| 5 star: | | (21) | | 4 star: | | (38) | | 3 star: | | (15) | | 2 star: | | (8) | | 1 star: | | (2) |
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Number of Ratings: 84
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Previous | << 1 2 3 4 >> | Next | Show All - Stickz (Atlanta, Georgia), July 10, 2010
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7 of
7 people found the following review helpful:
Out Among the Stars, June 23, 2010by Ghalev (Northern Appalachia, United States) The goal is simple enough: you’re a restless starfarer with a fine sailing ship, in the mood to get away and see something new, deep in space. And with that, despite the game’s linearity, it satisfies what non-linear games are usually better at: the sense of exploration. If you play these games (in whole or in part) for the sense of discovery, and you avoid linear play out of habit, I urge you to let this game be an exception for you.
The writing is richly evocative without being purple or self-indulgent, and the constant sense of cosmic vista defines the game experience. There is, really, almost nothing else to it.
There are one or two times where I struggled with the game’s verbs (Spoiler - click to show)(the puzzles, such as they are, are mostly about fiddling with sails, and some nautical terms work, and some don’t, and you just have to experiment to see). There is, at one point (I believe) a kind of very important false choice, and that frustrated me a little, but not for long … the game was simply too lovely, too rewarding in its own small way, not to forgive.
It’s a brief jaunt into the wind-and-sail version of space adventure fiction. It’s very nearly a one-room game in practical terms (not entirely, but nearly). It is linear. It is predictable (the ending I got, I saw coming when the story was barely underway). But … it is beautiful, and it is everything it needs to be.
11 of
12 people found the following review helpful:
Short but Sweet, June 23, 2010I really enjoyed this work. It was short and linear, but very creative and the setting was very evocative. Plotkin is quite good at using a few well-chosen strokes of the literary brush to allude to an extensive backstory, while letting the reader fill in most of the details themselves.
The style nods to classic SF of the pulp era -- Jack Williamson's "rhodomagnetics" makes a distinctive appearance early on, and I'm sure I missed many others. In style and tone I was reminded powerfully of both John Clute's Appleseed and the works of Jack Vance. The society of d'Accord is so advanced that the mechanics and time scales of space travel are of no real relevance to the protagonist, and the nautical metaphor Plotkin uses maps very well onto this setting.
And there's a maze. I don't mind mazes as much as some do, but even maze-haters should enjoy this one. The "room" descriptions are well-written and the mechanics are both novel and thematic.
The ending sequence was a nice finishing touch as well -- I won't spoil it here.
Overall, an excellent short work by a master of the art.
- perching path (near Philadelphia, PA, US), June 22, 2010
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