Spur

Baf's Guide

The best Western game I've seen yet. You start out in the middle of a showdown on Main Street, but, due to a night of heavy drinking, you can't remember what it's about. This gives you two goals: (1) Find out what's going on, and (2) avoid getting arrested for murder once you win the gunfight. (A third goal comes along before the story is very far advanced.) The writing is superb. Despite the good-guys-vs-bad-guys plot, the style owes more to Brett Harte than to John Wayne, with colorful imagery and a good variety of characters, even including a couple of children. Difficult in places, but never really unfair, as long as you're observant. Has some crucial timed events - you'll probably have to replay the beginning multiple times before you get it fully right. I have some quibbles with the library used: many of the verbs I tried were unrecognized, and I found several (purely cosmetic) bugs. Still, it does do quite a lot to support reasonable commands for the context (e.g., "draw").

-- Carl Muckenhoupt