unfortunately, one of the puzzles also involves "Paradise as seen through the eyes of a hormone-overdosed, raised-on-misogynistic-movies fifteen-year-old boy". No matter how good you may find the puzzle, this part is bad. Really bad.
That's really a shame, and the fact that it comes right before the end of the game doesn't help. For me at least, it tainted the final WIN-sensation.
If I excise that bit from my memories with my imaginary memory-scalpel though, I'm left with the experience of an overwhelmingly good game. Very entertaining, very emotionally engaging at times ((Spoiler - click to show)the Sasquatch again). It may be linear, "on rails" as they say, but it's one heck of a rollercoaster ride.
Must play, if you can stomach that bit-that-will-not-be-mentioned-again.
Finally, I'd like to come back to my favorite puzzle of Gateway.
I have read several reviews and interviews where Emily Short talks about the complicity of the player in commanding the PC, especially when immoral actions are needed to advance the game. She comments that through the years, it has become more of an emotional burden for her to just do whatever it takes as an adventurer to get the proverbial Magic Crystal.
In my years as an adventurer, I have happily stolen stuff, sedated and drugged NPCs, broken all kinds of furniture or laws. I have even killed a good number of guards that happened to be in my way. All without a moral hiccup.
When I first came across (Spoiler - click to show)the Sasquatch however, I found myself very emotionally involved. From the start, I hoped I wouldn't have to harm it. In the end, I did have to treat it in a way that I wasn't comfortable with (although it was not unbearable), and it was a very powerful experience to find myself caring so much about what would happen to this creature. This is where IF done right can truly shine, through shared responsibility between the player and the character.
(Actually, come to think of it, something similar happened when I played LASH, but that game had a twisted player/PC relation at its core that was aimed at just this strange complicity. Gateway is a more traditional adventure in this respect.)
A classic well worth playing (again).
A Blue Flash!, November 17, 2020I stand in awe. This game is so good...
Top fighter pilot during the past war, you now find yourself accompanying the Ambassador on a tourist trip to a place he slashed into submission from orbit just twenty years ago, while you were down there on a mission of your own. A heavy storm forces you to push him into his spaceship to take him to safety, leaving you alone and stranded on the surface with your storm-damaged plane. You might be able to fix it should you find your multi-purpose tool that you lent to the Ambassador. Maybe he dropped it somewhere during his escape?
As you search the area, you get re-acquanted with the strange towers that stand on the points of a great triangular field, and the massive Ziggurat that stands in the middle. Soon, driven by memories and an only half-understood inner urge, you find yourself unraveling the mysteries of these perplexing structures.
Inevitable takes place on a smallish map, readily memorized and easily accesible. You can oversee much of the area from several locations, making it feel bigger while at the same time tying it together into one big site. The descriptions are evocative while not overloading your brain with too much information.
Actually, the writing overall is extremely good. When exploring the different towers and examining scenery and objects, the text is efficient and to the point, almost cold in places. However, entering certain locations or finding certain objects brings back memories of your last time here, memories you would have rather forgotten. When remembering these, the writing becomes softer, even hesitant.
At its core, Inevitable is a puzzle game. It is actually one big puzzle with tightly interconnected sub-puzzles. Once you understand the overarching problem, the nature of the towers and the Ziggurat, the function of the sub-puzzles becomes clear. (Not their solutions however...) In this way, instead of other IF-games, Inevitable reminded me most of two point-and-click games I bashed my head against in the early 2000s: Chasm and Archipelago. (Ring a bell, anyone?)
The solutions to the obstacles are all logical, which does not make them any easier. I certainly needed some nudges along the way. (Thanks!)
The coding and implementation is top notch. Wrong attempts get helpful replies. You can GO TO locations if you don't want to traverse the entire map. The game starts in Default mode, but you can type EASIER or HARDER at the start of the game, depending on how masochistic you are.
What lifts Inevitable head-and-shoulders above other hard and smart and clever puzzlers is the dramatic backstory revealed in the memories. I felt strongly sympathetic towards the protagonist (I imagine it to be a woman, although the game doesn't say either way.) when she was reliving the final moments of the war through short but heartwrenching flashes of memory.
Extremely good game.
Holy Relics!, November 11, 2020Wow! That was really really really cool!
The year is 1347 AD. You, a renowned scholar and theologian, have been summoned by King and Pope. There has been a tragic fire in the library of the great abbey at Montglane. The fleeing monks have rescued as much of the treasures as they could, but the location of certain ancient relics has been forgotten through the centuries. You are to retrieve them for the greater glory of King and Church.
The Abbey of Montglane is a 1988 DOS text-adventure. It is by far the oldest IF I have finished. (Edit: I see that the date on the IFDB page is 1993. I could have sworn I saw 1988 somewhere.)
Because of the limited implementation of objects and scenery, I had to switch my adventuring style from obsessively examining everything named in the descriptions to a more general exploring of the game-space. On my first evening, I spent more than two hours drawing a map of the abbey, and I hadn't even found the passage into the catacombs by then.
This game is awe-inspiring in its handling of space. The map is very large, and a huge chunk of it is open to exploration from the get-go. However, it is structured according to the layout of a historical abbey, a large rectangle contained within the outer walls. Most of the locations are next to one of the main paths, with enough of them to the side or in between to break the symmetry and give the map a more natural feel.
A medieval abbey was for the most part a self-sustaining entity, so the locations are very diverse. Next to the church and the monk's dormitories, there is a herb and vegetable garden, a bakery, a pigsty (with barrels for collecting the blood of a butchered pig!), a meditative fountain grove,... An impressive bell-tower looks out over it all.
The orderly structure of this above-ground map contrasts with the nooks and crannies and twisty passages of the underground catacombs. (No maze.) Mapping fun guaranteed!
The intro I have summarized above promises good writing, and the game delivers... for the most part. The descriptions are sparse, efficient and more verbose when needed. But: the juvenile 1980s text-adventure humour that pops up here and there broke the atmosphere enough for me to take away a star from my rating.
Solving the puzzles is mostly a matter of exploring thoroughly, taking the (surprisingly few) objects you find with you and remembering written clues until you need them. The best puzzle of the game is wildly unfair to modern standards, but it works and it is great and funny. Well worth solving without cheating.. (Spoiler - click to show)Learn by dying... A lot.
The Abbey of Montglane is a tremendous work of interactive fiction.
