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About the Story
"A date by candlelight in a fine restaurant. Should be a perfect evening." [--blurb from Competition Aught-Zero]
Awards
Nominee, Best Puzzles - 2000 XYZZY Awards
18th Place - 6th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2000)
Ratings and Reviews
| Average Rating:    Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 2 |
This mid-length parser game is the humorous story of a young woman on a date that gets worse and worse. You have to use quick thinking and a bit of slyness to get past overpriced food and clumsy waiters.
The writing is memorable and funny. The puzzles are a bit underclued, though, and many reviewers (including me) turned to the copious hints.
There are two or three puzzles in quick succession, followed by one big, mega puzzle involving a collection of obstructing waiters.
Overall, fun with hints.
The whole premise of this game is that you are stuck in a restaurant and have to come up with a way to pay. It's an interesting little puzzle but not as outlandish as I had hoped for. I had big dreams of hiding the bill under the bread or sneaking out the bathroom window -- but alas, these are not the solutions. The real solution is kind of a let-down but definitely makes the most sense in retrospect.
4 Off-Site Reviews
Baf's Guide
You're on a date, getting ambushed by all sorts of embarrassments and trying to save face. Fun puzzles and nicely goofy feel, though your character can be a bit of a drag--she's so insecure that you may want to shake some sense into her rather than going along with her schemes. Still, everything works well, and there's an enormously funny take on snooty waiters that makes the game worth trying all by itself.
-- Duncan Stevens
SPAG
[...] I thought the pieces meshed together really well; they all tie into the initial scenario, and the pacing is superb: a series of linear puzzles, then the game "goes wide" with a tough multi-element puzzle, then tightens down and is at peace briefly, easy, relaxed, everything is going right... and then BAM, ouch, followed by an easy end game. Perfect. As an added plus, the elements of DwA end up serving as a bit of a parody of some romantic genre cliches, indeed with the ending almost coming off as (unintentionally) mocking Masquerade, which uses those cliches to create its archetypal romance genre story.
-- Sean T Barrett
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SynTax
[...] a well written original game about a date from hell. It starts out as a story-based game but then poses increasingly difficult obstacles in your path.
-- Dorothy Millard
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>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction
Solving the game's puzzles requires coming up with the funny response that the game had in mind, and using a less funny but still sensible response, or even a different funny response that the game hadn't envisioned, puts the player at a rather unhelpful dead end. Thus, in the first puzzle I had figured out what I wanted to do, but hadn't come up with the particular funny way of doing this thing that the game was looking for, and therefore I found myself going in ever more frustrating circles. Therefore, if you're anything like me, you probably shouldn't be afraid to turn to the hints in DWA, but once you do, you'll have a pretty good time. If only we could say that about all our disastrous dates.
See the full review
Tags
Game Details
Current Version: Release 1
License: Freeware
Development System: Inform 6
Baf's Guide ID: 1012
IFID: ZCODE-1-000930-3237
TUID: whko1dvjyuiuh9en
Dinner with Andre on IFDB
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Polls
The following polls include votes for Dinner with Andre:Solved without Hints by joncgoodwin
I'm very interested in hearing truthful accounts of at least somewhat difficult games (or games that don't solve themselves at least) solved completely without recourse to hints, walkthroughs, etc.
Romance Games by Molly
In honor of Valentine's Day, I'm looking for games that deal with romance and relationships.
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This is version 6 of this page, edited by Paul O'Brian on 6 May 2022 at 11:53pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page
