External Links
- tow.zip
Contains TOW.GAM
original competition entry, game file and instructions
Requires a TADS interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links. (Compressed with ZIP. Free Unzip tools are available for most systems at www.info-zip.org.)
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About the Story
Go sailing on a yacht with three friends, and a corpse.
[blurb from The (Other) TADS Games List version 1.2]
Awards
4th Place (tie), TADS Division - First Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (1995)
Ratings and Reviews
| Average Rating:    Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 1 |
This game was entered in the first IFComp ever, taking 4th place in the TADS division. This was the first year that Stephen Granade had ever written a game, and he is one of my favorite authors.
This game doesn't show the polish of his later games, but it is relatively sturdy. You are on a yacht, and a large variety of time events happen around you, like Deadline. You find locked compartments and safes, you see people walking around, a murder happens (!), you are given a series of commands to fulfill, and then you must discover and stop the murderer before even worse can happen.
The NPCs are the focus of the game, yet they are sparsely implemented. They have one-line responses to most comments, and don't react as much to items that they should react to (although this can be a hint).
Overall, good for fans of murder mysteries. Granada's technical ability and panache for storyline are already evident, but the puzzles and NPC interaction are not yet up to his later standard.
1 Off-Site Review
Baf's Guide
A small murder mystery, very imitative of Infocom's mysteries, set on an expensive little boat in the middle of the ocean. Lots of irrelevant detail for the player to sift through. The characters are a bit buggy and disappointingly mechanical for a character-based genre. The whole game has a time limit. It is possible to win without figuring everything out, which gives the game some replayability.
-- Carl Muckenhoupt
Tags
Game Details
Current Version: Release 1.1
License: Freeware
Development System: TADS 2
Baf's Guide ID: 224
| IFIDs: | TADS2-8EA46A79ABF2E86E2AA13E38B97DDE34 |
| TADS2-E431EE9405A3FB836F7D4F964C610E44 |
Undertow on IFDB
Polls
The following polls include votes for Undertow:Cool Murder Mystery/Detective Games by Christopher Caesar
Hey everybody. I am looking for a murder mystery text game. I finished An Act of Murder a while ago and want to play more games like that, where to get to solve the murder yourself. If you could tell me some of your recommendations that...
I'm looking for mysteries. by MCCLUTCH32
I like a game with a good story, good puzzles that aren't too difficult to understand and a good mystery. I was thinking more along the lines of horror, but murder mysteries work as well.
Nautical IF by Felix Larsson
I know there was a couple of commercial high-sea text adventures. Now I am on the look-out for ‘modern’, post-commercial IF with a nautical theme. As far as I can tell, there is a definite shortage of bucaneers, boatswains, able...
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This is version 6 of this page, edited by JTN on 7 September 2024 at 10:27pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page
