A Beauty Cold and Austere

I will tackle this review by sharing my experience with this game, because I played it, gave up on it in frustration, came back, and gave up again for a totally different reason. Before giving up, I became quite enamored with it. So there's totally a love-hate thing going on. Quite appropriate, isn't it, for a "cold, austere beauty".

This is also something that I make a point of doing in my reviews. There are usually, and this game is no exception, reviews already out there that are excellently objective. I also sometimes try to objectively review the game, or parts of it, but with such great reviewers as have come before - shoulders of giants, and all that - I think the only way to say something that's still relevant is to share my experience. If this is not something that appeals to you, well, you've been warned. Bwahahaha, and all that.

First off, the math that I picked up in school was pretty basic; I went into arts, into acting, into music. I always did find math to be fun, in a crossword-puzzle type of way. I mean the equations that we were given to solve. I mean the stuff that people usually say "that's not the good part of math, that's the drudgy part of math that people are right to hate". I liked it. It had rules; you applied the rules, and solved the equation. Much like a game.

I also may enjoy some puzzles, especially basic cryptography (simple letter substitution, the kind that Poe's "Gold Bug" popularised), but they are definitely not what I play IF/adventure games for. I grew up with the LucasArts and Sierra adventure games, and when I discovered IF, it was the Babels and Anchorheads of this world that spoke to me. My favourite "aHA" moment was when figuring out the elevator puzzle in Hollywood Hijinx. The puzzles where you put yourself in that game world, with those objects and inventory items, and you think, "how can I manipulate these to achieve my goals?"

Finally, I am keen to learn, within reason. I like occasionally following Wikipedia links that explain some sort of mathematical problem or paradox or something.

I am, in short, the layman with a few basic notions.

Reading the about text, I was left with the impression I would be the target audience for this game! (more so if I liked mathematical puzzles more, but ah well) And indeed, the game tickled my fancy immensely, at first. It made certain things very visual, very accessible. The royal road that doesn't lead to geometry, our pal Achilles, the growing lines in the axis, the way that we gather the information via our math book. I felt like I was being given a teaser of a world which, though not my own, was beginning to interest me.

Let's let that sink in for a second. This cold, austere beauty captured my heart. Surely that means that the game was doing something really great. I particularly enjoyed the responsive implementation; the game was working with me, and not against me or at cross purposes.

Then I came to the prime numbers puzzle. My brain froze. I hate that kind of thing. I sighed, turned to the hints, and solved it that way. Even as I did, I thought to myself, huh, this was quite logical and sensible. If I'd given this some thought, I might have been able to solve it.

Then I came to the scales. It is a puzzle with three scales, each scale with two pans, each one with multiple blocks.

I was already soaking up a lot of new information. And these scales puzzles, I'm honestly so, so tired of them. My brain froze again - terminally, this time. I played around with them, I read the hints, and in the end I decided, ok, this is not for me. "This beauty is cold and austere indeed", I thought. "There's no point in forcing. I like a different sort of beauty. This is good for what it is; but it is not for me."

I deleted the game. It was nighttime, so I started up another game "A Bloody Life", played a few rooms, then went to sleep.

And I kept thinking about this game. It kept me awake for a little while. I kid you not. I kept going over it, and going over what I had liked, and telling myself that I had done the right thing by quitting if I wasn't having fun. But still, you know, I couldn't let go.

So next day - after a mostly sleepless night, for some reason - the first thing I do is, download the game again. I decide I'm going to give it a proper try. It's not hard, I think, to open a text file and write down the equations on the scales. The hints told me what the overall goal was, and told me that (Spoiler - click to show)the non-lettered blocks all weighed the same (which is something the game itself had already hinted at), so I figured all that was left was the equation part. This is the bit I used to like in school, I told myself, so give it a go.

It was... embarassingly easy, as it turns out.

And fun!

