The Plant

by Michael J. Roberts profile

Espionage, Science Fiction
1998

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Number of Reviews: 7
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1-7 of 7


3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Cleaning windows..., May 30, 2021
by Rovarsson (Belgium)
Related reviews: Puzzler

Conveniently for the author of The Plant, his protagonist's car breaks down right in front of a sketchy detour leading to a mysterious plant off the main road. Equally convenient is the fact the boss of said protagonist is very eager to explore said plant...

While the circumstances leading up to the start of the game are a bit convoluted, once the story starts, I got drawn in fast and deep. The main reason for this is the excellent writing and pacing. The player's curiosity is piqued along with the PC's, and the boss's nudging adds some extra motivation to find a way into this mysterious facility.

The puzzles provide good pacing to the story, forcing the player to slow down and take note of what is happening. A good deal of actions trigger cutscenes, giving movement to the game/story, instead of being a static stage with the PC walking around it.

I did not encounter one bug, and only one puzzle that could be a bit more player-friendly in design ((Spoiler - click to show)When moving atop the glass ceiling, you have to LOOK each time you stop to see the particulars of your surroundings). Everything else is smooth, well clued (that doesn't mean easy...) and executed perfectly. The technical skill shown in the design of this game makes sure the player trusts that even though she is stuck, there is a way to win the game, and that it makes sense. (Lord of the IF-realm knows I've played games not so trustworthy...)

I'm still of two minds regarding the finale. It seemed like a profound breach of tone, but on the other hand, I did burst out laughing.

Very good original puzzles, extremely good pacing. Maybe a tad impersonal. Recommended.

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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Clever, March 31, 2020

"The Plant" is an engaging game which plays off the silliness of high-tech conspiracy theories by whimsically contrasting current technology with that of a former, fictional, Eastern-Bloc country.

Players learn about this conspiracy by solving mostly-innocuous, but frequently amusing, puzzles in each of the three areas of the game, but each area also contains a challenging and ingenious puzzle which provides access to the next area of the game. The puzzles are well-implemented, but each area contains a non-interactive scene which changes the game-state to allow the set-piece puzzle to be solved, and one of these scenes isn't well-clued and could be easily missed.

Nevertheless, "The Plant" is an excellent text-adventure game, which is well-worth a player's time.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
One of my favorites, February 8, 2017

I just played this through, and this is my favorite IF game next to Blue Lacuna. It wasn't terribly difficult but it was a lot of fun. The story and atmosphere managed to grip me, the characters (not a lot of them) were sympathetic, it is well-written, and the puzzles made sense. No 'guess the verb' or obscure item combinations at all. All in all I needed a hint only once, for an item I had not managed to collect. It was a bit short, though.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Like the statue with feet of clay and iron, February 3, 2016

There is an old story about a man who dreamed of a giant statue with feet made of clay mingled with iron, symbolizing strength mixed with weakness. This game really made me think of that image.

First, the iron: It is a mid-length game with three large portions to explore (though you can always return to a previous area). The implementation is good, and the story is pretty fun; I was excited when I first began to plan because I enjoy a good action game.

The puzzles seem overwhelming at first, but experimentation soon shows that the gameworld is more limited than it seems, which makes it easier to solve the puzzles.

The puzzles include a variety that I have never really seen in other games, especially in the introductory section.

Second, the clay: The game falls short in several areas. One is in length and size; the game feels unnecessarily small in the last two big areas. You almost expect an area about the size of Babel, but you end up with something a lot smaller.

As others have noted, the NPC implementation feels sparse after playing more modern games. Compared to Infocom games, this game does pretty good; however, having a travelling companion that has about one line for every 50-100 moves gets discouraging after a while.

I was stuck near the end, and used the walkthrough to make sure I had done everything up to that point, but somehow couldn't trigger a cutscene. I had to manually enter the walkthrough using the @ sign to get to the ending, which may have soured my reaction.

Thus, overall, I can only partially recommend this game. The first half made me ready to recommend this is another great hidden treasure, but the second half left me wondering.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Thoroughly Average, May 19, 2013
by Andromache (Hawaii)

The puzzles in this game were sensible and fair. I got stuck twice, but after discovering the solutions, I didn't feel too badly about not being able to find them. There are some red herring items that obscured some puzzles for me, and I'm not really sure why they were there when they're not really useful. Specifically, it made no sense to be able to manipulate them. I realize the point of red herrings is essentially to be useless. Made one puzzle more frustrating than it needed to be. The endgame puzzle was a bit incredible, however. Well-clued but who would expect it would have the effect it does? Couldn't suspend disbelief enough.

The story was a bit confusing and characters were pretty flat. Gameplay was good, but this isn't really a game I'd recommend to friends. This is definitely more for puzzle solvers.

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1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Teeterwaller's Revenge, July 18, 2010

I'm not given to the humor of the lower bodily stratum at all, and I especially dislike flatulence jokes. At the same time, however, while stuck in this game about halfway through, I amused myself quite a bit by wondering if the author had implemented: (Spoiler - click to show)TEETERWALLER, FART UNDER VENT or ASK TEETERWALLER TO FART INTO BALLOON.

Sorry. The actual solution came to me soon afterwards, but I tell this to illustrate what I think was something of a missed opportunity in this well-constructed game. Your companion is avidly interested in what you discover, to the point that he's willing to display significant personal courage; but, in my playthrough at least, he had comparatively little to say about anything that he saw happen. I read in some earlier reviews of the game that Teeterwaller would comment on or even give you hints about some of the machinery you discover, which would seem logical, but I noticed very little of this in my playing.

Other than that quibble, however, this was a satisfying game to solve without hints. I was stuck twice, but the solutions came to me after a bit of thinking. I never quite understood what was happening with Blottnya in this storyworld, but it's possible that I didn't pay enough attention to the expository text. (It's difficult sometimes to read closely the background material when you don't know if it has something to do with the obstacle-puzzles in an interactive fiction.) I also wondered, without trying, if certain other characters in the game would respond to the linguistic discoveries you made, but I didn't really try this out.

One of my favorite books on a related idea is Roadside Picnic, and I think the way that the concept of technology transfer is presented in that novel is much more convincing, but that would have been a very different (and much darker) game.

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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
One of my favorites, November 22, 2007
by puzzler (Everett, Washington)

Roberts knows how to write a solid adventure game. The puzzles are challenging, but reasonable and well-clued, and integrated into the story setting. Also, as the author of TADS, the technical details of his games are generally faultless. He has several excellent games, but this is his best. I only wish he'd write more!

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