Milliways: the Restaurant at the End of the Universe

(Note: this review was based on the mid competition version of the game. Some issues it refers to may have been since ironed out in the latest release.)

Ok my longest game played yet in the competition. This is an old style parser game, that’s a direct sequel to Infocom’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game, which I know well. I’m not sure how well this game would work for people unfamiliar with the Hitchhiker’s universe, but would be interested to hear!

I played for two hours and nearly got to the end, but ran into a bug with an object that kept disappearing ((Spoiler - click to show)the heatproof tray has a horrible habit of disappearing at times after you’ve got it) so couldn’t finish it. The game has some bugs, over and above it being traditional old style. To be fair it would be an almighty task for playtesters to work through thoroughly! And I do admire how so much has been coded by a modern author in ZIL.

However ... I was wowed by the imagination, and the use of Hitchhiker’s locations, and characters, and jokes. And I just had a very happy two hours of play time. Again I’m not sure how well this would work for someone unfamiliar with the Hitchhiker’s world. But this Hitchhiker’s fan was very happy. I also liked the hub like structure based on a classic Infocom puzzle, which was rather forgiving, albeit with so many more spokes than in the original Infocom game that sometimes it could take you a while to get to where you might need to go next, and you could be cycling through a lot.

The game has a comprehensive walkthrough which I peeked at at times, especially one place where I was ridiculously stuck ((Spoiler - click to show)the philosophical word), but wanted to play on. And in game hints, which are appreciated. You also have the Guide that you can look things up in mid game, which is a lot of fun, and like Infocom’s game.

I’d like to see a polished version of the game produced in future that irons out some of the bugs and also adds a little better object handling re disambiguation. But this is very good.