IFReviewed by
Andrew Plotkin on 2006-06-25 10:17
Right from the beginning, I feel like the game is trying to pull the
For A Change gimmick of using language strangely. Only it doesn't work -- it's just awkward. Being lyrical and alien is not the same as picking the wrong word all the time.
Beyond that -- the game is a collection of little scenarios, each trying to outdo the weirdness of the last. As experiments, they're actually pretty interesting: surreal scenes that exploit the IF interface in different (sometimes really different) ways.
So I like the way the author thinks. However, nothing is quite clear enough; I wound up using the built-in help for nearly every scenario. The parser rejected a lot of attempts that should have gotten some sort of response, so it rapidly boiled down to "What is the way the author thinks?"
The scenarios don't connect at all. No attempt at overall cohesion.
(A quick compliment for the help system: you get more clues for experimenting. Trying even totally wrong things will therefore help you progress. This avoids the usual clue trap, where you get a bunch of clues that mean nothing to you, followed by one which gives too much away. In this system, a clue which doesn't say much will still lead you to try more things, which gets you more clues. Absolutely the right way to do dynamic help.)