RPG--This just wasn't a game. It reminds me of 'What-IF?'. This
was a text randomizer, and the text was repetitious and didn't tell
a story (at least 'Life on Beal Street' had a beginning and an
end). I just have to think: why? Why write this, why enter it, why
play with it for more than forty-five seconds. If there was a
secret meaning, I didn't get it. (1)
Fat Lardo--I was really hoping there was some secret command that
would make this game make sense. Nope. Just a bunch of insults.
What hurts is that the author was clearly talented, both at writing
and at programming, and could have written something that was fun to
play. Again, I have to ask, why do this? To see how many people
you could sucker into voting it higher than a 1? I might have gone up
to a 2, if it were sufficiently complete (enough things you could do
to/with the duck). But stuff wasn't implemented. (1)
Temple of Kaos--Read the author's mind, again and again and again,
and read the results in bad poetry. It's hard not to be harsh
with this; the author deliberately left out pretty much everything
that would give the player a clue as to how to proceed. The player
has to do boring things for the sake of it (once you understand
how the chests work, you still have to deal with them again and
again and again). And he misspelled "shifgrethor" too (only one "t"
in it), and used it in a confusing way that wasn't even consistent
with its original meaning. (1)
Delvyn--I admit I had little patience with this game. But it had a
huge map, and I had no sense of direction, and things weren't
realistic. And *then* I found a hunger puzzle, with a very short
fuse. Plus I'm supposed to be an autistic elf, but the room
descriptions, and the way people treat me, don't seem to take that
into consideration. (1)
little girl in the big world--There isn't anything wrong with this
game, except it's about 1% of the length it should be. I won't
spoil the plot here, but when I finished, I thought, "That's it?"
It's the equivalent of "Drink: An Interactive Glass of Water". The
walkthrough that the author included had 25 commands, and some of
them were unnecessary. As for the parser, it seemed okay, except
for a huge lot of trouble I had convincing a character to remove
a piece of clothing. "remove x", "take off x", even "drop x" didn't
work. They should have. ("drop x" pretended to work, listing the
item in the room description, but the character was still wearing
it.) (2)
Curse of Manorland--Another game I didn't bother to finish. I
went to the walkthrough for the first couple of scenes, and there
were actions I'd already tried, but with a slightly different
wording than the author wanted me to use. Also, this weird thing
kept happening; I'd type in a command and the game would completely
ignore me. For instance: "hit richard" got me a response of "It is
very cold - you could use something to warm you up". So, if I'm in
short sleeves, I can't hit Richard? I guess this is a side effect
of the author's "real-time environment". "The sun rises and sets
like in real life. The weather changes, one minute it's sunny, then
it may be snowing....It is that realistic." I think this speaks
for itself. Plus this feature means you have to type a command
several times in a row (including "instructions" or "quit"). And
finally, the instructions say "commentary on" will give you an
author's commentary, but it doesn't work. (2)
Amnesia--I can't figure out if this is a parody or not. At one
point the author says, "by the way did I mention I am in high school
so I think I might I win the award for youngest IF writer, maybe that
will get me a couple of points from the voters." If this is true,
I'm sorry to say it didn't work for me. I did give a couple of
points because the game made me laugh. There was a line about "it's
your fault anyway for not having amnesia" that had a nice self-
awareness. However, the plot and setting were sketchy, and that's
being generous. Author: write some more, because I like your
attitude, but next time, be a bit more ambitious, and a bit more
careful about bug-squashing. (3)
Hercules First Labor--Okay, the freakin' *title* is mispunctuated.
Progressing past the first scene is completely arbitrary. Too many
rooms with no description or purpose. And, just my idiosyncracy
here, but Scott-Adams-style games are not what I am used to. I
think description is a *good* thing. I mean, I'm in ancient Greece,
but it doesn't feel like it. It doesn't feel like anything much.
The game beeps at me each move. I have to type "look noun" instead
of "look at noun". I can pick up clothing but I can't wear it. It's
just not for me. (3)
Sweet Dreams--Obviously a lot of care went into this game. But
things still didn't work quite right. If I started to choose an
action, then clicked "Cancel", I'd randomly hear piano music and pop
up in the cellar. I don't think that was intended. Also, I almost
gave up on this game during the opening screen, when *I couldn't use
the mouse*. I kept trying to get the cursor to show up so I could
click "start game", but I couldn't. And there was no text file to
read to tell me that I had to use the keyboard instead. Luckily I
had a flash of intuition the next day and was able to complete the
game. So, it doesn't have a consistent backstory (why exactly do I
change appearance in this "other world"?) and the puzzles are "give
x to y". I did like the rainbow bridge. In fact, the whole game
felt, to me, as though it were written around that one element. It
was a neat puzzle, but not enough to justify the rest of the game. (3)