This game needs work on the descriptions, and a lot more beta-testing. I spent my first three play sessions trying to find a way to cram the bandage under the door to stop the gas from seeping in, and being baffled that the game recognized neither "gas" nor "door" despite their ability to kill me; trying to wrap the bandage around my face as a mask, and finding that wearing the bandage was implemented all wrong; and going around the room looking under everything because I had run out of other ideas. The dresser I assumed was useless, since "open dresser", etc., had all told me that the word dresser was unknown. Only when I read the walkthrough did I discover that there was an object (the same one? a different one? I don't know) called an "armoire", a word not used, to the best of my knowledge, anywhere in the text.

There was a similar comedy of errors involving the application of the bandage, when I randomly cut myself going into the supply room. The supply room in which, as it happens, the word "supplies" is not recognized and the shelves, and whatever they contain, are (apparently) unimplemented. Then again, maybe not. Maybe they're called something else, like, oh, say, "bookcases" and "food rations", and I just don't know it.

Rigorous beta-testing should find these problems. I might've tried to keep going if I didn't generally feel unengaged, though. My character displays a strange lack of concern for the situation, since >X TV has him or her watch several minutes of some random rerun while POISON GASES ARE LEAKING UNDER THE DOOR. Man. I know you're supposed to stay calm and try not to breathe in any more air than you have to, but this seems extreme. Since he or she seems unperturbed by the whole poison gas situation, I guess I'll leave her/him to fight it out alone.

Bio Awards

25^th place on the 2003 Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (9th Edition).