From then on, I kept going. There was one more place I couldn't understand - the chest in the hidden room (I shan't spoilerize any more). I just couldn't really understand what I was meant to do; there were dials that said one thing, and there was an inscription that said another, and I didn't know which of those two I was supposed to "solve". The built-in hint system solved that for me. I still don't quite know the logic, but I am quite content to accept that it's a puzzle that just flew over my head. I still got the logic of the final solution, just not quite WHY that was the solution. No matter! I was still avoiding hints overall, and having a lot more fun this time! The game was throwing lots of new stuff at me, and I was consulting my little book and making headway as best I could. I was glimpsing, at a very basic and introductory level, a fascinating world. And I was actually understanding it, up to a point. Euclide's fifth postulate, Pascal's Triangle, the secretary problem, I didn't know about ANY of these things. The things I recognised the most were, heh, Achilles and the Tortoise (thanks to Terry Pratchett's Discworld and to Beyond Zork, mostly!), and Plato's Cavern, which is the one thing I recognised from school.

...you can tell there's a "but" coming on, can't you?

It's the TRON sequence. The Euler thing.

I hate these. I always have.

Look, I tried it. I understand that it's really simple, really basic. Laugh at me if you will. Make fun. Call me a moron. Whatever. I not only hate these puzzles, I absolutely suck at them. Very hard.

So I try it, I map it, I experiment, and eventually I give up. Cue the hints.

...the hints don't give a solution.

They give a couple of tactical pointers.

Huh. Ok, I guess; let's try putting them to good use. Let's try the puzzle again with those pointers in mind.

...nope. Still nothing. Yes, I'm THAT bad at this type of puzzle. Remember the type of player that I am; this is exactly the sort of thing I hate in my adventure gaming experience. Consider also all the puzzles that I had to solve to get to this point; I had been putting an effort, and I had felt the game kept rewarding my efforts, so I kept wanting to go on. It was all very positive.

So I sigh, come here to IFBD and check the "detailed solution" that's linked here.

The "detailed solution" doesn't give me an answer either.

And this pisses me off.

This. Pisses. Me. Off.

Excuse me, author?, goes my internal monologue. You make a detailed solution - detailed solution! - and you don't bother to give a solution to the puzzle that's stomping me? What, did you think it's beneath you? Did you think anyone could solve this easily with just a few pointers? Am I that useless and hopeless a player? Do you care so little about me as a player? Should I just quit and let others, who "get" you, play this game instead, seeing as I am not worthy?

Like I said, I was pissed off. I feel at this point it's better to be blunt about how I felt when I saw that, well, the "detailed solution" didn't detail the solution to a puzzle that I was stuck on. I feel that this is the sort of feedback that sometimes lacks: an honest depiction of how the player feels when encountering certain situations. Not destructive, not inflammatory, not insulting; but no holding back. Because, hey, the player felt that way because of your game; and the player was certainly not holding back when they felt it. Surely, author, it will interest you to know the reaction you caused.

So, I was still fuming when I checked the other available walkthrough, which DID have a solution. I could have continued. But... I didn't want to anymore. If the author was going to snub me that hard, to have so much contempt for me, then this was no longer a game I wanted to play. So I deleted - this time for real.

Long read, this. Or maybe a rant. I see it as candidly sharing my experience, my thought, my feelings.

This game is good. It's really good. It really captured me. It must have; I came back to it after giving up once, and even now I still think fondly on it, so much so that I needed to come and write this review, to serve as final punctuation, so I can move on. The imagery, the implementation, the way that it was mostly accessible to someone who has somewhat basic knowledge and was keen to learn.

But there are certain things I cannot get past. Different things at different times. I can accept a lot of things, and others I absolutely cannot. It may not sound like a big deal - but I hope that, through my rant, I was able to explain why it was such a huge deal. When we are really enjoying something, the bad things stand out all the more; and I was loving this, up until my progress was completely stopped by a puzzle that wasn't for me and an author who decided not to give me a solution so I could move on.

Well, if you don't want me to move on, author (goes my internal monologue), I shall oblige.

Moral of the story: it's possibly not really about which type of player is suitable for the experience. It's much more about how accessible the author makes it.

