Ratings and Reviews by Shaun Hamman

While I do not have a long history with interactive fiction games, I have had a blast working through the Infocom canon and select other more modern offerings. Moonmist, unfortunately, is the first one I have played that I really didn't care for. This is a fairly long review, but I feel the context is important to my takeaway.

I can certainly appreciate some of the interesting or unique things Moonmist attempts: Packing four entirely different stories into a single setting is a clever concept, the castle is a interesting locale, and the large cast of characters all with real-time schedules pulls the player into feeling like they're in the very center of an Agatha Christie Who-Done-It!

That however is where my praise ends. I found the interactions with this game very clunky and the writing very poor compared to the other games I've played.

To start off, as mentioned there are four different mystery stories each considered a different difficulty level. Confoundingly, you select which one you want to play by answering the question "What is your favorite color?" posed to you at the beginning of the game. Not having any knowledge of this mechanic, I answered the question truthfully ("Green") which apparently put me on the shortest and "easiest" story.

In each story there are 3 mysteries you must solve:

1. Who is the ghost?
2. Where is the treasure?
3. Who committed the crime?

You have until 7:00am to solve all these mysteries or the police will show up and take over the investigation from you.

None of this, however, is made clear to the player. If you read the letters included in the game box, you'll learn your friend Tamara believes there is a ghost that is trying to kill her and has asked you to come investigate. (If you don't, you will have no context at all about why are you here as none is offered in the game itself.) You are not told anything about any treasure nor of any actual crime being committed. The game forces you along a fairly pre-scripted path until a dinner event where you learn about the treasure.

Much of my criticism of this game comes from my experience during my first (and only) playthrough and how poorly the game unfolded, so I will relay those experiences along with my thoughts on them. Perhaps the other variations would have played out better? I don't know.

Knowing nothing about the above objectives, I figure I'm only here to help Tamara identify the ghost so I pay no mind to the treasure side-quest. Once the first steps of that finish playing out (during which I receive two clues to the treasure's location) I am finally able to explore the castle. I wander from room to room just looking around to learn what I can. This turns out to be very little, as most rooms contain very short descriptions with little to no visual detail. Descriptions shouldn't be so overly detailed that the player feels like they're reading rather than playing, but there is such a thing as being too sparse.

A simple but effective example from Zork II is the description of the Circular Room:

This is a damp circular room, whose walls are made of brick and mortar. The roof of this room is not visible, but there appear to be some etchings on the walls. There is a passageway to the west.

This is a far more engaging and immersive description compared to Moonmist's typical offering. One such example is that of Hyde's Bedroom:

Hyde's bedroom has many tasteful antiques, such as an armchair in one corner.

The antiques cannot be examined, and the only detail offered about the armchair is "There's nothing on it." While there is the occasional room that describes enough to allow the player to build some kind of picture in their mind, the vast majority are barren and lifeless. A couple rooms even go so far as to have no in-game description at all, instead saying only that "It looks even lovelier than it sounds in the tourist brochure." Bafflingly, descriptions of these rooms are only available in a pamphlet included in the game box (there is a tourist brochure in the player's luggage, but it seems to have no use and is not readable). While these materials are thankfully preserved and available online, having to refer to an external resource just to know what objects might be in the room with me is immensely frustrating. I assume this was done due to technical limitations, but given how short the descriptions could have been and how little detail is provided elsewhere I have a hard time believing that was an impassable hurdle.

At this point, I happen to enter (Spoiler - click to show)the library. I discover (Spoiler - click to show)a notebook on the shelf and (Spoiler - click to show)upon reading it I am informed "Congratulations! You've found evidence of the crime!". Crime? What crime?! (Spoiler - click to show)The notebook mentions that Dr. Wendish had been experimenting on his patients and may have killed the "granddau" [sic] of someone named Poldark. Okay... No clue who that is, and I guess it *is* a crime, but it's not what I'm here to solve. Up to this point I have found nearly no evidence of a ghost at all. The only lead I have is (Spoiler - click to show)a sighting by the butler which led me to find a missing contact lens, but after asking everyone about it the trail ran cold with no new details whatsoever.

