Tethered

Trapped in a snow locked cave after a mountain climbing accident, this game succeeds in setting the tone of danger. The growing threat of hypothermia is made real by a series of timed messages and context dependent updates throughout.

The obstacles to survival are well integrated into the story. These "puzzles" build tension and effectively control pacing. Particularly impressive (from a programming perspective) was the implementation of a certain rope puzzle.

Not wishing to spoil anything for others who haven't played it: (Spoiler - click to show)I have seen other reviews which compare "Tethered" to Colossal Cave, the granddaddy of text adventures, based on the shared underground landscape of these stories. For me, "Tethered" brought to mind Andrew Plotkin's "Shade" due to its shifting realities. Both games present a stark contrast between the safe domestic environment and the life threatening wilderness environment.

I don't remember playing this game during the 2018 competition when it was released, but I was turned on to "Tethered" when I was reading through the documentation pages for the Dialog development system. Tethered provided a solid launch for the Author's new development system, though "Impossible Bottle" (released a few years later by the same author) did even more to convince me that Dialog has some power to do things that are very difficult in other IF development environments.