Ratings and Reviews by RandomExile

I expected Out of the Pit to challenge my conceptions of freedom of information, military justice and due process, so it was disappointing to find that it has little to do with any of the stated premises and is in fact a negligibly implemented, awkwardly written, unpolished and shallow exercise.

As the author himself says in the "About" text, "...I've no idea how to fix it, and, quite frankly, I don't give a f***."

There isn't enough detail in the backstory or setting to identify clear parallels to any particular set of events, nations, or actors, but there's a vague supernatural menace which it appears has made short work of the soldiers guarding your facility.

Unfortunately, while the dead guards' eyes are nothing but a haunting blank void, they are empty to the point where you can see no such void nor even eyes. A rag is hardly portable; there is a dead body named Pat which can only be referenced by the noun "male"; there is a hidden aspect to the game dependent entirely on an inconceivable violation of physics (Spoiler - click to show)and a literal violation of the fourth wall; and my crowning achievement and great joy in the game was to see "array of monitors: Taken" and "control panel: Taken" before strolling out of the Security Room back into the hallway hundreds of pounds heavier and several cubic meters enhanced in bulk but no less nimble in my step. Threepwood pants, no doubt.

It's only a 10 minute experience, but on the downside, 9 of that will be spent attempting to interact with unimplemented objects and immovable tasers. There's still room for someone to address any number of aspects of the Wikileaks debate, but Out of the Pit has nothing of substance to say on that or any other subject. Alas.

Bonehead is an interactive exploration of an historical moment and it's clear the author invested time and care into the game's design, but it's hindered by some moment-out-of-time scenes which may be more jarring than illustrative, puzzles both cliched and obscure per the subject matter, and in my case, an inability to defeat my apathy toward baseball minutiae.

I wanted to enjoy it because I think empathy and the ability to learn from a time and place are great strengths of the IF medium (and I'm still firmly on the author's team, as it were), but having to participate in certain character interactions felt like a chore, there came points where it's necessary to perform specific unintuitive actions using unfamiliar language (the bag situation, specifically), and while the early puzzles were straightforward (distract Person A to retrieve Item B), the walkthrough carried me through the awkward final stage which I felt was unplayable otherwise.

Baseball aficionados or historians may feel differently, and there are two deeper and altogether more complementary reviews available by Emily Short and Jimmy Maher at the time of this writing. For the rest, there's always Wikipedia.

...but don't play this one.

Hallow Eve aspires to be a campy 80's slasher romp, but falls apart on weak technicals and poor design.

Problems include: finicky verbs ("saw [object]" doesn't work while you're holding the saw but "cut [object] with saw" does); sit-and-wait plot trigger; an area you're cautioned you could get lost in and have no reason to explore, but which contains a critical item you'll discover you need while on the opposite side of the map, although there's still no reason to think the boring maze-area might have such a thing; occasional plot-on-rails despite superior alternatives (someone's dying right now but you have to walk someone else to her car); poorly responsive NPCs; and the game's entirely unplayable without the walkthrough.

It's the author's first work, and considering that, it's far more substantial as a game than many learning pieces. I was torn between leaving 1 star out of 5, which seems harsh and discouraging, and 2, which seems slightly generous.

There's a good lesson here about seeking feedback early in the development process while puzzles and plot are still being sketched out in even the briefest of design and puzzle documents. Also a great opportunity to check out the IF Theory Reader (edited by Kevin Jackson-Mead and J. Robinson Wheeler), and Jimmy Maher's Let's Tell a Story Together (A History of Interactive Fiction).