With no other direction to go in, (and after having played the delightful Toby's Nose) I decide to (Spoiler - click to show)"ACCUSE Dr. Wendish". Lord Jack appears and holds Wendish hostage, but nothing else happens. With no new leads as to the ghost's identity, I try my hand at finding the treasure. Deciphering the clues I have proves very simple and I am quickly led to (Spoiler - click to show)the Office to collect an inkwell. Examining the (Spoiler - click to show)inkwell reveals "Congratulations! You've found the hidden treasure!" and (Spoiler - click to show)"Inside the inkwell is Moonmist." Uh... okay? I don't know what (Spoiler - click to show)"Moonmist" is, but progress I guess? (There is a (Spoiler - click to show)journal on the desk in the office that explains what (Spoiler - click to show)Moonmist is, but at this point I have stopped interacting with most objects unless I am explicitly directed to. The vast majority of objects in the game say only "You shouldn't take that." or "That won't help solve this case." when you attempt to do anything with them which has discouraged me from even attempting to do so.)

Unfortunately I still have no leads on the one mystery that I actually am here to solve - the identity of the ghost! I wander all over the castle. I check every room, every (Spoiler - click to show)secret passage, and ask everyone about everything I can possibly think of. No one knows anything. There are a couple new ghost sightings, but no details that generate a lead or even a hint of suspicion. I explore the garden maze, the castle basement, and repeatedly try to (Spoiler - click to show)follow the cliff-side path and (Spoiler - click to show)enter the servant's quarters, both of which the game basically just says "You can't do that."

I do discover two additional frustrations though. After wandering around and around and trying everything I can think of, the clock turns 7:00am and I learn that I have a time limit to solve the mysteries. This is when I turn to the invisiclues which suggest I ask people about the ghost, but it's after 1:00am and everyone is asleep so I can't ask anyone anything. Even if you wake them up, you just get told "They are too sleepy to answer."

At my wits end, I submit to the invisiclues further. It suggests I look (Spoiler - click to show)in Dr. Wendish's medical kit. I do so and discover (Spoiler - click to show)a contact lens case! Brushing off my frustration (I had previously tried to interact with (Spoiler - click to show)the medical kit only to be told "You shouldn't do that." - (Spoiler - click to show)I must have tried to take it rather than look inside it.) I asked (Spoiler - click to show)Wendish about the case, but he just claims it's not his. I restore to an earlier point (before everyone was asleep), retrieve the (Spoiler - click to show)lens case, and ask everyone else about it, but again no one knows anything!

One more time to the invisiclues. "Check the (Spoiler - click to show)medical kit again." Now I'm fuming. Looking again (Spoiler - click to show)in the medical kit reveals the (Spoiler - click to show)ghost's costume: a flowing white gown and blonde wig... Completely and totally hidden (Spoiler - click to show)beneath the contact lens case I suppose...

You see, because I had (Spoiler - click to show)accused Dr. Wendish earlier in the evening and in this variation of the story (Spoiler - click to show)he happened to also be the ghost, it meant that none of the encounters with the ghost were allowed to play out. On top of this, the game sometimes requires you to examine the same thing multiple times in order to fully search it. It gives a loose indication when this happens (It briefly mentions "You stopped searching.") but this happens so rarely and is so easy to miss that it feels like the game is just being spiteful. These combined led me to having absolutely no clue what to do or what I was missing, but through no obvious fault of my own.

There were additional frustrations I encountered throughout such as the clunky way dialogue must be conducted exclusively with phrases structured as commands, or how the majority of objects in the castle have the mysterious description of "You look over the <object> for a minute and find nothing suspicious -- for now." but which never become relevant, but I think I've hit the major turn-offs I experienced and this review is well long enough already.