First, i want to apologize for my poor usage of the English language, i understand it pretty well, especially with a little help from the computer when needed ;) , but when i need to express myself, as you will see, i have some problems (and it's the least i could say). So, sorry if this render my review unreadable, at least i would have tried and with time and practice, i hope i'll become better and better and maybe, one day, i'll be able to write an IF work in English (let's hope -dream ?-)

Now to take on the subject matter, this piece of interactive fiction is sublime for anyone who love puzzles and mathematics and its history. The story part of the game is rather limited, and i'd say it's impossible to spoil it but to be perfectly honest (Spoiler - click to show)it's the evening, you haven't studied for your exam which is the next morning, and the only solution is a "study pill" that your roommate kindly left for you on your desk. This pill will take you to an oniric mathematical world where you will encounter various figures, mostly related to math history/mythology, which you will need to help by solving mathematical puzzles to gain points for your next morning exam's test score. Along the way you will also collect major books from math history on which you will be briefly briefed. Near the end of the game, when solving a puzzle you can be re-send to your dorm room at which time you can choose to stop here and be satisfied with the test score you'll have at the moment or return in the oniric mathematical world and solve every little puzzle to gain a perfect score of 100/100. To make a review without any spoiler, even if it is hard to spoil, i would say that it is a collection of mathematical puzzles that you solve to increase your score and learn about the history, philosophy and mythology of math along the way. There is not a lot of prerequisites to play this game, i will spoil the subject of the hardest puzzle of all (Spoiler - click to show)finding an Euleurian path with only text description of the grid. It was my first game of IF and i'm a math lover so i thunk that it will be a good starting point for me to enter this world, and even if some part was hard for a first timer (especially the mapping of the rooms (if you played it, you know what i mean)); i would say that i greatly enjoyed it. However i would not recommend it as an entry point in the IF World since even if it fitted for me, i think that it will discourage more people than amaze them (except if like me you're a math lover, in which case go !). However after having gained a bit of experience with interactive fiction : GO FOR IT ! It's a must ! You'll learn a lot if math is not your thing and if your a math person you'll love this "Easter Eggs" feeling when catching reference to mathematical culture (history, philosophy, jokes, thought experiments etc...).

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Finally, and this has nothing to do with the game, if you have the time and will, can you leave a little comment on how you found my English expression skills were. Thanks.

This game blew me out of the water. Every puzzle was engaging and educational. I must admit to the occasional use of hints, but I fully believe that if I hadn't been in such a rush to finish the game I could have solved it all with just a bit of brain power.

It's chock full of interesting historical elements as well, and the characters felt very alive (I felt genuine emotion for Descartes, that man was going through it).

Play this game. Its well tested, you won't get soft locked, every puzzle is perfect.

This game was the insipid edutainment experience that I had feared when I was preparing to play Junior Arithmancer.

When I first loaded this up and got through the short introductory segment, I thought that I was going to be treated to an extended version of the experience provided by the core mechanic seen in the author's other notable math-themed game. I was envisioning a game of "magical" powers rooted in mathematical operations that would phrase key breakthroughs in the history of mathematics as puzzles to be overcome, with an emphasis on the expansions of conception as opposed to the mechanical operations. Having enjoyed the optional puzzles and just playing around in the number space of Arithmancer, I thought I was looking at the fun and compelling core of that game turned up to 11.

The presentation and the setting were quite similar, and the first few segments (constructing and extending the set of numbers) seemed to support the title's implication that this game would be about learning to appreciate the "cold and austere" beauty of the vast and interconnected web of concepts and reason that is mathematics. Since Arithmancer was so unexpectedly fun, I was looking forward to the experience -- I even hoped that I might learn something.

Unfortunately, the game quickly devolves into something else entirely: an old-school-style puzzler with frivolous mathematical theming that seems almost totally at odds with the implicit premise. Although *A Beauty Cold and Austere* appears to be the author's sincere love letter to the beauty of mathematics, it singularly fails to communicate that beauty. Fundamental and important conceptual breakthroughs are handled at a remove of one or more degrees, via puzzles that for the most part pointedly avoid the crux of the mathematics themselves. The entire puzzle structure is crafted in the old school style, and at times the game almost seems a parody of it.

