Spider and Web

This game channels the player towards a pivotal, brilliant, "gestalt" puzzle which requires the player to piece together a couple of different patterns that the narrative created through its repetition of the backstory. The fact that the puzzle works so well is impressive all by itself, but "Spider and Web" also features clipped, stylish prose that creates a tense, claustrophobic atmosphere and describes a sinister, memorable NPC.

This game is so good it hurts.

Really really good use of the medium. I have attempted to tell so many people about this game that my friends are bored. This is the memory of playing that I pull out when I am trying to explain to a non-IF player what the genre is all about and how exciting and mind-bending it can be.

Not really a spoiler, but marked for the especially sensitive:
(Spoiler - click to show)There is a part in the game in which I realized that what I was doing as the PC (in a flashback) was not what I had really done.

It created this weird moment when I realized that the author and I had entered into a strange conspiracy to tell the computer lies. In other words, the game state was not merely contained within some data structure in software, but existed in the mind of the player and the author. Weird.

Spider and Web is all about trial and error. Yet it somehow manages to make those trials and errors fun, intriguing, and occasionally illuminating. A too heavy-handed description of the story, or even the gameplay, would ruin the several "a-ha!" moments that Plotkin has set up for you. Play for a few minutes and you'll see the first. The second is nested much deeper.... While the game provides enough hints to keep things moving along, I was occasionally overwhelmed by the multitude of items in my possession, and the occasionally maze-like layout of the setting. However, there's a cognitively dissonant moment near the end - you'll know it when you see it - that could only be pulled off in IF, and only by somebody like Plotkin. It's when - no, I'll never tell.