Highly recommended.
Under a pale moon..., November 8, 2020Wolfsmoon is a chilling text adventure with graphics that unquestionably add to the pleasure of playing.
You play as an unnamed explorer who takes it upon him/herself to investigate a series of gruesome killings around a small farmtown. While looking around the town I found it honestly scary, thanks to small details like a family sitting safely inside their home while I was alone on the dark town square, a crooked scarecrow on the outskirts of the village and the ever-present pale moon hanging in the sky.
There are a few great puzzles here. All of them involve but two or three steps, but they are very clever, giving me a real "Aha"-feeling when I solved them.
The map of the town is altogether small, but it feels very naturally diverse, with wheat fields and hills surrounding the town. The graphics here do a lot to make the area feel bigger, more open than its number of locations. White, gray, black and blue, with a hint of red here and there, they add immensely to the oppressive atmosphere. The moonlit clouds almost take on a physical weight pressing down upon you.
After solving the cleverly bottlenecked puzzles outside, you gain entrance to the lone mansion in the fields. Here, for me at least, the feel of the game shifted from a creepy suspense-thriller to a more brainy escape-quest. You must examine all the rooms closely to gradually find your way into the master bedroom. This involves an obscurely clued combination lock puzzle that would have made me give up, were it not for an explicit solution I asked and received. (Thanks!) (btw: if you get stuck on the same puzzle -you'll know it when you see it- you can ask on intfiction.org, or just PM me.)
The final confrontation wraps things up nicely with a not-so-twisty twist.
It is clear from the writing that the author is not a native english speaker. Most of the time this is not a problem. In some places it's actually beneficial, with an uncommon twist of words that helps the game's atmosphere. In one place it was confusing, but a closer look at the graphics soon solved that. (Spoiler - click to show)The author uses "alcove", which I envision as a recess or crawlspace in a wall. It was used in the game to mean a smaller indentation or hollow in a surface. To be fair to the author, in several online dictionaries "alcove" is indeed listed as a synonym for "indentation".
The word that pops into my head when describing Wolfsmoon is "tight". The map is small yet full of atmosphere and things to explore. The number of verbs needed is limited but doesn't feel restrictive. The descriptions are efficiently terse and they are beautifully supported by wonderful pixel art.
Play this in a dark room on a moonlit night. Shivers!
Wade misses the spot., November 4, 2020The WadeWars III: Askin was published as a DOS game in 1993. The author dug it up in 2000 and transferred it to Inform. Verbatim, as far as I can tell. What a missed opportunity to give it a thorough work-over.
Your weird science minded recluse of an uncle has gone missing so you go and search his appartment. There you find a mysterious machine with a big red button. Now, what do you do when you encounter Big Red Buttons on mysterious machines? Push them, right! I'd probably push the button even in real life... (People have warned me against this though...)
Pushing the button transports you to a mirrored, dungeonlike version of your uncle's apartment. After a few turns, you are transported back to the normal world. When you are standing in a particular room when this switchback happens, you end up in an altogether strange land, where the search for your uncle continues.
Now, the author has set us up in a quite well written (if you can stand the grating sensation of typos) fantasy land with an intriguing and promising puzzle-mechanism: a parallel mirror-map where East and West are switched and altered for a few turns. (Heck, it could make for an interesting maze-puzzle, where you alternate between realities to navigate.) Unfortunately, instead of being the basis for different puzzles, this mechanism is hardly used in the game.
Implementation is very shallow, there are lots of empty locations, the writing is of differing quality (plus typos).
One part of the game does shine: the way to the Cloud Palace where you encounter the Laws. Quite a vivid impression.
Disappointing.
My First Love., November 2, 2020Some fifteen years ago, I came across this strange gameplaying/storytelling -medium. They called it Interactive Fiction. I thought it sounded interesting, but it turned out to be confusing, frustrating. I did not feel welcome in this world.
Then I came across "Worlds Apart". Thank you, Lady Britton, for "Worlds Apart".
For days on end I lost myself in this game, this story. Outer and inner worlds entwine. Exploration demands diving into ocean and mind alike.
Since that experience, I've played a lot of good, even great IF, but...
"Worlds Apart" will always be my first love.
An Ogre, a Chameleon, a Werewolf and a Squirrel fail to walk into the inn..., November 1, 2020Because, strangely, there is no inn in this otherwise standard Fantasy adventure.
I say standard, but it's actually a very good game.
After a lengthy but very funny introductory scene where you, the smith's apprentice, are appointed "volunteer" by the villagers to kill the dragon and get its treasures (the town has a bit of a tax-problem), you find yourself in a traditional Fantasy land. After talking to all the villagers and starting to explore a bit, you remember that aside from funny narrators, hidden treasure and a wizard in his tower, old-school Fantasy adventures also tend to be Big and Difficult.
-Setting: The entire map (minus a handful of hidden locations) is accessible from the get-go. The game thus has a great sense of spaciousness. The boundaries of the playable area are also very naturally worked into the narrative. There are mountain ranges with their peaks stretching out as far as you can see, grassplains too big to cross where you see the next town shimmering against the horizon, the ocean shore where you can just see the barbaric islands through the mist...
There are many, many locations. It helps a lot that they are geographically ordered. From the central village, you can choose to go to the river/swamp region, the forest or the rocky hills. The wizard's tower lies on its own mountain peak.
Some of these locations are truly beautiful: a hidden lake seen from a cliff above, a lone giant tree in the forest, the tower seen from a hill top far away...
The openness of the game world does mean that it can be hard to find that next loose thread while puzzle-solving, meaning that you will see some of the locations so many times that you don't care about that wonderfully described scenery anymore.
-Puzzles: The puzzles in The Windhall Chronicles are a mixed batch.
The three parts of the Wizardry-test are great. They are followed by a logic puzzle that I took out my chess pawns for and had a lot of fun solving. Most puzzle fans will probably have seen it in some form before though. There's a fetch-quest for the wood-elf that I found very enjoyable, and then there's the Mire Cat's riddle.
Then there are some puzzles that make sense,...in hindsight. The kind where you couldn't possibly tell what other function an object might have. Or where the sequence of actions is underclued.
One or two puzzles just make you go "Huh?" after finally checking the walkthrough.
It's a shame that the final puzzle, the dragon-fight, is completely clear and obvious (which I find a good thing for a final puzzle),but not described clearly enough to solve it while staying in the flow and thrill of the endgame.
