Ratings and Reviews by deathbytroggles

Theatre was one the first modern IF games I played on the heels of Babel. I was immediately pulled in by the same plot device that Finley borrowed, what with the journal pages lying around to provide chilling backstory. I was also pleased that for the most part the puzzles are straightforward and the only way to put the game in an unwinnable state is doing something obviously stupid. For a while I had this one rated four stars.

I revisited this one again today and decided to lower my rating. I still enjoyed myself and finished it rather quickly, but several aspects turned me off this time around:

-- The reason you're stuck in the theatre is because you're in a "slum" and a "bad neighborhood" and a "thug" is waiving a knife at you for some reason. All of these words are steeped in racism. I'm sure that wasn't Wyber's intent and I used those same words regularly twenty years ago. And sometimes old things we like become painfully dated for similar reasons.

-- Other have mentioned this, but the writing is definitely uneven. There are some highlights for sure. Wyber never tells the player how to feel, which makes my heart sing, especially in the horror genre. And there are some good touches with the occasional sound or shadow that creeps around. But then there will periods of less subtlety, such as when you move some things around and, "You suddenly realise there was a body under the pile!"

-- The central Lovecraftian theme is intriguing, but other horror tropes are just thrown in that don't seem to fit and are never explained, such as (Spoiler - click to show)the possessed mannequins and the random cobra in a locker. Also, at one point a skeleton is said to be the source of a horrible smell. Decaying bones would not give off an odor.

-- Wyber breaks the fourth wall a few times to comment on his own writing, which doesn't help maintain the sense of dread one expects in horror.

Despite these criticisms I still am very fond of Theatre and am grateful that it led me to trying out Anchorhead. It's a solid entry in the Lovecraft genre and worth playing if you like that type of game.

For most adventure games historically, puzzles have been overwhelmingly frustrating and preposterous. The better efforts have tried to reduce contrivance or at least reduce the difficulty, but for the most part I don't think players enjoy them, at least for their own sake. For every puzzle that is satisfying, often several negate that feeling. Adam Cadre once said something along the lines of that most games are far better to have been played than to be playing. I often find myself agreeing.

One way to sidestep this problem is to make the puzzles the reason for the game and another way is to make them so goofy as to disarm the player. Guest succeeds on both accounts.

I immediately appreciated playing this because your adversary, Mr. Booby, is barely functional and if you decide you want to do something, you can do it without resorting to trickery. Booby's reactions to your subversion are the highlights for sure, my favorite being his calling for the local constable despite being thousands of feet up in the air.

Unfortunately there are a couple of puzzles that didn't quite land. The first was (Spoiler - click to show)figuring out how to clear the trombone; using violence still doesn't seem intuitive to me. The second puzzle was (Spoiler - click to show)saving Aunt Gertie. I was trying to make a parachute, not realizing that the answer would be as simple as "make parachute." I was trying to thread the needle first and wondering why the game didn't understand all my attempts and starting the process of sewing. I greatly appreciate the simplicity of the puzzle, but just wish the game would have guided me there when I was on the right track.

Thankfully, the game includes gradual hints for every puzzle and I accessed them guilt-free. In the end the goofiness won me over and I count this among the games I enjoyed playing while playing.

In high school I was in an abusive relationship; the song "Push" by Matchbox20 resonated with me so much that it became and still remains one of my favorite songs. Is it a great song? I don't know. I only know that it stirs within me something raw and profound.

I feel the same way with Spider and Web when it comes to "The Puzzle." I've been playing adventure games and puzzle games non-stop since I first played King's Quest in 1985 and there is no other puzzle that makes me feel this way. In my first playthrough twenty years ago, it gave me chills. I played it again this week, knowing the answer, and that familiar wave came over me again. I am in love with this puzzle. I want to marry it and have brilliant puzzle babies.

I could try to break down why it gives me all the feels. Perhaps it's the gradual buildup that is extremely well-clued but never obviously so. Perhaps it's the oneupmanship over the interrogator. Perhaps it's the extraordinary gift of getting to play back the entire game in your mind up to that point with the knowledge bestowed upon realizing the answer. Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter. No logical argument will sway my adoration nor my reverence.

For those who are fortunate enough to read this review and have the opportunity to play Spider and Web for the first time, for all that is good and holy do not resort to a walkthrough. If you must, use the Invisiclues linked to on the main page. And be patient with yourself. Let the game play you.

Please don't mistake my adulation for belief in perfection. There are parts I'm not a huge fan of. The gadgets could come with more of a tutorial, especially since our spy is an expert with them. And the end puzzle itself doesn't really fit in with the theme of the rest, leading to a whimper of a conclusion. But our loves don't need aspire to perfection. They just have to sing to us in a way that will touch our hearts and stay there forever.

