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Review
I got stuck three times in a row and the hints file didn't help. So I'm pretty shocked this got 1st place for a contest, unless that contest was to be worst "guess the verb" text adventure of all time.
All three play throughs I got past the first two easy quests no problem but the witch... You can't talk to her - she's on the phone. The other room has a locked safe - no key... anywhere. Can't "crack" it. Can't "break" it. Any verb you try fails. Any verb you try on the witch... fails. Pure evil
Hint's file for adv. 8 translates to "talk to infinite adventure Riley" but if you talk to the witch... nada. Talk to Riley... again, nothing. You could even put in those exact words in one go and nothing happens. So how is...? No, after three tries I quit.
[edited] - Ah! I see now. If you wander about long enough the "timer" seems to go off and you get to use a computer and more than that "x notebook" (which solves it). IMHO it's pretty dirty to do that to the player though.
I made a NeverWinter Nights game module back in the day with a cursed door that would spit chickens at you and you could only ever open it from the other side which you got to by finding a secret path to there through a graveyard on the side of the mansion. This "witch" scene reminded me of that (so, yeah, I'm guilty of stuff like this as well at least in one of the games I wrote).
All right I changed my rating up to 4 stars from 1 but it's still a bit tough at that one early part. Seems like you have to waste a bunch of turns to get it to progress from there and then, even then, have to ignore that there's a computer and resist the urge to "p" (play it) and x notebook instead.
Interesting game but still a bit bland in that there are only ever a handful of rooms to explore on each "play." Also, the thing is, if you were to ask people to beta test this they'd come up with a ton of "bugs" in that you can't examine certain nouns mentioned in the descriptions and such. To be a five star game I'd think the author should program in all the noun objects where mentioned in the text just to flesh it out.
Comments on this review
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Sounds like you got stuck fairly early on - you certainly might not enjoy it after playing it through, but IMO there’s a lot to like, and if you play further you’ll probably at least have a better sense of why it won the Comp (though of course the experience of getting so thoroughly stuck can make it hard to have fun even when you get unstuck!)
In case it’s helpful:
(Spoiler - click to show)The hint text tells you exactly what to do - type QUIT and then Y to quit out of Infinite Adventure, which will let you keep playing the game. As the opening instructions mention, the command to quit out of And Then You Come to a House... is remapped to EXIT.
