NODE [7,3]

I almost didn't play this game, since it mentions lewd ascii art and strong profanity, but I found it not really objectionable at all (in case anyone was putting it off because of that).

This game starts kind of like Type Help, in that you have an interface available and have to guess the initial commands.

Fortunately, the game gives good hints. In fact, many times during this game it felt like it was setting up complex and difficult puzzles only to bypass them by simply continuing to explore and read more. There were some puzzles, but mostly fairly simple. As an example, there is Scheme code for ascii art generation which you can copy and paste into a compiler (as I did) and edit out the bugs (as I did; the bugs are intentional typos), and get it to run, but it's not plot-relevant. Similarly, you never really have to guess at file names; I thought there'd be a puzzle about finding which profile has printer access or accessing phone lines, but that never happened. This is good; the game was mostly story-based, and if such puzzles had existed, it would have brought the momentum to a halt, so I appreciate how things worked out. I think the most complex puzzle is in the Fryday mini-game, but that one has a good reward.

The overall structure is complex, with email entries, diaries, a mini text-adventure, and real-life events. In some ways, it reminds me of past IFComp-winner And Then You Come To A House Not Unlike The Last One (or something; I didn't google the name), with its computer terminal, ascii art, separated time frame, etc.

The writing is the main focus of the game. It does a lot right, with varied character personalities, realistic period-specific dialogue, and so on.

Some things didn't land as well for me, and I can't really pin down why. Sometimes jokes just went over my head; for instance, there's an email from a Nigerian Prince (a common scam at the time) with the name Mahomboo Sukammer-Ono. I figured out that 'Sukammer' was 'scammer' and maybe 'Ono' was 'oh no', but I still don't understand Mahomboo (many of my students are Nigerian and it's not really formed like a Nigerian name, and googling it, it's not a real name.). Maybe it's "My humble scammer oh no"? But what would that mean?

Other times I got confused because I'm American. I thought Vivian was a girl's name and Wendel a boy's name, so when they talked about 'another woman' or 'that man' I got confused. And sometimes the game veered between being pulpy and over-the-top in writing and being serious and somber in writing, so I occasionally lost my suspension of disbelief before reinserting it.

But the story was interesting, the writing was often fun, the game was complex, and I think this is an impressive piece of work.