10.07.2008

"Ananachronist" by Joseph Strom

This review of an IFComp 2008 entry contains spoilers.

I simply couldn't plunge very far into this game. The prose demonstrates carelessness which reflects the absence of attention paid to detail throughout the game.

Strom has misspelled several words and committed other careless typos. For instance, "You'll be wisked [sic] away to report a job well done." Also: "... That's probably a good thing when you're playing with the forcing [sic] that control time itself." These aren't deal-breaking mistakes, but they indicate a failure on the part of the author to play through his game with fresh eyes.

He occasionally fails to anticipate verbs which would be commonly associated with certain objects. TURN HOURGLASS OVER produces an error message. TURN HOURGLASS produces "Nothing obvious happens," which is unhelpful to say the least.

The game suffers from some unimplemented nouns, as well. When we put the chronometer on the pedestal, "the runes glow." If we try to EXAMINE THE RUNES, we are told there is no such thing.

The proper usage of the magical objects in the Vortex, our starting location, is not self-evident. I assume that either the author intended us to discover their uses through trial-and-error, as a minor puzzle, or that he assumed their usage would be more obvious than it is (which would be, again, a failure to play through the game with fresh eyes). In either case, since the player-character is someone who has done this job before, or at least has learned how to do this job, it doesn't make any sense that the player should be clueless and lost here. The author should have our mentor, mentioned in the prologue, give us a helping hand.

Speaking of the prologue, I can't suss out the intended tone here. It reaches for Douglas Adams but falls far short. Where the prose isn't borrowing Adams's wry tone, it is either bland or confusing; the description of the Vortex manages to be both. Once I had figured out how to travel through the portal, I had hope the game would become less bland, but I was teleported to a nondescript dome with hallways in all directions. Choosing a hallway at random, I discovered the following:

"A small sign, in immaculate black lettering, informs you that this hallway is marginally different from the others. Specifically, this is the hallway which contains the entrance to the warehouse. Said entrance is no more distinct, just a branch in the corridor to the west with a control panel set into the wall."

I tried to OPEN THE DOOR, and for my trouble got a condescending "Perhaps the control panel would help with that."

Guessing that the game would alternate between blandness and condescension, I found I had no interest in continuing.

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