House of the Stalker

I really liked the rooms and the atmosphere of the game. However, it just didn't work well.

When examining items, there seemed to be descriptions missing that would clue you in, to how the items worked. You can open certain things without knowing that they can be opened. You can take things, from one room and come back, and sometimes the item is still listed in the same room.

In addition, there are some non-standard verbs that are used to complete the game. I have some experience playing IF, but thought that some of the verbs would have been difficult to guess on my own. I also ran into a bug when I played where it asked "The pistol or the squirt gun?" I would answer squirt gun and it would loop back again asking what I wanted to squirt. When answered this, it came back to "The pistol or the squirt gun?" It got stuck in a infinite loop like this. This hindered me for completing and making progress in the game before I resorted to hints.

So, I tried to complete the game using the hint system, but was unable too. I must admit that I was frustrated at this point and simply tried the actions listed on the hints, but I must have did them in the wrong order. I would try to win the game only to be killed. I suppose I could try this game again, trying to figure out the proper order, but by this time, the game lost it's fun for me. I will wait for a walkthrough of the game to see what I missed.

The game could have used better cluing, so that you would know to do certain things when.

I really liked the concept of the game and atmosphere. I wanted to like it, but was disappointed by the bugs and inconsistency of the gameplay.

In this game, a serial killer is on the loose, and you have to try and make it out alive.

The game is unpolished, with many unimplemented synonyms and some illogical responses at times.

The writing is somewhat descriptive, but most of the effort goes into making the narrator snarky and insulting towards the player.

This keeps the game from having a strong emotional impact, as it constantly tells you you are dumb or that you don't deserve easy solutions. Also, the final sequence of required actions is somewhat tasteless.

The puzzles are generally "guess what the author is thinking", and I don't plan on playing it again.

The author did put a lot of effort in this game, but I feel that an author that is antagonistic towards the player should reasonably expect negative feedback.