Ratings and Reviews by Rose

The real mystery of The Mysterious Case of the Acrobat and His Peers (TMCOFAAHP from now on) is how a closing carnival, which presumably would have loads of people about packing up, manages to feel so deserted.

It isn't the lack of NPCs. There are certainly plenty of those. These NPCs, however, utterly refuse to respond to any input. Any attempt to ask them about relevant topics resulted in a stunning lack of communication. Which is a real pity, since the descriptions (what descriptions there were) exuded personality and gave me the impression that the characters, including the PC, might actually be interesting and well-rounded characters.

Which brings me to my next point. The writing, though it contained plenty of technical errors, was enthusiastic and full of subtle and not-so-subtle details about the PC. I really enjoyed the opening text, and felt quite ready to forgive technical errors. Until I hit this.

(from the opening text)
All you have with you is your police badge in your front pocket.

(a little later)
>INV
You are carrying nothing.

>X BADGE
You can't see any such thing.

>LOOK IN POCKET
You can't see any such thing.

>X POLICE BADGE
You can't see any such thing.

(later still)
>SHOW BADGE TO RINGMASTER
You can't see any such thing.

>ASK RINGMASTER ABOUT ACROBAT
You nod hello and show your police badge to the Ringmaster.

This was, obviously, totally mimesis-breaking. And this wasn't the last time either. Loads of items clearly mentioned in room descriptions aren't implemented. I quit shortly after I discovered that I could ride a bicycle into a tiny office.

I wanted to like TMCOFAAHP. But the mysteries of unresponsive NPCs and unimplemented scenery were not ones I was willing to explore, no matter how much I liked the descriptions that actually displayed. I would recommend to the author to proofread the writing, add meta-commands such as ABOUT (yup, it's missing), fill in all the unimplemented scenery, and make the NPCs respond to conversational commands. I would definitely be willing to revise my review in the event of a re-release.

To the author: Keep at it, and keep trying! I think your work shows potential. To everyone else: I would recommended holding off on this one until/if there is a re-release. One star.

Oh, and I love the cover art.

Prized Possession is a reasonably entertaining and beautifully written story. I'm just not sure it works well as IF.

You play a young female landowner in 1192 AD, presumably in England (although I don't think the actual location is ever stated). What begins as a journey in response to a royal summons turns into a desperate fight to survive as you become caught up in a whirl of intrigue.

What I say about the story in the plot summary above is actually about all I can make out about the narrative. It took me three playthroughs to sort out the plot at all. My impression is that, in an attempt to avoid too much exposition, Ms. Fischer erred on the side of too little. Our PC knows the situation and characters; but evidently doesn't feel the need to inform us. I found myself confused through much of the story. Once I received an unfavourable ending when I couldn't quite see what relevance what happened in the ending had to my choices. A little (okay, a lot) more plot information would be nice.

The game's structure consisted of a sequence of chapters, some short, some long. Instead of progressing towards a larger goal, most of the time you are hunting for the magic command or series of commands that will allow you to view the next cutscene and progress. Interactivity is minimal.

There are hardly any puzzles; getting through most sections of the game requires stumbling upon an unobvious action or performing an action at precisely the right moment. In many cases, progressing onto the next section involves picking the right conversation topic; but, as mentioned above, it is often not clear what the right conversation topic is due to the lack of plot exposition. Guess-the-command is common.

The non-player characters, however, are fairly impressive. There are only three NPCs that I would call well-defined, but those three, if slightly cliché, are well-written and interesting. I often wanted more information about an NPC, however. (Spoiler - click to show)What had Ranulf's father done, for instance?

Worth mentioning at this point is the conversation system. You type >TALK and are presented with a list of relevant options, one of which you type. It is quite similar to the more recent TADS 3 conversation system; interesting since the game was released in 2001. In theory, I quite like this system. Where it falls down is the vagueness of the responses presented. (Spoiler - click to show)At one point I was given the option to tell the truth or lie. The problem was that I didn't know what either would mean in this situation. Luckily, both lead to the same result in the end, but it was somewhat daunting.

I love the prose. The writing is vivid, engaging and elegant; perfectly conveying a medieval setting. The beauty of the writing made me forgive a lot about the game; I continued to play regardless of bugs simply because I wanted to read more. When played from a walkthrough, Prized Possession reads like a short story; in this respect it is quite similar to the author's earlier work, Masquerade. (I loved the writing in that game as well.)

