IFReviewed by
Andrew Plotkin on 2006-06-25 10:12
Nice little fable. The writing is somewhat awkward and doesn't always support the story, but the idea gets across.
The author says there are several optional puzzles, but I seem to have missed most of them. I went back after winning and managed to increase my score once more, but I don't really know how to proceed and I'm not very motivated to experiment. There should perhaps be some way to encourage the player to try these things before he hits the big finish -- at least, it would work better for me that way.
You know, in this sort of game, there should be a command like "diagnose" or "how do I feel?" Room descriptions do the job later in the game, but not in the opening scene. Opening scenes need to be the most descriptive.
Unnecessary and annoying inventory limit.
As long as I'm picking technical nits, compare these two parser messages -- one bad, one good:
>get phone
Just type 'answer phone'.
(Why don't you pretend I
did, okay?)
(On the other hand,)
>light weed with lighter
For sake of simplicity, simply type "smoke weed".
(...this is useful; it lets you know not to bother with a protracted sequence of longer commands.)
