External Links
- bluechairs.z5
Post-competition release
Or download bluechairs.z5 and run the game in a Z-Code interpreter. - bluechairs.z5
Original competition entry
Or download bluechairs.z5 and run the game in a Z-Code interpreter. - Story File in Russian *
Contains bluechairsR.z8
Синие стулья: translation by Vyacheslav Dobranov.
Or download Story File in Russian, unzip it, and run the game in a Z-Code interpreter.
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About the Story
She turns and looks at you curiously. 'You're here. You really came.'
'Of course I did,' you say. 'What happened?'
'I was dreaming,' she says with a sudden, awkward smile. 'I was dreaming of monsters.'
Awards
2nd Place overall; 1st Place, Miss Congeniality Awards - 10th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2004)
Winner, Best Game; Winner, Best Writing; Winner, Best Story; Nominee, Best NPCs; Nominee, Best Individual Puzzle; Nominee, Best Individual PC - 2004 XYZZY Awards
34th Place - Interactive Fiction Top 50 of All Time (2011 edition)
Ratings and Reviews
| Average Rating:   Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 13 |
3 Most Helpful Member Reviews
The game deserves 4 stars. A good edit would get it 5 stars.
The implementation is utterly sound and the prose is consistent and error-free. And that alone is enough to set this apart from 80% of that year's offerings.
It's a beautiful game, and I got really immersed. However, there's a dream section that goes beyond the nightime otherworldly and into pure surrealism for the sake of getting some exposition done. It's not needed, and shakes the mood.
What I'm saying (non-spoilery) is that the conversation with the reporter could as easily have been done by a conversation with Chris, while flying through the dark in the car.
I played Blue Chairs because I looked specifically for games with a surreal setting and surreal is what I got. The opening scene is really great, both technically and as a plot device, and it seems like the start of some psychedelic fun. But it isn't really psychedelic, it felt more like the stoned ramblings of a preachy zen-buddhist who read too much wikipedia on Freudian pychoanalysis. Then again, I don't know what kind of drug I, the player that is, is on.
I have no problem with games with a message, but either I didn't really get it or I'm not interested in it.
But mine is a very subjective point of view: The game is flawles technically, has various endings and if you are into psychology of the sub-consiciousness, symbolism and new-age-isms or just more tolerant than me, you will love it.
Even though I didn't like it I advise you to play it, it deserves it!
One heck of a Ride!, December 31, 2014I enjoyed this immensely. Several different settings, and a nice plot too. A lot of thought was put into this, it's extremely well written.
My biggest concern was the store maze. That certainly got repetitive ( had to look at the walkthrough to figure the end of that out) but I loved the people you met in the supermarket. The rooms you went into were unique enough to keep me satiated, and I wasn't too annoyed by the maze.
I loved this game's theme of life changes, it was really poignant and definitely gave you a lot to think about. Bravo!
3 Off-Site Reviews
Baf's Guide
My favourite game in IF-Competition 2004, Blue Chairs almost immediately won me over by a wonderfully surreal (or, more precise, dream-like) atmosphere and setting. As it turned out later, they were combined with one of the strongest stories I'd ever encountered in interactive fiction. On the other hand, it has been (deservedly, it seems) criticized for somewhat obscure puzzles, so that someone could find enough reasons to take away a star off its rating; someone - but not me.
-- Valentine Kopteltsev
SPAG
Yet work it does, with more than enough panache to spare. Yes, all of the above problems are inarguably present -- the sequence in the maze-complex or whatever it is does drag on too long, there are some actions I'd never think to do if the walkthrough didn't tell me to, and the whole Dante-and-Beatrice angle made me roll my eyes. But man, it just doesn't matter. I'm willing to concede that a good part of my goodwill towards this game is a result of its peculiar aesthetic, and particularly the author's knack for description, which comes off like Clockwork Orange by way of Freaks and Geeks. [...] The puzzles for the most part live up to the off-kilter yet sharp aesthetic of the prose.
-- Mike Russo
See the full review
>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction
Klimas has a hold of something very powerful -- interactive fiction steeped in surrealism and symbolism. This sort of thing has been tried before, but Blue Chairs is the best realization of it that I've seen.
See the full review
Tags
Game Details
Current Version: 2
License: Freeware
Development System: Inform 6
Baf's Guide ID: 2396
| IFIDs: | ZCODE-2-041229-942D |
| ZCODE-1-040930-2219 | |
| ZCODE-2-111222-1CA3 |
If you enjoyed Blue Chairs...
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Other members recommend this game for people who like Blue Chairs:| Shade, by Andrew Plotkin Average member rating: "A one-room game set in your apartment." [--blurb from Competition Aught-Zero] |
Recommended Lists
Blue Chairs appears in the following Recommended Lists:Good games by Simon Deimel
This is a list of games that affected me. Their contents had a certain impact on me and kept my mind busy even some time after I had finished playing.
Surreal/trippy/metaphor/mind's journey, with two worlds by MathBrush
There is a big genre of games where you explore a metaphorical region of dreams or symbolism, and which has meaning in the 'real world'. I love this genre, and these are my favorite examples of the genre. I only include games where there...
Great religious and mythological games by MathBrush
My "Best Fantasy" list was growing too big, so I'm splitting off the religious, mythological, and afterlife games. Some games like Curses! have a lot of religious and mythological references, but this list focuses on games where it's the...
Polls
The following polls include votes for Blue Chairs:Unreliable narrators by verityvirtue
I'm interested in games which hinge on the 'unreliable narrator', from amnesia to a plain distorted worldview. The more this distortion affects the storyline, the better.
Hallucinogenic games by jakomo
What games best evoke the psychedelic/hallucinogenic feelings of using DMT/Mescaline/LSD/Ayahuasca etc ?
Plot over Puzzle Parser by thecanvasrose
Looking for what it says on the tin.
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