-NPCs: To solve the puzzles, there are many characters that will help you. That is, if you help them first of course... This leads to some interesting fetch-quests and some funny conversations. It also adds to the feel of the game that all the characters have different opinions of one another, giving you a glimpse of the town's social dynamics.
Very important here is that all the characters (you/the protagonist included) have sleep cycles. Wildly differing sleep cycles... Your dwarven master gets up at 5:30 while the lazy alchemist doesn't wake up before 10:30 am. Some crucial information has to be got from an insomniac knight who doesn't show himself until after dark... Sometimes you can be forced to WAIT twenty turns because the character you have business with is still asleep. (Knocking on their door doesn't help...)
On the other hand, it is very rewarding to plan out your actions so that you can solve a puzzle and give the result to a character just as they get up. Therefore, I strongly recommend copying the sleep times from the walkthrough. They are all listed at the top of the page.
-Writing: The writing is good, sometimes very good. I only found a handful of typos, which is not a lot in a game this size. Some location descriptions are simply beautiful, but the prose does turn a bit purple after you solve some key puzzles. Also, both the intro and the epilogue are very wordy. Well written, but wordy.
The writing is also truly funny at times. Can't say much without giving the away the jokes but: (Spoiler - click to show)the shed falling apart when you turn the long-sought-after key...
So:
-The sense of space, Fantasy feel, natural borders and wonderful surroundings make this gameworld a joy to explore.
-The lack of pacing/bottlenecks, the sleep cycles and the undercluedness of some puzzles can lead to pointless wandering.
All in all, I was absorbed in this game for a week, often pondering puzzles in bed and coming up with new things to try.
Strongly recommended.
(If you enjoy this kind of text adventure, be sure to check out Larry Horsfield's Alaric Blackmoon-series)
"It is what it is.", October 27, 2020Edit: It has been brought to my attention that what I called "retro-gameplay feel" is actual sparsity due to the limitations of the Commodore 64 on which Hibernated 1 was originally written. I therefore added a star for "tight programming in small nooks and crannies".
More in the comments.
"Hibernated 1" is a pretty straightforward sci-fi game with cool electronic engineering puzzles and an abandoned alien ship to spend a few cool hours as a space heroine.
That is, it could be, were it not that the game overdoes its retro-gameplay feel by quite a lot of notches for my tastes.
Although the basic descriptions are good, sometimes even great, implementation of scenery is almost non-existent, making it hard to get a feel for the spaceship you're investigating. Even more frustrating, implementation for needed objects is also very minimalist, leading to exchanges such as this:
> X SLAB
It is what it is. A closer examination does not reveal any new insights.
Is the glass slab lying on the floor or standing upright? Is it the size of my head or taller than me? Is it clear and transparent or milky and opaque? These "new insights" might give an inkling as to how to use this thing.
Oh, talking about that verb: due to the two-word parser, you need to USE objects. In the right place, and , very importantly, at the right time. If you do not, the response is unforgiving.
>USE PARTS
That is not an option.
Even though you really do need to use those parts in that location, only there is something else that has to be done elsewhere in the ship first. So, no helpful responses to tell you you're on the right track.
Well, since you're carrying around IO, a semi-sentient robotic tamagotchi to assist you, you'd think that helpful feedback would be provided by simply:
>TALK IO
but unfortunately, 99% of the time you get:
That is not an option.
Because of all this, it is clear at every moment that you are not a female spacecaptain uncovering the secret of a lost alien spacecraft. You are you, sitting at your computer taking a stab at the right sequence of commands to type to make something happen to the gamestate.
That being said, once you've come to that agreement with the game and with yourself, "Hibernated 1" is a fine "logic-in-the-dark" puzzle. Just don't expect too much back from it, like feedback and stuff...
Stubbornly going back into an evacuated city to find "her", October 26, 2020Well, this was straight up my alley. Squarely in my comfortzone. Apparently I feel comfortable exploring the dimly lit streets of a gloomy abandoned city... (huh, what does this say about me, I guess...)
And exploring you must do. Since Nightfall is basically puzzleless, it's all about looking around and solving the Big Puzzle: Who is She?
While you search around the big, big map, some locations will trigger memories, which can be RECAPped to get a picture of this mysterious person you've actually half-known most of your life. Glimpses into her inner life, helping to make sense of what's happening this night.
The author has included some helpful commands to help navigate and keep your place in the story. (GO TO, REMEMBER, THINK). These are a great help, especially since the PC has a lot more knowledge of the geography than the player, and because it's easy to be unsure about what to do next in such a big city full of possibilities.
Writing and implementation are very good, good enough to have you wandering around Xing everything and forget about the time.
Yes, time matters in this game. You have to find her in a certain amount of time or ... Actually I don't know. I found her by 01.37am. I have no idea how much more time the game goes on for. (You can check the time limit in the help menu at the beginning of the game if you want.)
Depending on the route you took through the city, the locations and objects you examined, you get a different ending. (I got a "losing" one I think, but I liked it nonetheless.)
A game with great atmosphere, it deserves to be played/read attentively, best of all in one or two long stretches.
A shining pearl., October 21, 2020Playing Sunset over Savannah is a marvelous experience.
It is a story about personal growth and difficult emotional decisions in a magic-realist setting. The protagonist goes through a sequence of changing emotions about his life and himself that reverberated strongly with me. The setting reflects that. It is an everyday beach location, a pavilion by the seashore, that is suffused with wonderment about small beauties. At defining points in the story, the magic breaks through in illusions or visions whose reality is up to the reader to interpret.
Hard as it may be, the writing succeeds flawlessly in capturing that feeling of wonder in the real. There are carefully crafted short descriptions of the beauty of beach, sun, sea... Responses to actions are clear and to the point.
Following important emotional breakthroughs the author goes all out in dreamlike prose, that fits with the moment in the story.
All through the game there is a fun, friendly humor, making the player feel at home in this world.
Of course, a bug at the wrong moment would kill the fragile atmosphere of a game like this quite swiftly. Fortunately, Sunset over Savannah is very much up to the challenge of sustaining this wondrous experience. I found one tiny bug and less than a handfull of typos. Things like sand, water and ropetying are well handled, as are swimming and diving. The little details like a small crab scuttling around in the sand or the pressure of a wave crashing above while diving add immensely to the immersion. There are also tons of meaningful responses to completely unnecessary commands, which makes it a joy to just play in the sand.
