Radicofani by Rob
This is a parser game in what I think is a home-brew system. It certainly lacks many of the quality-of-life features that we players have become accustomed to: you have to type out two-word objects names like ‘remote control’ in full; you can’t use the up arrow to repeat commands; the word ‘it’ is not supported. The game also lacks many common verbs and synonyms, and the error messages are often less than helpful. On top of that, the game is a Windows executable, and the colours and fonts are far from ideal. So there’s a lot here that would have been better if the game had been implemented in a language like Inform or TADS.
On the other hand, Radicofani does some interesting things with pop-up windows, images and sounds that remind me of last year’s ALICE BLUE. Many actions generate sounds. When you look at some vinyl albums, you actually see some pictures, and one of those pictures contains a vital clue. (The albums are not mentioned in the room description, unfortunately, and I only learned about them through use of the HELP command.) Using the phone brings up a phone in which you have to type the phone number. You will get intermittent pop-ups with the face of your girlfriend asking you to hurry up and help her. Quite some attention and creativity has gone into this.
I couldn’t really enjoy the game, though. I had to use the help extensively to get through the apartment, not least because the spotty implementation often left me unsure what to do and whether the game had really understood me and I it. The frequently sub-optimal English didn’t help either. Then, when I got to Radicofani, I got stuck on going upstairs in the hostel – even after giving the manager a coffee, I just didn’t seem to be able to type a command that made me go upstairs. Here a real walkthrough would have been very helpful. Then I entered the church, got killed, and the game told me: “I hope you have an earlier save, Victor.” I didn’t, and I didn’t really feel like going back and trying this again.
In some ways an interesting effort, but it needs a lot of polish before I will be able to enjoy it.