The Big Scoop

This game was entered in IFComp 2004. It has two PCs, one featured in the prologue, and one who is a main character detective.

The opening scene was clever, but I soon find myself frustrated by small bugs and a lack of implementation. Without proper feedback, it was hard to know if I was on the right track or not.

The game has several puzzles which are fairly hard to guess on your own, and which seemed somewhat unfair to me.

Overall, it was interesting, and had a nice cat character.

It's not bad, per se, it's just ... nothing spectacular. The puzzles didn't seem to be particularly challenging or inventive. The descriptions, writing, and characters seem to be completely bare-boned, with nothing that really makes me care about them. If the characters had been more three-dimensional, I think I would have liked it a lot more. The "mystery" part of the game disappears after your first fail (and you'll probably fail the first scene many times), and that took a lot of the experience away from me.

As is, it's not a bad game to wile away some downtime if you feel like relaxing and not reading too much, but don't expect to come out with a fresh perspective or anything substantial like that.

As soon as I started the game and read the introduction I thought: "Wow, this could be intresting." And it was! I became really engaged and played for a long time. I enjoyed solving the puzzles although the hints in the menu can be good to take a look at if your looking for a specific verb(especially in the Swedish version).

I like the story a lot, it's exciting. It's driven forward by an excellent conversation system which I think worked pretty well, though, it can sometimes give suggestions for topics which you shouldn't have heard of yet; and by doing so spoiling the story.

I found some bugs around (Spoiler - click to show)Turbot Street and around the safe, regarding locking and opening, but nothing severe. I gave this game four stars because I find the conversation system very good and complete, I like the story a lot, the hint system is very useful and well organized and I think the puzzles are great - they won't drive you mad, they'll just force you to think a little more, and more, and more... In the end, the good things makes up for the minuses.

The environments are pretty standard, but the thing that matters most in this game is the story.

The game might be a little too much if you're new to Interactive Fiction, although the hint system works fine. I recommend the game to everyone but the absolute beginner to Interactive Fiction.