Perdition's Flames

5 star: (9) 4 star: (8) 3 star: (2) 2 star: (0) 1 star: (0)

Average Rating: Number of Ratings: 19 Write a review

- Sammel, July 4, 2020

- Zape, July 3, 2019

- Mr. Patient (Saint Paul, Minn.), June 24, 2019

- Stian, January 26, 2019

- calindreams (Birmingham, England), April 12, 2018

- Cory Roush (Ohio), July 16, 2017

- Mergath, March 1, 2016

This game was released in 1993. a year that saw several significant advances in interactive fiction. Perdition's Flames is one of the largest TADS games available, going up to 666 points in increments ranging from less than 10 points to 50.

You arrive in hell on a boat to discover that it's been improving it's image and applying for environmental disaster contracts to clean up hell so they can compete with heaven. But you don't like heaven or hell; you want adventure!

But adventure requires a series of magical protective amulets, the search for which occupies the bulk of the game.

This game is devilish, with some puzzles that are quite difficult. They are very inventive and fun, however. Perhaps the best sequence of the game is a detour to a haunted house (haunted by you!) where you have to get a silver ring that you can only barely nudge with your ghost fingers, all while being chased by a priest and the media.

This is just about as good as it gets for big, old-school puzzle tests, so if you're a fan of Zork, the Enchanter games, or Curses!, you should definitely check this out.

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- Thrax, March 11, 2015

SPAG

What makes PF stand out above the countless other text games currently on the market is its wonderful sense of humor. The game makes some truly awful puns, pokes fun at everyone's notion of what Hell is "supposed" to be, and generally keeps you looking forward to coming back to Hell every time you have to leave the computer.
[...]
I loved the non-linear nature of the game. Although by neccessity certain puzzles have to be solved before other puzzles can be reached, the game is tremendously flexible. You truly feel like you are PLAYING the game, rather than being sent to Location A to get Object B to take to Location C to exchange it for Object D, etc. (Indeed, this free-style type of play is neccessary, since the game's goal is not revealed to you until quite late in the adventure.)

- MKrone (Harsleben), February 18, 2012

- Nikos Chantziaras (Greece), February 6, 2011

- Sorrel, July 17, 2010

- lupusrex (Seattle, WA), October 4, 2009

- Shigosei, February 24, 2009

- NiMuSi (London, UK), February 29, 2008

- Michel Nizette (Brussels, Belgium), January 18, 2008

There are some very clever puzzles in this game. The haunted house puzzle is particularly memorable. I had played this game years ago, and played it again recently with my kids. They loved it, because it's very funny and you can't get stuck or killed.

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Baf's Guide

Hell has been modernized, with bureaucracy and tacky suburban housing replacing the traditional fire and brimstone. As a newly departed soul, you get to explore this wonderland and perhaps seek a way out. Wide-ranging settings, some hellish, some not, some taking subtle advantage of the fact that you're dead. Very puzzlish puzzles (including simple logic problems), with good re-use of puzzle elements. Lots of hidden objects, with some inconsistency about finding them - "examine x" will sometimes find things that "search x" will not. Impossible to die (for obvious reasons) or otherwise make the game unwinnable, unless you're unlucky enough to hit a bug involving some randomized values.

-- Carl Muckenhoupt