Reviews by Karl Ove Hufthammer

This is the third Speed-IF game in the Alex and Paul series (‘The Day I …’), and is structured very similarly to the first two games. It too takes place at a New Year’s party at your boyfriend’s apartment (but which for some unexplained reason is mirrored this year, with the living room to the east of the hallway, which left me disoriented for a while), and has a few easy to moderately difficult puzzles. But where you in the first two games basically were handed the puzzles by boyfriend and told what to do, here you have to figure that out yourself, at least for the first two puzzles. This doesn’t work so well, and for some time I wandered around not knowing even what I should be attempting to do. The actual solving of the puzzles is also made somewhat too hard by a few ‘guess the verb’ and ‘guess the noun’ problems.

As in the previous games, there are plenty of spelling and grammar issues, and the implementation leaves a lot to be desired (though there are some minor technical improvements compared to the earlier games). But there is also some good stuff here, like the humour, the best example being the remarks of Uncle Wally, a real sexist pig, which I found hysterical. If you have enjoyed the humour and the absurd situations in the first two games in the series, you will probably enjoy playing this one too. (Though personally, I feel less and less sympathy for the main (player) character, who in this game really comes across as a terrible person. However, the titles of the next games in the series leave me with some hope that this will change.)

You are (literally) a star, ready for your first, short visit to Earth, where perhaps you will be able to fulfill one person’s wish, before finally taking your place in the night sky. It’s a sweet story, only made better by the game’s truly beautiful writing, transporting you into a world made magical – if only for a short leap second.

I have played both the original Speed-IF entry and release 2. The second release has some improvements that should make the gameplay smoother, but there are still a few minor bugs. These are mostly related to the way the game responds if you try to do things out of order, or try to repeat an action, and you will probably not encounter any of them. In any case, none of them puts the game into an unwinnable state; they only make parts of the dialogue appear somewhat strange.

The game is easy and short – but with three possible endings – and the truly excellent writing makes it a joy to play (a transcript of the game might even work as a short fairy tale). I very much recommend it.

This is a short old-school puzzle-based escape game. The descriptions are minimal, and there is no story to speak of, except the story implied by the items in – and missing from – your inventory. The puzzles all make sense, and are not too difficult. There are a few minor ‘guess the verb’ situations, where the game could have been more understanding, but this is not a big problem, and is easily solved by rephrasing. A simple and short game, that, because of the minimal descriptions and few objects and rooms, perhaps might work well as an introduction to puzzle-based IF.

This is the sequel to The Day I Shot Hitler, and is in many ways very similar. It too takes place at a New Year’s Eve party, in the same apartment as the last game, with the same main characters (and party guests?), and it looks like it’s based on the same source code. This isn’t necessarily bad, though, as it’s often fun to play a game taking place in the same setting as another, and to notice the various changes and similarities. The game is also structured the same ways as the last one, with three puzzles, which all basically go like this: Something bad happens. Paul, your boyfriend, asks if you can help, then promptly disappears and leaves you to clean up the mess. (But he’s cute, so we forgive him.)

The puzzles are both strange and somewhat humorous, and moderately difficult. Some of the difficulty lies in actually finding the objects you need to solve them, but one puzzle has a very bad case of ‘guess the verb’ syndrome as well. The rest of the game also feels rather under-implemented, with lots of objects mentioned in the room descriptions not being available for inspection (‘x object’) or action. But at least ‘xyzzy’ is now recognised (it was not in The Day I Shot Hitler)!

One thing which greatly distracts from the gameplay is the frequent references to the fact that you’re just playing a computer game, instead of being a character in a story. While this is not a realistic game, the game constantly reminding you that it’s just a game really pulls you out of the story. The large number of spelling and punctuation problems also have the same effect.

All in all, this is game on par with the first game in the series. I actually enjoyed playing it, partly because it was fun playing a sequel taking place in the same setting, partly because the game is rather humorous, and despite the bugs, spotty implementation, bad spelling and punctuation and the much too frequent references to IF games. I look forward to playing the third game in the series.

You’re a secret agent, and this evening your job involves you assassinating Hitler, who’s travelled from the past in a time machine to crash the mayor’s New Year’s Eve party! This is a Speed-IF game, so it’s very short, but the writing is actually quite good, and I didn’t notice any spelling or grammar mistakes. However, the game has one major problem – it doesn’t really contain any puzzles. There are a couple of simple actions you need to do to finish the game, but the game does them for you automatically, leaving you (as the player) as a bystander. This make it much less engaging than it could and should have been.

