Iceweb

This is a fairly short, tersely written thriller, played entirely straight which makes a refreshing change from the usual more-or-less comic mode of most parser IF. You play a secret agent on a mission to retrieve a piece advanced technology from behind enemy lines (your people want to reverse engineer it, for purely defensive purposes of course). Most of the action takes place in a dinghy which you navigate between a few locations linked by pseudo-random exits (or at least, I couldn't figure out the map), which combines with the brief but precise descriptions to give a convincing impression of bobbing around on the waves. The game is very polished and very accessible. There aren't any bugs that I can see and care has been taken to guide the player through the narrative; you shouldn't get stuck or find yourself wondering what to do. It's fairly short and there are useful hints built in, which more experienced players are unlikely to need but beginners will be grateful for. The puzzles, such as they are, aren't very taxing (the items in your inventory make it pretty obvious what you need to do, and you seem able to stash an infinite amount of stuff in your wetsuit), and that is quite right for this story-driven game. If you want something fairly easy but nicely involving to pass an hour so, then this does the job very well.