Reviews by Nomad

The 1950's in the Caribbean: A steamy, exotic setting, politically overheated, vivid and emotional. You're a spy, not by conviction but because of events that led to your current situation. A James-Bond-like setting, with a lot of jumping back and forth in the recent history of the fictitious country.

The story is on rails, there's little exploration beyond the location you're currently in. Implementation could be better, from typos to commands not understood. The vibes are awesome though. Infocom always claimed their games would be driven by the player's imagination. 1958 does right that, you feel like you're there. If there were more details, if there were more communication, this would be a gem and the reference title in the segment "early 20th century espionage thriller in the Caribbean". <3 <3 <3

(Regarding the parser, please see my edit at the bottom.)

Home-made parser. Oh well. I fear it for two reasons: 1. The authoring systems available are around for years, or decades in some cases. They have been used and reviewed by hundreds auf authors, they have been constantly improved, they are at the top of the parser evolution ladder. A homebrew parser will never be able to complete. (I’m talking Inform or TADS, not AGT) 2. The author obviously wants to show off his coding skills. Given that few people scintillate in several fields of expertise, how are the chances a good coder is also a good author? But let’s see.

The game world is pretty lovecraftian. Room and object descriptions are full of old school adjectives. A pleasant experience, just like in the novels. The grade of detail could be higher tho. The closer you look at stuff the more often you get a generic response. Also, apart from one man who’s important for the story you won’t meet any living person, that’s a bit dull. And the town of Arkham is off limits which is a bit frustrating as the game starts right on the outskirts of it. The map is small, the central village is two houses big. There’s a large maze which will seriously annoy you if you stumble into it without having found directions upfront. The parser lists objects you can interact with. Except when it doesn’t list them. There you go. Home-made parser. My left eyelid twitches.

The development of the story is nice. Step for step you gather clues about what happened. Travelling is quick as the map is so small. The puzzles are easy, and pretty much standard. Romping through the game is a rather quick experience. In my opinion it would be worth the effort to enlarge the game, at least with a bigger village and one or two more NPCs, and with the number of puzzles increasing the maze could removed as it’s mainly annoying, and it doesn’t even make sense as it consists of outdoor paths leading nowhere in particular.

If you like Lovecraft you’ll want to give this game a try. It’s short and cooked to the point, but it lacks sophistication and leaves you somewhat unsatisfied because it could have been great, but unfortunately it isn’t. As for the subject of home-made parsers, please allow me to quote Jackass for your own and all our sanity: Don’t try this at home.

EDIT: As Gareth Pitchford pointed out, The Arkham Abomination was not created using a homebrew parser, but using the ThinBASIC_Adventure_Builder. This renders all my comments regarding the parser moot. Lack of research on my side. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Winter Wonderland was the first GAC adventure ever written, and the second one (after Apache Gold) to be published.

The plot starts off okayish. Stranding in the Himalayas with your plane - that leaves room for discovering an ancient civilization, a lovecraftian scenario, a Tomb-Raider-like treasure hunt in a cave, an educative game about the Bön religion. Plenty elbowroom.

What do we get? We're supposed to get back to civilization, but after a few steps we stumble across a ridiculous holiday resort where the rest of the game takes place until the sudden end. Rooms and NPCs just serve as vehicles for incoherent, sometimes obscure puzzles, the story stops existing. To spoil one puzzle: (Spoiler - click to show)In room C you need a ski pass to continue, in room B you find a ski pass frozen in the ground(!), and in room A you find "a fluid" that you can pour on the ground in room B to get the ski pass. Once you're in the holiday resort the initial immersion (Lovecraft! Tomb Raider!) starts to wane pretty quickly. The end is unsatisfying.

The implementation is good for a GAC game - the two-word parser is solid, synonyms are understood, the room descriptions are way less sparse than in comparable games. If you know the GAC you know what downside to expect from this: While navigation and picking up objects run fairly quickly, solving actual puzzles allows you to set up a coffee between inputs, and if a three-word input is required (e.g. GIVE X TO Y) you can take a shower between turns. (Disclaimer: Slightly exaggerating here for stylistic reasons. Slightly.) There's a few graphics. Memory shortage was always an issue for GAC games, so don't expect anything photorealistic.

