Ratings and Reviews by Nomad

Story: The prologue of the The Awakening series (that never came to life) doesn't have much of a story. You start in an every day situation, then you are transported into a sci-fi world, and then the prologue is over. Would one want to know more? Not me. 2/5.

Writing: Solid minimalism. Decent by late 1990's standard, but this one was written in 2010. Almost a 3, but quite a few stylistic bloopers. 2/5.

Puzzles: Game's on rails, and it's only seven moves to the end, so there's not that much puzzle to place. 1/5.

Implementation: That little game that there is is implemented solidly. Parser fails if you try odd stuff, but you don't have you, so it's... sufficient. 3/5.

Fun: Ends before it can become interesting. 1/5.

The verdict: 1.9/5 - A bad experience. But then, it's the author's first (and only, as it seems) attempt at writing IF. I bet chapter two would have been a 2.9.

An interesting story frame, to say something positive. A very cliché-ridden fantasy world. Quite some slips of the pen - wrong genders, pronouns without attributions etc. The playthrough I chose was very, very dull (Spoiler - click to show)("Patriarch-Bischof, you're evil!" - "Yeah right, sorry. Won't happen again." - "Okay bye!") but other paths may be more interesting. Contains music that suits very well. I wish the author would work on a parser game with emphasis on the game world, for imho that's where he shines.

The works of James Graham Ballard offer a very(!) interesting background for IF games. The author of this one, Mike Bonsall, is not exactly a novice to the works of Ballard. Problem is, his approach to IF is a different one to that which most players would want to take.

Bonsall manages to capture Ballard's writing style and his world building. That's hardly a miracle, with Bonsall having profound knowledge of Ballard's works. But the game is flawed in two ways that spoil it for pretty much every player: Wrong moves lead to your death, and the implementation is minimal. Like, you have two directions to chose from and chose the first one, and you die. And there's an exit east through a door but you can't go east or open the door but have to type "enter door". Sorry Mike, but Scott Adams did better, back in 1978.

So, while the game world and the writing are awesome, the game sucks as f**k. Due to the "wrong exit = death" policy a reworking would be very laborous. This one's a fail, unfortunately.

You are in a guest bedroom. In a house. That's the story. What do you expect from a SpeedIF game?

ASE is full of bugs. Error messages fill your screen every now and then. Items and verbs are not implemented. "Get all" reveals all items in the room, visible or not. Items act weird. The intro states "This is a SUCKY version - not much enjoyment can be derived from it.", and yeah, that's not exactly a lie.

The rooms descriptions are nice. Maybe there's something interesting to discover in the house. I won't find out, coz the bugs and lack of implementation keep my motivation at bay.

Waste of time.

The Adventure was written in BASIC by some high school kid in 1988. The setting is a high school (presumably the author's) with just a handfull of rooms. It's basically a CYOA without the "A"; the required input is a one-letter command from a choice of six. All you can do is move (NESW), "K"ill and "T"alk. Wrong move kills you at sight. So all you can do is try and error until you reach the positive end? Punchline: There is no positive end. The longest chain of commands will still result in death.

Someone with too much spare time ported this game to Inform 6. Still pondering whether that was an justiciable act. Playing this game feels like unlawful detention. Pun intended.