Reviews by Nomad

Great premise: A self-invented game world with a self-invented religious system, and some ritual is going on. Plenty directions to go from here.

Unfortunately, neither the religious system nor the game world are being fleshed out. You're a vampire, you've done bad, you're punished, then you go to a dungeon to fight a deity, and that's it.

The game world has potential and I really want to know more about it, and because of this I was very tempted to give a third star, but in the end the game disappointed me because of its shallowness. I'll follow the author tho, because potential is definitely there.

The game starts with a classic plot: Three girls visit the remote country house if a distant relative with the intention to have a party there. The relative is not at home, the girls enter the house and settle down, a storm rises, the house has an old secret, and the girls discover an old ouja board. The writing is nice in general; sonetimes one has the impression that it's based on an English story as some terms seem to be clumsy translations.

The interactivity is limited to navigating through the house and examining about one item per room by clicking on it. In the beginning this has a bit of potential as a story begins to unfold, but a few clicks later the game is over without answering any questions. The term "game" thus seems a bit toplofty. Worth the ten minutes read, but forgotten soon.

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.

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.

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.

So you're supposed to find a haunted house (which is right in front of you but on an island) and challenge a ghost inside. A bit generic, but probably suitable for the Halloween theme. Probably homebrew parser. And that's where the trouble starts.

Typical two-word parser ambience. Okayish room descriptions, though punctuation makes them hard to read at times. Rooms are incoherent, here you're in an orchard, one step south you're on a beach that's never been mentioned before. You can only interact with what's mentioned as "Here is ...". The text is written in caps lock, which is annoying, if only mildly. The parser does not accept abbreviations. The room descriptions do not indicate available exits. Sudden death is possible if you move in the wrong direction.

Back in 1980 this might have been a smasher, but really, I'm too old for this shit.

Okayish setting: You're an employee in some medical laboratory, something's turning the population into zombies(?), you got to escape and maybe find out what's happening.

Problem is, Quest (the engine used here) seems to entice authors to be sloppy about implementation. Objects in room description can't be examined, verbs are not working, everything's underclued. I didn't get very far. A pity, for I would have loved to know whether there's a good story behind the game.

In terms of tech, there's photos of rooms and some objects. Good in general, but not very well implemented - the pictures don't blend in well with the general interface, and don't have a common style. A general problem if you're using pictures from the net.

I would love to love this game more, but in its current state I found it annoying.

Physically disabled PC goes through college. Not the worst setting, but the "game" is in fact just one big rant against ignorant society, and a link container for websites dealing with the topic. In other words: A primitive infomercial for a good cause. Injunction: Support the cause, ignore this "game".

You're Justine Thyme, an ordinary schoolgirl with a passion for superheroes. She trips into a war between superheroes and villains and discovers she's got a superpower herself - she can control time. And so she stumbles through an abandoned amusement park to save everyone from a nuclear catastropy.

I personally don't like superheroes, with the exception of "Superhero League of Hoboken"-style ones. "Madame Time"'s wee heroes are cute enough to not repel me. The frozen time scenario makes for some neat puzzles, and the game world, small as it is, is well constructed and cozy. I had a problem with understanding the overall target of the game, but once that is clear it's fun working towards it. Definitely recommended, especially for n00bs (and I myself am always playing like one).

Interesting premises: The game "world" is just one room, and it's filled with abstract obstacles, encounters, fears and chances of your everyday life (as the author). Interaction with listed terms drives the story forward. Could probably be turned into an interesting experience.

Problem: Massive underimplementation. Guess the verb. Typing in plenty random thoughts just to get standard library answers. Sometimes you succeed and the story continues, but most of the time it feels like a big...

...waste of time.

Zugzwang puts you in the position of a chess piece close to the end of a game. Sounds quirky? It definitely is.

The game is extremely short (10 turns) and extremely linear (two paths). For me that's a classic candidate for 1, max 2 stars. The game is so quirky though - the setting alone is unique, but there's also dialogue between the individual chess pieces, IF-style description of the events, optional examining - it still sucks as a game, but it has so much potential, and as a "proof of concept" it sort of shines. I constantly had to think of a Romeo and Juliet story unfolding through a chess game. Too bad this is just a (term used by game) demo.

