When in Rome 1: Accounting for Taste

by Emily Short profile

Episode 1 of When in Rome
2006
Science Fiction
Inform 7

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Review

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
*A lunchtime game*, September 2, 2008
by Maze (Rome, Italy)

As the author says, this is a lunchtime game. Easy and brief: just some 15 minutes to reach the end (though it doesn't really *end*, cause 4 more episodes are coming - supposedly).
Manhattan, 1954. A dog starts pestering both you than an unknown girl. The matter is: that dog is not much doggy-like. As the cover art suggests, it seems that your turn to deal with aliens has arrived.

Judging from this first chapter, the story is nice and humorous, though somehow plain, and ends with an opening for more interesting episodes (and also for new peaks of chauvinism to come: that's fairly due to the chauvinist decade where this game is set, though I personally disliked that - but maybe a feminist revenge is ready to strike). Being a lunchtime game, the author doesn't want to cause you any stress: only a couple of very easy puzzles (imagine otherwise: you get frustrated by your precious lunchtime gaming, you go back to work, and all you want to do is to kick your colleagues/friends/anybody, just to see if they too are wearing a V.I.T.A.T.T.O.* armor). The drawback is that you really don't feel much involved: this looks too much as a linear tale where, at a certain point, you have to solve something to go on (and maybe it would indeed work better as a regular tale, without any interaction inside).
Anyway, as a lunchtime game this is nice. And the light and well crafted tone will surely cause many a satisfied smile.

*Violence Isn't The Answer To This One

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