Here Comes Treble

This is a horribly broken game, so broken that I have to issue it a one-star rating... but I wish it wasn't.

The title of this review is a somewhat compressed line from the game itself. The NPC to whom you would be speaking at that point is Dr. Polter, one of a handful of significant NPCs in the game -- the others being a mute and unsanitary ice cream vendor, an enormous stag, and FDR. (Yes, that last is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The actual original, brought out of cryogenic suspension.) (Spoiler - click to show)Dr. Polter possesses a key that you will need in order to encounter FDR. It's a bit tortuous to trace out the decompiled Glulx game code, but I think (based on gameplay) that you have to exhaust all of these topics in order to get the key.

It's an example of the type of nerdy, goofy humor sprinkled throughout this half-finished piece. Here's another:


> spray stag with spray
It STAGgers away wheezing, clearing your path.


I mean, yes -- it's a bad pun. Some of you laughed, though. I know it.

There's no denying that this game is a mess as a program. It's also pretty messy in design, seemingly one of those play-around-while-learning-to-code types of efforts. Still, and perhaps surprisingly, the game is minimally playable and can be completed. I don't think anyone is likely to make much progress without resorting to decompilation, but the single largest obstacle is a terrible implementation of an elevator. I won't even wrap this in spoiler tags since it's more like an anti-spoiler: The key to using it is >PRESS BUTTON followed by >STEP INTO ELEVATOR. (Per the decompiled code, a special action is implemented for this.)

I have a soft spot for these neophyte efforts informed by Infocom tropes, and I'm often amused by absurdity, so it bums me out that author Sarah Bullard seems to have abandoned this game before finishing it, most likely due to frustration with learning Inform 7. If you're out there, Sarah: Join the intfiction.org forum and ask for help in cleaning this up -- I can see that you had a lot of fun ideas to share.