Go to the game's main page
Review
The parser is a promise that is often broken. It offers you a chance to try anything. It bristles with possibility. Every game has a relationship with this promise, and most go something like this: You can try anything! Oh great, I'll try '[this]!', That's not a verb I recognise. The path of the text adventurer is one fraught with great disappointment, but also great excitement and glee when one's wishes are understood. And the more our wishes are understood, the more we trust the game and invest in its story.
What's The Blue doesn't have a consistent story, but rather dozens and dozens of different stories. With its breadth it comes a long way to fulfilling the promise of the parser. It isn't as complete as the multi-authored pick up the phone booth and aisle, but given that there is only one of Ruth it is impressive.
Comments on this review
Previous | << 1 >> | Next
I really enjoyed the commands in there and the basic idea, too, and the writing's also strong. I know the author added more of cool stuff since the Beta version, and while the game's complete, a side of me wants even more, because I'm greedy that way. Though that's also a problem with a game that tries/claims to respond to everything. But I think the default response referring to another game is an amusing catch-all.
Still, it's tough to implement every verb fully, even if you know how to deal with the Inform IDE or look at the I7 header source code. But I'd be one of the first to want to test it again and help check off on the more obscure stuff.
The big problem is, the dull research required to find and check off on all standard verbs is such a change of pace from thinking of the sort of new and unusual responses found in the game. Still, the author hit the main ones and then some.
You hit the nail on the head with the greed there: the initial breadth of response means we start to trust that the game will offer a response for *everything*, and then the disappointment sets in. This is definitely at the '6/10' end of three stars (perhaps worthy of a seven?), and in the tiny realm of hyper-broad non-linear one-move games, this is definitely at the top, only perhaps surpassed by PUTPBAA- which though broader has less consistent quality of prose.
I never know really whether to rate games based on how good they are objectively, how good they are compared to other games of the same type, or how well they achieve their apparent design-goals (no matter how limited). Respectively, I'd rate it 3/5, 4/5, 4/5.
Yeah, giving ratings is a problem for me. I'd say this is above the average, too, but we don't have the granularity to sort that out with 1-5 ratings. But the ability to give too many ratings might scare off reviewers in its own way.
Your three-pronged rating is a good guide for people who want to write games or play them & mitigates the trap of the potentially CONDESCENDING "this game's a good effort" when (well, I don't) know how to say it's more. Considering nobody else tried this with their fingertips & I can't be the only one who said, "Of COURSE someone should've tried this," that's a powerful thing, and it's where the best writing comes from--something everyone wanted to say/do but somehow we all missed a good, clear, straightforward way to it.
