So Far

For over a week I managed to get through this game without consulting a walkthrough. As long as one is extremely methodical in examning everything, and makes sure to restore back before what looks like accidental permanent changes to world or inventory, it's rather hard to get stuck. I had a great time.

The story is minimal and somewhat abstract, as I have come to expect from Plotkin. The environments are sparsely described and still manage to evoke a feeling of really being there. Exploring the foreign environments was fun.

Then about halfway through the game came a location which I just couldn't get out of. Not even with a walkthrough did I manage to solve it. I've played this game for more than a week, fitting it into periods of downtime, and it felt unfair to get so thoroughly stuck on what I consider to be puzzle of not-very-good design.

This prompted me to evaluate what I really got out So Far and I realise... it wasn't very much. The story didn't move me. The puzzles were mostly systematic examining followed by systematically trying verbs with nouns. I might come back to this game in a few years, and maybe then I will appreciate it on another level, but right now, I didn't think of it as that great.