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About the StoryOut of the TextFire "12-pack", this is an April's Fool game "demo" in which you get to play a pawn in a chess game - at the very end. Incorporates a very nifty variation on the status line to show the positions of the chess pieces after each move. |
| Average Rating: ![]() Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 2 Write a review |
The Textfire Demo 12-pack was released on April Fool's in 1998, claiming to be demos of an upcoming commercial studio called Textfire.
In this game, you play a pawn in a chess game. The game shows you the chess board. The storyline is actually pretty entertaining; it's fun being a pawn. This was a joke demo; it actually would be great to do a chess game where you saw inside all the character's heads, their thought process, etc.
Zugzwang puts you in the position of a chess piece close to the end of a game. Sounds quirky? It definitely is.
The game is extremely short (10 turns) and extremely linear (two paths). For me that's a classic candidate for 1, max 2 stars. The game is so quirky though - the setting alone is unique, but there's also dialogue between the individual chess pieces, IF-style description of the events, optional examining - it still sucks as a game, but it has so much potential, and as a "proof of concept" it sort of shines. I constantly had to think of a Romeo and Juliet story unfolding through a chess game. Too bad this is just a (term used by game) demo.
Chess--at least, a few moves of it--implemented for the Z-machine, though it's not really a Z-Abuse as such. The board is represented in a status line of sorts, but you still enter your commands as text. Cleverly done; might be even better if implemented as full-blown chess exercise. This was one of the games in the 1998 April Fool's hoax called Textfire.
-- Duncan Stevens
IFIDs: | ZCODE-2-990710-2FB8 |
ZCODE-1-980228-4855 |