Friday, July 29, 2011

IF Comp 2010 - Review Main Page

While contestants are gagged against reviewing other games for the weeks during judging, we authors exchanged our own reviews in a private forum. I've copied out the reviews I made, before they disappear from the forums forever. There were some really awesome games, and I look forward to next year. The links are organized by how well they placed in the competition - top place at the top, last place at the bottom.

Also, of course, please read my wrap-up I did of my own game, Divis Mortis. It was really a fun game to write, and it turned out so well that I'm really proud of it. 11th place, huzzah!

Aotearoa
Rogue of the Multiverse
One Eye Open
The Blind House
Death Off the Cuff
Mite
The People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure
Flight of the Hummingbird
The Warbler's Nest
Gris et Jaune (unreviewed by me)
Oxygen (unreviewed by me)
The Bible Retold: Following a Star
Leadlight
Gigantomania
Under, In Erebus
Pen and Paint
The 12:54 to Asgard
The Bible Retold: The Lost Sheep
Heated
Ninja's Fate
Sons of the Cherry
East Grove Hills
R (unreviewed by me)
A Quiet Evening at Home
The Chronicler

The Chronicler

Well, I enjoyed the flip back and forth feature, that was pretty darn cool, and way better implemented than I thought it'd be, although it would have been nice to just switch time periods in whichever room we were in. Since I'm a chronicler, though, I feel like I should have the ability anyway without some mysterious box.

Points for allowing me to take off my uniform. I hate it when you ANTI-NUDIST ELITISTS force my character to stay clothed. But seriously, for implementation, I don't know what a "pixel hunt" in IF would be called, but this one was it. I would have loved to play this one in a year after it had been fully fleshed out.

I enjoyed the light fixture puzzle, but really I had no idea why I was doing it until after it had been done. There was a lot of potential for really cool time-based puzzles, but alas.

I also had trouble with the map on this one... the hallway teleported you places, but later it became a stairway too? I should have drawn myself a map, but I got the paradox-creating duplicating power cores and finagled my way to an ending, woo!

I would also like to say, this game improved my vocabulary. I thought Gabbro was just a made-up futuristic bit of scenery, but really it's a real kind of rock. I also learned that patina is the oxidized surface of metal.

So, John Evans, start working on your new game now so it will for sure be finished by next year!

A Quiet Evening at Home

As someone who admits to having played The Sims 1 and 2, I have been known to enjoy a game that's just about an average person doing average things.

And this was a game that did not disappoint those expectations. I enjoyed turning on and off the sink, getting my hamster to exercise, among other mundane puzzles. I have to say, the intro was pretty nerve-wracking. The game jolted me to ureaic urgency, and the first bathroom puzzle was a good pull-in. I was going "ahhhh!" in my head at having to pull a key out of my backpack and then find the bathroom.

There were several cute moments that made me smile:

>x photographs
You remember the day you took them like it was... five years ago, because it was.

and also I enjoyed the ability to use the computer.

The futon puzzle seemed plausible to me, although maybe it could have been a sleeping bag.

Taking out the trash was really the only bit I didn't like, since I had to guess there was a sideyard and I couldn't push the can, but had to pick it up (In case nobody else mentions it:

Code:
After going a direction (called way-pushed) with something (called the thing-pushed):
say "You push [the thing-pushed] [way-pushed] to [the location].";
continue the action.
The trash can is an openable opaque container. It is pushable between rooms.




Instead of going north from the Front Stoop with the trash can: say "Don't push a trashcan inside."
End code.
(Okay, I'm just proud I know how to code something!)

I didn't get to see the end, because I must have hit some sort of bug:

>x self
You feel ready for bed.

>get in bed
you feel like there's something you've forgotten to do. Are you sure you turned everything off
>g
you feel like there's something you've forgotten to do. Are you sure you put away the hamster
>g
you feel like there's something you've forgotten to do. Are you sure you closed and locked all the doors

Which, after checking on the trash and the hamster and both doors made me feel like I had OCD because it still kept repeating these reminders, which was actually an enjoyable ending for me; as if my OCD was keeping me from annoying that quiet evening. Am I sure I locked all the doors? Am I SURE?!

