3 Minutes to Live

This game is a piece of speed-if written for the Hourglass Comp. Like all speed-if, it suffers from a bit of under-implementation. Unlike most speed-if games, there is a genuinely good game written here, and it's a shame that the author didn't finish it.

You play a hero trapped in a morgue by an evil mastermind intent on blowing up the city. ("Hero" as in James Bond, not Superman in spandex.) You must free yourself and stop him. The game is written with a tone of urgency -- aided by a giant clock counting down the seconds until detonation -- that pulls you into the game and spurs you to action.

The first puzzle is a guess-the-verb type that borders on obscure(Spoiler - click to show) "lean" is the necessary verb, and is completely unclued, but the rest of the puzzles are straightforward. However, as indicated by my review title, the game has only two endings, neither of which is an optimal ending. (Spoiler - click to show)There is no saving the city for this hero. Either you will run like a coward or stay and be blown up. I spent a large block of time searching for the optimal ending before finally discovering a set of hints for this game from the author, indicating that he had run out of time and been unable to create a good alternate ending to the game.

Nevertheless, the game is fun to play up until that point, and its ability to create a sense of urgency makes it worth a look.