Ratings and Reviews by Nomad

(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.