I think overall it was well-written, and well puzzled and I look forward to something more... exciting from Anonymous's life next year.

East Grove Hills

I have seen and imagine will continue to see many bad reviews about this game: how it's not interactive, it's angsty and whiny, and it's short on top of that, but it was aiming at something else.

And I have to say, it really speaks to how horrible it is to be a teenager when people don't even want to be a teenager in an adventure game. Nobody likes to be reminded of those awkward years, the angst, the introversion, scrutinizing every interaction to the point of inaction. I think that this game does a great job of conveying that feeling of how horrid teenage years are. It also did a good job conveying the powerlessness you feel during the teenage years and in the middle of a school shooting. You aren't allowed to make any moves that significantly contribute to changing the world or making things better or doing anything of importance. But that's what it feels like to be a teen, and what it feels like to be in the middle of a shooting (I'd imagine).

A note to the author or any other teens: as you grow out of the teenage years, you realized that everyone else is just as insecure, wrapped up in their own lives and they don't scrutinize your every move, and you relax in that knowledge and get over the awkwardness.

Sons of the Cherry

This was an alternate-history Choose Your Own Adventure. It had cool locations and descriptions and a neat conspiracy story going on, but it really was lacking on the "choose" side. It did have that cool meter that kept track of the tradeoff choices you made and how that reflects your gameplaying character, but other than that it served no purpose.

Ninja's Fate

Being a pirate person (GLARE), I find myself not as familar with ninja lore, and I stubbornly didn't examine the very things I was holding, which would have been a good idea to get the lockpicking device right away, and I felt foolish about not solving that puzzle.

When it came to the rest of the game, fun times and silliness abounded. I loved the unpaintable wall, the competition gallery, and I went around trying to paint everything.

The maze was daunting until I realized it was just there to be silly, not to actually be navigable, and it made the maze into something (gasp!) fun! While the foe attacks got tiresome after awhile, I enjoyed the variety greatly and smiled at all the cool stuff there was. The game really seemed like a great tribute to a wonky writer.

I managed to get 3 of the endings by myself, and the other endings seemed pretty reasonable enough from the hints section, but if anyone gets ending 6, share! I was disappointed there was no seppuku-styled ending possible, but that's just quibbling.

The trapdoor that's always closed seemed to tease away, maybe that had something to do with ending 6? or maybe it's just a ye can not get ye flask device.

Fun, silly and a great game!

[Later, I wrote:]

The more I think about Ninja's Fate, the more it grows on me and I find myself thinking of how sweet it is. I liked the museum, I did go back and figure out the trap door stuff, the wide expansive maze with poor implementation and randomly generated descriptions and attackers, the wall, the bust, the descriptions. I thought combining the elements of his work was a great way to pay tribute. I feel like it was really very clear what the significance of each wing was meant to be, and even though (as my first year participating in IF) I've never played anything by Panks, I feel like I really got to know who this guy was and what he did: persistently made the same kind of game over and over with a determination like it was very important. I feel like I got to know his character and make a sort of connection. I dunno, maybe I am just a sentimental type, but I'm treasuring this for what it is - a great memorial done in the style of Pank's passion. I think this did a good job of presenting unsuitable gaming elements while not making them game-breaking or game-interrupting: it captured the style without making it actually a bad game. I enjoyed it!

I want to say thank you for this entry, it's been something I've enjoyed as a unique experience.

Heated

As a newcomer to IF, I went through past archives of reviews, and I seemed to glean that the get-ready-for-work type of game is used and used often, and often the bane of entries for being boring. This was really anything but.

There were genuine puzzles, there was a hook of a premise, and really well-implemented mechanics. I played this game several times through, because the briefness allowed itself to be replayed and replayed. It was charming, it was cute, and it was fun.

Aside from the anger mechanics that permeated everything, including the UNDO command, my favorite puzzle was the time-sensitive sandwich. Knowing that the sandwich goes bad, I am kind of laughing at what will eventually be my avatar's rude awakening in a few more minutes. Here's hoping he had some money to buy something else for lunch!

