SHADE By Andrew Plotkin (2000)
INFORM
Reviewed by Eric Mayer
(For what it is worth, I wrote this review right after playing the game and before I knew
its author was Andrew Plotkin, whose HUNTER IN DARKNES was, for me, the most enjoyable
game of the 1999 Comp. I mention this because, had I known who the author was I would've
suspected, immediately that the game was something more than it seemed to be at the
outset which I suppose would've diluted the effect.)
So I'm sitting in a boring apartment waiting for a taxi. Feels like a plain old I
have-nothing-to write-about-but-I-must-code and whoopie-the-refrigerator-really-opens IF
game. I was about to explain how, after a few of these, opening a verbal refrigerator
isn't any more exciting than opening a real one but then...well. . .how do
I review this without spoiling it?
Let's just say -- stuff happens. And how!
You're on rails mostly, but the ride's exciting. This is a story in which you find
yourself involved, rather than an actual game. A well crafted story. There's a seemingly
meaningless event near the beginning, for instance, that, by the end is only too
meaningful.
Well, look...is there anybody going to be reading this that doesn't know what basically
happens in this game? (If so, go back! Go back!)
This event was the sound of a helicopter going overhead,outside your window, seemingly a
random, meaningless happening, but it has some resonance by the end if you figure you've
become lost in the desert and it was the search copter that never spotted you.
As a player I have one criticism although almost everything you have to do to
advance the story is well clued the one action you must take to really get events rolling,
so far as I could tell, isn't clued very well, if at all. Most players might find the
action obvious but I would think the action you need to perform to actually start the
story should be made so clear that even an IF Idiot like me can't miss it!
This ties in to the first of two observations I have from a writer's standpoint which is
that the game begins so "obviously" as a typical this-is-my-apartment coding
exercise that there is really little incentive for the player to fiddle with it long
enough to trigger the real game. The author takes advantage of the fact that, as players,
we will tend to mess around with a boring game for awhile just because it is there. So,
OK, that's part of the point -- this time, but it does highlight a problem with
a lot of IF, my own small effort definitely included, in that we too often expect players
to humor us and trudge around opening refrigerators and such rather than putting them
right into a story.
My second niggle is that the game/story continues on a little too long after it
has become obvious to the player/reader what's happening and this dissipates the overall
effect. How many objects have to turn into sand before you know damn well that everything
is going to turn into sand? Not many, I think. How many players really expect that
something different is going to happen with the fourth or fifth object? If the
path up to the climax, and the climax itself, had both been shortened the impact would
have been even greater. It is a good rule to make your point, hit the reader with your
climax, and then get out. Niggles aside, SHADE is a very
enjoyable and original bit of work.
Score 8
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