The puzzles our protagonist has to solve to get a grip on his own emotions and resolve are hard. Really hard. (To me, that is. I'm not that proficient in that department.) It was particularly difficult to find that first loose thread to get the ball rolling, and even then, the ball got stuck more than a few times. This is no punishment however, having such a beautiful place to wander around in. It pays to think about all the properties of the inventory-objects, all the possible functions they could have.
There is a good help system with vague-to-explicit hints per puzzle, but once you've explored all locations thoroughly, all you should maybe need are one or two nudges.
A lesser game would have a serious problem with integrating so many hard puzzles into a story that depends on depth of emotion and fragile wonderment. It would be hard to maintain the willing suspension of disbelief on the player's part.
Not Sunset over Savannah. The characterization of the protagonist and his mental state are strong enough to maintain the illusion and the immersion.
A beautiful, beautiful game.
Space Station Escape, October 19, 2020This, ladies and gentlemen, is good work!
"Fragile Shells" is an excellently made text escape game. It consists of a series of interconnected puzzles, all of them solvable by using logic, common sense and a ready knowledge of basic physics.
Maybe too easy for some, but I found that the layering of one puzzle onto another, linking their solutions together into one clear chain from the givens to the conclusion was very satisfying indeed.
Just about every command I tried had a meaningful response, a very friendly game indeed.
Add to this an exciting backstory remembered in bits and pieces by the protagonist to frame it, and you get a short and delightful IF-gem.
Immersion extreme!, October 17, 2020Not quite IF as I imagine it, but hey, it's text, it's a game (of sorts) and I can assure you it does not take long to get fully immersed in this simulation of a society developing.
It is amazing what sparse text and a few action buttons (with reload-timer) combined with human imagination and empathy will do to suck you into this world, how little of a nudge a brain needs to be there in that other world.
Snippets of a mage's life, October 17, 2020I played The Dreamhold in tutorial-mode. The tutorial voice was really well done, providing not only a basic introduction to IF but also guidance to certain puzzles and avenues of possibilities deep into the game proper. It never gets too intrusive.
There is an immense castle/dungeon to explore, with quite a complex layout. I like making my own maps, so this was a fun excercise on its own. You start off in a recognizable, habitable few rooms, and the further you venture from that center, the more varied and fantastic the locations get. There are a few vantage points up above. The wide sunlit vistas from these are a nice contrast to the dark feeling in the rest of the castle.
The puzzles in tutorial-mode are well-clued and solvable without hints, provided that you are well and truly engaged in solving this game. Especially near the end it is neccesary to understand what you have learned during your journey, instead of just having gone through the motions.
The sunlit vistas I mentioned are welcome sources of light and space in this game. I would have welcomed just a sprinkling of comic relief or self-deprecating humor from the PC to break the sad-and-gloom atmosphere a bit more. After some time searching the halls and domes the air in the castle starts weighing on the player's mind.
The implementation goes very deep, for scenery-objects as well as for "wrong" commands. Most things the player tries are recognized and their impossibility or impracticality explained, instead of getting a standard sarcastic snarl.
Fun, big, entertaining. Three stars for now, maybe more when I replay in expert-mode.
(mostly) Logical Magic, October 11, 2020I had been putting of playing Savoir Faire because it is a) an old school puzzle hunt which b) depends on magic. Two things I do not particularly enjoy when playing IF.
However, after succesfully completing the puzzly Theatre with very few hints, I decided to take on Emily Short's challenge. It was great!
The reason I dislike most magic is that it feels superficial. A bunch of floaty blabla about "words of power" that somehow control the essence of things doesn't appeal to me.
In Savoir Faire, most of the puzzles depend on the Lavori d'Aracne, a magic system that lets the practitioner LINK objects. That way there is at least a hint of a physical connection between the objects and the practitioner of magic. These links also depend on a material likeness of the objects, so the magic system feels more like the use of an extra property of nature than a violation of it.
At the start of the game, your PC is almost too obnoxious to even be an anti-hero. Coming to the house you grew up in to ask for money to help with gambling debts, finding that your adoptive father and sister are not there while you expected them to be, and then going on to loot the place? Not very nice, to put it mildly. Through the snippets of backstory you find through memory and exploration though, he is somewhat redeemed (somewhat, that is.)
The setting, the mansion of the count who took in the PC, makes quite an impression through the near-perfect prose of Emily Short. Descriptions are terse, only the bare necessities there, with an ever so delicate sprinkling of detail. Examining further however opens up layers of feeling and meaning about the rooms and furniture, so that the player is drawn into this world. Extremely well done!
Because of the use of magic, I tagged this game "fantasy", but it's actually more an alternate history, where the old France is precisely the same as it was, with the addition of this extra set of natural laws, i.e. the Lavori d'Aracne.
Hard puzzles, but all of them logical; many alternative solutions (except one I found so obvious that I was disappointed not to have it work: (Spoiler - click to show)To uncork a bottle you link the cork to your sword and then draw the sword. To my mind it made much more sense within the magic system to put the sponge in the drain, then link the cork to the sponge and pull out the sponge.)
And even when you're stuck you can relax while playing with the mechanical cooking contraption (which is very reminiscent of the contraptions in Metamorphoses)
Great game!
The dream of a brain in a vat full of liquor., October 8, 2020"The Chinese Room" posed a hard problem to my consciousness: three stars or four?
First off: nits to pick.
-Very annoying typos and misspellings ("er" instead of "her"), the consistent use of quotation marks instead of apostrophes (plover"s eggs).
-Many nouns or synonyms not recognized.
-Shoddy implementation of a cool device (the qualiascope)
-A rather big nit: there is an unmentioned path northwest from the beach.
My consciousness decided on four stars however.
-Although the game has no real story, the diverse puzzles are tightly held together by a very cool and engaging framework, the land of philosophical thought experiments.
-The puzzles are very well thought out, and more often than not very funny.
-Extensive background information, a crash course in the history of philosophy that makes an interested mind look up more on Wikipedia, or, in my case, open up my old copy of Bertrand Russel's "The History of Philosophy."
-The varied locations, landscapes and scenes are very nicely described, painting a picture in the player's head with a few well-chosen sentences.