The backyard was pretty useless, but I'll take it as social commentary on the uselessness of backyards in general, which I approve of.

Some other silly-amusing details I enjoyed: being able to flush the alarm, and the scene with the keys bouncing into the toilet even after you've closed the toilet.

The 12:54 to Asgard

I've started this one several times, but I keep getting stuck on puzzle 1 - fixing a roof. I don't know how to fix a roof out of game, but my character should know in-game, and he wasn't helping me at all. The problem for me was having too many pieces of potential solutions, lots of equipment that could maybe be used to patch a roof, but I could not figure out how/if to combine them. I consider that not having played it, and I am not going to really review it based on that alone.

Pen and Paint

Well, this game was a lot like Myst, and not just because of the book-as-a-world mechanic. It had varied other worlds, and a large scale. It would have made a great adventure for solving slowly over several weeks. I have to say, the amount of work that's been put into this game is pretty obvious. So many cool mechanics, cool backgrounds. I loved how magic is just taken for granted (a sphere of grave dust, a musician in my bathroom, uncertainty about how the kitchen machines work).

I did feel bad about taking the slave's shawl and not properly returning it.

It definitely needed some work, some more hints about how exactly you can trigger "entering" the book, how much inspiration you need and such. I spent 2 hours just exploring the house trying to figure out how to get inspired enough to enter the books.

Also, it could have used an official end, instead of just commanding a "stop".

I enjoyed this a bit, even though it was frustrating. I'd seriously love to see it fixed up and fancy.

Under, In Erebus

There are two things I am proud of in this game, one that I figured out that the puzzles were wordplay-based and that I got naked first thing. Preemptive nakedness.

I've discovered by now that I can't find my way around maps to save my life, so I mapped this dark underground cavern, and I have to say that the OCD in me enjoyed the fact that the island was symmetrical. (I redid my map, just to make it look nicer.)

Onto the actual gameplay. I feel like, this is what an afterlife would be like for an adventure gamer. They'd be thrust into an underground cavern with all sorts of odd and mysterious things, hints and puzzles. This game also felt like that because honestly it took awhile to figure things out, which you'd need in the afterlife.

As I said, I felt that the puzzles were word-based, but I fell just short of figuring out how to create those words. I was trying to figure that maybe putting the sheep in box 2 would get me _H_, because the 2nd letter of sheep is an H. I checked other reviews and then figured out that it was an ewe. After that it became pretty smooth sailing, but overcoming that realization hump was the doozy, and it's tough to suggest better ways to overcome that hum, because once you know the secret, it's really difficult to go back and decide if the game is well-hinted enough or too poorly hinted.

Once that fell into place, the rest of the stuff was pretty manageable to create and manipulate, and it was an enjoyable game that had a lot of cool extras programmed in. I feel bad because I realize that for many people, playing the actual game won't start for at least an hour in (does the time it takes to map the game count as playing it?) One quibble, I felt pretty horrified at vaporizing/sacrificing the sheep, but I do like to think she was just transported back to her cave.

Cool premise, cool puzzles, a bit of a learning curve, but if I was stuck in Erebus, I'd enjoy this game.

There is a post-comp release where many of the shortcomings have been fixed, and I'd recommend looking into that.

Gigantomania

Well, this was a game I was really excited to play. The Russian revolution(s) have always been one of those history moments that to me feels like if you could go back in time, you could really fix things, much like being able to course-correct the Titanic and then point out the structural flaws in the vessel. This game was just about watching how the incompetence and mismanagement completely ruined Russia's chances, despite the fervor and determination from the proletariat (Act II). I personally loved the "puzzles" where you harvested grain and potatoes, turned over the steel-thingy. They did a good job matching the repetitive nature of living in that sort of environment. The only problem I had was that in act I, I had no idea what I was supposed to do, and lost several times, even when I just happily harvested the whole day away. After exploring, I got it down and felt rather proud of figuring it out. Act II was the most fun to me, I enjoyed forcing him to be patient and wait, wait, wait in line. NO BREAD FOR YOU. Such a good and patient commie.

