Seattle Interactive Fiction

This one has good imagery, imagination, and world-building, though the prose doesn’t flow all that well. (Did I just get stabbed in the kidney? No, no that was a metaphor.) The opening reminded me of Floatpoint and despite some initial problems with the game I enjoyed it until it turned into a puzzle-fest. I’d better judo chop right now before saying too much, though.

(Though EXAMINE, READ, and STUDY really should be perfectly synonymous with each other.)

EDIT TO ADD: oh, I do mention below that I consider this to be the best game in the comp so far. That’s not really spoilers, and I feel it needs be said.

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(Hopefully not part one of an ongoing series.)

Vestiges, because it doesn’t belong in a competition.

Operation Extraction, because it seems more like a tech demo than story. While moving the “camera” around separately than the characters is interesting in the abstract, do I really care about the fates of agents A, B, and C?

Dead Hotel, because it’s Windows-only.

PataNoir, because despite the incredibly creative idea at its center, I’m 1) very bad at detective games because I don’t examine much, 2) very bad at anagrams, riddles, Scrabble, and wordplay IF which this also qualifies as, and 3) told the gun belonged in the drawer but the walkthrough told me to take it, so I feel jerked around. Besides, many other more qualified reviewers covered this game, including those bloggers who only wrote two reviews for the whole comp, so I figured PataNoir already has the appropriate coverage it deserves, and I don’t want to dent its review scores with my ineptitude.

Kerkerkruip, because it’s playing in the wrong sandbox. If it does something unique to Rogue-likes I’ll never know, but it has no IF elements as far as I can tell. While Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress feature player-led construction of places to serve as the overall arch of their gameplay so that combat is only one flavor of struggle, Kerkerkruip has (as far as I can tell) only naked combat and a high score list. Perhaps it’s also a tech demo?

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If anyone’s reading this and hasn’t reviewed many games, or at least not the above, please feel free to review these in my stead. Well, except Vestiges.

(If anyone wants to call me a cold, heartless reviewer, feel free to comment. I don’t mod this group blog.)

::excited sports-announcer voice:: And with the third female redhead in the comp comes BLIND FOR THE HAT TRICK! The *crowd* is *going* *wild*!

But seriously, ya know, if I were to be violently kidnapped and were to, ya know, wake tethered to a dungeon wall, I wouldn’t be, ya know, so nonchalant about it. But since I am not a redhaired woman, I don’t possess those powers of blithely ignoring danger and/or the fact that Jesus attended my friend’s wedding and is over there standing by the fruit punch.

Reasons I didn’t play this one very far receive a well-deserved judo-chop.

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