Suffice it to say while there is an interesting idea or two here, I found Moonmist to be an extremely frustrating game and a severe low point compared to its siblings in the Infocom catalog. It's not so much that the puzzles or mysteries were difficult, rather that the writing, structure, and implementation of the game are not even remotely close to the quality I've come to expect from Infocom games. This may be a biased take as I've only really played some of their highest-rated games so far, but among those are their earliest games so it is disappointing that their twenty-second game feels like it throws away everything learned from all that came before it.

Looking for a palate-cleanser after finishing the Zork trilogy, my wife and I settled on Toby's Nose, a delightful little one-ish room game released by Chandler Groover in 2015. You take the role of trusty basset hound Toby and are tasked with helping Sherlock Holmes solve his latest murder case. While this is technically a one-room game in that you never actually leave the Drawing Room you start in, you are able to explore a variety of locales in excruciating detail using your incomparable olfactory sense. By simply sniffing you are able to track movements, uncover clues, explore buildings, and even recreate long past events as though you were there. While this sometimes stretches the player's suspension of disbelief, it's such a clever and well-executed mechanic and the revealed descriptions are so vibrant and immersive that it is easily forgiven.

The writing in this game is superb! Every description drips with sensory detail, from the pristine garden to the smog-choked London streets. You can see and feel every location and every event just as clear as Toby can smell them. The core mechanic of chasing smells within smells to dive further and further into the world outside the Drawing Room is so intuitive and satisfying that each new juicy description feels like its own reward. Just about everything can be delved into for more detail, no matter how small. Sometimes it reveals a direct clue, sometimes wider context, sometimes just definitions or flavor.

Which brings me to my first and only main criticism of the game - there is SO MUCH extraneous detail! Once you've found a variety of clues and have explored areas thoroughly, there are so many rabbit holes to jump down that have no relevance to the plot. While this contributes to the vibrance of the world, it can get frustrating when you're looking for the one detail that you missed somewhere and each description reveals eight more things, none of which bring you closer to finding the one you're missing. To help with this, the game includes a very creative hint mode that can be turned on and set to either italicize all the things you can smell or also bold the actually important things. I was disappointed that after playing for a couple hours and feeling as though I had thoroughly exhausted all possible avenues of investigation, I turned this on and retraced all the steps through the important keywords to find there was a single one I had missed that held the final clue I needed to identify the murderer.

Most of the clues you'll find are circumstantial evidence at best, but this actually works very well. It guides the player to identify what happened while also allowing them to fill in the gaps with their own narrative about the characters actions and motivations. You really feel like you're solving the mystery yourself, rather than just finding the plot beats that the game wants you to find. Despite the vague evidence, there is enough there to solidly solve the murder. If you feel like you aren't sure, you haven't found everything yet. That said, the narrative my wife and I deduced (Spoiler - click to show)cleanly tied all the actions of all the characters together into one string of events that very satisfyingly wrapped everything up. Though we identified the murderer correctly, the story the game exposits at the end was (Spoiler - click to show)a fair bit simpler than the one we came up with and was much less satisfying as (Spoiler - click to show)many of the seemingly suspicious actions of the characters ended up being red herrings.

The only other minor criticism I have is that as you discover clues, you will occasionally be given a bit of dialogue that Toby had overheard earlier in the day. This gives some insight into the characters and speaks to the relevance of the clue you just found. However, once you've seen this dialogue there doesn't seem to be any way to repeat it. Though the clue gets added to your inventory, there is no indication of where you found the clue, nor does sniffing the clue again repeat the dialogue. Although this is not necessary - all the information you need is in the descriptions themselves - it would have been helpful to avoid having to track down where you had seen a particular clue before and being able to replay the dialogue would help when solidifying your own version of the events that unfolded.

Overall, this was a lovely game and a nice change of pace from the forest and cave, lock and key style adventures we've been playing through. Were it not for finding that last clue feeling a bit like pixel-hunting in a graphical adventure game, I would give this a full five stars. As it stands, I'll go with an extremely high 4 and very strong recommendation to any text adventure aficionados. Don't pass this one up!

Zork III feels like an altogether different game than the first two.