Admittedly I am not a huge fan of poetry, especially free verse. Though if the imagery is evocative I can get lost in it from time to time. Unfortunately, the design of The Space Under the Window, while making for an easy game, results in an unsatisfying poetry reading.

In a sense, this structure of play feels like a precursor to Twine, only one has to guess at the keywords instead of clicking on them. And it's hard to get lost in poetry when the parser doesn't respond to half of what you type. It's very difficulty to predict what keywords will trigger a new path or bring you back to an old one, and also difficult to predict where the story will go. There are no puzzles to elicit satisfaction from all the keyword guessing so it's all a bit underwhelming.

That said, it's an intriguing (and short!) parser experiment from one of IF's greatest authors.

While the premise of looking through someone else’s phone is intriguing and the backstory you discover is important, I was nevertheless not terribly impressed with A Normal Lost Phone despite all of the awards it was nominated for.

The entire game is just manipulating a cell phone UI and this is implemented fairly well. However, the puzzle design is tedious, essentially boiling down to figuring out passwords based on contrived clues dropped by other people in texts and e-mails. While the passwords served their main purpose (pacing and story reveal), they were neither interesting enough nor easy enough (in a couple of cases) to give them a pass.

The highlight of the game, however, is the focus on LGBT and abuse issues. To that end the game does a really nice job of introducing them in an empathetic and digestible fashion. Nothing about the plot or the character interactions feels trite or exaggerated, and the teenager writings feel mostly real.

The game only takes a couple of hours or so and the background music is pleasant, unobtrusive. However, unless you really are looking for a basic education on LGBT matters, the story is too short and disjointed. In my case, I learned nothing new from playing and I wasn’t terribly moved by this character.

Limerick Heist, a simple game
Of filching jeweled Fabergé
Rhymes are this one's claim to fame
And ease of play

Puzzles are a bit obtuse
Replays you will be contending
In hopes that you can right deduce
A many ending

Charm, for sure, is ever present
A smirk did find me several times
But like reviews that are unpleasant
Too many rhymes

With a Kafkaesque dystopia the author must be very careful that while the world is constantly spinning around the protagonist that the viewer in addition to being misdirected doesn't feel cheated. For the most part Finley does his job here.

I played this twenty years ago and played it again just recently (because I had honestly forgotten most of it) and was swept away both times. I have generally enjoyed frequent plot twists as long as they're fun (e.g. Wild Things) and don't negate everything that came before (e.g. The Game). Multiple times while playing Kaged I thought to myself "Hey, this isn't logical" (Spoiler - click to show) like when the guard was conveniently asleep knowing that in this government that would be dangerous), or the code on the matchbook for no reason and then it would be revealed later that I was correct and the inconsistency was intentional. I also felt like many of the plot twists were foreshadowed so that I didn't feel cheated at the end. (Spoiler - click to show)My favorite was being told that the Commissar had front-row seats to the execution, very cheeky. I also figured out the final twist with about five minutes of play time left (Spoiler - click to show) because of all the cameras which was a brilliant move by Finley. Throughout the game I felt empowered and thrilled by the chase, until right near the end where I felt powerless but compelled to press on. The parallels between the story and my experience as a player were often step for step.

My only critique of the structure was the ability to die at several different points along the way. While I understand that seemed necessary to conceal the ending, it feels like in retrospect that those ways of ending the story do indeed negate the final ending.

Many have commented that the puzzles are poorly clued. I frequently use walkthroughs while playing and I didn't have to resort to one here. And I felt many of the puzzles were heavily clued (Spoiler - click to show)(the armband one especially, and even how to help the boy) but your mileage may vary. However, there is one structural issue (Spoiler - click to show) being allowed to access the 10th floor before helping the boy that killed the plot flow a bit early on.

Finley's writing is, as always, a treat and despite the game's flaws I was happy to be along for the ride.

When I played Night Guard / Morning Star last year I noted that I was captivated by the writing and atmosphere and turned off by the multitude of endings. I feel similarly after playing Dalmady's Cactus Blue Motel and I'll dive further into the reasons why.

The general conceit of interactive fiction is that you are the primary character. The playing character may be a cipher, such as in Zork, or a specific character, such as Maria Elena here. Regardless, you are making decisions for that person.

In a pure puzzler, the author hopes to engage the player in the game's objective. In a comedy, the author hopes to make the player laugh, and character development may or may not be necessary. Drama, I suspect, is the hardest genre for IF authors, as they must make the player care about the characters, unwaveringly, for the entire game. The CYOA format highlights this difficult task, as there are no real puzzles to distract the player.

