Ratings and Reviews by RadioactiveCrow

In this story you play Calaf, a rougish young man with rich parents whose primary leisure activity is spending time in brothels. But with a single glimpse of the legendarily beautiful and mysterious princess Turnadot (based loosely on the play/opera of the same name), he falls deeply in love with her (or does he?) and becomes willing to do anything to get her to marry him.

This is an interesting piece of IF. It is written in ChoiceScript, but does not make use of the stats features (instead replacing the stats page with a funny message), and I'm not sure any of the choices you make cause the story to branch much. But it illustrates well a different way to put interactivity into a work of IF. Each bit of writing in between choices is very small, you basically get to decide on 90% of the dialogue of Calaf. In this way I felt I embodied the character more than in many other pieces of choice-based IF, because he basically didn't do anything without my permission, I put all the words in his mouth. Now, between the subject matter and the necessarily limited choices I was given in most instances to choose the dialogue, I still didn't really connect with the character, as my personality does not fall any where near the range you allowed to pick from for Calaf's personality. Still, the quick pace of choices made me feel like I was playing the character almost as much as I would in a parser-based game.

The writing in this game is excellent as well. It is mostly dialogue between two characters and has a fun cat-and-mouse rhythm to it. It reminded me of the best scenes of dialogue from a Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino movie, and I enjoyed it very much.

In the end, I think mostly due to the subject matter, and a bit of plot dissonance towards the end ((Spoiler - click to show)I felt like the story went too quickly from Calaf discovering his friend murdered to the "happy" ending), this one didn't really grab me the way some lesser games with more agreeable plots have. Still, I think this is an important game for the quality of the writing and the lessons it can teach about the different kinds of interactivity. Certainly worth your time for that.

I have a vague recollection of a Twitter conversation with the esteemed Mathbrush about a year ago regarding this game that was still a work in progress at the time. I don't remember if I was talking to him about it or merely observing a thread he had going with someone else, but what I do remember (which doesn't necessarily make it true) is that he said he was working on a game that combined all of the most popular elements from IFComp winners of years past. That he was making the uber-IFComp game, designed specifically to win the competition in 2021. I'm not sure what happened along the way, but more vague memories of tweet snippets have led me to believe that IFComp needed his help, perhaps behind the scenes, but definitely as the preeminent reviewer and judge of interactive fiction, so he selflessly entered his game in the less prestigious (though still awesome) ParserComp 2021. And it won, defeating a game by another titan of IF, Robin Johnson, along the way. I don't know if it would have won IFComp 2021 (the list of games isn't out yet), but it would have had a great chance.

This is a really good game.

You play the part of Lily, a little girl on her birthday at the eponymous theme park, tasked with gathering five key items from throughout the park in order to enter the castle at the far end of the park and become queen for a day. But all is not as it seems. Strange things are happening in the park, and the longer the day goes the weirder things get.

The game is heavy on puzzles and atmosphere, light on story, but that's just fine. The puzzles are some of the best I've encountered and range from easy and obvious to tricky and hard. I liked the spectrum of puzzle difficulties as well as the variety of types. There are a few find-the-missing-item puzzles that we've all seen a million times, but there were also some truly unique geographic and mechanical puzzles, one of which I will likely nominate for a XYZZY award (see spoilers below). With one exception I thought puzzles were pretty easy to wrap your head around, even if they took a little while to solve, and the clues were ample.

The world is very modest in size and the map laid out very simply, which is great as it makes sure that navigation isn't a frustration. I did draw a small map for one of the puzzles, but moving around the park from attraction to attraction was easy and set in memory pretty quickly. Every location and just about every item was important, with some dependent on others in order to progress, so that if you got stuck somewhere you could just explore and examine some more, or in other areas and usually find something to help you out. There is also an in-game hints system. I didn't have to use it at all (first time in while that has been the case), but I tested it out after I finished the game and the hints for the hardest puzzle are good and dole out the information Invisiclues-style so you get just the push you need.

Overall the writing wasn't anything to write home about, but it usually isn't something that I look for in parser games. However, there were a couple places that had some great writing, one atmospheric (to me reminiscent of the Land of the Dead puzzle from Zork) and one just crazy weird in true Groover fashion. The story is thin, again, pretty normal for puzzle-first parser games, but it is sweet and has a good ending.

Overall, a truly excellent and enjoyable game. This one got close to five stars from me, and I very rarely give those out. (SEE EDIT BELOW)

(Spoiler - click to show)My favorite puzzle was making the Creaky House sing. I think that one should get nominated for best individual puzzle in next year's XYZZY awards.

My least favorite puzzle was the Midnight Laserfight puzzle. The explanation of the mechanics/layout of puzzle went by fast and didn't give me enough to really visualize what was happening. I had to save my game and then restart to go back to the first entrance into that room to get the explanation again and still it took me a while to figure it out. But eventually I did without hints. There were enough clues in the text after you experimented with giving the teams uneven weapons that I knew what my ultimate goal was, and I just missed it a couple times when the hidden room became an option at the controls.