-Playing illegal logic games with Willard Van Orman Quine (the philosopher with the coolest name ever.)
-An actual intuition pump!
A joy to play.
Good Golly Miss Molly!, September 27, 2020A good story-driven game with easy puzzles and a menu-based conversation system, so nothing gets in the way of defeating the Brainguzzlers and saving your 1950s American Smalltown.
I really liked the game for the first half hour of play. After that the caricature of 1950s scifi horror, and of 1950s American society began to wear me down. I began half expecting The Jetsons coming down in a UFO of their own to drop off the Fonz who would then save the day.
I also doubt that "Jeepers!" would last long as the swearword of choice during an alien attack.
Technically, the game is very well put together. The scripted conversations are perfect for an uptempo story like this. Intro, middle and endgame are well paced. I would have liked some more implementation of scenery, but that would have slowed the game down, so it's understandable. What did bug me, and slowed the game down is the lack of synonyms available. A fast-paced story-game like this would have benefited from a wide choice of different names for your items so you didn't have to stop to remember how something was called in the description. I hated that in a scifi setting such as this, "blaster" was not recognized.
Probably best played in one go, straight through to the (slimy) ending.
Large, engrossing,... and somewhat lacking., September 21, 2020Emily Short is one of my favourite IF-writers, and when I found this big story-game with her name under the title, I pounced on it!
And it is good. Apart from being an immersive adventure and a detailed exploration of a fine city, deeper themes also shine through.
Truth above obscurity, even if truth also means complete transparency?
Creativity above strict order, even if creativity also means chaos?
The writing is top-notch, the NPC interactions feel real, the city and its history hold the interest, but in the end, the game misses something.
Is it because the game is so good that I raised the bar impossibly high?
Finding an outdoor café where there were no interactive NPCs and where nothing story-moving happened disappointed me.
Finding out that a little nook in the gameworld, about which I dreamed up many possibilities, didn't play a role in the story didn't feel like a red herring, it felt like a let-down.
Finding out that certain information I found about my character didn't matter to the game was a pity.
But those are nitpicks, and very personal nitpicks at that.
This game is very very good. Just not as amazing as I really really wanted it to be. And that's on me.
So play it.
Break a leg!, September 21, 2020"You have discovered the secret of the Theatre and have completed the game with a score of fifty out of a possible fifty in one thousand, one hundred and fifty-eight turns."
Yes, and I enjoyed every single one of those turns!
I'm not normally one to test my wits against what is described as a puzzlefest, most of the time enjoying more story-oriented IF. Once in a while though, I like to crack my noggin on some oldschool puzzles. I've given up on "Curses!" thrice already and "Christminster"'s opening scene sent me screaming to my walkthrough.
Theatre was different though. I never got completely lost, always having at least one clear goal. The solutions to the puzzles were always fair, also the ones that I didn't get. The very vague in-game hints were enough for me until very late in the game, and even then the problem was adventurer's fatigue on my part, not having explored thoroughly enough.
The setting and descriptions are creepy enough, but I never felt fear or horror. Instead I was excited and curious the whole time about what would be around the next corner of this sprawling run-down Theatre.
"Theatre" does show its oldschool heritage: a key gratuitously hidden on the opposite side of the map from the door it's supposed to open, picking up everything that's not cemented to the floor to use it in a puzzle far down the road. Apparently ghosts have made a hobby of tearing up diaries and spreading the pages all over the place for no apparent reason...
The backstory was just good enough to be interesting in its own right, but it's not much more than a fragmented Lovecraftian template that supports the dark and damp atmosphere.
The great puzzles mostly revolve around getting to the next part of the map, getting "around the corner" as it were, in varying original ways.
There are glimpses of true genius here, especially one "puzzle that isn't": (Spoiler - click to show)"Tunnels go out in all directions." is not limited to the compass directions. This one had me stumped for a long while, and it was an exhilarating feeling when it finally *clicked*.
A fantastic experience, well recommended!
Prime Directive, anyone?, September 18, 2020The overarching theme of "The Orion Agenda" is an exploration of the implications of the Star Trek prime directive (not interfering with the natural evolution of technologically lesser developed cultures). Aah, many an hour have I spent waxing philosophically about this question after a Trek-marathon with friends...
The game is nicely structured: a light and funny bureaucratic puzzle to begin with, a somewhat harder midgame (that makes excellent use of the flashback), and a slight twist in the finale, where you also need to use the insights from the midgame.
NPCs mostly do what they have to, no more, except Rebecca, your partner, whom you can order around a bit. (REBECCA, JUMP)
I know it's not for everyone, but I like me some text dumps. Here, you get a SciCorps manual with your equipment and some screenfulls at the end of the game to summarize the moral dilemma.
A good game worth mulling over a bit after you're done.
Historical scenes from a treasure hunt., September 17, 2020Well, this was a very short but very welcome historical experience.
Each scene puts you in a different situation as the servant of mathematician/alchemist Napier. You are his hands and eyes in this easy treasure quest.
The scenes are very well written, letting you feel the atmosphere of the castle, the cave,... The NPCs have distinct characters, adding to the immersion in the story.
All in all, more a series of historical impressions than a full-fledged game, but very enjoyable.
Great side-effect of this game: it sent me on my own treasure hunt to find out more about this John Napier, an intruiging personality in the history of mathematics.
Good fiction, not so interactive, September 16, 2020This is a great adventure story for 10- to 14-year olds. Heck, it's a great adventure story for all ages. If it were a board game, I'd label it 8-99.
"Jack Toresal and the Secret Letter" is not, however, great IF.
I've seen reviewers that would recommend this game as a good introduction to the medium for newcomers to interactive fiction. I would not. "Jack Toresal" does not give the player that sense of engagement, immersion, agency that is so important in interactive fiction. Even though it is an exciting adventure story, the player does not get to do any adventuring. Examining and searching locations and objects yield well-written descriptions but no discoveries. There are no puzzles to be solved, not even the kind of bigger-picture-understanding that goes with most puzzleless IF.
Starting a new IF-game, I always enjoy that exhilarating feeling of controlling my character in this new world. Here, that feeling quickly wears off to the point that entering commands actually lessens the immersion in the story. It becomes a chore to make Jack do the glaringly obvious when I would have rather just flipped the page of a novel and read on.
That said, the story really is good, and the characters in it are lively, well-written (to the point of caricature, but I don't mind that in this kind of tale) and they have lots to say.