I finished this game with mixed feelings. The prose was beautiful; and I think I would have liked the story had I understood it. The linear structure was sometimes mimesis-breaking, which didn't help. I would have loved it had I been able to stick around in some of the scenes and grill NPCs so I could get more background information. I would recommend Prized Possession, but you may want to keep the walkthrough at the ready. Three stars.

This is my idea of what a short game should be. Amusing, if clichéd, NPCs; simple, if dated, puzzles; and an environment in which even the Inform default responses seem amusing.

Coming from the PC of this game, "As good-looking as ever" actually sounded suitably self-aware and cocky. Of course, I could be reading a lot into it, but I don't think so. The humour is innocent and subtle. The parser makes fun of the player on at least one occasion. Personally I find this amusing, but I am aware some dislike it. Generally, the writing was snappy and funny, reasonably well-crafted. NPCs were stock-clichés with no irrelevant conversation topics, but in this setting it was fine.

The puzzles were fairly dated (searching, get-X-give-X etc) but that is not surprising considering the vintage of the game. I solved most of them by myself; going to the source code for two. I probably would have solved them myself eventually, but I felt impatient. There were no guess-the-verb problems or tricky syntax.

Most scenery is unimplemented; attempts to manipulate most objects in the room descriptions will result in "That's not something you need to refer to". This is fine by me, as what is irrelevant is clearly marked as irrelevant. However, it sometimes got confusing trying to decide what was unimplemented scenery and what wasn't. (Spoiler - click to show)I resorted to typing "take all" in each room to find important objects.

Overall, a quick, child-friendly diversion. I'm giving it three stars on the grounds of under-implementation and lack of length, but I still recommend it.

I hate writing bad reviews. But frankly, in this case I don't seem to have an option. This game seems to have been written for a university project, which is great: IF is vastly underrated in general, and the more people who write games the better off the community is.

First of all, I'm not trying to discourage the author from writing more IF. I sincerely hope that the author will practice more and continue to write -- if nobody ever wrote for fear that their writing wouldn't be perfect, nothing would ever be written. Practice makes perfect. However bad the game mechanics, I think the enthusiasm of the author shows some promise, and wish him luck with future works.

The standard commands "about", "help" and "credits" turn up no responses. The game constantly breaks the fourth wall trying to hold the player's hand. I did appreciate the attempt to prevent the game from becoming unwinnable by clearly stating objectives, but there are subtler ways of doing it then blatantly mentioning the INVENTORY command in game text. Guess-the-verb problems are frequent; scenery is unimplemented; punctuation and grammar mistakes are rampant; plot information is included in room descriptions; exits aren't mentioned in room descriptions. I quit when a NPC started talking about an item I hadn't seen anywhere and couldn't locate.

I would recommend a revision of the game to the author: if you tidy up the game mechanics, fix the bugs, provide help commands and clean up the grammar and punctuation, I would be willing to revise my review, and I believe other reviewers would also be willing. I would also recommend that with future works, you ask a competent IF player to beta-test it for you. It makes a world of difference.

At present, as a game, Special Detective Agent certainly does not shine. It is, however, a start. If you want to know whether it is worth playing, then the answer is no. If the author wants to know whether to have another shot at it, the answer is yes. One star.

Woah. This game takes me back to the first time I played Adventure; I was so terrified when I reached the dark section that I rushed out immediately and refused to explore further until the next day. This game has a similar feel: you don't want to progress for fear of what you might find, but feel compelled to progress nonetheless.

The writing really makes the game; crisp, succinct, vivid and chilling. An interesting touch was the total lack of compass directions; you navigate with commands such as left, right, forward etc. This defiance of genre traditions actually works surprisingly well, adding to the feeling of realism.

The structure of the game is not so much defined by puzzles as by learn-by-dying. Save often and expect to die often. In fact, if you play from a walkthrough and never die, you'll miss some of the best writing in the game. If you really really really need a walkthrough, I'd recommend saving often and trying different ways to die anyway.

Overall, in terms of craft and writing, this is an excellent game. I'm rating it only four stars, however, because of its small scope. Regardless of the small size, Hunter, in Darkness is definitely worth a play.