You and Hitler are competing in a dance competition (!), and the whole gameplay consists of trying various dances (tango, boogie, morris dance, …), while Hitler counters with a different dance. The game implements a simple RPG-style hit point system, where either you or Hitler or both or none loses hit points after each dance. When either your or Hitler’s score reaches zero, that person loses.

Trying various dances is fun for the first few moves (pun intended), owing to some entertaining descriptions (e.g., ‘Hitler gets two steps into a quite passable rumba before remembering himself. He quickly pretends that he was just invading Poland.’), but quickly just becomes the tedious task of trying all dances in Wikipedia’s ‘List of dances’ – or at least the non-‘Western bourgeois abomination’ ones. An impressive number of dances are implemented, but many are not, and only a very few have custom descriptions. While the game doesn’t contain much real content (it was a Speed-IF entry, after all), the high number of hit points you and Hitler start out with actually makes the game feel too long and repetitive, and thus rather boring.

You’re at a new year’s party, standing near the refreshment table, and people keep coming up to you, asking for pretzels, cherry tomatoes or celery stalks. You can choose to give them what they want – whereby you win – or not – whereby you lose. This is not just a summary of the game; it’s basically the entire gameplay (though a mouse in the egg nog does make things (just) slightly harder). Oh, and one more thing: You’re Hitler. Nazi Mice is not a fun game, but thankfully it’s short. Not recommended.

This is an entry in a SpeedIF competition, meaning that it had to be written in two hours or less, and under some rather strange rules (among other things, the story had to involve a mail-order course, with bonus points for including the colour scarlet or a cardboard cut-out of Graham Nelson). Thus, don't expect a complex plot or realistic characters. Really, the game's only strong point is the humour, which is sure to at least get a few smiles out of you. As an example, here's my favourite passage, taken from the opening description:

This is a very long road. Houses are on either side. They're standing still, while the road runs north and south.

If you like this example, I do believe you will enjoy this short game. But besides the humour, it has has very little to recommend it (hence the 2-star rating).

The Kissing Bandit is extremely linear, and basically runs on rails, with little real interactivity. What saves it, tough, is the hysterical writing, which are sure to make you smile throughout the game.

There are no puzzles as such, and you don't even have to pick up anything during the game (but do examine your inventory!). While many 'original' verbs are implemented, several items mentioned in the room descriptions are not, and the autocompletion could be smarter. For instance, typing 'climb' outside a tower offers the not-so-helpful (but somewhat amusing) completion 'climb (the maiden)'. The author does acknowledge the somewhat spotty implementation, caused by lack of time before the submit deadline, and it would be nice to see an expanded and improved version released.

All in all, I think the humour and the overall cuteness of The Kissing Bandit does make up for some of its shortcomings, and since the game only takes about 10 minutes to play, it's well worth spending those 10 minutes.

You're spending the weekend with grandma and grandpa on their small, old, run-down farm. There's nothing much exciting happening, and the farm doesn't even have electricity, so it looks like it is going to be a long and boring weekend. But as a game, it's actually rather enjoyable.

There is no strong main objective (perhaps except making grandma happy again), and there are no time limits or ways of getting the game into an unwinnable state (except dying), so the gameplay revolves more around exploration. The writing, though nothing to write home about, isn't bad, and the game actually succeeded in making me feel like a kid having fun exploring the old farm and the surrounding area.

The puzzles aren't very sophisticated; they're more of the 'fetch a pale of water for grandma's soup' type, and mostly not to hard. The game features short built-in hints, and the list of hints change when you move from room to room, and as you solve other puzzles. Even so, I did get stuck at one time, and had to resort to the walkthru. (The basics of what I had to to do was clear, even before looking at the hints, but exactly which command to use was not obvious, and the result of a similar action had a not very encouraging outcome.) So even sometimes the mechanics of the gameplay did disturb the story, it mostly worked well.

Before finishing this review, I'd like to add that for people using an interpreter supporting graphics, there's a very nice picture of the farm when you start the game, and a picture of a sunset when you quit or finish the game. These are the only graphics featured, and while they add a nice touch to the experience, they are in no way necessary for enjoying the game, so do go ahead and play it even if your interpreter doesn't support graphics.

To conclude, I'd like to think of the time spent playing this game as a rather enjoyable day on the farm.