Craverly Heights

Craverly Heights is a short game with a lot of creativity. You play Dr. Langridge, a brilliant physician at Roland Memorial Hospital. Pauline, your patient, is in desperate need of an operation. Sadly, her insurance is refusing to pay for it, which saddles you with the laborious task of trying to raise the money yourself.

A dramatic setup quickly mutates into a comedy of bad acting and ad-libbing. The map is small, but the rooms have a lot of personality. The characters are mostly static, but their dialogue does change depending on what you are wearing. There are multiple endings.

I usually find comedic IF to be more amusing than actually funny, but Craverly Heights has some really great moments. If you are looking for a light-hearted game that doesn’t take itself too seriously, I highly recommend Craverly Heights.

It's a wonder IF writers haven't leaned harder into overt soap opera presentation. The stock verbs are so over-the-top and tailor-made, what with all the KISSing and THROWing and KILLing we reflexively do. In this slice of daytime drama / wry workplace comedy, no one in particular is at the controls. Although you are seemingly the least-qualified performer to sort out the issues, only you have the motivation to walk about the set and try to string together the scenes between the commercial breaks. And, of course, you have a secret weapon that lets you weave plot threads twice as fast...

I enjoyed Craverly Heights more than a C-grade. Tight writing, paths to multiple endings feel natural and build the character/actor relationships well. The game is mostly well implemented, although the lurking stack overflow bug is funny in its way.

But I do feel cheated that we never got a scene with more than two characters, never got a solid soapy slap (to receive or give--indeed, SLAP is unimplemented and HIT gives the stdlib response!) and never got a payoff (beyond head canon) for the Pauline(Spoiler - click to show) / Janine conflation.

This is a sparsely-implemented but well-written piece in Playfic. It feels like an example game, but contains Veeder's usual wit and noodles around with the PCs identity and inventory in a way that could be interestingly fleshed out in a longer piece. Any more description would spoil. Worth a look if you have ten minutes.

This review is for the Official Ryan Veeder Weekend Review Salon with Guaranteed Prize.

This Ryan Veeder game had me very confused, and then pleased, then more confused; then I read the source code, nodded, and understood.

You play a doctor trying to help a sick patient named Pauline. You are in a small hospital that is very... unusual, to say the least, in its geography.

The lack of cluing got to me, though, and the strong branching made each playthrough less memorable.

But the twist was pleasant.