Fireboat

This is fos1's third game, I think, and it's been nice seeing them progress over time. This is his most complex game yet, I think. It still is rough in some areas but I enjoyed playing.

The idea is that you are in charge of a fireboat on the Hudson river in NYC, and you are visited by a strange ghost who begins to leave you messages.

The game is both hard and easy. It's a little hard because some things aren't coded in, like some synonyms, and you have to use nautical navigation (although that wasn't too bad). It's easy, though, because the game tells you exactly what to do.

I enjoyed zooming about the river and having memories of my family. Places that I think could use improvement in the future are improving conversation and replacing Inform's default 'you can see a ____ here'. The best way to do that (for an author who wants to) is to type the name of the object in the room description with brackets around it, like: 'Lined up in a row are some [map charts], a [dial], and [a compass]' (if you had those three things).

Anyway, I look forward to future games!

Fireboad is an action parser, in which you incarnate Captain Kent Decker, a senior fireboat captain of the NY fire department, on the Hudson river, when the ghost of your grandmother appears before you, with dire news: a terrorist is planning to blow up the Big Apple! You ready yourself to thwart its plan, going up/down the Hudson river with your trusty boat.
There are two endings, incl. one bad which is obvious enough (and clearly hinted that (Spoiler - click to show)you shouldn't touch the trailer) and one where you save the day. A walkthrough is also provided on the game page, though if you follow the explicit "crumbs", getting to the end is just a matter of remembering where to go.

Because you are eagerly told what to do, head on, the game feels pretty railroady: the game presses you to do the things it tells you to do, rushing you almost before you can take a breath. It's a somewhat understandable, seeing as you have an exploding plot in your hands, and you're a seasoned captain that knows what do to. But it felt a bit like exploring/examining objects around you to be... futile/pointless. At times, I wondered if some of these hints/pressure points would have been better behind the *HINT* command, for those needing that extra help (especially since (Spoiler - click to show)notes left around by the ghosts tells you exactly what to do.).

I liked that inclusion of the spectral presence leading you along the way, and how it only appears when you "need" it, or the ghostly objects disappearing when you completed their task. It made keeping track with your task's progress much easier. Though, the whole (Spoiler - click to show)Liberty Statue section felt a bit out of place, and stilted a bit the pace of the story, especially considering the urgency of the issue.

Yet, it was genuinely fun to play and I really enjoyed being able to move the boat around the river (that's such a fun movement function!). And kuddos to the Chief Mate for being so good at his job!