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Still adventuring – I have completed "Distress" and "Internal Vigilance", each in under two hours. I could spend some more time on either, especially "Internal Vigilance" with its claimed multiple endings, but I see no need.
"Distress" is a time-limited science fiction story in which your ship is destroyed, you crash-land on the planet, and you have to figure out what happened and how to survive.
Usually, I am irritated by stories which count moves, but this time I thought it was all right. The greatest danger of the text adventure – speech interactions – is entirely absent from the story, as it happens; people say things, but you never have to ask or tell to advance the plot.
Speaking of the plot, it's fairly good. The premise is not exactly new, but it felt fresh, and the puzzles were solvable fairly intuitively, though not trivial. There were some nice ancillary details – the ships crew were named for various prominent science fiction authors, for example – and, importantly, it was well proofread. I gave it a 10 because it was good enough that I liked it.
"Internal Vigilance" is a dystopian ... well, thriller, maybe, or mystery. You are an agent for The Agency, the main police unit for The Union. The Union is the world-wide Orwellian (or so I presume, not having 1984) government, with its capital in your home city, The City. The story opens with your new assignment: interrogating and investigating a prisoner, suspected of terrorist leanings due to his recent anti-Union book.
I actually kinda liked the naming scheme. I wasn't so fond of the game.
First off, especially in the opening part, the game required a lot of speech interactions. It wasn't clear to me, given my initial ignorance, what the goal of the interrogation was, so I ended up losing a lot of patience and somewhat less time trying to figure out which keywords to pound on. Also, there were a lot of typos – not nearly so bad as some of the stories, but noticable.
More damning, however, was the plot. In all honesty, I just wasn't impressed. The story is reputed to have multiple endings, which is nice in an interactive fiction story, but the treatment of many aspects of the plot was somewhat tired, and there were a few too many plot twists which weren't foreshadowed. Also, at one point, you end up having to make a choice at one branch point that seems from a role-playing perspective undermotivated.
I gave it 8 out of 10. Probably half of that or less was the typos; the main thing that bothered me was the perceived (by me, of course) weakness of the plot. Even quoting "The Third Man" doesn't fix that.
Anyway, that's two more decent adventures, and 10 out of 28 rated, if you include "Mix Tape" that didn't work. Next is still "Waldo's Pie", then "The Sword of Malice".
"Distress" is a time-limited science fiction story in which your ship is destroyed, you crash-land on the planet, and you have to figure out what happened and how to survive.
Usually, I am irritated by stories which count moves, but this time I thought it was all right. The greatest danger of the text adventure – speech interactions – is entirely absent from the story, as it happens; people say things, but you never have to ask or tell to advance the plot.
Speaking of the plot, it's fairly good. The premise is not exactly new, but it felt fresh, and the puzzles were solvable fairly intuitively, though not trivial. There were some nice ancillary details – the ships crew were named for various prominent science fiction authors, for example – and, importantly, it was well proofread. I gave it a 10 because it was good enough that I liked it.
"Internal Vigilance" is a dystopian ... well, thriller, maybe, or mystery. You are an agent for The Agency, the main police unit for The Union. The Union is the world-wide Orwellian (or so I presume, not having 1984) government, with its capital in your home city, The City. The story opens with your new assignment: interrogating and investigating a prisoner, suspected of terrorist leanings due to his recent anti-Union book.
I actually kinda liked the naming scheme. I wasn't so fond of the game.
First off, especially in the opening part, the game required a lot of speech interactions. It wasn't clear to me, given my initial ignorance, what the goal of the interrogation was, so I ended up losing a lot of patience and somewhat less time trying to figure out which keywords to pound on. Also, there were a lot of typos – not nearly so bad as some of the stories, but noticable.
More damning, however, was the plot. In all honesty, I just wasn't impressed. The story is reputed to have multiple endings, which is nice in an interactive fiction story, but the treatment of many aspects of the plot was somewhat tired, and there were a few too many plot twists which weren't foreshadowed. Also, at one point, you end up having to make a choice at one branch point that seems from a role-playing perspective undermotivated.
I gave it 8 out of 10. Probably half of that or less was the typos; the main thing that bothered me was the perceived (by me, of course) weakness of the plot. Even quoting "The Third Man" doesn't fix that.
Anyway, that's two more decent adventures, and 10 out of 28 rated, if you include "Mix Tape" that didn't work. Next is still "Waldo's Pie", then "The Sword of Malice".
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