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Review
This game has possibly the most misleading title that I've ever encountered in a work of interactive fiction. Although the name suggests wordplay, there is nothing of the kind to be found within.
That's what it's not. What it is is harder to define. There are elements of mystery, heist, treasure hunt and survival horror, and in some places it seems to be looking longingly toward AIF. The game portion has a split focus between making it to the end alive and collecting valuable items along the way, and the story lies somewhere between political thriller and methodical heist. Gameplay is very constrained by the intended scene structure (i.e. "on rails"), which lends a choice-like feel to the work.
Most people discussing this game mention the interesting player character. She is a kind of alien, essentially humanoid but with such vast differences in culture that it can be hard to fully adopt her perspective. The PC is indeed the standout feature of this work, presenting an alien psychology that colors the whole playing experience.
The overall writing style tends toward the leaden and repetitive. In part this seems to be the consequence of a particular system of producing responses tailored to the current state of the PC's knowledge. The system is a solid concept from a technical sense, but it very much needed to be refined in its execution -- at many places it seemed to be malfunctioning in small ways. This game was written in Inform 6, and producing such a system under that language was a larger technical challenge than it would be today. Unfortunately, the author Richard Otter's reach seems to have substantially exceeded his grasp in this respect -- perhaps a collaboration with a more experienced programmer would have been desirable.
The game bills itself as science fiction, but it's a strange kind of science fiction that is difficult to go along with if one prefers the harder type. Some of the imaginary technology is nonsensical (Spoiler - click to show)(e.g. a propulsion system based on biological cells), as are some of the engineering choices (Spoiler - click to show)(e.g. an "airlock" that opens directly to space). These sorts of things were already straining my suspension of disbelief, and it was finally broken after the first glitchy encounter with an NPC.
This is a very distinctive work, however, and a standout effort at inventing aliens that are more than just "people with funny masks," and these features make it worth exploring if one is prepared to look past the flaws. A thorough debugging and second pass at the prose would do much to improve my estimation of this work, but as it is I can't give it more than two stars, meaning "there's something there, but it needs improvement".
