What remains of me by Jovial Ron
What remains of me is a very short game with a retro look (although I don’t think fonts were ever quite this bad even on my old 8086 with monochrome screen) and a keyword-click interface. The system seems robust but lacks several convenience features, including Save/Restore/Restart as well as Undo (which is frustrating in a game where a dog can tear up your love letter). I also found it strange that arrow keys for directions we cannot move in are shown; surely one of the great advantages of such an interface is that we can communicate possible directions of movement without having to list exits. The game also spews some rather useless messages, such as “you have moved from room 1 to room 4”, which seem to contain internal variable names rather than diegetic content.
The game itself is extremely minimal. You walk through an apartment and some streets, pick up objects, and give them to people in order to ‘help’ them. It’s all ultra bare-bones. Very few descriptions. Very limited opportunities for interaction. NPCs that say only one thing over and over again. The emphasis on helping people is nice (and certainly not a given in old-school text adventures) and there’s something mildly charming about this quaint world. But there’s also just not much there in terms of prose, story, theme, exploration or puzzle.