A New Day

I had heard about this game as one which has the conceit of being "unfinished" by design, as in taking place within a game whose construction was still underway. That is technically the setting, but that's not really the important part.

This game placed 10th of 34 in the 1997 IF Comp (only the third one held at the time), and what strikes me most is that this game ended up in the top third! The development of the form has come a long way since those days, and games like this are the proof.

The plot of this one is very strange. It feels like the core concept came from a Stephen King story, weirdly injected into a story with the plot of an action thriller. The implementation is quite limited in scope, leaving not nearly enough time to develop either angle into something intriguing over the course of a typical play experience.

Beyond its undue brevity, the game's puzzles and their solutions make little sense. The saving grace is the built-in hints, which allow one to get past obstacles that feel contrived, uninteresting, and in places just plain nonsensical -- yes, the basic design exhibits all of the worst habits of the old school era. One of the hints gives advice that does not work in the current release 3; I'm not sure whether this is intentional as part of the game's "meta" nature or the result of a programming error.

While A New Day verges on a 1-star rating, I can't say that it has no redeeming qualities at all. The seed idea could have potential, though it seems close to impossible to engender a genuine sense of threat to (Spoiler - click to show)you the player from any in-game character or events, as this game seems to attempt to do. Also, the initial "finished" portions gave the impression of at least decent quality.

This game has little to offer the typical modern player but offers a genuine challenge to the would-be author: imagining other ways to run with the core ideas on which this game was built.