Ratings and Reviews by deathbytroggles

Jeff O’Neill’s first game with Infocom pits the player in a circus mystery involving a kidnapping and a cast of crazy characters. O’Neill certainly brings forth his vision of the shady underbelly of circus life, and there are several puzzles apropos to the atmosphere (e.g. getting across a tightrope, taming some lions, etc.). However, the mystery itself is highly convoluted and not all that interesting.

It becomes very difficult, even early, to determine exactly what’s going on, and several puzzles related to the mystery are barely clued and can be solved with only limited understanding of the situation at hand. Worse yet, there are bugs that require practically restarting the game. Despite several sprinkles of humor and ingenuity, Ballyhoo is simply too frustrating and not worthy of play unless you must complete your Infocom collection.

Have you ever wanted to get a nice juicy steak, but all you had was a stake? Have you ever wanted to literally kill two birds with one stone? Or have you come across a pretty girl and it made you long for a gritty pearl? Then you should definitely help out Nord and Bert, because they truly can’t make hails or teds of it. Wait, um…

My favorite language based game until Counterfeit Monkey was released, Nord & Bert has you playing with homonyms, spoonerisms, idioms, and other plays on our language and culture in order to help save the town of Punster from total chaos. There’s a story, but it’s there to serve the puzzles. Just dig in and get your lexicon dirty.

The game designers smartly realized that most gamers would not be intimately familiar with every phrase, idiom, and slang the game is riddled with; thus, an in-game hint system is a welcome sight. Despite the occasional frustration that ignorance creates while playing, the game can be funny and very satisfying when you do advance on your own intellect. Nord & Bert is a must-play for those who love word puzzles. Hardcore adventurers may want to look elsewhere. Naturally, non-native English speakers would struggle here, as well as at times non-Americans.

One of the few games that has made me legit laugh out loud, Detective was the perfect game to get the MSTK3 treatment. It was a seriously earnest mystery written by a 12-year old Matt Barringer and he made nearly every possible mistake one could make--instant death rooms, unimplemented objects, doors that only go one-way, etc.--but since there are really no puzzles, the game can be won in a short time.

Normally I’m not a fan of punching down. But for the most part the mocking done by Servo, Crow, and the gang is light-hearted and it helped me play a game I never would have touched otherwise. That Barringer retroactively gave his blessing for this also helps. I have never seen a full episode of MSTK3, but I still very much enjoyed myself. And I’ve come back to this a few times whenever I need a laugh.

A parody of Aisle and IF in general, several well-known authors teamed up to write this hilarious send-up.

Rob Noyes created a silly, pointless game called Pick up the Phone Booth and Die, which is exactly as complicated as the title implies. Its stupid charm made it more famous than should have been possible, though being released in 1996 no doubt helped. Here you are faced with the same phone booth, only instead of having two possible endings, you again have over 100 possible endings in the same vein of Aisle.

Only play if you are a veteran of interactive fiction (meaning you have played at least ten games, including the aforementioned two this game parodies); otherwise, many of the jokes will go over your head. I replay this every five years or so and it amuses me without fail, including several laugh out loud moments.

Perhaps the first serious game that would automatically end after one move. The premise is quite simple as you play an ordinary man in an ordinary supermarket who has stopped in the pasta aisle next to a woman who is also shopping. There are exactly 136 possible moves you can make that produce 136 separate endings. There is neither a puzzle nor a plot, and one would be hard pressed to say this is even a character study, as some of the endings’ portrayal of your character’s history contradict each other.

I do wish there was something more here to unravel, but as it stands this is quite a pleasant diversion thanks to the imagination and quality writing of Sam Barlow. More importantly, Aisle inspired many future authors in experimenting with the genre, including a few entertaining games that mimic this one.

I still come back and play Aisle about every five years. There's just something about the protagonist's world view that makes me smile.

Taco Fiction has one of the more intriguing openers I’ve ever played. You are a petty thief in need of some cash, and the opening prompt gives you specific directions on how you’re going to rob the taco joint next door. If the protagonist were the violent sort this could be off-putting, but the game lets you know he has no interest in hurting anyone.

