Escape from the SS Borgarís

Ultimately, at many points while playing this title I had to keep in mind the fact that it was written in less than eighteen hours, and with Inform 6 to boot. By those standards I think it's a fun, mostly structurally solid exploration of what you can really do in such a brief time.

You're on an abandoned ocean liner, stuck in an iceberg, and need to formulate an escape. Doing this will require a thorough exploration of your surroundings, a disregard for personal property, and at least one cruel prank. I'm reminded of some classic 80s works, not least of all when it comes to the central feature of the game - two hundred cabins with randomly-generated contents.

Description, where present, is evocative and well-done. The brief writing time means that there are several parser difficulties but none proved too difficult; in some cases only one verb will work but it's the most obvious one, which I don't even consider a problem. There are a few item disambiguation issues but again, none showstopping. Searching two hundred cabins sounds incredibly tedious, but it's not so bad. What *is* regrettable is several cases of unmentioned items in room descriptions; nothing requires guessing but it can take unreasonable leaps of logic to figure out what to examine to find these things.

(Spoiler - click to show)The clothing necessary for one puzzle is found in the first four or five suitcases you find, and the gas cylinder you need for the balloon is found in whichever room the clown was staying in; it's a very reasonable implementation.

There are three, arguably four real puzzles, and all are logical without too much fiddling; the sparseness of the game makes the cues fairly obvious but not unenjoyable.