The Lesson of the Tortoise is a short, okay game with an interesting setting. You're a Chinese farmer who finds out his wife has a lover, and those two dump him in the basement of his own home, probably to kill him later. Interesting setup, innit?

Unfortunately the game is very short, linear, and not overly well implemented. The plot takes a few (well, three, it's short after all) sharp bends that are interesting but leave you wondering if that was really necessary. It resembles a fable that's been brought into IF form with a sledgehammer. Also, it's somewhat underimplemented, could need a transcript or two to smooth the crucial scenes.

All in all, I'd bet you start the game because of the promise of an interesting scenario, and then when you're done you're like, "Okay, but that was it?!" Waste of potential, probably.

You are thrown into a typical slice-of-life situation: You find yourself at the foot of a tree, and your corn dog is somewhere up in the tree. You get choices, and with each choice a usually completely unrelated consequence happens. Like, you decide to climb the tree, and happen to stumble across a family of elves living in the tree. Or you decide to walk to the next gas station, but on the way you meet a troll who's got a problem with the local skateboard kids. Stuff like that, all the time. Chosing the wrong answer results in an end screen. As funny and entertaining as requesting a new passport at the registration office, but less rewarding. Two thumbs up in case it was written, as I suspect, by an ADHD-infected teenager within the scope of a mandatory homework. If you're looking for entertainment as a player, look elsewhere.

Oh, you play as a small dinosaur. Doesn't change a thing.

C64 only. A slightly obscure commercial game, didn't get much attention back when it was published, which was in 1985.

The game throws you right into the pit. Probably pardonable, let's assume the original game featured some sort of instructions. You can find some blurb on the web: Free the king's daughter from an evil magician.

Designwise the game is pretty horrible. The rooms are generic and don't even try to form something like a game world. The two-word parser is stubborn. The puzzles are not blended into the action. The typography is one big mess, looks a little like noone ever proofread the (commercial!) game.

On the plus side the game has a few surprises up the sleeves. It's just one file so it's limited to 64k of memory. Probably a tape release. It features graphics and music(!), so there's almost no memory left for the game and parser antics, right? Wrong! The map is rather large, you control two characters (although you can't switch at will), and you can command an NPC (a walking tree, of all sorts). The puzzles, as randomly thrown onto the map as they are, are associative and thus not too difficult, yet somewhat rewarding.

Not recommended for people used to sophisticated parsers of the Inform age. If you have witnessed and enjoyed the 8-bit era, or if you have a weird interest in how adventures looked like before the invention of upright walking, you might want to give this one a brief look.

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

In the 1980s, you're a fortune seeker (and trained diver) on a small island probably located in the Northern Caribbean. A friend consigns you to a map that bears coordinates of a wreck previously unknown - and gets assassinated moments after he parts ways with you. You have to team up with some locals in order to get a chance to seek for the wreck, but the locals are fortune seekers just as you, and cannot be trusted. Will you get out of this situation alive?

The cons of this game cannot be denied. The pros neither: Besides the pretty unspoiled setting (for 1984, that is), Cutthroats starts like a predecessor of an open world game. NPCs roam about freely, minding their own business, or (less pleasant) yours. The game gives you the feeling of exploring a game world that advances on its own. That, in combination with the realistic Caribbean setting and the fascinating (though stereotype) NPCs, provides for a mindblasting experience.

But then, the cons. Since time trickles away relentlessly, and since time triggers (and disables) events, there's a multitude of situations where being at the wrong place at the wrong time (or rather not being at the right place at the right time) renders the game unwinnable. Sometimes even without telling you so. Sometimes your only fault is to carry the wrong things with you at a certain time and place, or to give a wrong answer to an NPC. This way you'll do a LOT of try & error, which is only acceptable if you're aware of what's happening, which in many cases you aren't. Also, the second part of the game (the actual treasure hunt) is a bit dull.

In summary: Great premises, but full of doubtful design decisions. If you can find the original game package on Ebay, you'll be rewarded with hilarious feelies, as ever so often with Infocom games.

(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.

