Reviews by Nomad
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Meh., July 17, 2021You 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.
Meh., June 28, 2021You'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.
I LOL'd., June 9, 2021Available 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.
Meh., June 9, 2021Commercial 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.
Meh., February 25, 2021A 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.
Not a game, February 12, 2021Just 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.
Meh, February 3, 2021You'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.
Wow., February 3, 2021This 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.
Nice, short, linear, some flaws., February 2, 2021A 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.
Try & Error Like It's 1980, October 11, 2020No 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.
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