The world of Zork I is vast and vibrant. Its sort-of fantasy, sort-of modern setting and abandoned yet still in-tact structures fills the player with the spirit of adventure - to discover what secrets lie in this land (and many secrets there are!).

Zork II pivots into a curated puzzle box, feeling less like a world and more like a series of vignettes for the player to find and solve. The zaniness of Quendor's history is highlighted here by references to the many subsidiaries of FrobozzCo and the actions of the Flatheads. Where Zork II feels less cohesive and less fair than Zork I, the evolution of the formula and attempts at making puzzles stand out and be unique shines through even where those attempts failed (looking at you, Oddly-Angled Room and Bank of Zork!).

The atmosphere of Zork III is choked and bleak. Darkness covers the land, structures have collapsed, and the only remaining inhabitants of this place are worn, wrinkled husks. Far more than in the first two games, you can *feel* this setting. This is also the first of the trilogy to really feel like it has a narrative. This place has a history, the few people here have lived long, painful lives and have stories to tell.

Unfortunately, what Zork III has gained in narrative skill it has lost in gameplay. Where the previous games tended to favor lock-and-key style puzzles, this one has you interacting with the environment much more. Very positively on the one hand, this adds a very physical and grounding element to the puzzles - they feel much more real and important. But on the other hand the way it does this relies heavily on breaking the rules of how the player has learned to interact with the world. For example, to solve the (Spoiler - click to show)time machine puzzle you must (Spoiler - click to show)push the machine into different rooms. Even ignoring (Spoiler - click to show)the description of the machine suggesting it is likely highly immobile, never in the entire trilogy has the player been able to (Spoiler - click to show)take scenery between rooms with them. The closest analogue would be (Spoiler - click to show)the robot, dragon, or princess in Zork II, but (Spoiler - click to show)those were creatures that were following instructions or acting of their own accord rather than inanimate objects. Or, to (Spoiler - click to show)cross the aqueduct you must (Spoiler - click to show)get there before the earthquake occurs (around move 130 or so). If you have not (Spoiler - click to show)gotten there by then, the game just becomes unwinnable through no fault of your own.

This is also the first game where I ran into a handful of bugs during play which actively made the experience much worse - The first when (Spoiler - click to show)I was somehow able to cross the lake after using the Grue Repellent and still making it through the dark rooms unscathed. After many, many attempts I was never able to replicate this and not having discovered I could (Spoiler - click to show)dive in the lake, I became very frustrated trying to find another solution when I had seen that work. The second was regarding the (Spoiler - click to show)man on the cliff. After you (Spoiler - click to show)trust him and tie the rope to the chest (which is *highly* unintuitive, especially given how shifty he acts) he will lower the rope back down to you. If you then type (Spoiler - click to show)`CLIMB UP` as would be expected, you will actually (Spoiler - click to show)climb down, leaving the chest unopened and the man permanently gone. Instead you need to specifically (Spoiler - click to show)`GRAB ROPE` which admittedly (Spoiler - click to show)is what he tells you to do, but as the intent is to (Spoiler - click to show)go up I would suggest the former is a significantly more intuitive input when both are expected to be synonymous anyway.

The final point too is that although Zork III has a stronger narrative presence than the previous games, it does a poor job capitalizing on that. The very few characters you encounter in the first two games have no semblance of backstory, personality, or characterization. They are all just props on a stage. Here, for the first time, the characters you meet are interesting! They have emotion and hint at a past, but you can't interact with them in any kind of notable way to learn more. There is arguably a reason for this as (Spoiler - click to show)it is revealed they are all the Dungeon Master in disguise, but it still feels hollow. Even after you (Spoiler - click to show)enter the dungeon and are able to interact with the Dungeon Master directly, there is still nothing more to be learned. The final "cutscene" at the end of the game features a very interesting interaction as well, but offers no insight into why it plays out the way it does or what that means for the future.

Ultimately, Zork III does a very good job at thinking outside the box and presenting a wholly different and unique experience compared to its predecessors, both narratively and in terms of puzzle design. It is an interesting experience and absolutely worth the play through, but I did find it the least enjoyable of the three to play (even forgiving the bugs) and while it implies a stronger focus on narrative, it fails to really deliver on that.