What follows is an unexpectedly light, mostly comical (but at times tense!) mystery that takes you in bizarre and unexpected directions. The NPCs are delightful and respond appropriately to what you do with your gun. The puzzles are also light, well-clued, and set the appropriate pacing. My only main criticism is the endgame, which feels a bit rushed and unsatisfying. I felt like the game was just starting to explore the characters and setting and then it was over. At least there are a couple of endings available depending on your motivations for the character at the end.

When I first discovered interactive fiction in the late 90’s and learned that the public now had tools to develop their own games, my first story idea was to design a game where the player controlled a cat. I gave up on the idea when I realized I had a hard time coming up with a good story with good puzzles that made sense.

Levi makes a valiant attempt here. Your initial goal is to simply get some damn food, and this was the part of the game I enjoyed the most. For the most part, the puzzles here fit within the scope of a feline’s abilities if requiring more foresight than they usually have. However, the final two thirds of the game (Spoiler - click to show)where you must foil a stronger enemy and save your provider’s life more than stretches the limits of what a cat is able (and willing, in some cases) to do. Thus, the game feels at times like a generic puzzlefest with a cat built into the game, rather than the other way around.

I wound up using the in-game hints and a walkthrough for a good portion of this because a couple of the puzzles required some leaps of logic (Spoiler - click to show)(particularly one involving setting a trap) and some reasonable alternative solutions were neither implemented nor acknowledged. I was also annoyed by the map, wherein you are frequently doing things like moving north to go northeast, then west to go back southwest whence you came.

The writing is solid and there are several delightful responses to things you can try in your feline body. I just wish it had focused even more on the typical life of a cat.

My introduction to H.P. Lovecraft, and frankly, well-written horror, Anchorhead remains one of my favorite games ever made twenty years later. While the free version stands on its own, the 20th anniversary edition is well worth the ten dollar price tag if you liked the original or are a fan of thriller/horror games.

You play the role of apprehensive wife who has uprooted her life after her husband inherited a spooky house in a spooky New England town. Naturally, as you explore the house and the town, you begin to unravel horrors better left uncovered; except your husband’s life is at stake and so the motivation to press on remains ever present. Gentry does a superb job of encouraging the player to go at their own pace as key events have to be triggered by solving key puzzles. This allows his masterful atmospheric writing to draw the player into his world (not surprisingly as it won Best Setting at the XYZZY awards). I have played this a few times now, and each time I have felt on the edge of my seat despite knowing what’s coming. Even reading through old newspaper clippings or library books intensifies the mood here. The writing is that good.

In fact, there is a sequence about halfway through the game (Spoiler - click to show) (well/mob/church) when things start to get real that was sort of a coming of age moment for me in interactive fiction. It remains one of my favorite areas of any video game, graphic or otherwise.

My only real criticism of Anchorhead is the puzzles. In the 20th Anniversary Edition, Gentry cleaned up several puzzles that were done hastily. The wine cellar puzzle is infinitely more interesting now, and your acquisition of keys seems to be more organic. But there are still too many puzzles that seem to present only for puzzles' sake (Spoiler - click to show)(including one near the end with a broom), and some that practically require you to die in order to learn what you need to do (Spoiler - click to show)(the lighthouse puzzle comes to mind). The game is also cruel at times, allowing you to progress in an unwinnable state because you didn’t find an out-of-the-way object you didn’t even know you were supposed to look for (Spoiler - click to show)(a needle in a haystack, as it were). Thankfully, the nature of a horror game means you’ll be saving often, and even the worst walking dead situation doesn’t require to restore back too far. Still, when atmosphere is king, these types of issues can pull the player out of the game. I admit I used a walkthrough near the end of the game, not because the puzzles were too hard, but rather because I was too engrossed in the story to want to solve them.

It would be hard to introduce someone to the world of interactive fiction without recommending Anchorhead. While it’s not easy, the game’s parser and design are so user-friendly (thank you trench coat and key-ring!) that it rarely becomes frustrating to play. As of this writing Anchorhead is considered the 2nd highest rated text adventure of all-time, and most of those ratings came before the new edition which enhances the playing experience while also adding some appropriately horrifying graphics.