Red Tornado's Verdict: As one of a million androgynous robots desperately attempting to understand humanity, I must confess that this hasn't helped a bit.
The IF Author Attempting To Write A Funny Game's Verdict: LOL!
My Verdict: Somewhere, God is crying.
Game Information
Game Type: Inform
Author Info: Rybread Celsius is a deliciously sentient AI. I am more convinced of this now than ever.
Other Games By This Author: Symtery, L.U.D.I.T.E., Punkirta Quest One: Liquid
Download Link: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/limp.z5
The Review...
This game is utterly pointless, and I think everyone involved in its construction, play and review know this. No surprises there. I was cleaning out my IF directory when I was this thing on my drive and double-clicked.
I'm sorry. I apologize to all the IF authors out there who are slaving away trying to get the perfect introduction screen to their masterpieces. I apologize, because most times I read the first screen, think, "this is interesting" and don't come back nearly enough of the time. As much abuse as Rybread gets in this industry, this is an area where he is, without question, not lacking. I mean, really -- in Limp, he sets the scene quite quickly and rather well.
The woman sitting there in the game is described as "a Women." I thought to myself, "this is one of those famous Rybread bugs, right?" Well, no. Looking at the Women (great, now he's got me doing it) reveals that Rybread is fully conscious of her plural nature. I mean, the game does not even allow the word "woman" to be used to describe her.
This is why he is a genius. An insane genius most mad, sure. But a genius nonetheless. I've seen disdain for cops in IF. I've seen disdain for keggers. But I've never seen disdain for girls who have degrees in Cognitive Science. And, see, I want to. I want to see more of this, and understand the rage that burns within my fellow authors. I don't know why. I just do.
It wouldn't be a bad idea if everyone thinking of writing a text adventure played a few games by Rybread Celsius. The guy has an appeal and gets some things so perfectly right sometimes... sure. It's frustrating to constantly speak of his game solely in potential, but he's made me "laugh out loud" more times than any other amateur game designer on the planet. Surely that accounts for something, yes/no?
Simple Rating: 1.5 / 10
Complicated Rating:
Story: 0.5 / 10
Writing: 7.3 / 10 (Some parts are funny. But there's not a lot to it...)
Playability: 6.5 / 10 (Well, no one will really get stuck with it.)
Puzzle Quality: 1.0 / 10 (One puzzle I encountered.)
Parser Responsiveness: NA (I mean, it was intentionally set to not respond to the logical name of the one interesting object in the game. Celsius has shattered RFTK rating conventions.)