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19th Place - 10th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2004)
| Average Rating: based on 10 ratings Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 2 |
This game is a shortish parser game about a trial run of an automatic typo corrector. The majority of the game is spent trying to fix a bizarre machine.
This game had several implementation issues, including fatally crashing the game when looking up various topics in the manual.
The puzzles in this game are fiddly. I have a distaste for machinery puzzles, but those who enjoy them will like this game.
The writing is descriptive, and though the first part was bland, I loved the ending, so I'm giving this 2 stars.
A single large one-room puzzle about a very complicated machine, with some impressive parser tricks. Too focused on implementation and technology and not enough on being actually fun. Amusing ending sequence.
>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction
As for the game itself, it's nothing too remarkable. Typo deploys the old reliable IF trick of literalizing some aspect of the medium, in this case the typo correction system. The PC is cast as a tester working for Flavorplex to iron out the bugs in its typo corrector. There's one substantial puzzle, a Rube Goldberg device for which the PC receives a set of instructions, but which is constructed so straightforwardly that I never needed to consult them. There's also one big plot twist, which in a more substantial game would move the action from prologue into the story proper, but which in this game serves only as an odd, abrupt, and unsatisfying ending. But Typo isn't too interested in telling a story -- instead, it just wants us to think about the implications of machines that make decisions on behalf of their users. For me, the game accomplished that goal.
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IFIDs: | ZCODE-1-041119-CA0B |
ZCODE-1-040924-5CE1 |