Ratings and Reviews by Kommissar Verboten

You're a theatrical director at the end of his rope who just has to get through one more dress rehearsal, but there are a few problems: the leading lady has been struck down by an allergy to face paint; her replacement is a local actress who has her own ideas about the quality of the play's writing; the leading man is an accident-prone stand-up comedian; and the veteran actor who plays the antagonist is a melodramatic, misogynistic brute. What could possibly go wrong?

The Play is a fantastic choose-your-own-adventure comprised mainly of just one scene, and is therefore not that long, but you'll be drawn back to try different outcomes again and again and there is a lot of variety there. My first playthrough consisted of going with my gut instinct, and I think that's the best way to approach things in the beginning. Like the actors in the play that he directs, Ainsley M. Warrington follows the spirit rather than the letter of the player's instructions to him, and as a result the outcomes can be a little different to what you would expect. This just adds to the fun and the variety, and is certainly what drove me to try everything.

The issues that it deals with are certainly serious ones, and sometimes the contrast between that and the humorous pratfalls, slapstick and witty repartee can be a little jarring, but I think that makes it all the more effective. Five wobbly couches.

Cape is a story about the making of a superhero, rising from petty crime to be the scourge of a corrupt city. A thief down on his luck finds power from an unexpected source and becomes a vigilante. A familiar tale, but slickly executed and told. The quality of writing is obvious, and you get drawn in by the details pretty quickly, until the story itself draws to an all-too-soon conclusion that leaves you wanting more.

The only thing dragging it down, in my opinion, is a lack of actual choice and interactivity - the only things essentially up to you are your powers and your cruelty, which in most circumstances would suffice, but I think perhaps it should have been expanded on further. I did explore all possible choices, and while there are slight variations there's not much other than flavour. It's up to you whether you go back for further readthroughs, though I do think it is worth it.

Nonetheless, it was a great read from beginning to end, and I only wish there was more of it. Four balaclavas.

Described as a 'limited parser game', Inside the Facility gives you just six possible actions - NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST, LOOK, and Z (WAIT). My first impression on hearing this was, "So the whole game is just wandering around? That's pretty shallow and restricted gameplay, right?" Wrong. Very wrong.

I spent the next two or so hours enjoying myself so much that all of my initial skepticism was replaced by respect and quite a good deal of affection. I was in my own little world, writing down room names and sketching out travel routes, making notes about keycard colors and puzzle solutions, all the while trying to figure out how to explore deeper and further into the place.

The setting is simple enough - a huge facility full of quirky rooms in which they do SCIENCE! - but there's a lot of character and depth there: the handyman who is too distracted by you to do his job; the hapless security recruits and their exasperated sergeant; a gardener who has mastered the art of strategic avoidance... yes, it's all 'wandering about' but what a wander it is. Clever puzzles and even cleverer humour make all the difference.

You're even explicitly advised to make a map and there's a handy print-out for you to use and everything - and believe me when I tell you that you should definitely do that, else some of the puzzles will be a bit of a nightmare.

Inside the Facility proves that you don't need too much complexity in terms of commands to have satisfying puzzles and a deep interactive experience. Five flasks of hypercalderic Borsch fluid.

New as I am to interactive fiction, I had not heard of this game until recently, nor had I heard of the concept of its genre - you have only one turn in which to input a command, after which the story resets and you can start over, ad infinitum.

Aisle, which is as of this review a 20 year-old game, is an extraordinary piece of writing, and I can see why it has a special place in the hearts of so many. Although the concept is simple, it is executed so brilliantly and with such depth that each repeated turn reveals another layer, and another, until you have not just one story but many in parallel.

There are breadcrumbs placed throughout leading you to more ideas of what to do next, so it's not really a case of just throwing in random verbs to see what sticks - though you can do that if you want, and I think it'd be just as rewarding. There's also a list of commands available out there for the completionists who want all 183 possible outcomes. The true genius, however, lies in how all of those outcomes are woven together - or not together, as the case may be - and the depth of feeling created from every piece as well as the whole.

After playing this game I am curious to try others like it, but I think I will always remember Aisle, decades late to the party as I was. Five packets of Gnocchi.

Harmonia's beautiful presentation and fascinating premise is what drew me in and kept me reading, and the experience as a whole was a good one. 19th Century Utopian literature and the movements that grew out of it are an interesting subject, particularly due to the social commentary that we can draw out of it in hindsight. Harmonia reads and feels like a true academic's journal with its footnotes, asides and even comments on comments, each part and story beat quite literally unfolding one after another.

However, it must be said that despite being a work of interactive fiction it is a thoroughly on-rails experience, with only one significant choice: the ending. Don't get me wrong, I was interested in the story and its characters, and even though a couple of reveals were a little predictable, I felt that it made narrative sense and was overall an enjoyable read.

All in all, Harmonia has a lot going for it and I recommend you give it a try. If you're anything like me, by the time you're done you will have picked up not only a respect for the design and the writing but a healthy interest in the history of Utopian communes as well. Four astroliths.

I'll make a confession straight away - I'm not a big fan of fiction about teenagers, and I'm even less of a fan of summer camps. If you are like me, don't worry - despite being about teenagers and set in a summer camp, Birdland is an incredible piece of interactive fiction that is enthralling from beginning to end.

It's a story of emotions and having (or not having) the freedom to express them; a story of youthful attraction, of coming to terms with one's inner nature; and it's a story of strange dreams and even stranger things within them.

The mechanic of determining what mood you are in - and therefore determining what choices are available to you at various points - may seem a little arbitrary at first, but there is a method to that madness, and it helps that the mechanic itself is hilarious.

All in all, a fantastic and well-crafted experience. Five plasma spheres.

You Will Select a Decision is an extremely well-written piece that uses Soviet-era tropes and language quirks to full effect, creating a world that draws the reader in with atmosphere, charm, and stellar humour. It's a pity there are still only two adventures within, since the titles of the others teased in the beginning seemed ripe for potential. Nevertheless, I highly recommend these stories, and if you're a big fan of word play, choose-your-own-adventure books, or whimsical Soviet references (or better yet, all three), you're sure to get a big kick out of it. Five Orders of Lenin.