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Review
Author Marshal Tenner Winter seems to have made something of a personal cottage industry out of adapting modules from the Call of Cthulu RPG into interactive fiction. This work is his first attempt, but the "call of cthulu" tag shows that he followed The Surprising Case of Brian Timmons with no fewer than four other titles, all published in 2013. This group represents about a third of Winter's entire catalog.
The pace of production speaks to a certain hastiness and consequent inattention to quality that is abundantly evident when playing this game. The writing is of lackluster quality, and implementation is extremely minimalist in nature. Scenery items are frequently missing, significant bugs abound, and tone and mood are almost comprehensively mishandled.
In 2013 there was already a model implementation of the core concept (i.e. an adapation of a CoC module) in the form of The King of Shreds and Patches. That title, which features a deep and carefully polished implementation -- is admittedly a tough act to follow, and its author, Jimmy Maher, has spoken about the vast amount of work required to create it. Based on the relative development timelines, I would estimate that at least ten times as much work went into producing The King of Shreds and Patches, and the difference between the two results is like night and day.
To be fair, Maher seems to have been attempting to recreate the sense of illusory freedom that is offered by a tabletop RPG, and he succeeded brilliantly in part through judicious trimming of the possibility space to reduce the burden of implementation while preserving elements of apparent player freedom. Winter's approach to adaptation seems to have been to curtail player freedom so severely that "on rails" is a generous characterization. (On a train, one would at least expect to be able to get some enjoyment from the scenery passing by.) It's a reasonable approach, but attempting to impose a linear sequence automatically undermines the emergent narrative that the module is designed to produce. The author is saddled with the task of crafting a single, coherent storyline out of the multiplex possibilities that can result from different player choices in the RPG version.
I'm sure that task can be done well -- after all, for a well-designed module any one path should be satisfactory -- but it is not done well here. Lovecraftian horror is heavily dependent on suspense arising from the slow buildup of the protagonist's understanding of the true situation. The crisis point is essentially metaphysical in nature, and arrives when the protagonist must accept a radically different order of existence, typically straining his or her sanity to the breaking point (or beyond).
You won't see that in this tale; the protagonist is beyond hardboiled and reacts not at all to the horror. Since the most interesting thing about the premise is the promise of blending horror and hardboiled detective tropes, this is a disappointment.
Infodumps are antithetical to tension, and this game lives by them. Character "interaction" comes primarily in the form of monologue. In a messy room full of books, the only one of plot significance is the only one implemented. Location descriptions are handled with minimal text that does little to evoke dread in the player.
The final sentence of the game is really the most entertaining part, and it wouldn't surprise me if it was inspired by something that happened in a real-life playthrough of the module in question. However, despite being an unexpected gem of humor, it's a poor ending to this particular story -- can you think of any other Lovecraftian tale that ends in a laugh line?
Despite its flaws, I would recommend it to any author interested in producing this type of adapation. The flaws are what make it a worthwhile study, especially when compared and contrasted with The King of Shreds and Patches. However, The Surprising Case of Brian Timmons falls so far short of its implicit animating vision that I can't recommend it as a play experience.