This game would probably have much more reviews if it was playable in a browser. Anyway, it starts out as a simple fantasy gamebook with a linear flow. Writing is actually good - the game world is presented from the perspective of the protagonist, meaning there's no lengthy explanations of everything, because the protagonist *knows* what kind of social system etc. he's living in. I like that. Next up, a horror element creeps in, almost lovecraftian. Then, a sudden change of perspective which I'm not going to spoil. After that, the game was over relatively quickly.

I played it through once only - so far. I'm pretty sure the game is not as linear as it seemed to me. There's a score at the end indicating I could have performed far better - means I maybe only scratched the surface. Three stars so far, for the interesting setting and plot. Probably a fourth star the next time I play it. If you like gamebooks you should definitively try it.

A short story, not exactly interactive. A spaceship crew discovers a lost spaceship and boards it. Nice setting. Good pacing at the beginning, maybe a bit too fast once on board the lost ship. More trouble begins there: Logic dissolves. Crew hierarchies don't matter as everybody just does as he pleases, everybody intuitively knows the layout of the strange ship, a former crew member had the means to paint paintings with acrylic. The "game" end happens soon after. I counted two situations where I could make a choice. A nice quick read (with a few flaws), but not a game.

No explanation what your goal is. Sparse room descriptions. Things are lying around unmotivatedly. NPCs are not communicative. Two word commands are all you need. It's like the past 40 years didn't happen, and Scott Adams still squeezes obscure puzzles into 16 KB of RAM. I appreciate the effort, but I do not long for a sequel. Not recommended.

Wow.

First glance: Artsy experiment
But then does the fun increment
It's a game of adventurous exploring
Scattered puzzles make sure it's not boring
For a Twine game it's really excellent

It's not a game, just a story you click through. But the story is nice. Well, it's pretty trivial until the one interesting twist, but that'll grab you, promise. Makes me a bit sad it's not a game.

Shambolic, horribly implemented. If the storyline wasn't on rails you'd never get beyond the first room. Plus, the story didn't grab me.

Robin Johnson has a lot of quirky ideas, and within the severe limitations of the format of his game (see below) the writing is amusing, refreshing and down to the point. That should easily make forget that the setting of the game is pretty cliché.

Unfortunately the technical novelty of reducing a parser game to the most indispensable verbs and available objects leads to two problems: The solution to many puzzles is obvious when the necessary verb-object combination is suddenly highlighted (e.g. a beer usually has the options "drop" and "drink" with it, and when the right situation comes up an additional "give" option pops up), and not coming up with the correct solution immediately entices you to fall a dull simply-click-everything routine that many magazine editors criticize about P&C adventures. It doesn't exactly help that the entire text is kept in a Scott Adams telegraphic style which cuts off the feeling of exploring a game world's details.

As an interface experiment Draculaland is really cool. And it has its moments, see above. But in general, as a game I want to dive into it fails.

A nice reminiscence of 1980's C64 cassette games. I'm now too old to wrestle a parser though.

A Chose-your-own-adventure game with sexual content. Good idea, but bad implementation: The "story" doesn't captivate at all, and apart from a few story branches there's not much of a "game" aspect. Wasted potential.

The James Bond setting in the Austrian Alps was fresh at the time and would still be promising. Everything else... Alpine Encounter's competitors in 1985 were games such as The Pawn, Nine Princes in Amber or Dragonworld. Textwise, Infocom released A Mind Forever Voyaging, Spellbreaker and Wishbringer that same year. On the graphics front, Mindscape released Déjà Vu in 1985. Alpine Encounter's has a two-word parser, sparse room descriptions, and lets you guess the essential commands in every damn room. Antiquated the moment it hit the shelves.

Clicking through hyperlinks to find a path that lets you get on with the story. Time limit. Snack-sized game. Not my thing. Setting has potential though.

You're just clicking through text. Not even "choices" to chose from. As a simple text the concept is not too bad - the text is divided into 24 chapters, mimicing an advent calendar. As a game, it fails completely.

'Nuff said. Five minutes playtime, and being a hamster allows for some unusual and funny situations. The "intro" is a bit confusing and the parser is not very sophisticated, but the game is won before you even notice that. If I had to limit myself to one word only, it'd be "cute".

(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.