Zesc

Review for Assimilationist or Integrationist?

For an educational game... "not too shabby", to quote the user below.

However, some nitpicks: the hypothetical "imagine you are a government" part is somewhat disrupted be the game assuming i am singaporean (i guess the author is). Also, the animated meme gifs... they try to hard. I might just not be the target group, but they look so forced in context, without any reason...

Review for Dungeons & Deadlines

There defenitly went some effort into this, meaning the presentation is more than solid.

The gameplay is rather shallow, to the point where it gets annoying to move your mouse in order to see the next part of the hilariously written card texts.

The humour is a refreshign mix of gallows humor and cynism. If you're someone like me who subsists solely on these two things: if you have 10 minutes to spare, i recommend you this game.

Review for Cyber Security Gamebook

"Two Stars for Effort", wie man doch so schön sagt.

Dieses Spiel ist eine Farce. Es handelt sich nur um einen langen Fragenkatalog mit jeweils zwei Antwortmöglichkeiten, wobei diese im Normalfall schon derart suggestiv formuliert sind, das selbst der naivste DAU sich die richtige Antwort zusammenreimen kann.

Wenn eine Frage mal nicht offensichtlich ist, dann, weil sie eine Abfrage eines Fachbegriffs aus der IT-Sicherheit ist, den man als Laie gar nicht kennen kann. (Das Gamebook beginnt bereits mit "Was ist Skimming?". Ich hoffe, ihr lest auch alle fleißig KrebsOnSecurity.)

Ich schätze das Erziehungs-/Belehrungspotential dieses Gamebooks auf konvergierend gegen Null ein. Wenn man sich z.B. mal "Be a Software Developer" (http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/fimdmdqtwk2vnuxbk64euw/be-a-software-developer) im Vergleich anschaut, so stellt man umgehend fest, dass es diesem Werk an (auch für Fachfremde) verständlichen Erläuterungen bezüglich zentraler Konzepte mangelt.

Wahrscheinlich von einem frustrierten Auditor/Berater in ein paar freien Minuten zusammen geklöppelt, kann ich dieses Gamebook niemandem weiterempfehlen.

Review for Die Drei Roboter

Vergleichsweise gut, für ein Erstlingswerk. Nicht überragend innovativ, aber durch die geringe Dauer (10-Minuten-Krimi trifft es sehr gut) wird das Konzept nicht überbeansprucht.
Ich mochte die Mischung aus Hyperlink-getriebener Untersuchung des Tatorts und Stichpunkt-basierter Befragungen, etwas an dem sich andere Krimispiele durchaus orientieren könnten. Allerdings sollten die Befragungen etwas mehr Synonyme verstehen (etwa "Experiment" statt "Versuch") um feuch-tfröhliches Worteraten zu unterbinden.

Schlussendlich sind mir auch mehrere orthografische Mängel aufgefallen, insbesondere "in's" lässt mich erschaudern. Man könnte durchaus noch mal eine Rechtschreibprüfung über das Spiel laufen lassen um Fauxpas wie "beschliesst" zu vermeiden.

Review for Secretly French

Like most games in the comedy section, this one is mostly just incongruent randomness that is trying (probably to hard) to be funny.

There isn't much else to complain about, i call this solid game if you're into the kind of humour.

Review for Be a Software Developer

I've just found this under the "Last Played" section, and was suprised by it. Took me no 5 minutes to breeze through though.

"Gameplay wise", it's really just a multiple-choice test, but it has the major upside of explaining why given answers were preferable or not.

Sharing this wisdom instead of a mere "Beep. Wrong!" helps understanding, but it i have the feeling it is leaving out on the most difficult things for upcoming software devs. (Like dealing with customers that are incompetent and just don't know what they want.)

Review for Threehole Hospital

Entertaining. Albeit the replayability not very long, yet amusing. The author certainly knew the english language, but should have run the game through a spellchecker to catch for typographic mistakes nonetheless.

Review for Not A Game.

Calling this a "game" is far fetched. It's at best a Proof-of-Concept regarding some gimmicks. I'd honestly be suprised if there are more than ten complete sentences in the whole "game". The self-referential title is what saved this from 1 Star.

Review for The Sock Puppet Killer

This game allows me to do one of my favourite actions in interactive fiction: Annoying the narrator.

And else... it's surreal, it's wierd, it's humorous... and probably having subtle surreal horror? I really don't know how to describe this.

The story is hard to follow and only really makes sense over multiple playthroughs, but it's otherwise enjoyable enough. Being stingy with praise, i'll deem this acceptable.

Review for Choice of Robots

I played the Steam version of this little gem.

As most Choice of Games, there is really nothing to complain about UI and accessibility. Everything is intuitive, and the game gives you recaps of former chapters, important for a game of this length.

Also typical for Choice of Games, the game is extremly linear at the beginning, but branching out rapidly towards the end. As stated above, there are only 4 major endings though. (5, if you count dieing.) Yet there is enough diversity to make it worthwhile to achieve the same ending multiple times.

The story is neatly written, and the author manages to capture every emotion as good as possible in a game that spans a whole human live. The humour is mostly subtle (almost snarky, at times) but i'm the last one to complain about that.

Most of the story is hard sci-fi / borderline speculative fiction. However, the technical details only play a (very) minor role, and everything is explained when necessary.

At the end a minor nitpick: there is a certain scene in which it is terribly ambigous whether a certain character dies or not, but it is not explicitly resolved. Context makes it obvious what happened, but it is very confusing at first.