The City

An short experimental work, not entirely successful. The main puzzle involves breaking out of a Delusions-esque loop, but this game lacks the backstory of Delusions and doesn't do nearly as much with the conceit. Lots of standard features, such as UNDO and SAVE, are disabled, and there's no status line or location names; the author's reasons for all this hacking aren't clear, but it's fairly disconcerting. It seems like the point was to be nihilistic and gloomy, but the game's too short to have any real emotional impact.

-- Duncan Stevens