The actual reasoning required to make progress is typical for old-school puzzlers, and the game does little to explain or reinforce mathematical concepts. I frequently found myself imagining young players of this game huddled around an Apple ][ in a 1980s school computer lab, too interested in the novelty of a "talking" computer to notice that they weren't learning anything useful about math from overcoming the game's obstacles.

To be fair, it's hardly this work's fault that it wasn't what I had hoped it to be on the basis of a misunderstanding that it was written after Arithmancer. It was, in fact, written before, and the arrow of causation points the other way; Spivey quite admirably extracted one of the best ideas from this game and crafted a much better experience from it. Perhaps I was reading too much into the title and cover for a second time with one of Spivey's works. However, I was not particularly impressed with this work even when trying to take it on its own terms. The fairness level of many puzzles is debatable, and the only unifying structure is dream logic, i.e. non-logic. The most interesting aspect was (Spoiler - click to show)the roller coaster; with its multiple possible configurations, I had to admire its implementation as either very clever in its design or of impressively large scale in execution, if not both.

I think I would recommend this game to someone who really enjoys the old school puzzle sensibility of wanting to solve a puzzle "because it's there," and I imagine that there would be some appeal to mathematicians in the fact that many props and setting elements come from the history of their field. If the idea of Zork with math-themed puzzles appeals to you, then by all means proceed directly to playing. If what you want is fun with the math itself, then you may be better served by Junior Arithmancer from the same author.

A Beauty Cold and Austere is an elegant and ardent love letter to mathematics. The game progresses naturally along the historical development of mathematics, and the world expands along with our understanding of what a number actually is. Each puzzle is cleverly designed around a fundamental principle of mathematics, using the language and thought processes of at the time of discovery. I loved interacting with the historical figures and seeing them interact with each other! This game is a masterpiece, and I will being singing its praises to all of my math-y friends!

First of all: A Beauty Cold and Austere is extremely well coded and implemented. Every action I tried that had even the slightest relevance to the problem at hand was understood. The parser understands tons of synonyms and guesses accurately what you want to do from differently formulated commands. This is a joy in every adventure, but it is doubly so in a game like this. There is a lot of precise fiddling of switches and turning of dials here, and any less near-perfect implementation would have made this a hell of frustration.

The puzzles here are logic and fair (duh). The author has put in a lot of effort to guide the player to understanding why the solutions work. I daresay that I have learned a (vague) thing or two about calculus.

The game truly shines in its visualization of abstract mathematical concepts and problems. An algebra problem made concrete with balancing scales is something one could find in an oldschool text adventure. Making an infinite converging series tangible or visible is harder. And programming, nay, creating a working machine in the game that lets you manipulate such series at will is just a heavenly present to any IF-tinkerer.

The writing is very good. Well-described locations, the occasional joke (well, a bit more than occasional, but it stays within bounds...), good NPCs. On the larger scale, it's harder to say:

Like The Chinese Room, a game that explores some basic concepts of philosophy, A Beauty Cold and Austere explores many mathematical concepts. And, like The Chinese Room, A Beauty Cold and Austere does not have much of a story beyond that.

It makes up for this though. Instead of a story-structure, we get an ever-widening understanding of mathematical concepts and how they are linked to eachother. And this widening understanding is beautifully reflected in the way the gamespace evolves. The map itself expands and deepens with your mathematical discoveries (or inventions, depending on your philosophical standpoint). You also have the backbone of math's history and many of the great minds in it to give the game a recognizable structure.

I like this game a lot.

The game succeeded in teaching me a whole load of mathematical concepts that I either didn't know or had long forgotten, and did so in a way that made me feel pretty smart for figuring stuff out. The gradually unveiling structure was good for keeping the challenge space manageable. The puzzles were on the whole challenging without being too obtuse-- I only resorted to hints a few times and mostly discovered I'd forgotten to look at something properly.

