Indigo

Indigo is a game that's really more frustrating than fun. I love the concept, but it's not communicated well, and the game is full of bugs. I was relieved to be finished with this one.

A super fun and quick game with a really creative magic system. I did have to use the hint system once, but other than that the puzzles were doable. Very impressive for a speed-IF game.

Sometimes I think Emily Short has a competition with herself to see how many different magic systems she can come up with.

In this short game, you can take amounts of time from an object and place them in another object. The game makes this fairly simple.

This is a speed-IF, which generally means messy implementation. That doesn't show up as much here, except for leaving the tower. Also, the ending took me a bit to figure out.

Beyond being just a speed IF, this was a new-language speed IF, which means that Emily Short learned TADS and made this game all in a couple of days. Extremely impressive.

Emily Short's games are always intriguing and original, Indigo is no exemption. It's a wonderful short IF. The story was compelling and the magic system interesting.

Please keep in mind that Indigo was written in a couple of days and is marked as unfinished. That being said, it did have a weakness: game play. For most of the game, I found myself playing 'guess the verb', though to be fair, the about did say it was unfinished and as such, was bound to have problems. The main thing I had a problem with was (Spoiler - click to show)correctly formatting the command to take time. I knew from the beginning I needed to transfer a month from the apple to the potion. Yet when I tried take month from apple, the interpreter informed me that the month was part of the apple and couldn't be taken. take month, the correct command, and take month from apple should produce the same results. The game, while brilliant, was riddled with small errors like this.

In spite of this, I would recommend indigo to any and all IF players.

Emily Short turns IF on its head every time she makes a new game. She excels in 2 areas: a) she has an incredible command of prose - the stories are very compellingly told. I would pay to read her books; b) Imaginitive story-telling mechanics (think the servants and bells in Bronze) and ingenious game-play mechanics (don't waste too much time figuring this one out). I also had to look at the hints to get started - and the clues were right there from the start! An incredible play on words - and all done in 4 afternoons!

I really, really enjoyed Bronze so I was looking forward to playing this one. I enjoyed the whimsy of this game, although the manner of using objects was definitely unique and I needed hints to figure out what I was supposed to do. Once it was clear what commands to use, I was able to finish the game in a matter of minutes.

There was one glitch that got me completely stuck, I had to restart to be able to finish the game.
(Spoiler - click to show)I attached the hour to the window (which is on the top floor). 50 turns later, I was meticulously searching the middle level when my candle went out. Ok, I thought, I will just get another hour and restore the candle. I tried "get hour" but could not, because the hour was still stuck to the window upstairs. I went to the top floor and was able to take the hour. The text said that the candle was whole again -- but when I went down to the kitchen to light it, there was just a stub left. I was caught in a situation where my hour was on one floor and my fire source was on another floor!
I am sure I am the only person who would ever get in such a situation, but I guess that makes me a good beta tester? :)