Theatre

Theatre is a nice, atmospheric horror game in which you find yourself trapped in an old, run-down theatre that seems to have malevolent designs for you. The backstory is pieced together out-of-order by collecting torn journal pages as you puzzle your way through the secret passages of the old building.

The puzzles are mostly logical, especially in the early game, and probably all doable with some patience and trial-and-error, though I found myself consulting a walkthrough a few times so I could keep up with the brisk pace at which I plowed through the early parts of the game. This logic breaks down a little towards the end, when I found myself consulting the walkthrough more often and doing things I didn't completely understand (or which only made sense once they had been done).

The tone is more eerie than outright horrifying (which is fine with me) and is a little inconsistent in places (as if tropes have been pulled from different styles of horror without serious thought as to how they fit together).

All that said, the game was fun and satisfying to play, and I found myself constantly eager to see what would happen next. I don't quite rate Theatre as highly as Anchorhead or The King Of Shreds & Patches (both of which were probably influenced by this earlier game), but I would still recommend it to players who enjoyed those other titles.

A superbly spooky game with (aside from some trickiness near the end) puzzles that generally feel fair and logical. There's a lot of enjoyable prose and a superbly well-executed use of old-school occult cosmic horror.

"You have discovered the secret of the Theatre and have completed the game with a score of fifty out of a possible fifty in one thousand, one hundred and fifty-eight turns."

Yes, and I enjoyed every single one of those turns!

I'm not normally one to test my wits against what is described as a puzzlefest, most of the time enjoying more story-oriented IF. Once in a while though, I like to crack my noggin on some oldschool puzzles. I've given up on "Curses!" thrice already and "Christminster"'s opening scene sent me screaming to my walkthrough.

Theatre was different though. I never got completely lost, always having at least one clear goal. The solutions to the puzzles were always fair, also the ones that I didn't get. The very vague in-game hints were enough for me until very late in the game, and even then the problem was adventurer's fatigue on my part, not having explored thoroughly enough.

The setting and descriptions are creepy enough, but I never felt fear or horror. Instead I was excited and curious the whole time about what would be around the next corner of this sprawling run-down Theatre.

"Theatre" does show its oldschool heritage: a key gratuitously hidden on the opposite side of the map from the door it's supposed to open, picking up everything that's not cemented to the floor to use it in a puzzle far down the road. Apparently ghosts have made a hobby of tearing up diaries and spreading the pages all over the place for no apparent reason...

The backstory was just good enough to be interesting in its own right, but it's not much more than a fragmented Lovecraftian template that supports the dark and damp atmosphere.

The great puzzles mostly revolve around getting to the next part of the map, getting "around the corner" as it were, in varying original ways.

There are glimpses of true genius here, especially one "puzzle that isn't": (Spoiler - click to show)"Tunnels go out in all directions." is not limited to the compass directions. This one had me stumped for a long while, and it was an exhilarating feeling when it finally *clicked*.

A fantastic experience, well recommended!

Theatre was one the first modern IF games I played on the heels of Babel. I was immediately pulled in by the same plot device that Finley borrowed, what with the journal pages lying around to provide chilling backstory. I was also pleased that for the most part the puzzles are straightforward and the only way to put the game in an unwinnable state is doing something obviously stupid. For a while I had this one rated four stars.

I revisited this one again today and decided to lower my rating. I still enjoyed myself and finished it rather quickly, but several aspects turned me off this time around:

-- The reason you're stuck in the theatre is because you're in a "slum" and a "bad neighborhood" and a "thug" is waiving a knife at you for some reason. All of these words are steeped in racism. I'm sure that wasn't Wyber's intent and I used those same words regularly twenty years ago. And sometimes old things we like become painfully dated for similar reasons.

-- Other have mentioned this, but the writing is definitely uneven. There are some highlights for sure. Wyber never tells the player how to feel, which makes my heart sing, especially in the horror genre. And there are some good touches with the occasional sound or shadow that creeps around. But then there will periods of less subtlety, such as when you move some things around and, "You suddenly realise there was a body under the pile!"

-- The central Lovecraftian theme is intriguing, but other horror tropes are just thrown in that don't seem to fit and are never explained, such as (Spoiler - click to show)the possessed mannequins and the random cobra in a locker. Also, at one point a skeleton is said to be the source of a horrible smell. Decaying bones would not give off an odor.

-- Wyber breaks the fourth wall a few times to comment on his own writing, which doesn't help maintain the sense of dread one expects in horror.

Despite these criticisms I still am very fond of Theatre and am grateful that it led me to trying out Anchorhead. It's a solid entry in the Lovecraft genre and worth playing if you like that type of game.