It Is Pitch Black

This is a fun short choice-game that sports some surprisingly deep world-building for a game that was written under a strict three-hour time limit. Or perhaps, it is simply riffing on the Great Underground Empire/Zork universe and I'm not very well up on that any more... Either way, the simple premise has a convincing world behind it and the cracks don't show. The writing style is sympathetic to the Zorkian world and generally delivers.

You are stuck in a derelict old antiques shop and you must survive by making light by any means until help arrives (which it reliably does after x moves). It is an entertaining concept and your survival must be ensured by setting ablaze anything that looks like it will burn for a few minutes, as well as other strategies.

It's not really difficult to survive (just keep clicking those links!) but I suppose the puzzle is to find all the things you need quickly enough. I found the game fairly easy, but it was a diverting 15 minutes! (There is also a bonus item that can be claimed by solving an actual puzzle, which I did: hooray!)

This is a cool concept, entertainingly delivered, but suffers because surviving is a bit too easy. I wish the difficulty had been ramped up to increase the tension.

(I played this by downloading it from Wayback Machine, but I didn't get the music/sound so I can't comment on that aspect of the game.)