I'd give it 8.5/10: very good execution of the concept with few missteps. Relatively sparse environs and characterisation, but this is fine for the kind of effect it was going for.

When I finished this game, in 3 not-long-enough sittings, I had the feeling that I had once again put yet another great IF game under my hat. And it's one of those of which I can truly say that I learned some very interesting things. I may be biased, because I have a background in mathematics and enjoy solving problems in math and physics, but I think this game also entertains--and enlightens--the math lay-person.
The game takes the player through mathematics in history, beginning with the ancient world, and the player advances by solving puzzles pertaining to the major discoveries. The player actually meets some of the historical personalities involved and learns something of their work.
I'm going to leave off discussing many of the particulars, because I feel like I would be spoiling it for the reader, but I really enjoyed how the game seemed to show, symbolically, how mathematics lies at the very root of existence, as a fundamental part of the universe. Also, if you have a keen eye for math humor, you'll find plenty of such references in ABCA.(Spoiler - click to show)Some examples--the log table, which is an actual table made of logs (if have used logarithms in math, you'll spot this one); the square root, which actually is a square made from a root; one puzzle involved Descartes's famous saying 'I think, therefore I am.'--reminding me of a puzzle in my own game 'Bullhockey!'; an 'empty set'--your holdall; even the game's initials seem to allude to a triangle in trigonometry, made by segments ABCA etc, etc.
I really don't have any real complaints about this game. The closest I can come to one is--(Spoiler - click to show)this game has a number of levels, each of which has a central room, from which there are a number of exits--not all of which may be obvious or usable at first. The more you advance on a level, the more 'clear' this central room becomes, and the more exits open up, plus at one point, an exit to the next level opens. I didn't realize this at first, I felt a bit dogged when the room seemed to change on subsequent visits. But this isn't really a complaint--there is a logical reason why this would happen and the player will figure it out.
I think that ABCA is well-suited for being part of a course in the history of mathematics, and I wouldn't be surprised if it indeed is. I honestly think that if a student who balks at taking a math course played this game, s/he would want to learn more about math as a result.

I liked it very much: most of the puzzles are based on classic memes of popular mathematics, but they are well designed and sometimes able to surprise even when known. In fact, a bit of familiarity with math is needed to enjoy the game.

I must confess that in a couple of cases I needed to peruse the hint system, which is well designed and very useful without too many spoilers.

"A Beauty Cold and Austere" takes its player though a tour of freshman-level mathematics, from the basics of combinatorics to touch the beginnings of cardinal numbers. If unfamiliar with the relevant concepts, this game might take a while to complete, but if you know the math then you shouldn't have much difficulty. The puzzles were tasteful and well-designed, though I had a little difficulty determining which puzzles had already been solved and which had not. I have one complaint about some of the puzzles, such as the Hotel puzzle, which used character knowledge instead of player knowledge. This felt jarring - like I had been robbed of some agency - since I knew the answer but I had to find a way to force the player-character to figure out the answer for himself.

As for the main point of this review: I think this game falls short of its eponymous cold beauty. All of the math is at the high-school or freshman level. This isn't the problem - it's a positive, since it makes the game accessible. The issue is that it emphasizes the same ugly parts of math that are taught in these classes: matrix algebra, trigonometry, calculus. At one point the player is even asked something along the lines of "What's the third important topic in calculus after the limit and the integral?" But the limit, integral, and (Spoiler - click to show)derivative are hardly conceptually interesting together. The only relation between them is that a calculus class would allocate each of 3 sections to them.

These aren't the beautiful parts of mathematics. They are the ugly results of condensing math into something useful which can be applied to introductory physics. I felt like I had entered a world not of mathematics but of math class.

I want to qualify these feelings because they're a bit too harsh. I really did like the game despite its shortcomings, and I think it's worth playing and thinking about. This game sets high expectations from the very start, and though I think it fails to reach them, it remains an enjoyable and provoking experience.