IFReviewed by
Andrew Plotkin on 2006-06-25 10:06
Hrm. I have mixed feelings.
On the one hand, this is really good -- good writing, good use of background, good story well-knitted into IF conventions.
On the other hand, the first-person thing still doesn't work for me. No matter how many times I try it. I can, after playing halfway through the game, get used to first-person prose enough to ignore it; but it's never anything but an obstacle.
The extremely narrational descriptions are striking, but again, I have real trouble with them. Without a stable description, the locations refuse to come clear in my head; I don't have the reminders of what's present that I normally rely on. (In fact, half the time, typing "look" causes me to go elsewhere. When that happens, I lose the interactivity entirely; I'm just turning pages.)
Even the lack of the normal status line confuses things. Of course I understand the desire to get rid of it, along with all the other 1980's-IF paraphernalia that this game drops, but the status line serves one practical purpose: it tells you when you've moved. In this game, flailing for context of where I was and what was going on, I really missed that.