After many failed attempts at Zork I before finally completing it, I was very eager to jump into Zork II for the first time! I was expecting more of the mysterious and vibrant, yet utterly abandoned world that the first painted such a glorious picture of. Zork II has shades of that world, but is so much more surreal and less consistent that it feels less like a world to explore and more like a loose collection of puzzles strung together.

In contrast to Zork I where you really only had a couple different locales (forest, cavern, river, mine) and they were all mostly consistent with each other, each room in Zork II feels like it was glued together from a collage of different ideas. One minute you're standing on a bridge in a great marble hall, then you're in a frozen cavern with a glacier blocking a path, then you're on a spinning carousel that fills an entire room, then you're (Spoiler - click to show)at the bottom of a giant well in a magic bucket, then you're in a pool full of tears that are pouring in from the ceiling, then you're in a machine room with whirring gears and steaming pipes while you bark commands at a robot. You never know what the next room may hold.

There is some excitement in being able to find just about anything around the next corner, but what made the world of the first game so engaging is that it was realistic. You start next to a house in a forest, then descend through a trapdoor into a non-descript cavern. Every step along the way, what you find may be fantastical but is grounded in a pseudo-modern pseudo-fantasy setting that is very consistent and believable. This then facilitates solving the puzzles you find as you can mostly just try taking actions that you would reasonably take if you were in that world, which is not a stretch to imagine due to how immersive the setting is. Zork II on the other hand, due to its strange and inconsistent environments, makes it much more difficult to consider how you would interact with the world if you were really there. Because the world feels like a game board rather than a living, breathing place, it causes the player to think of actions in terms of locks and keys - "Do I have the specific item I need to 'solve' this room?" rather than the first game's "I want to do a thing, is there a tool I can use to do that?".

This mindset change, unfortunately, also breeds frustration as unlike the first game there are a significant number of red herrings and items that while seemingly important actually serve no purpose. This then compounds against the player when combined with many puzzles having very unintuitive solutions. For example: (Spoiler - click to show)At the top of the magic well (which has its own unreasonably cryptic solution) you enter a room with four cakes themed very obviously around Alice in Wonderland. One of the cakes is labeled "Eat Me", the tiny writing on the others is unreadable. Eating the cake shrinks you down and allows you access to the aforementioned pool of tears. There is a flask of poison here you can take, and there is a shadow of something in the pool. These two rooms are the only ones you have access to. With nowhere to go and nothing else to interact with, a player will likely take one of two actions at this point: Restore and come back later, thinking they may need an item they don't have yet for this, or try eating the other cakes to see what happens. If the player does the latter, they will discover one of the cakes makes them grow, the other two kill them. Solving a puzzle by trial-and-error is never satisfying, but the intended solution I would suggest is one I think it unlikely a player will think of. The player is supposed to use the flask as a magnifying glass to read the tiny writing on the cakes. This is actually necessary to some degree, as the player needs to throw the cake labeled "Evaporate" into the pool to acquire the critical item there. While the flask is mentioned as having a clear liquid in it, there is no mention of it distorting the room as you look through it. A student who happens to be currently studying the properties of light in fluids might think to use it in the intended way, but the average player is likely to think it just a flask of poison to be used elsewhere, especially as you can identify the "Enlarge" cake by just trying them all and be able to leave the room with your new flask in tow.