I had trouble finding a solution for act III that didn't involve ratting out my Polish coworker, but as an established selfish politician, I suppose my character had no other ways out.

Judging it on the first 3 acts, I enjoyed this game a lot. It certainly needed more descriptions, more polish, and more cluing, but it had a solid story and I really identified with the struggles.

My only trouble came with act IV, where I ran into what I thought were bugs, but was actually shorthand for chess moves.

Leadlight

Well. Hol-ley crap. I had decided to power through the rest of my games and review them all today (4 left!), but Leadlight, you stole the show. I played for what must have been 6 hours, and even still I only got a score of about 50, so after I finish writing this review, I'm going back to attempt that max score. I am not sure what it was, but this was far and above my favorite. It had that classic feel. It grabbed my full attention and had me constantly planning on how to make optimal moves and what to do better next time. One of my first actions was to walk east unarmed right into the arms of a zombie, and that being my phobia, freaked me right out. I immediately got sucked in and determined that I am going to beat these fuckers. Every action had me on the edge of my seat, and while the dangers were often unforgivingly random, I think that's what being in a surreal horror situation would be like.

One of my favorite spots was where you find a woman sitting on the fountain, tip it over, find out it is only a doll, leave and then there is the same description as the doll being on the fountain but FUCK NO THAT IS A ZOMBIE HOLY CRAP.
That was my thought process there.

The puzzles started to get trickier inside the school itself, and some of the puzzles seemed more arbitrary (why a bell, for instance?) fighting multiple foes was something that was really draining. I am not sure if I should have just taken better advantage of the save / reload functions, or if I missed some food, but by the end of the game I won with like 3 HP left.

Anything I can complain about would just be quibbles, for instance the misspelling during combat, and the lack of "X" (although [blank] worked for G (so handy for the fights!), and N, S, E, W all were fine). {note: EX works, I didn't realize that.}

This game was just, I dunno, fantastic. A masterpiece. I have a gold standard of adventure games, somewhat obscure, but I am sure many here will recognize it. There is a scene from Jeff Vogel's Exile III: Ruined World where you enter a crypt, and no matter how many torches you light, they are extinguished and your map goes black, coupled with a simple text explaining the extinguishing and the deathly chill. You just know monsters are going to appear. That specific event scared the crap out of me with 8-bit pixels and text, and ten years later it's still memorable. I think that Leadlight parallels this with its execution and construction.

Edit:

Played it through again, Missing 2 weapons and 5 secrets, so I'm giving it another go!

The Bible Retold: Following a Star

This game certainly tried to pull out all the stops. It had a map image that changed based on your location, for starters, and from what I hear, it had very engaging puzzles, but I absolutely couldn't get into it. The first dozen or even two dozen turns were on rails. I wasn't allowed to take a sword (I'll fight them off with my fists!, an NPC jokes), I was only allowed to follow these NPC's blathering on about how they were going to see their Christian savior. The text was just so unnatural and stupid; ""We must follow the star," Melchior proclaims bluntly. "We must honour this future king, for he will be mighty and powerful."".


There was an effort to make things silly, slightly scandalous (let's just buy the baby a rattle and diaper, har har) and light-hearted, but it was a bit like watching a children's version of a bible story, a la Veggie Tales.

I didn't make it too much further than the part on rails, just because it was a little too saccharine for my likes.

The Bible Retold: Lost Sheep

I found this game rather amusing, but not in the way I think the author intended.

First, a note about the layout: my first and only difficulty with this game was getting a sense of the landscape. I decided to first explore my territory and got lost quite frequently because I'm bad with direction, and all the places were variations on "Field". I had to write myself a map of the area, and then I felt really silly when it was basically revealed as a 5-room map. This probably says more about me than the author, since I have trouble with many maps, but a bit of diversity would be nice.

