Delusions

When I first played Delusions as a teen in the late 90s, it blew me away. Coming back to it, I find that it has not aged well. Delusions does a workmanlike job of playing cyberpunk tropes, without really advancing or subverting them in any way. Cyberpunk was not exactly new even in 1996, but it was still before The Matrix and a lot of other influences that left popular culture absolutely saturated with the stuff. So, at the time, Delusions' formula was still good enough to weave a compelling story. Today, it just doesn't work any more. Anyone coming to it with even a modicum of genre-savvy is going to see the midgame's big reveal coming within a handful of turns exploring the lab.

Delusions was one of the very first IF-games I played when I first discovered the medium. The puzzles were way over my head back then, but I found the setting and the slowly unfolding plot fascinating. Except exploring rooms and examining objects, I used a walkthrough for the entire game, knowing I would once try again.

And now I have come back to it. Where before I would have given Delusions five stars for its story alone, now I have more experience with IF and I might offer a more nuanced opinion. I will have to be quite vague in this review to not spoil the overall story.

The story remains fantastic. It is a reworking of a tried-and-true science fiction trope, very well told and paced. Each of the three parts of the game sees the plot of self-discovery open up some more to its inevitable conclusion. Story-wise, there are many similarities to Babel. The way the player discovers the story through puzzles is different however.

The puzzles are very reminiscent of some mini-games in Gateway. You have to build a good understanding of your surroundings and the available objects to figure out a sequence of actions that brings about the desired effect. This will undoubtedly take some experimenting, failing and retrying. You can of course rely on saved games for this, but the game always brings you back to a fixed starting point to begin anew. (In the middle game at least. The endgame is not so friendly.) It is vital to play through the introductory puzzle attentively, because it is an easier version of the puzzle in the middlegame.

For the map-drawers and world-explorers there is not so much here. However, the setting is exquisitely suited to the plot, it adds to the trapped feeling and the big puzzle is designed to fit snugly in these few rooms.

Unfortunately, being more experienced I could also recognize more flaws. The unfolding of the plot relies on examining the same objects multiple times over the course of the game, to see how they change, or, more accurately, how your perception of them changes. Sometimes an object gives a default "not interesting"-response while you should still examine it later. One crucial action demands a non-intuitive (to me) command, making it a very frustrating guess-the-verb problem: (Spoiler - click to show)TAKE object WITH TONGS does not work, you have to PUT object IN TONGS. I also found a game-breaking bug: (Spoiler - click to show)do not SET WATCH TO [time]. It breaks of the playing session immediately. Just SET WATCH wil do nicely.

So, I am not so awestruck as the first time I played through Delusions, but it is still a very clever and well-written game. Highly recommended.

This classic game is exceptionally well-written and implemented, together with a well-done hint system.

The game features a pretty small playing area that is packed with objects and several NPCs that take interesting actions.

The game is hard, and I had to rely on hints much of the time. The puzzles require creative uses of a large number of objects gathered from different areas, and some large leaps of intuition.

The plot is about the nature of reality, and it has several mind-benders, which is why I am not describing it as much.