Terminal Interface for Models RCM301-303

This game by Victor Gijsbers contains many of the best elements from his former games, including an examination of player agency and strong NPCs.

You play as the commander of a mech, complete with manual and custom parser messages. Unfortunately, your visual components are damaged, so the on-scene pilot Lemmy has to do the talking for you. But Lemmy's quite the character, making life pretty difficult.

The parser is constrained to those verbs recognized by the mech, and even by the nouns which Lemmy 'tags'.

This game is shorter than I would like, but it's pretty good when my main critique is that I want more of it.

Contains some strong profanity in some paths.

In Terminal Interface for Models RCM301-303 you control a robot with one of your employees, Lemmy, inside. An explosion has occurred elsewhere in the facility, and Lemmy wants you to use the robot to destroy some incriminating evidence before the police show up.

This is just a bare outline of the plot. I don't want to say much else on the story other than there's more to this game than appears at first - which shouldn't surprise anyone who has played other games by Victor Gijsbers. (Check out some of his other titles to get a sense of what I mean.) Also, discovering what that more is led to one of the strongest emotional reactions I had to any game in IFComp 2018.

The writing is quite good. Lemmy's character comes out clearly from his patter. If I were more familiar with the UK's regional dialects I would probably be able to place Lemmy, but this American's ears couldn't do any better than "working-class" and "British."

Implementation is also strong. For example, to nail down the effect of controlling a robot remotely Victor had to replace many of Inform 7's standard error messages. It must have been a lot of work.

(Fun fact: This game is one of three in IFComp 2018 to feature a character who drives a Ford Fiesta.)

Overall, Terminal Interface for Models RCM301-303 is a strong, well-written, and well-implemented game that... packs a punch.