|
Have you played this game?You can rate this game, record that you've played it, or put it on your wish list after you log in. |
Playlists and Wishlists |
RSS Feeds![]() ![]() ![]() |
About the StoryA wordplay/quasi-maze game. Game Details
Language: English (en)
First Publication Date: September 29, 2013 Current Version: 2 License: Freeware Development System: Inform 7 Forgiveness Rating: Polite IFID: EE1E938E-D78D-4582-BB0F-D702D30DC868 TUID: gn913naa45qwdv2t Followed by sequel Fourdiopolis, by Andrew Schultz |
7th Place - 19th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2013)
Nominee, Best Puzzles; Nominee, Best Individual Puzzle - 2013 XYZZY Awards
| Average Rating: ![]() Number of Reviews: 6 Write a review |
This game is by Andrew Schultz, a noted author of puzzle and wordplay games. You go around a three dimensional city with a list of tasks and addresses to complete them at.
Part of the game is just figuring out what is going on, which I didn't experience, as I already knew the premise.
The puzzles in this game are challenging but fun. Andrew has made it easier by not requiring you to solve every puzzle to beat the game.
A must-play for fans of wordplay.
I originally reviewed this shortly after playing it during the IF Competition, which was a mistake. The stress/strain of having limited time to play brought out a (bizarre) inability to even figure out the basic mechanism at play.
I've since re-played it: it is very, very clever, but far from impossible.
Don't spoil this one: most of the joy is in figuring out the mechanic and exploring it.
On top of the excellent puzzle mechanic, the writing is good, fun, and crisp.
This game is about wordplay, and it's mostly about figuring this particular puzzle out in a systematic manner (almost no objects to interact with, which in this case is fine).
You are given a list of tasks to accomplish, and each of them implies figuring out a specific command related to the constraint at play here. You can figure out about half of them fairly easily, then you realize that you missed a few more; you then get somewhat stuck, but luckily you can use the room numbers to try to get more information about the rest of the commands (very wise from the author to have included those, the game would be simply too hard without them). And then, there's the last lousy ones, including obscure ones (also, it's not very clear that you can combine two words, so you can get stuck on the longer words for a while if you don't realize that).
Apart from those commands, there's a few more that generate a (usually funny) response from the game - which is an interesting design choice (it could have been than any valid command would give you a point, but it's not; although I feel some of those "extra" commands could have been on the task list, which could have bumped the tedious ones off the list and made the game less frustrating). But yay for Big Lebowski references.
The writing was actually somewhat underwhelming, I found. Responses to valid commands rarely go for longer than one line, which doesn't really make it that rewarding. (I know writing 45 different responses is soul-crushing, but here I feel it's a necessary evil!!) The end message (for completing the task list) is incredibly underwhelming too. ((Spoiler - click to show)We spend hours running around, putting things in a quantum shoebox to prepare a mysterious party, please tell us how the party went, if the boss was pleased, how we managed to fill the room with the box's contents, anything!). I did notice a few typos, and a non-critical bug, but nothing more.
To sum up, it's almost all about that wordplay puzzle, which is fun and challenging, making the experience enjoyable but a little rough.
Shuffling Around, by Andrew Schultz (as Ned Yompus) Average member rating: ![]() A weird power to save a weird world. So you just got fired from the best company ever, and it's the best day of your life. New opportunities! New horizons! New ways to look at things! Like calling this stupid kiss-off job fair a... |
Turning Point, by Robert Street
Average member rating: (3 ratings)
The twenty-year war between Valkon IV and Delmoke X is at a crux. In this small game, you are Athtax, bodyguard and aide to the Valkonian Captain Athta, a tactical genius who will lead the final assault against the Delmokians. You are...
Tránsito, by n-n Average member rating: ![]() Una Ficción Interactiva en múltiples umbrales. La historia está situada en un espacio de frontera, un cambio de época y al límite entre la vida y la muerte. |
New walkthroughs for June 2022 by David Welbourn
On Tuesday, June 28, 2022, I published new walkthroughs for the games and stories listed below! Some of these were paid for by my wonderful patrons at Patreon. Please consider supporting me to make even more new walkthroughs for works of...
Recommended Linguistic Games by E.K.
Good games that use language puzzles, or language itself as the puzzle.
2013 XYZZY Awards Nominees by Molly
Here are the nominees for the 2013 XYZZY Awards, roughly by order of appearance on the finalist page. Note that this list does not cover the Best Technological Development Award.
For Your Consideration: Games from 2013 that should be nominated for the XYZZY Awards by Molly
There were a lot of great games released in 2013, and now that the XYZZYs are coming up, it seems like a very good idea to take a poll of all the games from last year people would like to see nominated. The management has asked that we...
Vertical Games by Anya Johanna DeNiro
Looking for games that really explore verticality, which go up (way up) in their setting. Human-made structures in particular: towers, skyscrapers, radio antennae. Games that figuratively can make you feel dizzy, particularly after a...
Games with "logical" puzzles by Victor Gijsbers
Some puzzles--like chess problems or sudokus--can be difficult even though you know all the rules. I'm looking for IF games with this kind of puzzle: you can get to know the rules by simple exploration, and then you still have to solve...