EDIT 08/11/23: With the quadrennial IF Top 50 vote upon us again I'm re-examining many of my old reviews and ratings, much as I did four years ago, to see if anything that I've given 4 stars really deserves that bump up to 5 stars. This one deserves it. It has stuck with me more than most of the other works I've given 4 stars. My mild criticisms of it still stand, but I don't think they should hold it back from being considered one of the 50 greatest IF works of all time (at least in my book, though I still haven't played many of the best loved classics). Over the past 4 years my respect and enjoyment of puzzle-centric games has increased greatly. I still love a good story with deep characters mixed in with my IF, but I really do appreciate games with layers of puzzles in a well-built world just as much too. And this game does that better than almost all (if not all) other games I've played. The puzzles are fun, interesting, and innovative, without being too hard, and that is something I really respect. Add to that the myriad of homages to another IF titan, Chandler Groover, and I think it makes this one a classic that will stand the test of time.

This is a Twine piece in which you play a writer, or at least someone who aspires to be such, trying to just get something on that damn page to start your novel. I think anyone who has encountered such a problem will recognize many of the excuses to avoid writing and the honest attempts to jump-start your creativity.

The game loops a little bit more in the beginning than I would prefer (I was beginning to wonder if the game had an end or if it stayed in the loop forever to make a point), but slowly progress is made and new choices become available.

A decent effort, if nothing too special. A fun, short piece, worth a few minutes of your time.

This game is very abstract, with concepts implemented as objects and I suspect able to be used in that way if the conditions are right. I could not figure out how to do so though, and after puzzling with it for awhile and asking the game for help (only to be told I'd created a game condition without an associated hint), I gave up. There wasn't anything about the game up to that point that made me care enough to fight harder to get a resolution/ending.

This is a game I feel like would have been better in Twine or a similar system. Instead of me getting frustrated to the point of giving up, trying to make the parser do what the author wanted me to do, I could have been guided gently down the author's intended path.

This game felt like the author was just learning Quest and wanted to create a whole (though very small) world to test that she knew the ins and outs of the system. Sadly, that's all this is, a proof of concept, a prototype, a maiden voyage.

There isn't much to this game other than clicking (since it was programmed in Quest) the hyperlinks to navigate around the world and find the various objects you are supposed to find, all very obvious and none hidden behind puzzles. And there really isn't any story to it either.

I did really enjoy the implementation of the map creation system. As I moved around the game drew the map for me, which was a great help in orienting me in the world. However, when I went back down stairs and the ground floor map started to be written on top of the upper floor map I was less thrilled. That was unnecessarily confusing.

No bugs, but also not much fun.

First of all, my thanks to Magnus Olsson for the z-code port of this game. So much easier to load up Filfre to play this rather than trying to get an ancient executable to work or what not.

I had never played this game until today, but had read about it many times. For the time in which it was created I'm sure it was a fun little game. Even in the modern era I enjoyed playing it for a bit and I'm sure I will introduce it to my kids one day as both a logic problem and computer history lesson. That said, it is just a puzzle/mapping game, no real story to it.

I recommend everyone play it for an hour or so to appreciate where IF started and where it is today. Still fun, if only for a bit.

As best as I gathered, in this story you play a series of birds, I believe all pets, stealing diamonds from your owner.

The game provides very little backstory or direction and just have to flounder around for awhile trying to figure it out. You play though a number of scenes, embodying a different bird with a specific task of the heist to carry out in each. Each scene has a single puzzle. I finished the first few, but gave up on the third (or fourth?). All the puzzles seemed very guess-the-verb with few hints from the game to clue you in to the correct solution.

Didn't find much about this game to like, except the ostrich character. The stark change from the prior few scenes did have me giggling.

Your mileage may vary.

This appears to be a one-room game with a single guess-the-verb puzzle. No backstory, characterization, or reason to care about what is going on. Feels like a test game for someone trying to learn a new IF coding language. It did implement an impressive number of verbs for such a small game though.

This is a parser-based game featuring several puzzles, but also some funny scenes and dialogue. You play as Ichabod Stuff, the recently fired village-idiot of Swineford, headed back to the farm where you rent a barn stall, to figure out your next career move. You have to talk to the family you live with, and their animals, get some minor "quests" to start your career as a knight, and then complete them. The game features the typical parser interface, but with a menu-based dialogue system, which I appreciated.

The game is relatively short and features a fairly small map. Early on, before I was sure just how big the map was I did feel the need, for the first time in years, to draw my own map. This was primarily because the game used ordinal directions, which I have trouble keeping straight in my head. There wasn't really a pressing need for it and if the map had been rearranged to only use cardinal directions I think it would have made the game a little better.

