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Review
This is an old 1988 basic game ported to Z-machine. It has a simple plot of you trying to … Well, it wasn’t entirely clear from what I played. You have to save your crew from contamination? It has some good puzzles, such as the videogame one. However, as it does resemble a Scott Adams game, there are many parsing issues, and backspace doesn’t work, instead outputting what I assume is a space. Which confused me, but it didn’t affect me largely enough at all.
There was parsing problems, such as what seems to me as no way to turn on and off things. I tried TURN ON FLASHLIGHT, which responded “What’s the use of turning that?” So I tried ACTIVATE FLASHLIGHT. It didn’t understand. So I attempted TURN ON LIGHT, which responded again with “What’s the use of turning that?” Then I tried TURN FLASHLIGHT. Same thing. Then, finally I tried TURN HHH, and I was still given “What’s the use of turning that?” Which was confusing, since every other verb I tried it would go something like “What in space is on flashlight?” If I typed X ON FLASHLIGHT.
As well as this, a fountain and pond that are the main attraction and take up the most space in a room description are not implemented at all, yet some benches which take up half a sentence yet are vital to the game are implemented.
I did spend a lot of time trying to talk to something that was not implemented, and then I got it after about 15 different failed attempts.
Overall, there were some problems. Many directly listed objects weren’t implemented, and I couldn’t get very far into the game. If the game changes halfway through, I couldn’t get there because I spent so long walking around and trying different things.
Comments on this review
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Sounds like you did not get far into the game because of the parser. I haven't completed it yet, but like it so far. The main problem I think is, that it is a two-word parser game which was ported to Inform, which causes confusion. So you get the idea that the game does understand sentences like TURN ON FLASHLIGHT because of the responses but you should always think in two words, which was the norm in Europe for a long time due to cassette games, i.e. no disc loading and thus less complex parsers.
I think if you approach it as a strictly two-word parser, you might be able to enjoy it more, e.g. TALK MICROPHONE, not TALK TO MICROPHONE and so on. Maybe you don't want to play more, but you can get the ending with this walkthrough:
https://www.solutionarchive.com/file/id%2C1537/
Fair point, I get that. Unfortunately, ACTIVATE wasn't implemented either, and I couldn't think of anything else. Also, MICROPHONE nor PHONE was implemented, which was weird. And many important objects. But yeah, I will definitely play through it again with a walkthrough to get through. :)
