Reviews by Nomad

(Warning: This review might contain spoilers. Click to show the full review.)Not an actual game. A situation, some choices, one page of text per choice, the end. Yawn.

I'm not particular fond of CYOA-style "games". This one hooked me on though. The setting (a company special investigator arrives at a company-owned research site in remote, snow-covered Norway to find out about a missing team) is fairly fresh, the story and it's pacing are crisp and the writing is excellent - not too brief, not sprawling, but to the point in a way that lets you visualize scenery and action. The author gets something out of the limited "game" mechanics by locking the player from information through the choices she makes. I'm sure there's alternative endings and I have the feeling those are only determined by the last three or four choices, but that's just guesswork. For a gamebook this is an excellent piece of entertainment. If you're a kid, or you're easily scared by anything more scary than Sesame Street, be warned - the secret agent story gets a slightly lovecrafty twist during its course.

"Phone in Mouth" is a short story about a journalist discovering the subculture of "oralphones", people who put their smartphones into their mouths. As the term "short story" indicates it's not a game. The writing isn't remarkably bad, but "interactive" means more than occasionally pressing a "continue" button.

The game comes with several comfort features and may very well get interesting some time into the story, but hilarious parser problems prevent initial progress.

Lost and Found plays in modern day Tokyo, but not in the glitzy entertainment districts, but in the unhurried suburbs. The player is a homeless tutor who lives in a park near a school and encounters a female teacher who leaves an enduring footprint in his life.

The setting is fresh and well fleshed out. As a game, Lost and Found sucks as it's just a gamebook with merely a handfull of choices to make. But the writing is good, the story is good, the pacing is good, and so it's a good read. Done in 15 minutes, but it's exciting and emotionally affecting. Recommended for people who love fresh settings and who don't expect a game to be an actual game.

The game plays in an alternate reality which is just like our world, except for that vampires co-exist as a small minority among humans. Most humans are not very fond of the vampires, some are downright racist, even violent. You play a human adolescent who's forced to live with a vampire family for a while. The story is full of action, romance and the occasional sociocritical undertone.

For literature, "The Vampire House" is too shallow. It's obviously written for adolescents, and not for the "Catcher in the Rye" reading type of adolescents. At times it reads like a dime novel, which would be okay for a piece of interactive fiction. Unfortunately, as a gamebook it lacks interactivity. Page after page after page it's just text, until finally a decision is required, usually just to boost different stats that might come in handy much later. Like, each evening you can chose between "studying" and "workout" (and a few minor things). This gets repetitive pretty soon. The story slowly hints at two greatly differing ends, but the way there gets more and more boring.

Adolescents might find this gamebook entertaining. Others better look elsewhere.

The story starts with a stereotype amnesia situation (*yawn*) in a lighthouse unknown to you, then slowly unfolds and thus shall not be spoilered here. The setting is... if I'd call it "simplyfied reality with magic realism elements" you'd probably think it's more exciting than it actually is. The cute game world has electricity, but its elements are usually reduced to buildings that could have existed a century or even two ago. Say, a bakery, a pub, you get the picture. It's consistent though; it's fun wandering around because the surroundings are easy to understand and seem lively, and there's NPCs where you would expect them. There's cons though. The NPCs are pretty taciturn. The plot unfolds slowly at first but is then thrown into your face in one move, with magic suddenly entering the game world without further explanation. Most of the puzzles aren't integrated into the plot, but just obstacles. The parser is functional, if not rudimentary.

All in all, I enjoyed romping through the game world and wished the author had spent more time on polishing the game. And on thinking of better puzzles. Would like to see a second game.

It's just a dialogue-heavy short story through which you click.

You are a prominent lawyer in 1950's New York. An accident (or was it an assault) all of a sudden turns your life upside down, and you need to find out whom you can trust and whom you can't.

The story got me hooked up from the first moments, and the implementation is generally smooth. The pacing is pleasant, I was gently being directed through the events but never felt rushed.

On the con side, there's a lot of typos in the text, and conversation parsing could have done with an additional synonym or two to make it more intuitive. What some will rate as a design flaw is the fact that you can't play the game in one session - you will make mistakes and need to learn from them. Since the game is not overly complex I personally have no issues with this - if I know it up-front, which is the case here, as the game notes prominently mention it.

Big recommendation. If you're fluent in German, that is.