Alias 'The Magpie'

McT's Interactive Fiction Reviews

Beautifully, professionally done – superbly implemented. Funny, clever and delicious. I doubt it can be completed in 2 hours, but this is currently the standard bearer in the competition for me. 10/10.
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IF Comprehensive
A rich setting, motivated puzzles, and memorable characters
My introduction to interactive fiction was playing the Infocom games as a kid. They were fun then but a bit dated now, with an emphasis on contrived inventory and set-piece puzzles and less NPC interaction than modern works. “Alias ‘The Magpie'” plays like one of the best games from that era, but with a rich setting, motivated puzzles, and memorable characters. Score: 10
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The Breakfast Review
Something Fresh
Now, this is Something Fresh. We are an imposter -- that is, we are a slippery gentleman thief pretending to be a famous psychiatrist -- and our objective is a scarab, a Cheops of the Fourth Dynasty. What follows is a Wodehousian romp complete with dotty aristocrats, disguises, and wacky hijinks.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. The voice is engaging and the writing knows just how much to say and how much to leave out. The puzzles were just challenging enough, and the gating is effective. The characterisations are comedic just verging on cartoonish, without going into eye-roll territory. It's certainly not deep or thought-provoking in any way, but this damn-well near exactly what I come to IF hoping to find.
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Good Old Days
+ Colourful and very detailed background
+ Wonderfully neurotic characters
+ Clever setup for a nifty chain of events
+ Best use of a cucumber in a video game ever
+ Had me laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes at times
- Some of the puzzles could have used a bit more or better hinting
= Just like playing a Pink Panther movie.
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Patrick Brian Mooney

This was a fun treasure hunt. The multiple levels of deception involved in pretending to be multiple people to various NPCs was also a fun mechanic. The multiple disguises were great, too, and most of the interlocking puzzles were wonderful. The map was elegantly designed and access control handled gracefully. In all of these ways, it feels a lot like The Wizard Sniffer last year, though with a smaller, more restricted field of action and with a larger verb set. But all in all, it's wonderful in some of the same ways. Rating 9/10
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