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Number of Ratings: 129
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Previous | << 1 2 3 4 5 6 >> | Next | Show All - Adam Biltcliffe (Cambridge, UK), December 28, 2008
- Shigosei, December 12, 2008
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- Linnau (Tel-Aviv, Israel), October 31, 2008
- brattish (Canada), October 26, 2008
- madducks (Indianapolis, Indiana), September 5, 2008
- tylluan (Vermont), August 26, 2008
- Mukeja, August 20, 2008
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- Jason Catena (Chicago, Illinois), July 11, 2008
- Steven (Honolulu, Hawaii), July 4, 2008
18 of
18 people found the following review helpful:
Puzzles, Plato and Purification, June 26, 2008Imagine a puzzle game making strong use of a set of simulationist rules about materials and sizes. Imagine a game set in the only partly material laboratory of a Renaissance magus. And imagine a game where the player character attempts to escape from bondage through spiritual purification.
If you can imagine all of those together, you have imagined Metamorphoses.
It is not just a strange game, it is also a very good game. The writing is impeccable and Short effectively weaves together the PCs current exploits with a more emotionally gripping backstory. The puzzles mostly aren't too hard, and all seem to have multiple solutions. The atmosphere is simply great. And there is also true progression in the story, as the PC purifies herself and finally chooses her own fate.
It is also a short game, and you'll probably play through it in two hours. That does mean that the backstory remains very sketchy, and the story doesn't get the emotional resonance that it might have gotten in a longer game. (I would have liked to see the Master in-game, for instance.) The multiple endings don't really work, since you choose between in your last move and that means that everyone is going to Undo and try out the other ones immediately (right?). And there were one or two details in the setting which I felt didn't really fit into the Universe of Renaissance Platonism.
But all in all, these are insignificant complaints compared to the virtues of the game. If you like puzzles, Plato and purification, you should not give this piece a miss.
- Zoltar, June 22, 2008
- tinroof, June 15, 2008
- Michael Everson (Canberra, Australia), May 6, 2008
- Moses Templeton, May 3, 2008
- Tom Hudson (Durham, North Carolina), April 10, 2008
- Rhian Moss (UK), March 29, 2008
- lobespear, March 14, 2008
- jfpbookworm (Hamburg, New York), February 25, 2008
- J. Robinson Wheeler (Austin, TX), February 22, 2008
- Michel Nizette (Brussels, Belgium), January 18, 2008
2 of
11 people found the following review helpful:
Perhaps a candidate for Lojban translation., November 24, 2007The experimental and physical nature of this game world makes me wonder if it would be an ideal candidate to translate into the artificial predicate-nominative language Lojban. The author has described the game as an experiment in "mimesis" (the representation of nature), and I suspect that the unambiguous root words of Lojban may be well-suited to expressing and interpreting mimesis. A physics model embodied in language seems to need something more object-oriented than English.
That is not to say that the game does not succeed in this already, merely that it revealed fascinating possibilities.
If you had told me that an interesting story could be set in a world of Platonic ideals, I would have wondered how it could be possible. But I feel like this is a world I would be interested in revisiting. It held my imagination. The multiple endings were a loving touch.
- Leland Paul (Swarthmore, PA), November 19, 2007
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