Here are my thoughts – behind a spoiler tag, of course.
[spoiler]Did I like the game? Yes. I was especially impressed by the way the authors integrate slow and careful exploration with some quick action-oriented sequences. The opening of the game is great. You know that things will go wrong, and it is immediately clear that you are supposed to enjoy that. That really generates the right player expectations. I also loved the sequences where the squid enters the building and you are swept away by a flood. The weird stuff where you are suddenly a shoal of fish is also the kind of thing I like. (It’s not a hard sequence, by the way – you just go towards the only feature that gets described.)
Some of the puzzle design is smart in terms of foreshadowing. You know that you’ll have to blow up the squid, and are waiting for the moment to do it. Once you have turned on the hop tap, you know that you’ll have to write on the mirror, and you’re just waiting for something to accomplish by that. I like this kind of design, because it makes the player feel smart without increasing the probability that she’ll get stuck.
I’m not sure I’m as hot about the story. So we have a rival who is trying to kill us by tampering with our machine. However, things don’t happen as he expects, because – it turns out – he himself has died, and we are transferred to his own body. In his body, we then actually create the conditions that make his plan work. Uh, what? That doesn’t seem to make much sense. The unexplained death of the antagonist is a major plot weakness, as is the existence of a rather huge mortuary in this small underwater base.
Actually, I’m not even sure I understand what the antagonist’s plan was, even after playing the game and reading the design notes. (You don’t have to type “notes” twice; it just takes one extra turn to activate.) Can anyone explain to me what Kurner’s plan was?
The puzzle are a mixed bunch. I enjoyed the language puzzle a lot, but that was presumably in part because I had already found out that I could write on the mirror before I opened the drawer. The metal detector was not well-implemented. I didn’t understand how to use it, even though I immediately understood what the object was. Here it seems that the authors fell in love with their own joke about misleading acronyms, to the detriment of the player. I also wonder whether anyone figured out which corpse to call through the computer; I just tried a bunch, and then the wooden leg turned out to have an effect. I didn’t see that coming. But at least this puzzle solves itself with a little perseverance.
My final point of criticism would be the humour of the game. I felt that the authors – Jon Ingold, I guess, since he did the writing – didn’t quite manage to catch the right tone. Most of the explicit jokes were a bit too “laboured”; instead of making me laugh, they made me think, “wait, this is a joke.” That’s hard to explain, but I suppose the Cosmetic is an obvious case. It’s not very funny as satire, but it is pushed into the forefront so much that you are forced to acknowledge it.
So, hm. Some nice action sequences. A couple of puzzles that I enjoyed. A story that is quite confusing and doesn’t, I suspect, make much sense. Attempts at humour that frequently fall flat. I don’t think Till Death Makes a Monk-fish Out of Me is a classic; it has too many weaknesses for that. But it is certainly enjoyable and well worth a play.[/spoiler]