Reviews by Sobol

The owners of the house are gone; they will not return. But the housekeeping robot still continues to clean dust, make food for them, trim their lawn... Sounds familiar? Yes, the melancholic first part of the game is basically Ray Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rains. But then the author takes the premise in a new direction.

They Will Not Return is a short science fiction story in the classical spirit: you should play it if you like Bradbury and Asimov. It's the third game by John Ayliff that features an AI protagonist; and his AIs are wonderful - not too humanlike, not too machinelike, touching and sympathetic. (When playing Seedship, I cared about the player character as much as about the success of its mission.)

On the first playthrough, I was having fun and experimenting and enacting a fireman fantasy. Then I died. Then I thought about the game for a while, replayed it and adjusted my rating up a star.

The Volunteer Firefighter is probably the most realistic ChoiceScript game I've played. It's set in our present world; the events and characters described are much more mundane than, say, in SLAMMED!; there's very little of extraordinary, over-the-top; no striking plot twists, no clever narrative tricks; you don't even have a chance to do many "heroic" deeds. It's a simple and honest game and it has some simple truths to remind you of.

I've been waiting for this game for a while. Since the promotional text specifically mentioned the Miller and the Wife of Bath, two of the most larger-than-life Chaucerian characters, I expected The Road to Canterbury to be a light-hearted merry romp through the comical version of Middle Age England - perhaps in the general spirit of Tally Ho and A Midsummer Night's Choice by Kreg Segall (based on Wodehouse and Shakespeare, respectively; Kreg Segall is also one of the beta-testers for The Road to Canterbury).

As it turns out, the game is rather serious, and political, and often reads as an encyclopedia of medieval life and thought. Your character stats, for example, are traditional medieval virtues and the four Hippocratic humors. It isn't particularly light-hearted: some important things are at stake. And while there are some gently amusing moments, the main attraction here are extraordinary many details for those interested in the life and times of Geoffrey Chaucer. Quotes from Virgil, Boethius, etc.; scattered references to the original Canterbury Tales and other Chaucer's works (the Prioress' dog, the name "Blanche", the astrolabe, Saint Christopher's medal, etc.); excursions into the English religious history - and so on.

The story is good and a bit slow-paced, as it fits the source material. The tales pilgrims tell each other are not those from the original book, but condensed versions of other medieval tales (a lay by Marie de France, for instance). Likewise, the characters are new. The Miller, for one, is completely redone and has little in common with Chaucer's Robin; Alyson of Bath, though, is still recognizably Alyson of Bath (and she's romanceable, too!). The most alive of the cast, for me, were two historical figures - Chaucer himself and Philippa.

The most unusual ChoiceScript game I've seen so far: there are no RPG elements and stat-balancing at all, only puzzles to solve.

A child gets transported into a fantasy land and has to answer a series of riddles to return home. The riddles are mostly classical ones and can serve as an introduction to some common puzzle types and themes; I especially liked the riddle about goldfishes - a homage to Fibonacci's Rabbits. (Several puzzles can also potentially give children an introduction to the joys of brute-forcing.) The characters are cute and provide some entertainment between riddles.

You know those moments - when, say, in Lost Pig there's absolutely no reason to type BURN PANTS, and the sensible course of action is quite obvious, but you type BURN PANTS - and are totally happy with the results?

Well, this whole game is one of those moments in the purest form.

It's extremely brief. You can see all possible endings in a couple of minutes.

Crocodracula supposedly recreates the feel of American TV shows for kids from the '90s; having little familiarity with those, I was instead reminded of the recent hit series, Gravity Falls. There are similarities: two young protagonists in a small town full of various supernatural stuff, a creepy swamp, a climbable water tower, a helpful book about magic and dark secrets, a cryptogram... There was a cute plot and some good kid-friendly spooky moments.

Games by Ryan Veeder generally feature lots of optional details, glimpses of a backstory, digressions (like, for example, the tale of Homeschooled Gwen in Robin & Orchid) which add to the atmosphere and give you the feeling of inhabiting a rich world. In a game like this, which encourages you to look everywhere, search for hidden content and don't do what the NPCs tell you to do, these many optional details turn into red herrings. After helping the sheriff and playing through three different endings I'm still not sure I've seen it all. Is there a way to open that door with a Latin inscription? What is the significance of the Old Tree? Or the verb "ululate"?.. Perhaps some mysteries of Opasassa are never to be unveiled.

You were going to meet a dragon, but you're stuck at a door which won't open. I looked through the code - seems like there's no way to get in. So, it's either unfinished or an unwinnable joke game (having one among the entries feels now like a good old IFComp tradition). Probably the latter. There were a couple of mildly amusing moments, though.

A fruitful idea: taking one common action verb and building a whole game around it. We already had SMELL: The Game by the same author, KILL: The Game, GO NORTH: The Game together with GO WEST: The Game, last year's TAKE: The Game, and even USE - I mean, UNDERTAKE TO INTERACT WITH: The Game. Now it's EAT: The Game.

I often have hard time relating to the games by Chandler Groover with their aesthetics of abhorrent, but this one turned to be not as revolting as I initially expected. The puzzles were satisfying, the images vivid; the game is cruel (I think it should be the first one to boast both "child protagonist" and "evil protagonist" tags at IFDB at once), but not particularly repulsive to my taste - mainly because of two reasons:

1. A strong fairy-tale atmosphere that smoothes everything, gives an unreal, dream-like feeling (and excellently fits in with the game mechanics, as many classic children's tales are obsessed with food - Hansel and Gretel, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, etc.).

2. Many food descriptions were pleasant and genuinely appetizing (e.g. cheeses in the armory).

All in all, not a "don't play it while eating" kind of game.

The game feels a bit unfair, but it's so short and your options as a grue are so limited that it isn't hard to win; in-game hints are also available. There are several nice atmospheric touches like referring to the human NPC as "it", the description of the starting location, some customized responses, etc. And even many standard responses - e.g. the infamous "hollow voice" - seem completely at home in this setting.

I'd like to see more parser games from the author. Hopefully with some more polish - this one doesn't list beta-testers and is kind of rough.

A Study in Porpentine is a text game about making a text game. I initially expected something like Last Minute, where you make several choices of what your game will feature and then play the result.

As it turned out, the essence is roughly the same, but the game is... very different.

You explore a small multiverse of nested worlds, seek for inspiration in various sources and collect parts of your game - its "skull" (the main idea? your game can have two skulls and more), its "bones" (game structure?), its "flesh" (writing?), its "skin" (appearance?), its "hair" (?) - until the whole organism is complete; even when it's not, you can try to play what you've got (don't fear to use "Entwine" - you won't lose anything).

There's repetition. There's confusion. There's irritation. How many parts do you need? You don't know.

But I liked it.

The ending was beautiful.