Beyond the Tesseract

Baf's Guide

A highly conceptual game in which you interact with abstract concepts and mathematical entities as if they were tangible. Requires some techinical knowledge, but nothing that you probably haven't picked up if you pay attention to such things. Small, primitive, difficult, fun. Some sticking points - thank goodness for the walkthrough.

-- Carl Muckenhoupt

SPAG
I personally found this game hard...but that's because I'm in 8th grade and haven't had physics or quantum mathematics. [...] Over all this is a fun game that could take a long time to play, or a very short time to delete.
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Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 1 Write a review

This is what you get if you cross a Scott Adams adventure with an abstract math/physics adventure. The parser is primitive but consistent (verb+noun, only 4 letters of each word matters) and fast (running an Atari ST emulator at 32MHz - at 8MHz the text is slightly delayed). However, a z-code version exists.

Most puzzles you don't need to understand 100% to solve, as you will usually have an idea of what to do. For instance, you may come across a Riemann Zeta Integral. If I ever learned about it, I have forgotten about it, but knowing it was an integral was sufficient to have a hunch of what to do so I did manage to solve the corresponding puzzle.

For me, the difficulty level was just right but I think some of the optional puzzles I could never have solved without some knowledge of e.g. superconductors and electromagnetic fields. Luckily, being an electrical engineer helped me a lot here. However, if you allow yourself to google the concepts you come across, you will probably have a chance of solving all puzzles anyway.

Overall, a highly enjoyable and original game.

Parser/Vocabulary (Rating: 7/10)
Primitive but consistent, fast and has several synonyms for verbs. My only caveat on the Atari ST is that there is apparently no LOOK / REDESCRIBE command so if you want to see the location description again, you must leave the room and enter it again.

Atmosphere (Rating: 8/10)
The surreal atmosphere is very convincing. The writing is terse as can be expected from a game which originally was an 8-bit game.

Cruelty (Rating: Merciful)
I don't think you can make the game unwinnable.

Puzzles (Rating: 9/10)
Some fun, fair puzzles, though the perceived difficulty will depend very much on your scientific background, thus it may seem unfair to some people.

Overall (Rating: 9/10)
A surprisingly fun game, considering it was designed in 1983. Some scientific background may be needed to enjoy it fully.

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