Conclusion: Starts nicely, technically pretty solid for a GAC game, gets boring on the way.

Played on a C64 back in the 19th century, revisited with a C64 emulator now.

You enjoy your house with garden when things happen and you got to find five special stones or else.

Seen even worse stories. The implementation sucks tho. Lots of empty rooms, non-existing items, uncommunicative NPCs, orientation problems.

The game has potential tho. Better implementation, and it's gonna be fun.

You're a journalist on your way to work. There's a bit of a tension between you and your boss because of you coming late for work at several occasions. You stumble across Jeremy Corbyn, labour politician and opposition leader from 2015 to 2020 (game was published in 2017). You suspect him of falling for ISIS propaganda and try to get him on the beaten track again, well aware of the fact that running into trouble with your boss.

Actually, the story doesn't matter at all. The game is a CYOA game consisting of random scenes stringed together without significant connection. Most choices lead to an immediate end of the game, meaning the game is all about trying to make your way through the choice tree by randomly picking a choice and hoping it doesn't end the game. One star extra for the occasional pleasantly silly humour.

Available on GOG for around 5 € when not on sale, including manual and hintbook. A steal!

The player is the worst knight in the kingdom and everybody knows it. Still, he's being entrusted with a prestiguous knight job, the mother of all knight jobs to be precise: Princess Lorealle the Worthy, daughter of highly ramshackle king Fudd the Bewildered and heir to the throne after his death (which is expected to occur asap) has vanished. If she doesn't show up again, her step sister Grizelda the Hefty, daughter of Queen Morgana from a past marriage, will become queen after Fudd's death. At this stage, attentive readers will already know what's behind Lorealle's vanishing and why the player got the job to find her.

If you've never played a Legend adventure before you'll enjoy the largely helpful and intuitive interface (interactive compass rose, object list) and the illustrating pictures that back in 1993 were... okay. What you'll enjoy most though is the talented writing of author and Legend co-founder Bob Bates who's propelling a standard, cliché-ridden fantasy/lazy medieval tale into a slapstickfest. From scene 1 on the player stumbles from hilarious situation to hilarious situation, and as soon as he solves a (mediocrely difficult) puzzle more shit happens. Eric the Unready hails from a time when text adventures were entertainment, so if you're after sophisticated literature or an innovative gaming experience, pass on this one. If you're after a classic GAME and if you like humor in Monty Python style, this one's for you.

Commercial game, free ad-infested version available.

So the player receives a text message from a girl called Sam. She claims to have found a smartphone with the player's number in the contact list. An unlocked smartphone, nice. Sam's surroundings have been the stage for a zombie invasion, but it can't be that serious, for the player didn't get to know any of that. Or the player didn't watch the news for the past few weeks, who knows, the player character is not fleshed out. Sam is in great danger but finds the time to use correct spelling, grammar and capitalization.

The gameplay is good old CYOA. To answer Sam the player always has two choices. Usually the choice doesn't matter, sometimes the wrong choice kills Sam and moves the player back to the last save point.

Yet another cheap CYOA game. The story ain't bad (apart from the plot holes) and the gameplay concept has potential, hence two stars.

A short, surreal scene about a nightly "conference" (rather a performance) in a hotel, interrupted by short, surreal dreams. It has vibes, and it's not annoying. If you're looking for a game though, look elsewhere.

Just in case you stumble across this database entry and wonder what kind of game it is: It's an interpreter for the Funge-98 programming language. An interesting abuse of the Z-machine, but nothing for a romantic evening at the fireplace with just you and your laptop. Three stars because everything else would be unfair.

You're swimming in the Atlantic Ocean and are suddenly sucked underwater by a "whirlpool". Down there you can swim around without worrying about a lack of oxygen, and get killed without warning when you enter certain rooms, or enter other rooms with certain items in inventory.

Quill games, or memory-restricted games with a two-word parser in general, can have a certain charme. "Sea of Zirun" doesn't. It doesn't even have an "examine" command. The underwater setting with clams and seaweed and turtles and all is nice, but everything else is plain annoying.