Since the story is the first part of an intended series, it stops with a cliffhanger. If anyone hears the call of the IF-gods to write a sequel, I'd love to read/play it. With a bit more adventuring, that is.
Notes:
-The first chapter does not suffer from any of the criticism above. It's a good and funny self-contained exploration puzzle.
-I found an extremely annoying bug that would have made me QUIT if this weren't such an easy game:(Spoiler - click to show)The game won't let you out of the library without the secret letter. The letter is in the chandelier. So if you enter the library without having lowered the chandelier from the room above, you're stuck.
Anyways: good story, bad IF.
Points for best NPC: The Castle, April 30, 2020In this retelling of the classic, wellknown fairy-tale, you play Beauty. However, you (the player) are not Beauty. Through memories triggered by various rooms, objects, pieces of furniture, it's clear that she has lived a life of her own, in this castle with its Lord, and outside it in her village.
She does not find Beast after coming home from a visit to her family, so she has to search the entire Castle.
And this is where the game shines. This Castle is so detailed, so well implemented and so vividly described, I felt like I was looking over Beauty's shoulder every step of her search. Your discovery of the different wings and rooms of this Castle is paced to perfection. The various puzzles hold you long enough to get accustomed to a certain part of the setting, until you find the solution and another part opens up. This has the effect that in the end, I felt like I had experienced much more space than is actually in the map.
For other of the many qualities of this game, I direct you to other reviews. The Castle was what I wanted to highlight most.
A stroll through Shakespeare's London. (oh, and unspeakable horror), April 24, 2020 It had been a long time since I seriously played IF. The King of Shreds and Patches pulled me back in.
Right from the back cover description, I got a tingling feeling in my brain about this game. A Lovecraftian horror set in the historical London of Shakespeare. Uhm,... Yes please.
The player is invited to empathize with the protagonist in a simple but very effective way: neither has the abilities needed to bring the story to a good end. So they have to be learned and practiced. The first few times you try a certain action, you have a rather high chance of failure. The more you perform it, the more proficient you get at it. Nice.
This learning curve also shows in the guidance of the player in solving puzzles: use a certain simple way to get an object in the intro, then complicate things in the middle game.
Two other puzzles are long but completely logical mechanical puzzles. These were great, as puzzles. I loved tinkering and fiddling with the objects needed. However, one of them in particular completely breaks the immersion in the character. (Spoiler - click to show)You are a printer of pamphlets, yet you somehow have to learn how to operate your own press...
One puzzle is frustrating as heck. I could not get my visual cortex to envisage the situation. I even thought it might have been better to implement this puzzle or sequence as a graphic mini-game. ((Spoiler - click to show)yes, the rowing boat)
Storywise, TKoSaP is very engaging. It's long and sprawling, with a good division into chapters that have to be handled in order. Two seemingly separate story-arcs meet eventually. Allthough you can see this coming, it is still very satisfying. That means good writing.
The adventure takes place in historical London, and the author has gone all out with this. There is an illustrated map of the city, the descriptions of background noise and activity puts you right in that time, and of course there are the characters you meet.
All of the NPCs that are of any importance are extremely well fleshed out, with many topics to discuss. Some have different opinions or viewpoints on one topic, filling in the backstory tremendously.
One of the non-player-characters is William Shakespeare. Nuff said.
The suspense leading up to the finale is long drawn out, as it should in a Lovecraftian tale. Books of lore, tales of myth, whispers and rumours,... it's all there, getting you to the very edge of your chair.
And then there is a very good and also very Lovecraftian finale.
(Spoiler - click to show)Of course, the story ends up shooting itself in the foot with a classic Lovecraftian backfire. Showing the tentacled monstrosity from the deep makes it laughable. But that's also part of the genre.
Immersive slow horror., April 20, 2020"Let's get out of this cabin and go to the shack. No wait! What have I got in my hands? Put that in the sack so no one will see it. Phew, lucky I thought of that."
While playing Lydia's Heart I was well and truly immersed in the story, caring enough about my PC to not go "adventuring " all over the place. I left rooms as I found them, put books back on the shelves after reading them, closed cupboards after searching them,... Most of the time this was unnecesary, but this game made it feel natural.
The writing is great. Clear descriptions that also give you the feel of the place. Some of the puzzles I needed a nudge with, but they were all well integrated in the story.
And what a good story it is! Or better, how well is this story told! Those who like a bit of Lovecraft now and then will not read anything new, but they, and hopefully all others will read a thrilling, frightening adventure.
Rags to Riches... a second time., April 20, 2020 Die Feuerfaust is the third installment in the Alaric Blackmoon-series by Larry Horsfield. Having played and tested the previous two, I knew pretty much what I was in for, and looking forward to it.
I was not disappointed. Unapologetic (have I used this word in an Alaric-review before? I just might have...) oldschool adventuring, big and varied settings, some use of magic, some killing of foes, and at least one very elaborate, well thought out puzzle (Have you ever tried any horseriding? Wait til you try riding a wild Zampf).
Also: some lack in depth of implementation and interactivity in the large and sprawling settings, as is to be expected in the oldschool tradition.
A classic storyline drives the game forward: Whereas Alaric was a run-down mercenary going on a quest that lead him to glory in Axe of Kolt, in this game Alaric is stranded after a shipwreck and has lost all his belongings. He must work his way through various obstacles and tasks toward his final goal, recovering the famed Fist of Fire.
Nothing new, but tried and trusted adventure fare.
Many NPCs, most still smelling of the cardboard they were cut out of, some more fleshed out. All do what they're supposed to do in a text-adventure such as this: drive the action forward with clues and gifts.
Many, many puzzles, most quite straightforward and not too big. And as mentioned, a great Zampftaming sequence to sink your Hero-teeth into.
All in all, the best of the three I have played so far. The evolution begun in Spectre of Castle Coris continues: tighter gameplay, clearer subgoals so less wandering about, more engaging story.
Not must, but certainly should-play.
A new version of the game will be appearing soon.
The university of puzzles great and small., April 12, 2020 I must confess to a serious character flaw, a deeply rooted chasm that runs through the heart of my being. It is a source of frustration and temptation, it leads me to reach above my abilities and cheat to grasp above my reach. It is the following:
I suck at puzzles and I love puzzle-games.