In the first game, the player's frustration could be curbed somewhat by the knowledge that if they couldn't figure out how to solve a puzzle, it was likely because the tool they needed was elsewhere and they just hadn't found it yet. Then, when the player got stuck, they could focus in on things they hadn't solved or items they hadn't found a use for. Unfortunately Zork II also throws a wrench in this process. Not only do a number of items just have no use (e.g. the (Spoiler - click to show)perfect rose and (Spoiler - click to show)wooden club - granted this is supposed to be a clue to the nature of the Oddly-Angled Room, but it's a poor clue *and* has no physical use) but from very early on you are introduced to the wizard who periodically appears and casts spells on you. This quickly gives the player the thought that they might gain the ability to cast spells themselves, (Spoiler - click to show)which they do, but now it becomes very tempting to attribute any elusive solution to "I guess I need a spell for that". In my playthrough of this game I specifically forbid that thinking from my approach as I didn't want to be wandering from unsolved puzzle to unsolved puzzle thinking I just couldn't solve them yet, but I had no way of knowing if that approach would pay off or doom me. (Spoiler - click to show)Thankfully it paid off.

I could go on about a number of other puzzles in this game I thought unfair, but this review is long enough already and I think I've gotten the point across. Overall, this is not a bad game. I still had fun playing it and the world portrayed here is definitely creative, if less immersive. I don't know how many of this game's issues come from mainframe Zork being split into three parts and just not translating well and how much of it is just it being less well designed than the first game - the lack of many of these issues being present in Zork I leads me to think the latter. I do hope Zork III, which I move on to now, will be more like the first and less like the second. Either way, I am looking forward to finally experiencing the conclusion of this trilogy that I have held in such high regard for so long!

After a rekindled interest in interactive fiction and seeing that many prominent adventure game developers cite Trinity as a major source of inspiration, I was eager to pick it up and play through it myself.

To start, looking back at the game after having completed it and comparing it to other IF games I've played, Trinity really is a gem. The world building is phenomenal! The story is fairly minimal, but enough to give you purpose and remains relevant throughout. Each area is completely unique and the writing tells of vibrant, surreal landscapes. Your never know what lies around the next corner or through the next door, and that makes it an absolute blast to explore!

Mechanically the game is mostly well designed. The map is more of a grid than the sprawling caverns and mazes of other Infocom-era IF, which while being less interesting to map out does make it easier to map out and get from place to place. Most areas of the game have (Spoiler - click to show)a time limit but these areas are (Spoiler - click to show)small enough and the (Spoiler - click to show)time limits generous enough that the player (Spoiler - click to show)rarely feels rushed. There are a few puzzles that feel extremely unfair (e.g. (Spoiler - click to show)giving the paper to the girl to make the bird or (Spoiler - click to show)getting the winged boots) and a few that require the player to know particular, uncommon terms for things (e.g. (Spoiler - click to show)WTF is a perambulator?!?! - It's a baby carriage! What is a skink? - It's a lizard.) but the majority are good. There are a few puzzles that are so cleverly designed that when you happen upon them the solution seems obvious, and you're almost right but not quite, and figuring out the single small missing step is so immensely satisfying!

The final section of the game did start to try my patience. That area, unlike the others, is (Spoiler - click to show)so large that it's difficult to (Spoiler - click to show)map and it (Spoiler - click to show)feels like there is really nothing there. The (Spoiler - click to show)timer is also (Spoiler - click to show)far more strict than in the other areas. With how surreal and magical the rest of the game had been up to that point, it became difficult to get my thinking in the right headspace because just about anything could be possible. That made it very frustrating trying to think through exactly what to do.

Overall, it is a great game and definitely a pivotal inspiration for anyone who might want to write their own adventures, textual or graphical. It could use some polish here and there and some better telegraphing for certain puzzles, but I strongly recommend anyone interested in adventure games to play through this one!

The forefather of modern adventure games, Zork brought the genre to the masses. I have begun this game many times, wandered the dark and dusty halls of the Great Underground Empire, only to get completely stuck and put it back on the shelf. Finally, after my wife helped me finish playing through Trinity, we tackled this adventure again and completed it!

There are certainly puzzles here that haven't aged well (e.g. (Spoiler - click to show)figuring out you need to give the egg to the thief or (Spoiler - click to show)defeating the cyclops) but for the most part after a little experimentation and discovering the types of interactions the game expects you to take, most of it is well structured.