Dalmady succeeds, as usual, in building a fun atmosphere with compelling characters. A mystical desert motel where time is squishy is ripe for intrigue. But the game's format, unfortunately, usurps the development of Maria Elena. Eight endings are written for Maria Elena and the decisions that impact those endings are based on how you interact with her two friends, Lex and Becky, throughout the game. There are no puzzles and nothing to deduce, so all of the game's real choices are impacted by Maria Elena herself.

For my first playthrough, I made choices for Maria Elena by projecting my desires for her character. Subsequent playthroughs to find different endings required me to project different desires onto her. This requires me, essentially, to divorce myself from how I feel about our protagonist. I am no longer rooting for her, but rooting for myself to find different endings. Dalmady sidesteps the awkwardness a bit by making these choices not impact the course of the plot or even much of the game's dialogue; however, this in turn has the side effect of the eight endings feeling somewhat arbitrary (not to mention a chore to find via repetitive restarts), and Maria Elena's relationships wind up seeming so fragile that a couple of fairly innocuous comments drastically changes the course of their lives.

In the end, the focus on these three characters and their fates detracted from the game's best character, the motel. Such is the bane of CYOA: the focus dedicated to plot branches necessarily gives everything else less importance.

When looking at the reviews so far for this game I am, frankly, surprised and appalled. A plurality of folks (probably well-meaning folks, but you never know) gave it only one star. Please bear with me as I dissect how very wrong they are.

I know we can't strictly rate games by their time period but one has to give credit to Rob Noyes to not falling into the traps that were common for the time.

Instant Death Rooms: None to be found. In fact, you are given fair (one might even say explicit) warning of any possible deaths. Zarf would have no choice but to give this game a merciful rating, a rarity in 1996.

Crimes Against Mimesis: None to be found. There is no need to explain why a phone booth is in a nondescript New England town in 1996, as phone booths were still fairly common. Even the haunting message from the operator one hears upon victory (is it victory?) is a testament to the harsh realities of telecommunication in the nineties.

Unrealistic Inventory Restrictions: None to be found. In fact, much like today's games that aren't as obsessed with inventory, you are strongly discouraged here from carrying anything!

Guess The Verb: I found at least one synonym for the game-winning action, and the most obvious verb is used anyway. One might argue that the puzzle itself is a leap of logic, but honestly, who hasn't wanted to do that to a phone booth?

Confusing Maps: Wait, so when I go southwest from the castle entrance to the antechamber, I have to go north to get back to the castle entrance? I don't know either, man. What I can tell you is that you won't have to worry about a map. Just you, a phone booth, and your wits.

Absurd Length: Noyes really anticipated the player of 2020. Who hasn't played Curses! or The Muldoon Legacy and died a little inside from the monotony (and a little on the outside from banging one's head into the monitor)? No such worries here. You can play this entire game and still have time to take your dog for a walk or remember to feed your children.

I could go on, but needless to say if you haven't given Noyes' timeless classic a try then you've probably lived too complicated a life.

One of the challenges of Twine games is to be more than just an interactive text dump or CYOA. There's nothing wrong with those formats, of course, but I was bred on Infocom and crave deductive reasoning in my text adventures. Black Sheep provides plenty of that and is three-fourths of a great game.

While playing I was reminded of The Longest Journey. Other than some of the sci-fi elements there's not a lot in common between the games, but I couldn't shake the feeling I had that I was in the same world. And believe me that's high praise. This game pulled me in from the start, and when I discovered that I was in a time loop I was extra giddy. Learn-by-dying is a well worn trope for sure, but its beauty is that it grants the player freedom to explore without the anxiety of making (permanent) mistakes. Other tropes played for full effect are the buddy cop (in this case an android) whose dead-pan delivery is quite amusing as well as the monolithic coldness of the bad guys.

Most of the tasks involve fairly logical inventory puzzles, though a couple are a bit obtuse and in one case I had to resort to a walkthrough without guilt. There are also several red herrings that gave the game more depth without being unfair. Otherwise you need to deduce the mystery by essentially combining clues together from your notebook. This is not always satisfying, because as I progressed through the game I deduced the mystery before the character did and before I could go ahead and solve it I had to figure out which clues to combine to get her to realize it.

My only other critique is the ending, which felt rushed. To that point the writing had been rather tight and I was hoping for an epic climax or a satisfying denouement, of which there were neither. Still, a very solid first game by the authors and I hope to see more from them.