Shade

by Andrew Plotkin profile

Travel
2000

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Reviews and Ratings

5 star:
(121)
4 star:
(162)
3 star:
(90)
2 star:
(23)
1 star:
(12)
Average Rating:
Number of Ratings: 408
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- Guillaume Voisine (Montréal), July 29, 2013

- BladeL, July 21, 2013

- NewWorld, July 21, 2013

- Xon, July 15, 2013

- morphy_richards, April 7, 2013

- Zepton (Canada), April 6, 2013

- Floating Info, April 4, 2013

- Tiberoo, March 26, 2013

- dk101 (London, UK), March 2, 2013

- Brown_Cow, March 1, 2013

- ptkw, March 1, 2013

- redfuture (Canada), February 19, 2013

- DJ (Olalla, Washington), February 5, 2013

- Stewjar (USA), January 29, 2013

- Fantacide (California), January 11, 2013

- Edward Lacey (Oxford, England), January 8, 2013

- Sdn (UK), December 24, 2012

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Elusive symbolism, but well-written, December 24, 2012
by Andromache (Hawaii)

I've never been very good at working out symbolic meanings. I think I'm supposed to take something away from this, but it eludes me. (Spoiler - click to show)I have impressions of someone going mad from dehydration and possibly drug use, but the ending feels like I'm supposed to be grasping something that I'm not.

There were some parts of the game where I struggled with what to do. (Spoiler - click to show)The only thing that gave me any clue was that if something was intact, it must be destroyed. However, I had tremendous fun wrecking everything, and the writing during that part of the game had me laughing out loud. The to-do list, changes in room description, and the plant showing the state of dehydration were nice touches and enhanced the bleakness of the atmosphere.

This is a fun diversion and mostly intuitive. Not difficult at all for anyone familiar with IF conventions. It's worth playing just for the amusing and ironic writing.

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- Lingling (Perth, WA), November 20, 2012

- Rezz05, October 12, 2012

- bluevelvetwings, October 5, 2012

- Sillyjuliaann, September 30, 2012

- AADA7A, September 19, 2012

- Jordan Magnuson (Corvallis, Oregon), August 21, 2012

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Thought-provoking but somewhat blah, August 20, 2012
by glassmice (Equatorial)

Maybe I'm dead inside, but somehow I couldn't get drawn into the plot, despite the excellent attention to detail, (Spoiler - click to show)e.g. the subtle changes to the game environment as the story progressed, and very competent writing. Perhaps what detracted from the story-telling was the predictability of the plot twist, which was not so subtly hinted at (too?) early in the beginning (Spoiler - click to show)(namely the news report on the stereo), and the linear manner in which the subsequent actions unfold. For most of the game I could see where the character was going, and it was just a matter of figuring out how to lead him there; the little details in the story, which on hindsight provide so much to the narrative process, just got lost in the rather tedious gameplay.

That said, Shade provides lots of material for literary analysis, and the ending is tantalizingly opaque. So if you don't mind gameplay (no puzzles!) taking a backseat to a good - if slightly hackneyed - storyline, this IF is for you. If you're unsure if you'd like, its short length (approximately 1 hour) means you could give it a shot anyway. Who knows, you might end up liking it.

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