IFReviewed by
Andrew Plotkin on 2006-06-25 09:19
The first thing I notice is that the game is in funny colored text on a black background. I hate reading text like that. Unfortunately HyperTads seems totally resistant to giving me readable colors. (Yes, I tried all the preferences.) Wound up building ncurses TADS in order to play the game.
(But I won't downgrade the game for this -- it's a HyperTADS bug.)
Good grief, it's the old classic: "Which toilet do you mean, the toilet, or the toilet?" I thought TADS had fixed that. Or at least made it possible for the author to avoid it. Ok, I'll provisionally blame the author for that.
More seriously: I'm several events into the plot, and I still have no idea what this game is about. I thought it was about rescuing my buddy Arthur, but that theory has just been violently disproved.
Playing from the walkthrough now. Game needs a big pile of synonyms and stuff. Particularly for talking to people -- most of the significant actions have involved NPCs, but their implementation is minimal.
I just went to the walkthrough (again) because I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing, and the answer turned out to be "go outside, more plot will happen to you". Hmf. The author has pointed out (in a cut scene) that he has provided no motivation for the protagonist to be doing any of what he's doing. The author is correct.