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Review
This game is about a child "inventor" who plans revenge against a trio of bullies that ruin a favorite project. Physically outmatched by the antagonists, the PC instead devises a series of traps to use on them during a planned after school showdown.
It's a terrific premise, but one difficult to deliver in interactive fiction: The ideal freeform combination of objects to novel purposes will always be more limited to the imagination of the author than that of the player. Author DCBSupafly handles this by simply having the game suggest the type of combination that will work when the key ingredient for a trap is discovered. This gives the gameplay a scavenger hunt feel that primarily consists of exploring the available environment (i.e. the protagonist's house) in order to locate the necessary materials.
The writing is of the "adequate" class; simplistic and skimpy on details, it suits the voice of the grade-school age player character well enough but offers little other than description to the reader. Even as description it falls short, as it is frequently the case that items apparently in plain sight (Spoiler - click to show)(e.g. a rotten watermelon sitting on the kitchen counter) go unmentioned in room descriptions, and must be discovered via dedicated >EXAMINE commands. It does do a reasonable job of capturing the burbling, excited outlook of the PC, and this gives the game an air of sincerity that is its greatest asset.
As with every ADRIFT game I've tried, I frequently found the parser to be irritatingly inconsistent. Be prepared for this when starting the game, I guess. Fortunately, by the time you get sick of wrangling with the parser's occasionally erratic responses, you'll probably have made it far enough to end the game.
As Lance Cirone notes, the endgame can be reached at any point after three traps have been deployed, but there appear to be many more possible -- I'm guessing at least eight. Neither the walkthrough nor the >SCORE response gives any clue about the upper limit; I managed five (Spoiler - click to show)(a squirt gun trap, a mud trap, a watermelon trap, a pit trap and a sticky note trap) and had materials that seemed suitable for at least three more (Spoiler - click to show)(two kinds of pepper, a spider egg sac, and rotten milk). I couldn't find a decompiler for ADRIFT that worked on it, so those secrets remain for other players to discover (and hopefully share).
This game could easily have been a high two, since it practically cries out for more polish and refinement. The gleeful climax, which plays out like an 80s kids' movie, is fun enough to push it over the edge into three stars, which means I recommend it as a play experience for those in the right mood. Would-be authors are encouraged to contemplate the premise and how it might be better executed... great artists steal, right?
