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by David Welbourn

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Jesse Stavro's Doorway

by Marshal Tenner Winter profile

Time Travel
2014

(based on 11 ratings)
2 reviews

About the Story

Jordan is looking for his friend, Jesse, who is in hiding from the government. Picking up the trail, he discovers that Jesse is following the Grateful Dead on tour, but as Jordan immerses himself into the "deadhead" culture, he learns that Jesse is not currently in the same decade as those searching for him. Logic is an illusion in this drug-fueled, time-travel adventure tale.


Game Details

Language: English (en)
First Publication Date: October 1, 2014
Current Version: 1
License: Freeware
Development System: Inform 7
Forgiveness Rating: Polite
IFID: BB4EC1FD-8450-4713-95DB-12F2EA2DDAB0
TUID: muavh5jceq87jle

Awards

19th Place - 20th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2014)

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4 star:
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3 star:
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Average Rating:
Number of Reviews: 2
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Rough around the edges, August 18, 2017
by Cory Roush (Ohio)

The premise of this game is interesting, and you can tell the author has taken some time to flesh out the world and the mechanics of the player's ability. However, this is not a polished game, and a lot of corners seem to have been cut in getting to the end.

I have no idea why I'm looking for Jesse, other than because he's not around. I have no idea why I didn't do more to confront someone who was willing to burn down the house I'm standing in... the main character barely responds and when they do, it's illogical. If you were a time traveler told that your only way to get back home was destroyed, do you think that you'd really be a-okay with that?

The conversations with NPCs are muddled and choppy - a NPC's response to a topic sometimes includes details about the room they are standing in, but there are no limitations on where the NPC can talk about that topic, so on several occasions in the game's first 15-20 minutes, dialogue was taking place in some weird kind of limbo where actions I had previously taken haven't happened yet and my surroundings were different... and unless I jumped ship too early, I don't think that was the author's intention or a gimmick of some kind.

And as a pet peeve, containers in this game are poorly executed. Authors: please design your containers so that when opened, the contents are immediately obvious to the player. It's really monotonous to be subjected to "OPEN FIRST DRAWER. You open the drawer. LOOK IN FIRST DRAWER. The drawer is empty. OPEN SECOND DRAWER. You open the drawer. LOOK IN SECOND DRAWER. There is a flashlight in the drawer."


1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A time travel game about the grateful dead, October 4, 2019

Jesse Stavros Doorway is a mid length game about a collection of people with the ability to travel through space and time. There is a good chunk of backstory available in-game.

The game is large, with complex implementation, but it needs more beta testing; there are capitalization errors and "printed name" inform issues.

The setting is interesting, with a bunch of hippies time traveling to a grateful dead concert. The writing is descriptive.

I played with a walkthrough, as many actions were hard to come up with on my own.


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This is version 9 of this page, edited by David Welbourn on 29 May 2023 at 1:17pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item