I had previously banged my head against the front door of Christminster University. I gave up each time. This time I gave in to temptation and sinned. I consulted a walkthrough. And I have no remorse.
I loved this game. The puzzles after that fiendish first one were milder to me (I cheated a few times more though), and stubborn exploring got me further and further in the game, and also in the story.
The progression of the story is great. You get the chance to get to know your character and one NPC in particular, a marvellous professor with whom you get to spend a good amount of time. The clock on the tower announces your progression through the puzzles as you get nearer to the endgame. That detail works as a brilliant way to heighten the tension, it lets you know each time you've gotten closer to... what?
The puzzles are hard, but the reward you get is great. You can explore more and more hidden parts of the old building, and the atmosphere is gripping.
A really really good game.
Classic Fantasy meets Ghost Mystery, March 25, 2020The second Alaric Blackmoon game. It's a large oldschool quest to save a village from a spectre that's killing and abducting people.
Right from the start it got my attention because of the mystery aspect. Who or what is this Spectre? Finding this out is essential to vanquishing it in the end.
I like my fantasy oldschool, straightforward and unapologetic. Here the mystery adds to the fun. Good puzzles, a great sense of space once you enter the castle grounds. Linear, but I don't mind that in this sort of game. Some great, vividly written scenes.
The author made a design choice that may be offputting to some: until you enter the castle, you must send the ghost away with a prayer every 20 turns or so. To me, this added to the presence of the Spectre, to others, this will get dull.
This game's good for a week, maybe two of ghosthunting and castlesearching fun. Well worth playing.
It's only oldschool fantasy but I like it., February 28, 2020 This is cliché fantasy galore and it's great!
Step one: set expectations to sorcerers, dwarves, a magic axe and all that.
Step two: don your Hero-attire and rush in!
Step three: be stopped in your tracks by this or that puzzle that is cleverer than you thought, wander through a forest searching for poultry, witness a demonic sacrifice...
It's good fun and the Hero of the day should count his blessings that you're the one guiding him because there's a few hard and complex puzzles. (Heroes aren't all that bright in the noggin, you know).
It's also fantastically long. This is one to sink your teeth into. Clear an hour a day in your schedule for a month to play this. You might get to the end by then.
AoK does show its age: some non-interactive forest-locations all alike, lots of death, some learn by trial-and-death, timed sequences. I didn't mind any of that because: fun!
In the end, it's a great straightforward fantasy romp that had me tied to the screen for some weeks.
A Should-Play!
Do Zombies go to heaven when they, uhm...?, January 2, 2020A zombie game in a closed building where you wake up all alone with no memory of how you got there; all while the living dead could break through the door any minute. Yeah, I know...
Play this one though. It's very polished and well implemented. There's lots to explore, and examine. And you learn a lot about barricades: how to erect them properly if the creatures mustn't get through, how to get through them if you yourself must. Also: chemistry, yaay!
The game has a twist at the end, but you must be blind and deaf not to have felt it coming. Still nice though.
I particularly liked the epilogue. It gives Divis Mortis some gravitas, albeit after the fact. (Well, it is an epilogue...)
Strawmen, trolls and unicorns. Oh My!, December 25, 2019"The Lost Labyrinth of Lazaitch" is a type of game I miss in newer IF. It's an oldschool fantasy text adventure. Period.
No deep metaphors for our pressing modern times, no personal symbolism about overcoming your deepest fear, no soul-searching tale about spiritual enlightenment.
You are Alaric, a Hero. Somewhere to the East is a Magic Book of great importance. Obstacles and enemies are between you and said book. Overcome them and get the Book. Period.
Aaah, good times!
Be sure to bring your brain, because we all know Heroes need all the help they can get in that department, especially with puzzles like in LLL. Not too hard, but enough to get you scratching your head.
This way, they are both funny and engaging, not frustrating. Just remember the 3 IF commandments: Read, Explore, Examine.
Also bring your imagination, because on your way you will see beautiful and horrifying sights. May you be the first to live and tell the world about the troll-bowl or the Red Tower.
Full disclosure: I playtested this game.
I befriended a Dinosaur. His name is Hopper., December 12, 2019Aotearoa has an extremely cool premise: An excursion to a Maori island where Dinos still live. Two things that are smack-dab in the middle of my interest zone.
Unfortunately, my piping hot enthusiasm soon went to lukewarm appreciation. Yes, it's fun to name your dino-friends. The puzzles are good. The game has a great children's adventure story on an unknown island. The confrontation with the poachers is exciting.
A good game, a nice diversion for an hour or so, but not so memorable.
That being said, a ten-year-old me would have given this game a raving review, replayed it to give the dinos all different names, pulled out the books to look up Maori culture (which the now-me should do too!), and would have had dreams about this adventure for at least a week.
Given the target audience, I think ten-year-old me's opinion has more weight, so I'll push my rating up a star.
Play it with a kid, if one of those is available.
Urbanly Fun Fantastic Romp, December 10, 2019(Well, it actually plays out as much around the city as in it, but I have my reasons...)
First things first: It has a cannon! -Hmm?.. Yes, I'll wait...
Now, Risorgimento Represso is a very good puzzler. Because the main puzzles center around the same theme, completing the first (silly) task before you is one big trial run to prepare you for what's to come. It gets you comfortable with the feel and humorous tone of the game. It also teaches you what details to look for and trains you in the specific puzzle-solving mindset you need for the game.
All the puzzles are well thought-out and in-game logical; on top of that, you might pop an eyeball or two laughing while solving them.
Storywise, Risorgimento makes fantastic use of the Wizard's Apprentice-trope. The whole concept gets the player and the PC on a shared learning curve, facing the same obstacles, and scratching their heads at the same times. I found this really heightened my involvement with my character and with the story.
There's a great build-up of tension, from playful exploration and experimentation to seriously hard thinking about how to save your Master. That's a good learning curve ànd a good immersion curve for you!
So, go shoot that cannon, those of you who haven't done so already; and don't smell the paint thinner, it's bad for you.
Classic Second Era., December 8, 2019Babel. What a game. During my first tentative journeys into IF-land, I stumbled across this deep, dark psychological horrorstory. I recently replayed it and it's still as haunting as it was then.
Do not riff on Babel for using the amnesia-trope. I have seldom seen it used so effectively as a source of suspense in IF. No lazy author here, but a tried and true storytelling technique that takes the reader down into the deep with it. Think Dr. Jeckyl.