Knowing that in the parable, the shepherd is God/Jesus and the sheep is a person, I find it amusing how incredibly hell-bent the player is on retrieving his sheep, for recovery's sake only. This is a sheep that clearly does not want to be in the herd anymore, hiding in bushes, crossing streams strong enough to potentially drown people, and finally climbing a mountain firmly established as scary and "looming". As myself, I feel like leaving well enough alone, and letting this sheep find his/her own happiness, and not forcing the sheep to do anything. After all, if I were omnipotent I have no need for sheep, really, so the best I can do is allow them happiness, so I struggled to put myself into the mindset that I must find this sheep.

As God/Jesus, however, I understand fury at this disobedient sheep and embrace the intention that must be returned to where I want it to be, no matter what the cost. It seems only fitting that in the obsessive quest to re-enslave your sheep, you end up burning it, forcing it nearly to drown, then to climb a perilous cliff-face before you finally corner the cowering creature. The text says you call all of your friends and neighbors to celebrate the return of your sheep, in a party which I can only imagine contained lamb chops.

I was disappointed by the lack of implementation of SMITE, but PRAY had the good sense to include the amusing response of "... Unfortunately, the Lord seems to be conveniently engaged elsewhere." Too true.

I really laud the author for restraining from overt proselytizing, because that's something that can really kill gameplay. There's nothing so bad as an "education" game that put education over game. While it was short, it had no bugs, and a cohesiveness. Everything that said it was there, was there, and there was some amusing stuff with the goats.

Mentioning the Juniper Bush immediately made me think of the scene from Life of Brian, although after burning it, it was probably intended to be a reference to Moses, and I fully expected the burning bush to be implemented as a communication device with God, but it wasn't, and I feel like that was probably for the best.

I expect this game to get flack for having Buffalo in Bethlehem, but meh, that's just a technical detail, that doesn't affect gameplay or tone, so it's not an issue. Anyone who harps on this is just looking for ways to needle games instead of enjoy them, and ignore them.

Overall, slightly fun, short, but it shows great promise, and I hate to say it but I would look forward to more games from this author in the future, providing they create a larger environment with more puzzles. I would recommend picking a more obscure story, one where the outcome isn't already known, or introducing more obstacles and extrapolations.

The Warbler's Nest

Oh, I absolutely loved this one. It was dark and twisted in a way that was horrifying because of how reality-based the horror was. This sort of thing happened, the darkness of superstition, how it just gripped people's minds and warped them to do cruel things in the name of warding off evil. The way that I watched the woman convince herself that she was holding a changeling and that drowning it... seems to crazy to us, but that's how it was back in the demon-haunted world: people did and justified horrible stuff because of these legends.

I've always been a fan of The Twilight Zone, and I have to say, this would adapt into an episode really easily. I had been toying with how you could convey that slight lunacy, that uncertainty in an IF game while still keeping it interactive and this nailed it quite well.

My only complaint was that "remembering" the garden didn't put the garden into the room description of "Outside the cottage", so I thought the garden was NE or SE of the cottage and I got stuck for way too many turns.

Again, this was absolutely fantastic, and I want to say it's my favorite so far, despite being so short.

Flight of the Hummingbird

Okay, I finally got to play this one, and I really enjoyed it. I think it did a great job of building up the superhero as someone believably lame. Not so lame that we're venturing on Squirrel Girl, but just competent and powered enough that maybe he should be doing circus acts instead. I thought the flying mechanics were pretty cool, but I really had trouble mentally mapping this one. I've really discovered that growing up with pictured adventure games has left me handicapped unable to create mental maps, and this one required lots of thought. The majority of the puzzles seemed to make sense - fuel the rocket, figure out the right dance of power switches and flying through hatches. I think I hit the 2 hour mark when it got to the blast-off for the rocket (I didn't find the crowbar, that one was kind of unfair), and that was a good cutoff mark for judging, I'm glad it was split in 2 like that. One thing that I had trouble with was convincing myself to go down into a trap pit, even after I saw there was stuff I needed down there. I was expecting some sort of monster, but there was nothing. A fight there would have been cool. The rocket thing was interesting, and I felt really boss when I figured it out, but I wonder if some sort of ASCII art could have been used here:

[A lame attempt at ASCII art, blogger html throws a fit at me using carrots and I don't much care to look up the web-safe way to represent them]

See? It's a... rocket ship... with 3 thrusters firing west and 2 firing south (pushing you up and north)... Okay, I suck at ASCII art, but I bet it would have been possible! Look, I even named the ship: the Dread.

