Ratings and Reviews by Marco Innocenti

I guess it is always hard for an established author to enter a competition (the IFComp, especially, for several reasons). What will people expect from him/her? What SHOULD we?

It's things like this that... how do they say on Facebook? They "restore my faith in humanity".

Will not let me go is an EMOTIONAL piece, of the kind that didn't resonate with me this much since Photopia --- we all know what I'm talking about.

I don't want to enter into details and dissect this, well, masterpiece, as I don't think I have the right to. I just want to say that this is a Twine game that EXACTLY does what a Twine should do every time: tell a story no regular text-book could.

The way the words change to address a memory problem; the way the game (which is fairly long, all considered) aids us in understanding how long it will be still; the AWESOME, INTERIORIZED, MOVING story it tells. And all of this in such a fantastic, unique and PROFOUND way. This is the craft of a Writer, with the capitalized W.

What to say. Einstein once said that intuition is the best skill of any scientist. I may add that knowing how to f*****g tell a story is probably the second best.

Stephen is a scientist. After this... thing he did, I may very well say he's the Einstein of Interactive Fiction.

I didn't understand this game. The prose was superb (some would say a lil' bit too much wandering on the poetic shore), the setting intriguing... but what was this about?

I mean: the goal is obvious but how does (Spoiler - click to show)selling narcos to a bird and offering the same to an old lady fits said goal? Most of the times I was strolling thru the park (uhm, yeah), doing strange things to NPCs or items for the sake of what?

Ah: and the provided walkthrough is broken. So I couldn't actually finish the game, properly. I suppose that's where all the things are explained. Although almost everything the walkthrough told me to do was unclued. It fits the protagonist, maybe... but certainly not me.

I expected a far bigger game, given the premise.

What I have mistaken for a prologue is indeed half the game. That half is specially well crafted and intriguing... then the game simply breaks. It starts behaving strangely (poor testing of the second half?) and becoming the more and more aimless. And when I started to think "what's happening here?", the game is over.

Left a bitter taste. This could have been a nice piece, if only it didn't wander away so soon.

Absence of Law (which title needs to be discussed, too), is a technically perfect game, where the player needs to use a custom command line to achieve extreme results. Most of the action is given through a set of three-letters custom-commands and by looking at nested things. The interface (in the online-playable version) is customized too, and offers music as a background, a thing that I've been missing since the days of Castle of Terror (in the Eighties!).

AoL is fun to play, hard and soft here and there, and also very nice to read. It's a story that needs to be told, while keeping all the puzzles that make IF such a fantastic trip, when done properly.

There are a few drawbacks, but those are minor and strictly personal, so they won't remove a single star from the overall rating.

The language puzzle, and partly the cloning puzzle, had me fear I had to drop the game. While the latter is just a matter of trial-and-error, the former proved too hard for me. Probably, the experience was ruined not by the puzzles themselves but by the lack of time for the IFComp scope and by the availability of a walkthrough, which I reverted to too easily.

The music was precious, but sometimes a bit off. I expected it to be ghastly and in Minor, while it too often sounded like merry jingles. This links to another problem (which I admit is only in my mind): much of the content is about dystopian concepts. Although the game is referred to as "comedy", I think the fun fest at the end broke the 4th wall to me. I would have preferred a grimmer closing.

This game is about being inside a simple, animal-like, childish mind. And so, it all revolves around this premise. The minimalism is not plainly esthetic. Guessing who you are may be simple. Guessing at what it's happening still puzzles me, instead. Very nice at setting... the setting; very low in putting up some fight (the game is ridiculously easy).

As a side note: this game would really love having some old-style, pixelated graphics as room descriptions. I would do those for free. :-)