Excuse Me, Do You Have The Time?

This game interested me as a time travel adventure. It clearly takes its inspiration from ultra-terse games in the style of magazine type-ins. An earlier version, written for the Atari ST and reviewed by James Judge in SynTax, apparently offered graphics and occasional animations, but the TADS2 version available from the download link here seems to be pure text. (Note that I played it with Gargoyle, not QTads.)

Something might have been lost in the translation of the game to TADS. This was the author's first use of that system, and my impression is that the attempted approach was to directly translate the interaction of the original. If so, that would explain certain inconsistencies in responses: The author would have had to provide overrides for default behavior, and occasionally seems to have just skipped doing so. This makes the parser feel slighty untrustworthy, resulting in a lot of mechanical repetition of commands in an attempt to ensure that nothing important is being missed.

The game must be played in the "mind reading" mode that is very difficult to put up with today. The built-in hint system seems generally adequate, but the typical player may need to consult it rather frequently. (I certainly did.) Alternate solutions to puzzles are not welcome. Meticulous multi-level >EXAMINE is required to discover important things -- to the extent that the protagonist comes off as myopic and/or severely tunnel-visioned. Clues are in the form of obtuse riddles, and can take unlikely forms(Spoiler - click to show), such as a message written in stains on a bathtub. Mimesis is frequently broken.

On the whole the game is done well enough on a technical basis. The only bug of significance that I encountered was that in one case solving a puzzle requires a certain verb (>PICK instead of >UNLOCK) in order to get points for the task. It's still possible to complete the game. In another case obtaining a specific item requires >PULL instead of just >TAKE. The need to >SEARCH many things is a baseline expectation, aggravated by the fact that sometimes only >LOOK UNDER or >LOOK BEHIND will do. This kind of finicky and specific requirement is not really fun.

The three NPC sidekicks are, as Rovarsson's review notes, not extensively implemented. They are necessary to complete certain puzzles, and can be used to carry items should the protagonist's inventory limit be reached -- which it will because this is the kind of game where you never know just which item will be needed where, and red herrings abound. A casual fact about one of them (Spoiler - click to show)(insomnia) is the key to a puzzle. I don't recall this fact being disclosed anywhere, but as Rovarsson notes, it's easy to start to tune out their limited "chatter." Oddly, the game includes a hunger mechanic, but since the PC will be provisioned with what seems to be an infinite supply of sandwiches, it creates no additional difficulty.

The time travel aspect is definitely not the focus of this game; instead of a mad scientist with a time machine it could just as easily have been a wizard with a magical portal mirror. Although the author does seem to have done quite a bit of historical research for this game, the fruits of this effort are not well-integrated into the game itself. It mostly makes itself felt via "telling, not showing" in the form of a few paragraphs here or there in the style of a 500-word book report. Some of the facts are quite interesting, and they are something of a highlight of the game.

I can't say I'd recommend this game to a modern player, or even to a fan of time travel or old-school adventure games... Curses and Jigsaw both seem like they would have more appeal to this game's target audience. Nonetheless, it is an earnest attempt, and some of the puzzle concepts are pretty good; it may be worth studying as an inspiration for a similar scenario.

For the sake of completeness, here is a list of all possible point awards in the game:

(Spoiler - click to show)
10 finding various objects hidden under/behind others (6 times, 60 points total)
10 finding entrance to house
10 agreeing to try time machine
10 standing on stool to reach something needed
10 sharpening pencil
10 lighting sticks
10 lighting torch
10 frightening native
10 getting beauty treasure
10 getting feather
10 getting hairpin
10 getting page from record book
10 getting stuck sack
10 getting chocolate drink
10 knocking out Aztec guard
10 giving drinking tool to priest
10 getting slingshot
10 getting carving
10 picking drawer lock (point award will be missed due to bug if >UNLOCK is used)
10 giving cutters to bomb expert
10 giving magnifying glass to bomb expert
10 making bravery treasure available
10 taking correct picture
10 giving brooch to guide
10 frightening yeti
10 taking page from book
10 giving better tool to gardener
10 buying symbol of happiness
10 giving invitation to palace guard
10 giving correct gift to Japanese lord
10 getting medicine from priest
10 fooling bull
10 getting red disk
10 getting orange disk
10 getting white disk
10 giving beauty treasure to scientist
10 giving knowledge treasure to scientist
10 giving bravery treasure to scientist
10 giving achievement treasure to scientist
10 giving friendship treasure to scientist