There is effectively no story to speak of, and the few other living creatures you encounter are hostile obstacles to bypass, but the immersion here is top notch. The descriptions are not necessarily grandiose and examining the vast majority of objects only states that they are nothing special, but the writing is just detailed enough to let your mind fill in the blanks mostly without even noticing. You feel like you're delving deeper and deeper into damp, rocky caves and where evidence of civilization lies, it's rough, dusty, and abandoned. Unlike the sequel, there is not a huge variety of locations, but each room is exactly distinct enough that you'll start to remember where it is on your map very quickly (you **are** drawing a map, right?!).

Zork isn't a very cruel game, but it will seem like it is until you wrap your head around how the world works (the occasional poorly designed puzzle excepted). It definitely doesn't hold your hand. While I'm usually a fan of starting at the beginning, Zork is difficult enough and the learning curve steep enough that I'm not sure I would recommend it as an entry point into the genre for beginners unless they are already excited and eager to take on the challenge. That said, not having played very many interactive fiction games, I don't yet have an opinion of a better one. Certainly, if you can look beyond the lack of guidance and get immersed in the world the prose reveals, there are many mysteries and adventures Zork I offers.

Spider and Web is the first IF game I've played in many years, and the first that I actually completed! Don't think that an indication of the lack of difficulty in this game, rather it is due to my renewed interest in the genre.

I thought the narrative framing of the story was very creative and served as a clever way of breaking the story up into smaller segments and treating each as individual challenges. I did find the actual gameplay a little frustrating, between the (Spoiler - click to show)obnoxious modular inventory items and having to (Spoiler - click to show)examine everything to find the right keywords to reveal additional things in the room since they weren't included in the room's description itself. This latter trait was very effectively used in a couple places but was still generally annoying.

There were a few places where information about how things worked was withheld until a future segment which sort of worked okay from a narrative perspective but made it difficult to tell if such challenges were supposed to be solved in the moment or left for later.

While in retrospect I think THE puzzle is extremely smart and narratively well executed, I bounced right off of it on my playthrough. When I first made it into (Spoiler - click to show)the interrogation room outside a flashback, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to (Spoiler - click to show)attach the bomb to the chair, intuiting that I would need to (Spoiler - click to show)use the voice module to activate it when I returned to the interrogation. I was completely unable to make that work of course, so eventually gave up and went on my way.

I was very confused then when (Spoiler - click to show)I did return to the interrogation, to then (Spoiler - click to show)activate the voice module and see that not only did it work, but (Spoiler - click to show)it triggered a completely different device than the one I had attached the voice module to. While I worked through the remainder of the game, I assumed this was actually just a bug in the game that happened to play in my favor, or that the author had not figured out a good way to reconcile (Spoiler - click to show)the interrogations with the flashbacks and so left it a little awkward. (Spoiler - click to show)Items being scattered about places that I hadn't been seemed to confirm this, and I just ignored it and moved on.

While I had grasped (Spoiler - click to show)the time dynamic of the interrogations and that you were (Spoiler - click to show)playing through flashbacks, I completely missed that (Spoiler - click to show)when you're not being interrogated you're not just playing a flashback, but you're playing the lie that you're telling to your investigator and as such (Spoiler - click to show)are an unreliable narrator! That is super smart storytelling, but not at all obvious as a player. I didn't discover that (Spoiler - click to show)the shuffling around of objects was intentional until I had to look up a walkthrough to help me through the segment where the lights go out, since I had no reason to believe I needed to (Spoiler - click to show)go all the way back to the drop ceiling near the beginning of the game. The walkthrough then explained THE puzzle. While it made sense, I also kind of felt sour about it since it felt like (Spoiler - click to show)the game lied to me and there was no way for me to have known. That's not entirely true, but it required a much deeper level of attention and (Spoiler - click to show)meta-analysis than I was expecting to have to give the game.

Overall, I thought this was a good story and a good game, but I definitely wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a veteran IF player. IF games require a mental model of what you can do and how things work, of how to interact with the world, and this game toys with those concepts. Excellent premise, but the player needs to thoroughly understand those things and be able to conceive of bending those rules to really grasp this work in its entirety.