This is a review of LAIR of the CyberCow, by either Conrad Cook or Harry Wilson, an ADRIFT game entered in the 2008 Interactive Fiction Competition.
Here are some other reviews of this game:
Emily Short
Aric Maddox
Michael Martin
Yet Another Mr. Lizard
Wesley Osam
Merk
Jenni
Riff
Carl Muckenhoupt
Dan Shiovitz
Jacqueline A. Lott Ashwell
Jake Wildstrom (includes other reviews)
George Dorn
…
Another short review: I think this game is someone’s first game-writing practice, given the puzzles and the non-sensical happenings. “Vluurinik” seems specifically designed to encourage typos in player input, and a couple guess-the-verb puzzles tended to blunt an otherwise standard walk-around-and-pick-things-up kind of game. Surely ‘lift’ should substitute for ‘flip’ considering the context.
I did complete it, but only in the sense that I got to the ending. It’s mostly competent, I guess. But it is inexcusable that I couldn’t escape the flood in the roll-top desk.
Technical: Well, everything seems to be implemented, at least, but I did have to install an old version of Adrift in order to play. Hasn’t 4 been out for, like, years and years? A good number of nouns work, which is nice. Vluurinik sometimes doesn’t say when she’s leaving the room, which is really annoying. I also managed to crash the game at the end. Hooray!
Writing: Pretty standard, but it was more competent than some of the games. A few typos outweighed by good phrases here and there. The frequent pauses in gameplay – more towards the end – are just annoying. They don’t add anything to the game, dude, except filler time.
Fun: Another game where I kind of went on autopilot, and needed the walkthrough quite a few times. I did finish it, though. It’s got that going for it. I’m just not sure why it’s in the comp.
Do I hope that the author writes more IF? I wonder if the author will implement some more Adrift tutorials in his next game. Perhaps something beyond “Hey, I wonder if I can get random-movement NPCs in my test game.” Eh, I’d give it a shot. I am happy to play Adrift games that don’t make me want to sandpaper my eyeballs.
