Ratings and Reviews by Henck

I've finished Return to Eden (with help of a walkthrough). It turns out that this game has a sprawling map, with room descriptions unfortunately consisting of a single line ("You're in a long tube"), more if you're lucky - but all that's likely due to lack of memory on microcomputers of the time (1984). Scenery can generally not be examined, though carried objects can. It's well known that Level 9 advertised the first installment of Silicon Dreams as having "over 6,000 rooms" which turned out to mean 4,800 rooms that are exactly the same, but in Return to Eden they've pulled all the stops to create a gigantic map, with well over 200 rooms.

For those who have read the accompanying novella, Eden Song, describes mostly the city you'll encounter in the sequel, Worm in paradise, but Return to Eden expends some effort in letting you roam the city under construction, and under robot management. As such, there are no characters you can speak to, only robots - and any conversations are once-off one-liners. Robot city has a few locations where the Austins put some humor in the game, where they could afford to spend a few bytes. There are a few funny references comparing the future that Return to Eden describes to the year 1984.

One thing of note is that this game hardly contains any puzzles (beyond mapping it all out). Most puzzles are solves automatically if you're carrying the right item. Thus, picking up everything you come across is enough to solve the game. It's too bad there's an inventory limit, which requires you to go everywhere with a different selection of objects just to see what works.

This game is from a time where mazes were still considered an essential component of an adventure game, and this game offers two (or even eight or so, if you count all the sections where exits are one way or loop back), both of which be solved in the most straightforward way. They're not very big, thankfully.

The game's ending is a bit of an anticlimax: you're rewarded with two lines of text that essentially say, "you won", and not much more. Showball did a better job of building to a climax.

(It may be useful to someone trying to play this that in my playthrough, a certain casino was broken. I needed to use CheatEngine to give myself extra money, although the walkthrough and Level 9 Cluesheet insisted that this wasn't necessary; for me this made the game unwinnable.)

Here is a map to Return to Eden.

A hundred years or so in the future, people are prepared for deep space exploration by inserting a probe where the sun don't shine before going into an isolation chamber for several months, after which they are required to do tests that involve manipulating devices with less-than-helpful descriptions.

Operating various devices is the major puzzle element in this game; at one point a fairly common device must be operated, but for it power up, a button must be found that is illogically placed somewhere out of sight. A vehicle must be driven - I can't describe what it is without spoiling some of the story - that requires mechanical various operations that come as a complete surprise to the player character, even though one might assume that a prospective astronaut might be familiar with both device and vehicle.

The lack of context in some of the vignettes -- why am I here, what is the point of the next few actions I must take -- make solving the puzzles somewhat unrewarding.

The descriptions in this game are elaborate and well-written, and it is clear the author knows his way around TADS3 very well. The game provides good responses to actions and has a helpful hint system. It is clear that a lot of work went into this game. I would certainly like to see more games by this author, with his ability to write great prose applied to more down to earth situations.

This game tells a Doctor Who story, and it does it surprisingly well. If playing with a walkthrough at hand, the plot unfolds quickly and interestingly as if it were an actual episode of the eponymous TV show. Much like whatever actions the Doctor might take on the show, however, the puzzles in this game are often inscrutable.

The game could benefit from a more elaborate implementation. Scenery items are usually implemented, but will allow no interaction beyond "The tihamajig is not important." While such descriptions are useful to minimize red herrings, the environment becomes rather lifeless. In this game, the player does what the plot requires, or nothing at all.

Any fixed items along the way that you can interact with are, again, part of the plot and only become active once the plot progress. For example, just about every door is locked and will open automatically once certain events happen, so there is no point searching for a key or whatever other method to open them. I confess that my enthusiasm playing the game abated somewhat when I understood that the plot drives everything, and all the player can do is follow along and solve puzzles as they are presented.

A minor point of irritation: many descriptions lack a full stop at the end (possibly on purpose), but this put me off a little. It smacked of unfinished prose, somehow.

Tying all the plot events together must have been a complicated programming job; the game is therefore ambitious and would have been much better if more effort had gone into descriptions, and puzzle clues.

There appears to be rhyme nor reason to this game. You're in "NoPlace" and you can either eat or wait. Eat too much, die. Wait too long, die. Death is inevitable. In fact, the only way not to die is not to play. The author has even thoughtfully provided a restart function that allows you to die again, should you feel the need.

I may be missing the point and perhaps this game is actually highly philosophical, but I need more direction in the game to be able to understand the rich subtext it undoubtedly has. Why is it called "Spring 2020", for one thing? A clue could be hidden in that title, but I can't figure it out for the life of me.

One thing's a plus, though: I was done with my map for this game fairly quickly.

I had huge fun with the way children speak like grownups in this story, soldiers as they are in a game of "Mud Warriors". The descriptions of some of the children and things you encounter set the scene very nicely. The scripted conversations between the protagonist and his fellow warriors make the story worthwhile to read.

On the other hand, I found the descriptions a bit brief. Sometimes this works well enough, allowing the player to form his own image of the mud-encrusted playground where tired warriors fight their battles; oftentimes I would have enjoyed a bit more detail.

There are no puzzles to speak of; merely examining the available scenery is enough to progress. Conversation is limited to one-off scripts, but they are very well written.

All in all, I thought this mini-adventures was well worth a quick playthrough. Here is, by the way, a map to the game.

Overall, I think this game has its funny moments. The code does not bring the NPCs alive to any great extent, but it does present a fair number of office jokes. Since the puzzles are not very complicated, the game is a joke a minute as you run through it.

NPC interaction is rather buggy, unfortunately. Then again, anything NPCs say serves only as hints for puzzle-solving. There is no character development, but for a snack-sized game like this there doesn't need to be. That said, it would have been good if the author had put some more effort into character descriptions and interaction.

The game is full of jokes that only the author and friends understand, which can be off-putting.