Early modern IF that it is, Babel sometimes relies heavily on non-interactive scenes to make sure the player sees the whole story. I don't mind this one bit, I am as much a reader as a player, but I know this bothers some people.
The story is great, albeit not very original in this genre. Well told, well paced. The surroundings are fantastic, I thought. Varied enough to avoid feeling buried in a tunnel, without losing the thrill of the dungeon-feel.
The puzzles are not so hard, as long as you are patient enough to stick to The Adventurers Code: Read! Explore! Examine!
All in all, a true classic of the modern age.
Don your supersuit and try it out!, December 7, 2019This is a very short but enjoyable game.
The first part is mostly an introduction to the characters. You talk to your brother via a choice-menu, which gives the author the chance to put a lot of the brother-sister dynamics into the conversations. Downside is the almost mechanical ticking off of options.
In this part you can also experiment to your hearts content with the powersuit you found. Very much fun!
The second part switches quite abruptly to a big boss-fight. Use the skills you've learned to subdue the monster.
That's it. Short, easy, fun. That's all you need sometimes.
Sshh. It's a secret., December 6, 2019First location: Leathery Cliff. I was hooked.
The concept of the game is intriguing: Political espionage to undermine the position of someone of high societal standing.
You break in to a marvelously described and well-implemented mansion to find evidence that the owner of said house has unacceptable secrets. Some of these secrets are hidden in plain sight, others take quite a bit of examining, searching, and doing rather improbable things.
The puzzles range from "Just X and search and you'll find something" to using inconspicuous objects to unusual ends.
Getting out of the house without compromising your own trustworthiness is as important as getting in in the first place. (And both are hard.)
Very good and rewarding game. Very replayable too, if you left some loose ends the first time (or didn't understand where the loose ends came from.)
Very good, but not my cuppa..., December 6, 2019When browsing recommended lists and best of lists, Suveh Nux springs up frequently, so I decided to play it.
I can only agree with other reviewers that this is an excellent puzzle-game. Everything works, there's more than one "Aha!"-moment, and there are almost limitless possibilities to experiment, combine stuff and spells and stand in wonder at the results of the latest whim you acted upon.
I loved the brain excercise of solving the logic/language puzzle. The game is a great cerebral A-implies-B problemsolving excercise, with a very big sandbox.
Personally, I like a bit more involvement, the feeling that there's something bigger at stake, but that's just me.
Good Gladiator story, but too short., December 4, 2019I'm rather new at Choice-games, but this one, with its ancient Rome theme appealed to me.
I very much liked the customizing of my character at the beginning. You can choose male or female, which doesn't seem to have any effect on further gameplay. The way you assign further strengths and talents was very rewarding to me. You get stat-points based on your choice of family background, and on the choice of the mythological character you're named after. (Diana, goddes of woods, wildlife and hunting, gives you a headstart in Stealth, for example.)
It's well written, apart from a typo here and there. It's also well structured. A coherent story of development as a fledgling gladiator, with attention to development of fighting skills (of course) but also of various personal relations. Do you choose sibling loyalty above a strong training ally? Do you choose friendship above a good rapport with your trainer or master?
These decisions play a clear role in how well you fare in your first battle in the arena. Just before and during that fight, you also make difficult but influential decisions (weapons choice, tactics, who you help and who you leave to fend for themselves). Deep involvement with your character here.
And then it's over...
This game feels like a very good introductory chapter to a longer, fully fleshed out novella about the life of a roman gladiator/slave. Will she earn or buy her freedom? Will he become trainer of gladiators that follow? Will she escape with her brother and confront their father? How about his friends, enemies, allies, trainers?
I, for one, would very much welcome a continuation.
I felt hungry for more.
This game puts a smile on my face!, December 2, 2019"Molly and the Butter Thieves" is truly a joy to play.
Vividly described, well-implemented. Some easy, fun puzzles to get you more involved in the story, what's more to want?
What? Oh, yes. Beautiful, beautiful imagery. Plenty of that too.
This game is fun!
And it's called "Molly and the Butter Thieves"!
Language, meet Logic, December 2, 2019It is very tempting to try to translate The Gostak. I've found different versions of the, no, more accurately I should say a story on the internet. I too have created a story based on my understanding of what things and what actions the strange words in this game refer to.
But as Chase Entwistle put it so well in his review: "Distimming the doshes could be the most evil thing imaginable."
I really started appreciating this game once I let go of the assumption that the "words" had to have external referents, and instead viewed them as symbols in a logic system that could be manipulated through their interactions with other such symbols.
This brings this game very close to mathematics or symbolic logic. "Distim", "Gostak", and "Dosh", like any other "word" in this game are defined solely by their relations with other "words". Putting "words" next to other "words" makes them act in a certain way, and gives output from which the player can infer what role they have in a logical system.
But yes, of course I have my own version of the story. And my, how my doshes are distimmed by that gostak!
Fantastically Fun City Romp, November 29, 2019I would have rated this game 6 stars if it would have let me fly the Pterosaur!
There. That should be enough incentive to stop reading this and go play it.
Or not. I absolutely loved this game.Here's why:
-The world. The two cities Illuminismo Iniziato takes place in are big, detailed and deeply implemented. When I began playing, I spent a lengthy and thoroughly enjoyable time just sightseeing, examining stuff, thinking about what I would buy later on and in what shop. I also read the newspaper, and was pleased to see it provided me with hot-off-the-presses news about what happened in the world. And of course, in a city like this, I talked to the people.
-NPC-interactions. The cities are populated with lots of characters, most of whom you might remember from the game's prequel, Risorgimento Represso (also highly recommended). They each have their own personalities, and you can talk to them about quite a bit more than needed for the task at hand.
One NPC who undoubtedly deserves a paragraph to herself is Crystal, your NPC-tag-along slash hint-system. A wonderful character. Helpful but not too helpful when you need a nudge (or a shove). A knowledgeable guide to the game-world when you want background-info. And a tireless chatterbox for your entertainment only.
-Puzzles. Against this background, there are puzzles. Many puzzles. They are mostly well-clued (and if they are not, yaay, another excuse to talk to Crystal!), some are quite difficult, and all are so well integrated that you hardly feel like you're solving a puzzle. Also, some are laugh-so-hard-you-might-break-a-rib funny.
This is a fantastic game.
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