The Great Xavio

SPAG
The puzzles were actually intriguing enough to keep me involved -- especially once I had put about a half hour into it. The worst part was that what I saw as the first puzzle, finding and getting into the Great Xavio's hotel room, was actually the hardest and most-involved of any puzzle in the game. [...]

Anyway. Enough about puzzles: what about the story? Well, the character is a pretty interesting one, while still managing to be vague so that the player can identify with him easily: a grad student with only a last name, who teams up with a professor (Dr. Todd) to solve mysteries. Or maybe fight crime. Apparently they've been featured in other stories before, though this is their first interactive fiction game. The professor is a bit of a caricature, but amusing enough until he becomes annoying, which is probably how it's supposed to be. He could have used a bit more variety in his random actions.

-- Jess Knoch
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>VERBOSE -- Paul O'Brian's Interactive Fiction Page

The game credits testers, but I can't tell whether any of them are members of the IF community. If not, that may be part of the problem -- it's important to have at least one person in your pool of testers who is conversant with the basic standards of modern IF. They'll notice things that novice testers will miss. To sum up in one word what this game lacks: polish. It just needs to be tightened up -- formatting errors fixed, typos eliminated, underimplemented areas enhanced. Once that happens, the peculiar charm of Hagerston and Todd will be able to shine through unimpeded.
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