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About the StoryA new, experimental game that has no puzzles but uses only words that change your focus on things, thereby adapting the story.[--blurb from The Z-Files Catalogue] Game Details
Language: English (en)
Current Version: Release 2 License: Freeware Development System: Inform 6 Baf's Guide ID: 920 IFID: ZCODE-2-970402-C5C9 TUID: egtt6j8vif0plzrc |
Awards
Nominee, Best Writing; Nominee, Best Use of Medium - 1997 XYZZY Awards
Editorial Reviews
Baf's Guide

-- Duncan Stevens
SPAG
Not being able to exercise control over the character -- yet playing in the second person nonetheless -- is a strange and disconcerting feeling, and the haphazard ways that your input affects events reinforce the sense that you are witnessing rather than participating in the narrative. The result is subversive in its way -- it questions the assumption that you are sent to an interactive-fiction environment to do something concrete, make an effect, rather than experience what's there. In effect, it makes the scene itself, and what happens there, more important than you, the player (though you as the player are distinct from "you", the character), since your importance is mostly to enter commands that allow you to see more. In that the setting is almost entirely fixed in one location, Space... also forces the player to appreciate the minute details that Plotkin brings out.
-- Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April
See the full review
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Member Reviews
| Average Rating: ![]() Number of Reviews: 6 Write a review |
Most Helpful Member Reviews

I only wish it were more fully implemented, allowing more keywords to cause revisions to the narrative.

Is it interactive? Well, yes, it is, but unlike traditional IF in that you do not control the character with actions. The flow of the narrative is triggered by single word input, a word that is already in the narrative on the screen.
Is it fiction? Traditionally fiction is plot oriented, although I am sure there are enough English majors who would argue that there are character driven works. Still, what is lacking in "The Space Under the Window," is a sense of motivation for the central character. What *is* the goal? This is an experimental piece of fiction.
This work is unsettling and surreal. The sense of time seems to fluctuate as certain commands seem to trigger going back in time to previous moments. That is what this piece is, a collection of moments strung together where the player is left to wonder what it was he (used in this context, "he" is meant to be a generic genderless pronoun, which English is sorely lacking) just experienced.
This is a game that is difficult to love, but easy to appreciate for the skill with which it was crafted.

In a sense, this structure of play feels like a precursor to Twine, only one has to guess at the keywords instead of clicking on them. And it's hard to get lost in poetry when the parser doesn't respond to half of what you type. It's very difficulty to predict what keywords will trigger a new path or bring you back to an old one, and also difficult to predict where the story will go. There are no puzzles to elicit satisfaction from all the keyword guessing so it's all a bit underwhelming.
That said, it's an intriguing (and short!) parser experiment from one of IF's greatest authors.
See All 6 Member Reviews
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Polls
The following polls include votes for The Space Under the Window:Games with extraordinary "wow" moments by J'onn Roger
If there is a moment in a game that stands out to you with vivid clarity, a moment of extraordinary beauty with writing that makes you really makes you see what is taking place, list the game here. Since surprise may play a part in the...
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