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Review
https://mathbrush.itch.io/impossible-stairs
> An interactive fiction by Mathbrush.
> Written in Dialog. Authorized sequel to The Impossible Bottle by Linus Åkesson.
> Release 1. Serial number 220621.
> Dialog compiler version 0m/03. Library version 0.46.
WARNING: Review contains spoilers!
(Spoiler - click to show)
This game has so few rooms it feels more like an escape game. It is set in just a handful of locations within a suburban house. Although, because of time travel, the rooms are a lot more interesting as the content and descriptions change with time.
I didn't read any hints nor the walkthrough, so at first I didn't appreciate the mechanic that going up and down the stairs moves the player forward and backward in time. The mechanism is quite neatly done and i was impressed by the slickness.
I must confess to liking time travel games which are often quite difficult to engineer and to pull off smoothly while avoiding paradoxes. In this game, although you travel in time, you cannot meet yourself. Although it _is_ possible to move things around.
The characters are well done, fairly believable, and their dialog fluid. The game clearly sets out the objectives, of which mostly it is to make dinner. A somewhat underwhelming mission for a game where you can time travel. I also found it a bit sad to go forward in time to where people you had just talked to had then passed away.
The user interface is adequate but limited. Clickable text and conversation menu options are not new anymore and the presentation of these should definitely be improved. Clickable text should appear like a web link, while dialog options scroll up the screen after selection rather than disappear, looking quite amateur.
The user interface features a kind-of text-based action bar that floats at the bottom, just above the input line. This displays a handy list of things you can do, which can save a lot of typing. Although i found this sometimes gave away too much and sometimes suggested things that you couldn't, in fact, do. Personally, i would dispense with this altogether (it also looks rather ugly), replacing it with context sensitive input word completion.
The "Dialog" game system needs a bit of work for ambiguous terms. At one point i received the comedy lines:
```
> get leg
Did you want to take the leg or the drumstick?
> the leg
That's part of yourself.
```
Otherwise I had no problems with the parser or input system, except some minor keyboard focus issues.
The gameplay involves going forward and backward in time, mostly to collect ingredients from the pantry. There's a sequence where you have to pull up then re-plant a tree sapling so it can grow after a storm, but somehow the corresponding tree house still contains the dinner plates from its previous time line. Well, who knows maybe it does, or did. But, I never figured out what to do with all the cereal boxes. Perhaps they're just there to mark time.
The game won't let you do some things that you could, in reality, clearly do, such as eating the chicken drumstick or the walnuts:
```
> eat walnuts
You don't want to spoil your appetite!
```
This would obviously ruin the puzzle, but it's an interesting design question for player agency.
If there were points for potatoes, i would award top marks here. A huge potato fan myself, i was chuffed to read the lines:
```
> eat potatoes
Did you want to eat the au gratin potatoes, the mashed potatoes, or the french fries?
```
Regarding points, the game has no `score` command, although this is not needed since the, nicely implemented, "chores list" clearly indicates your goals and those left to achieve.
The "Ada" puzzle is rather long-winded, having to move things around in time in several sessions until it begun to get tedious. The puzzle was nevertheless excellently implemented, but I would have preferred the effort used to instead implement perhaps an additional game puzzle and the Ada puzzle be maybe somewhere around half it's given complexity.
I didn't resort to the walkthrough, which means the game difficulty is well balanced. But I would also say the content didn't really grab me. The Grandma character was rather clichéd. Additionally, even for "parser games", it would be nice to see a few illustrations to add atmosphere, while the cover art was basic and jejune.
The help system seems to be just a boilerplate generic message and list of commands, although a walkthrough is provided for anyone who gets stuck.
In conclusion, I would say this game is nicely done albeit having somewhat pedestrian objectives where the implementation effort could have been used for a much more engaging design.
* Writing 4
* Story 3
* Characters 4
* Implementation 4
* Puzzles 3
* Use of multimedia 1
* Help and Hints 1
* Extras 1
