Condemned

by Mark Jones profile

2009
Inform 6

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Review

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Ok, It's not photopia, January 5, 2010*
by Grey (Italy)

No, it's not. But it tries very hard to be it.
The genre is similar, a dramatic, plot-driven gameplay, several flashbacks putting the story together with only some puzzles, and lot of text. A LOT.
The problem is that it's very ambitious, and ultimately it falls short.

Plot driven IF works if the plot is very good, and the writing is very good, but here it's needlessly verbose, to the point of being boring.
The game has its moments, it's a pity that they are buried under screens and screens of text. (Spoiler - click to show) The garage is good, and the doll head was genuinely creepy, but the exposition angel at the end really killed the immersion.

Another problem are the "puzzles". I can understand having little or no puzzles, but the problem here is that the plot is ON top of the gameplay, and often i tried doing something while the dialogue went on in the background...distracting.

I'm sure that by pruning a lot of dialogue and repetitions it would be worth 4 stars.

* This review was last edited on January 6, 2010
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Audiart, April 6, 2010 - Reply
TRUTH - I confirm your analysis & completely agree about the exposition angel.

Tipper Gore oughta slap a warning label on this game for Excessive Religious Allegory.
Ryusui, January 7, 2010 - Reply
I was one of the beta testers and I had exactly the same complaints: too damn verbose, and the exposition angel (I used almost the exact same phrase!) pretty much murders the plot at the end. He would've had a better game if he'd taken a chainsaw to the dialogue.

The final version is still undeniably better than the beta, though. He didn't fix the needless amounts of dialogue, or the exposition angel, but he did fix a few sticking points I had.
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