Weird City Interloper

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- Veraloo, January 20, 2016

- branewurms, December 24, 2015

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Conversation-based exploration, December 19, 2015

by verityvirtue (London)

Weird City Interloper is a short conversation-based romp through a fantastical city in the vein of Porpentine’s works - peopled with fascinating and fantastical characters.

For a game with no location descriptions to speak of, it was surprisingly atmospheric in its descriptions of the slums and the stenchworks, and spoke of a society more well thought-out than one might expect from such a short game. The hints of detail suggested a city like Miéville's New Crobuzon: highly stratified, with each social strata having elaborate rituals and norms; and highly industrialised, with the cogs of machinery merging with the eldritch.

All we know of the NPCs are their replies in conversation, and Pacian makes full use of this by giving each character a distinct voice and take on common topics. The game also comes with a very friendly hint system, in the form of a streetwise city guide. It took a bit of a leap of logic to figure out how to progress, I must admit, but the logic in the rest of the story is consistent.

Weird City Interloper was similar to Walker and Silhouette or Castle of the Red Prince in its unusual navigation, and the game lives up to its description as being shallow but broad, and makes for short (less than an hour) but colourful play.

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- Doug Orleans (Somerville, MA, USA), April 23, 2015

- CMG (NYC), February 11, 2015

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

Very Conversation Orientated , January 4, 2015

by Chai Hai (Kansas City KS)

This was a fun infomation game. In this game you can't do anything but talk to people. No items whatsoever. I liked it, it was a nice game, relying on conversations to advance the plot. A nice twist.

I found it delightful every time I discovered a new topic or person. I loved getting all the different perspectives and listening to what everyone had to say about everything and everyone.Even the simple minded slab knight.

The story was easy to follow, and I liked the way you slowly introduced the plot to the player. The player starts out having no knowledge at all about who we are, who we're supposed to see or our mission.

It is only with talking to various people that you discover your history and mission, piece by piece. I like that, because most CYOA games follow a predictable plot. The majority of the time the player knows its eventual end, and the steps needed to achieve it. Not knowing either at the start is a nice touch.

I want more of this world, Lissa's words left me hungering for more, be it this character or someone else!

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- Floating Info, December 20, 2014

- erisian, December 18, 2014

- Jason McIntosh (Boston), December 17, 2014

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

Clever and captivating, November 30, 2014

by Sobol (Russia)

Weird City Interloper is a fairly small conversation-based game.

Perhaps "conversation-based" is an understatement: there is literally nothing but conversation here. No conventional IF narrator telling you what is there, and how it looks like, and what is happening: only the direct speech of the NPCs. No "examine", or "inventory", or "go north": all you can do is talk.

And yet there is wonderful scenery in the game, and eventful journeys through the strange and colorful city of Zendon, and exciting adventures. Playing it reminded me of Elizabethan drama: no stage sets in the theater, almost no stage directions in the text; and then somebody says something like "But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, / Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill" - and you get the picture.

Above all, the game has vivid and memorable NPCs. I think even Gun Mute, another work by Pacian with a magnificent NPC cast, in this respect pales before Weird City Interloper. Each one of the fantastical and amusing characters would be enough to make a whole game centered on them. You could write an entertaining game about Lissa Ratdaughter, our trusty streetwise guide - and I would definitely play such a game, because I found Lissa interesting. You could write a nice game about Zook Spiralhouse, an innkeeper (who also happens to be a gigantic snail), charming in her grandmotherly way. And here there are not one or two, but a dozen of them - funny, mysterious, grotesque, different, each with their own unique voice and world-view.

There are no difficult puzzles (I don't think anyone can get truly stuck in this game, even without hints from (Spoiler - click to show)the rat queen) - just exploring, going through different topics of conversation, discovering things about the city and yourself; "lawnmowering", if you wish to call it such. But I never thought "lawnmowering" could be so enjoyable.

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