I think the game starts really strong, particularly in its non-puzzle parts. The first descriptions you encounter, and especially the first dialogue you have with the NPCs, can be laugh-out-loud funny. I also appreciated that early in the game as you are going through the typical examine everything routine, that the game will just go ahead and make you take the objects that will be useful later, while not letting you get anything that won't be useful. The puzzles in this game were plenty fun and challenging (more on that later) without red herrings, so I appreciate that the author didn't include any.

Before I go into what I didn't like about the puzzles, let me talk about the stuff that I really did like. The animals. Any puzzle involving direct interaction with an animal was delightful. Some of them were (Spoiler - click to show)guess-the-verb puzzles, but in the best way possible, with plenty of clues given to figure them out without too much hand holding. Any time I feel impressed with myself for figuring out a non-standard puzzle without too much frustration I enjoy it very much, and in those situations the credit really goes to the author for excellent puzzle design. I also really liked how those puzzles figured into the story arc and ending of the game, they were integrated into the whole, not just one-off puzzles. Finally, the game has a really good hint system accessible via the help menu, it is split into different sections so you don't get hints you don't want, and doled out Invisiclues-style, so if you just need a nudge you can get just that.

Regarding what I didn't like about the game: (Spoiler - click to show)the nest puzzle. Two aspects of it frustrated me greatly. The first was getting straw. Annabelle makes it very clear that you need straw and you only see it mentioned in one place, in your stall. But when you try to "get straw" or reference it in any way the games tells you that you can't see that here. I banged my head against this one for awhile. The description of your mattress and the "gaping hole" made me think the straw was spilling out, but I had to read the clues to understand that you have to "examine hole" in order to get the straw. So this was an example of an object clearly listed in the text that wasn't implemented in a way I was expecting. On the flip side, another aspect of this puzzle, the mud, was something that was implemented the way I expected, but wasn't clearly described in a way I was expecting. You can't find a mention of it in that room's description, nor when you "examine stream". Of course it is obvious that a stream is the place you would find mud, but in the midst of my frustration regarding the straw, I was wondering if the stall and stream were red herrings and I should be looking elsewhere for my straw and mud. After reading the hints and just typing in blindly "get mud" I was able to complete the puzzle. Later I realized that if you "examine bank" the mud is mentioned. I feel like here the mud should probably be in the room description, but at the very least examining either the stream or the bank should mention mud (or they could just be implemented as the same object). One other small problem with a puzzle I had, but got past quickly, was finding the cat after you get it out of the tree. After you fall from the tree there is no indication which way the cat went, but given the small map only two directions make sense. However, when you head NW to the clearing, the game seems to indicate that you hear the cat from that direction before you reach the location. It took me a second to realize I had to go NW again from the clearing. Unlisted exit puzzles are tricky, I think this could have easily been avoided by 1) put the text indicating that you heard the cat in the room description after you reach the clearing rather than on the way there and 2) making the direction you have to take out of the clearing not the same direction that you took to get to the clearing, as that makes it more confusing. The issues with these puzzles and the frustration they caused is pretty much the only reason I gave this game three stars. If they are fixed in a post-IFComp release I will happily bump my rating up to four stars.

Overall, a fun game with some clever puzzles that is well worth your time.

In this choice-based work you play as a kid who, in order to escape a bad situation at home, goes to a Neopets-like website called Ruffians and makes a friend named BusyAsABee. The game plays out over the course of 11 chapters and 11 years (you start as an eight-year-old and get one year older each chapter). The game primarily plays out through the chat function on the Ruffians website, though in the interludes there is some conversation with your sister (including voice-overs). Over the years you have the choice of how to develop your friendship (or romance) with Bee and how much to reveal about your troubled home life.

The middle part of this game is rough, with the player-character experiencing (Spoiler - click to show)maternal abuse and ridicule at school. Some of the scenes and conversations are heart-breaking. But thankfully, in the end there is still hope and things are looking up. Depending on how warm you've been in your conversations with Bee, the ending scenes can be beautiful in how much trust and love has grown between the two of you. I played through the game twice to try some of the other options. It is possible to get an aborted game if you don't want to open up to Bee at all in the beginning, and some of the best stuff is cut if you are more aloof towards the end. So in this game, as in life, it seems best to open yourself up to those that love you to get the best experience.

I thought this game did many things well, including a realistic portrayal of a now decades-old messaging system, and the speech patterns, cadence and abbreviations of kids chatting with each other online from elementary school age through college. The images of the Ruffians website were also great to help set the mood. I also thought the voice acting was very strong and really added something to the game. I loved the character of Rachel and her relationship with the player character. Finally, I had a huge smile break out across my face when the game ended with some music, a la the credits scene in a movie. It was a great song for the occasion and I let it play to the end.

The few things that I didn't like were the parts of the game where the audio looped until a part of a scene finished. Purposefully, the audio is intrusive to match what is happening in the scene. But the more it repeated the harder it became to focus on the text. I'd recommend the audio fading out or stopping after 2-3 loops. Also, sometimes the text and graphics were so big that I had to scroll to find the right place to click to continue the story, and I think that could be polished a bit to make it more compact.

Well worth your time!