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About the Story
You are some guy who, after a night of drinking and proclaiming that you'd sell your soul for a chance with the lovely Gwyneth, wakes up in a literal "Mall of Hell". It seems Lucifer overheard you and although he doesn't want your soul, he will give you your chance with the lovely Gwyneth if you can defeat all seven deadly sins all of whom can be found somewhere in the mall.
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Ratings and Reviews
| Average Rating:   Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 2 |
In this game, you are dared by the devil to get out of a mall with the seven deadly sins in it so you can go on a date with a beautiful young woman.
First, the annoying things. This game claims it is too easy to need a walkthrough; like most games with such a claim, it doesn't implement very many alternate solutions to puzzles (in faft, I think there is only one solution for each puzzle), as well as neglecting many synonyms. The goal of the game is to make a passive, desirable girl sleep with you as a reward. Finally, it has some unnecessarily gross parts, such as with Lust.
Beyond that, the setting has some creative touches, a gently vague in-game help system, and some creative depictions of the seven deadly sins.
In this light and slightly sloppy puzzler (and possible first effort) you have to dispose of the seven mortal sins in Satan's new mall in order to get the girl. The puzzles are not bad, mostly running along the standard lines of taking everything which isn't bolted down and strategically relocating it. The tone is humorous, though a fair amount is both juvenile and unsuitable for children (Pride has a small penis, Lust has a misfire in his pants, etc.) I did not find it particularly worthwhile, but this might be interesting to devoted puzzle fans who can forgive a number of flaws in implementation.
4 Off-Site Reviews
Baf's Guide
Another entry in the ever-expanding genre of hell- or Satan-themed games, but a pretty good one. Hell is a shopping mall, and the seven deadly sins are embodied in various forms somewhere in the mall, and you have to find and defeat them. Not as funny as it might be--the humor is sometimes a bit sophomoric--but the writing's reasonably solid and the puzzles are fairly creative. One particularly good puzzle recalls one of the better moments in Leather Goddesses of Phobos, no small feat. There are some bugs and design errors, but on the whole this works well.
-- Duncan Stevens
>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction
In Robert Camisa's Beat The Devil, Lucifer is building an addition to Hell, and you're his betatester. He overheard you mumbling about how you'd sell your soul for a chance with the object of your affections, and, being surfeited with souls already ("Washington and Hollywood provide me with all the souls I'll ever need to buy."), makes you this alternate offer: wander through this Stygian mall and defeat the incarnations of the seven deadly sins, and that date is yours. It's a fun concept, and Beat The Devil gives it an energetic, cartoonish implementation.
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SPAG
Recipe for a slice of tried and true IF:
5 parts Perdition's Flames
4 parts John's Fire Witch (or substitute with Sins Against Mimesis)
1 part Leather Goddesses of Phobos
Mix well with some solid writing and logical, if not difficult, puzzles and you'll wind up with the '99 IFCOMP entry Beat The Devil (BTD). [...] If you've never played any of the games listed in the recipe at the beginning of this review, then I would definitely recommend Beat The Devil. If you have played those games, then I guess I would probably still recommend it, with some reservations.
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SynTax
This type of theme has been done before, but undeterred, I decided to give it a whirl. You can wander around almost at will, and you will soon find six of the seven sins, and believe me, they're quite disgusting (as you would expect). All I had to do was find ways of making them disappear, and with the collection of objects that you can lay your hands on, the answers are not as obvious as you would think. For instance, can you decide what you would do with a particularly nasty ice cream sundae, a tape of the world's worst insults and a catsuit?
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Tags
Game Details
Current Version: Release 1
License: Freeware
Development System: Inform 6
Baf's Guide ID: 610
IFID: ZCODE-4-990926-C877
TUID: wjcxkqyoqsxo2l8u
Beat the Devil on IFDB
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