Inside the spaceship had another cool touch, I absolutely LOVED how there was a crate full of stuff to take out the major superheroes, but instead he got The Hummingbird. It made me wonder, what would have been The Hummingbird's weakness? A big flower? Some sugar water? The mind boggles, in an amusing way. I did have some trouble dealing with the guards and had to resort to hints. In the end I got 45/51, and I'm sure I lost points for screwing up the rocket re-entry. I wonder if there was a peaceful way to get rid of the goons, maybe unlock the gaming consoles? All-in-all, a great fun game, with a fantastically detailed minor superhero. The puzzles and implementation could use a bit more detail, but nothing that detracted too terribly from the game.

[NOTE: a fellow author suggests The Hummingbird's weakness is Insulin. I love it]

The People's Glorious Text Adventure Game

Well, a few facts before I start talking about this game.

1. I checked out the intro screen for every game before playing them, just to get an idea of what they were each about.
2. This was the second game I started actually playing.
3. It was the only game I finished out of order.
4. That's because of how awesome it was.

You see, just from the into page, I got a complete page of how fun and silly and well-puzzled this game would be, and so I asked Russell to play it with me as a sort of gaming-together-date (we've played the most recent Monkey Island together like this as well), but of course it took awhile to get through the game in this way.

But it was completely worth it. It was fantastic! Excellently silly, well-puzzled and well-implemented. It was great getting to play with Russell, because he did things I wouldn't have thought about (he insisted on Ventriloquating every single NPC, and I was surprised by what was often a custom response). The communistic fervor was equal parts silly and amusing, the puzzles tended to make sense, and I was able to really get into it. This was an overall SOLID piece of IF, and I hope to see it getting top marks in the comp, because it really deserves it.

Mite

I thought it was cute and sweet. It took me a few screens to realize that I was tiny, instead of just in a magical land where everything else was huge (which, I guess, is still technically true). I thought I was stabbing a giant Shelob with a crazy magic rose thorn, until I climbed the dandelion.

Anyway, I enjoyed the sake of the adventure for the descriptions. It did seem a bit short, and I feel like I must be the only person who ran into the glitch of not being able to give the jewel to the fairy prince at the end.

>GIVE JEWEL TO PRINCE
(first taking the jewel)
You'd prefer to keep it safe in the sling.

My Zoom was also glitching at this point, I couldn't scroll up because I had the title bar banded against the text, so I am certain that it's something wacky with my interpreter. I would have enjoyed the ability to "ride Snoll".

Overall, cute fun and full of whimsy.

Death Off the Cuff

After sampling the first room from each game, this was the first one to play through in my random list (that is to say, I waved my finger at the screen and landed on this one).

It was a fantastic and fun entry. I absolutely loved the intro, sucked me right into the character. Creating a flawed protagonist that the player enjoys is difficult, but I just fell into the role of a pompous ass right away.

When I started gameplay, my interest flagged, because I thought that the gameplay was only about talking trees, but my interested picked back up when I exhausted available talking trees and realized that the room was in fact dynamic.

I loved making my assistant nervous, and I hugely appreciated the ability to ask him accusingly prodding questions instead of just rebuffing me with something like "I don't want to question my own assistant!". Another subtle touch that I appreciate is the note something along the lines of "the perp usually reveals him/herself," because I was worried I might have to write down notes on each character, but this hinted to me that I wouldn't have to.

I took the wrong ending the first time of saving my reputation, and played again with a determination to get it right.

The only complaint I have is that there was no ACCUSE verb. I want to be able to just accuse people when I feel like it. In writing this, I realized I never tried the ARREST verb, but I should try that.

Overall, though it was really fun and inviting, and was really a great play.

