The King of Shreds and Patches

First of all, this review was made by a newbie of the genre, don¡¯t expect any comparison with other games, just a honest review from someone that was scare of IF just a few months ago. This review is mostly for newbie players. Also, I hate spoilers, so I will not talk much about the story. My 1st language is Spanish so yeah, lotz of typos.

What got me to play this game was, the map¡­ yeah, a piece of paper with names of places make me play this game until the end. For newbie players, sense of direction, is very important. Walking randomly just hoping to arrive where you want to, will lead to frustration, unless you got a very . memory (I¡¯m talking about new players, an expert of IF I suppose can get around without a map) or incredible luck. The story was very interesting, is about this man, Robert, trying to figure out what happen to his friend after finding him dead, any more info will spoil the fun of it. Its play kinda like a detective game, finding clues, talking to people to discover who or what did this to your friend. This games is not as graphic as I will like it to be, only one scene really surprises me, otherwise I will have love if the game would have gotten more mature and disgusting bloody scenes. The puzzles were very good, maybe one or two will lead to frustration, (especially new players like me) but there¡¯s a very good hint system, its follow your progress and give you the tiny bit of info to keep solving the puzzle on your own, or give you the full solution, I really love this system, and I think many IF uses this. The game uses very easy commands, you will never will find yourself typing random verbs just to ¡°cut the paper¡±. And in the conversations the game give you the topics beforehand, just in case you forgot what you have to ask to a certain person. The conversations feels lively, the writing is very good in my opinion.

I really recommend this game to newbie players. One of the first IF I played what this game that was supposed to ¡°teach me¡± how to play, and it did the opposite, its make me afraid of ¡°games without pictures¡±, its make me feel like ¡°if I can¡¯t resolve this puzzle in this game for ¡°new players¡± without typing hint, its mean I will never be able to beat any other IF on my own". All those IF expert players learned by trial and error, playing multiple games at first, without even beaten half of them. Also, play a game with a story you like with normal places. Houses, shops and a city, this is easy to imagine and to get into, not like a castle with a supernatural wardrobe that you have to use to light a candle in the first 10 minutes of the game. This game should be in the top list of games to play for people that think that IF is an error in writing and have to be in lower case¡­ like I once did.