Robert DeFord

There are no spoilers in this review; I liked this game too much to take a chance on ruining it for you.

 

September 1954: one year after Mutually Assured Destruction

 

That's the first line in the game. It grabbed my attention, and the game that followed held my attention tightly for the entire half hour or so it took me to experience it. It did not do this with an inane action story along the lines of Mad Max. No. The action in this story is emotional, not physical, and it is so very much superior because of it.

 

Prior to playing this game, I did not believe that the emerging hyperlink fiction genre could produce an IF work of merit. I spouted all the same parser-biased criticisms you'll see scattered around in the reviews for hyperlink games: Not enough interaction. No control over the outcome. Too linear. No puzzles to engage my powerful mind. No interaction with the environment. Good cluing was impossible. And so on. Well, I was wrong.

 

Based on my experiences with this game. all this genre needs is more good authors who are able to exploit its strengths and avoid its weaknesses. The writing in this game is superb. Each word in the story is chosen with an eye towards both its standard meaning and its connotations. The sentences are short where they should be short, and long where they should be long. Everything works to keep the game intriguing as the narrative slowly unfolds through a process that I can only describe as iteration-by-hyperlink.

 

You see, instead of a linear story that you click your way through, this game presents you with a succession of paths that originate from, and loop back to, a common center. Not all paths are present at the beginning of the game. In fact, only two are available at the start. However, you soon find that, as you take one path to make one iteration, one or more other paths becomes available. Thus, you get to piece the narrative together as you make iteration after iteration. Instead of being tedious, this iteration process is kind of fascinating because the author has cleverly arranged the emergence of the paths such that the pieces of the story begin to fit together in your mind to make a coherent whole, a whole that tugged at my mind and imagination to pull me to a mystical ending, or endings. It all depends on how far you wish to take it.

 

To experience all the endings to this story, you are going to have to play it several times. However, you don't have to start over each time. I was able to use the back button on my browser to go back a few pages and chose an alternate path so it didn't take me too long to see all the endings. It was well worth the effort. Oh, before I forget to mention it, just don't stop playing just because you see THE END on your screen.