The Blind House

I loved how this one always made you feel off-kilter and uneasy. No matter what I did, I felt like something was wrong, something was off and that was really well-done. I absolutely had to use the walkthrough after getting stuck halfway through, and I'm glad I did because otherwise I would have never thought to look behind the calendar for a key.

The examine hunts just got trickier from then on and I got lazy. I loved how there was the other woman there as a red herring, otherwise I would have started to suspect that I was a ghost myself, but that woman threw me off. This was well polished, and I certainly enjoyed the insanity touches of the roses and the gluing and on and on. Fabulous bit of horror drama, left me with chills from start to finish.

Also, my compliments for including "feminine toiletries". It's one of those small touches, but really adds to the realism of the game. I think this game will do well.

One Eye Open

Despite being the other horror author of the comp, the idea of zombies and dead things and creepy crawlies is something I cannot handle because it keeps me up at night with worry, so it was with great trepidation that I started this one.

But I have got to say that this thing blew me away. Tapping into the psychics research craze of the 70's to create a horror just worked really well, and the surrealism of the environment with the combination of dead bodies and demonic creatures just created this completely otherworldly place where shit was going as wrong as it could possibly go. I enjoyed how things changed without you (rarely anything game-necessary), and I felt that the puzzles were awesome:(Spoiler) using a demonic washing machine to eat red goo in your suit, amazingly random and perfectly hinted so that it seemed sensible when it needed to happen.

I haven't finished the game as of yet at 1,000 moves and 6 hours, and I am a bit stuck, but I can feel like I'm so very close, and just needed to take a break.

There have been a few bugs (and apologies, I didn't transcript), one that seemed to leave me trapped in the autopsy room for way more turns than I can tell should have happened, but where I feel like I'm really losing out is witnessing people die - am I supposed to figure out a way to save them during their death scene? or by winning the game, does that fix it so that their deaths never happened? Since I haven't gotten to an ending yet, I can't really tell.

I do want to say that I love the concentrate mechanic, and how it was hinted at in the very beginning. It would have been nice to know that I could concentrate about just a room from the very beginning, but that's just a minor detail. Also, I liked how instead of walking into walls, the parser would tell you directions you could be going instead. That is something I would love to borrow for my future games.

People have mentioned that the notes mechanic was nice how it combined things, and that WAS nice. But I found that if I forgot what a document was called like the one to the door combo, then I had trouble navigating back through my notes to find it, and couldn't find a verb even from the verb list that'd help me.

And finally, an odd compliment, I know, but the "About" section was very well-organized and professional-looking.

Rogue of the Multiverse

Heh, I absolutely loved this game. I named my character James and made him a male, which turned out to be pretty awesome after I bought the tuxedo and hopped onto a rocket car to escape my captors.

I loved the humor in all of this - the bananas, stealing stuff just to sell it, a worm assembling stuff it its stomach... all the details were spot-on humorous. And for anyone who didn't buy the books, I recommend them. :D The tagging mechanic was pretty fun too, every was just so intuitive.

I played the game a 2nd time and bought Sliss a dress, but there wasn't any point where I could give it to her, which was especially disappointing after I was allowed to kiss her. I thought maybe getting her a gift and being well-dressed would trigger a separate ending where we were closer to equals, but I was still just a test subject. I guess I should have known based on how she treated her fish.

Absolutely fun and engaging, really strong when it came to all those little details.

Aotearoa

I just finished this game the other day. It was cute, it was involving, and just created the story world perfectly. It all seemed natural to have these dinosaurs living with you. I enjoyed the monkey that followed you around, even if it got creepy after awhile (I named it Gollum, so maybe the creepiness was my fault). Which, speaking of which I love how the author recognized that giving things native-sounding names would be difficult to type and gave us the opportunity to name them. That's something I have never known was possible.

The plot was pretty involving, the language bits were great, the puzzles were straightforward, and as a total hippie I loved getting to interact with nature. I think at one point I encountered the unwinnable bug, that is, I had the map and the GPS w/ battery, but it wouldn't let me back into the jungle even after I had already been to the jungle.

Not just a solid entry, it's a diamond-studded one.