Vicious Cycles

I played this game for the first time in a hotel room in the mountains in New York with my girlfriend. We sat with my laptop on the bed in our pajamas and took turns entering commands and reading the text out to each other, working out the puzzles together, bickering a little with each other to decide what to do. It was her first time playing IF and she was really enthralled. For hours! I have really warm memories of that trip.

Anyway, the groundhog day loop game mechanic is done really effectively. To try and explain as much as possible while dropping as few spoilers as I can, the game centers around a catastrophic event in one person's life, repeating the same hour or so before it took place over and over and "crashing" and restarting the cycle each time it occurs. The loops are occasionally broken up with flashbacks to other short events, vignettes which give clues as to characterization, backstory, how the main character got into this situation, and what exactly is going on.

The groundhog day loop as a mechanic works because, due to the time limit, it's impossible to solve all of the puzzles in one go if you don't know exactly what to do first; therefore each loop becomes a chance for discovery, for learning more, for testing and trial-and-error-- so that eventually, one time, one loop, you'll know exactly what to do and you'll do it in time to save everyone. There is such a feeling of triumph each time you realize, "Oh! That's what I'm supposed to! Now I know for next time!"

In terms of storyline... ups and downs! Extremely effective for a game made for a competition. This isn't to say it was bad, because it wasn't, it worked. The characters are certainly sympathetic enough to make you want to help them, and they aren't wooden or anything. Some of the themes which the game's storyline uses are very dark and complex and may not be treated with the intricacy that would be necessary to do a thorough exploration, and for that reason I remember reacting with mild skepticism at some points-- but at other parts the storyline is so powerful I almost cried. The writing in terms of pure language is lovely as well.

Things I liked:
* Gameplay
* Setting
* Little characterization quirks

Things I didn't like as much:
* Some of the solutions to the puzzles didn't seem quite logical to me ((Spoiler - click to show)I didn't think the connection between the respirator and the smell of alcohol was very obvious, and I hit UNDO so MANY times because I thought I was supposed to take the key out of the pocket before I left the station, and was just typing the wrong verb...)


Overall I 100% recommend this game if you're into time travel mechanics and cool sci-fi settings.