IFReviewed by
Emily Short on 2006-08-01 04:30
House or Office:
House, but sorta futuristic, I guessPlayed to completion?:
YesRating:
4You know how sometimes you're watching a movie that is supposed to be suspenseful but you know exactly where it's going, so you get all impatient to just get to the big conclusion already?
This was like that, with the added problem that I couldn't get the game to progress at one point — though I knew where it was supposed to progress to — because I happened not to have re-examined the correct object recently. Because I'd already examined it once, and didn't feel like I needed to see it a second time. This violates the standard 'do not make a puzzle solution depend on the player doing something multiple times' rule.
Anyway, I felt as though this was not reconceived as IF very successfully. It still basically plays like the short story it once was, not gaining very much from its nominal interactivity. Even as a short story I'm not sure it would've made my top ten list — it felt a little too pointless, I suppose, a little too dreamlike — but it might have done all right as a piece on Outer Limits or Twilight Zone.
On the positive side, the author demonstrates decent programming and writing skills which could be turned to good account with a game that was actually designed from the start to be a game.
