The Time Machine V2 (Revised and expanded) (Bill Maya)
What it is about: Your friend has boarded a time machine and went back to the future. You’ll have to save him to prevent some suspicious thing from happening. Something that, if not handled carefully, can threaten to destroy the world as we know it. This is a rescue mission, but it turns out that you have someone else to rescue too.
The good: Can IF adaptations of traditional novels be done? Hitchhiker’s Guide and inkle’s 80 Days are obvious examples. Someone some time ago attempted an IF-ization of Moby Dick, and I have no idea how successful it was. Indeed, we had a Pride and Prejudice sequel on CoG with the title Pride and Prejudice and Murder. Here, it’s similar, only this time the source material is from H G Well’s The Time Machine- the author says it’s a sequel. Thanks to popular demand, we now have images (the original one lacked those)! The exit compass is on the main bar, so it’s easy to navigate. There is a maze, but it’s better than the dungeon in Escape the Tomb. The search command, while not as common, is appropriate as we’re a time-travelling detective! Moreover, your inventory is displayed in a separate section, so there is no need to keep typing I to remind yourself what you have- and there are no inventory limits. ASK ABOUT is reasonably well-implemented.
The bad: Much like Milliways, you need to have read the original Wells novel to understand what is going on and what things you can say. So more background information is needed. You can forget about TAKE ALL again. There are some not-so-obvious things (like combining items!) that you’ll need to do later on. The Holy Grail isn’t found here, but someone gives it to you instead. I also think this is a little on the short side- I initially thought we were going to different time periods and rescuing different artifacts and “collect all the artifacts to open up the endgame, defeat this game’s version of Bowser and save your friend”. I was off- by a lot. There isn’t much Eloi interaction. No idea how to use the newspaper or pocket watch, lol. And pesky dark rooms. And unexplorable locations, undefeatable Morlocks, etc. Some things have questionable implementation “that’s clearly not portable”.
The Huh: This was originally submitted for Parsercomp 2021. Compared to the original, some things have been censored (like tobacco, book details). So I’m quite surprised that this one was submitted for Spring Thing (parser to parser isn’t approved)- most likely this one was revised and expanded. Come on, this still retains the Victorian setting that the original novel had, but can we have a 21st century take on this? I am still waiting for a Robinson Crusoe adaptation- there has been some work done over on the CoG front, but a parser implementation, while simple (at least in terms of exploring the island)- is still pending. I hope we can get more of Jules Verne’s stuff adapted- certainly, given the success of 80 Days, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon and the like could be adapted (parser and choice versions, please). If we had a movie, perhaps an IF too? And this one feels more like a spin-off rather than an actual sequel.
Grade: 74.3%