This is a review of Nerd Quest, by Gabor de Mooij, a Java-based executable game entered in the 2008 Interactive Fiction Competition.  Spoilers after the cut.

Here are some other reviews of this game:

Victor Gijsbers
Michael Martin
Wesley Osam
‘Nitku’
Sarah Morayati
Merk (read the whole thread)
Imrihamun
Dan Shiovitz (includes other reviews)
Jake Wildstrom (includes other reviews)
George Dorn
Christos Dimitrakakis (includes other reviews)

…

First off: You should read this: http://www.mechanique.nl/blog.html.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Tum dee dum.

Done?  Okay.  So, I am late enough in judging the games of the competition that other reviews (Merk’s, if the page above is to believed – this is odd because Merk writes really good reviews) have gotten back to the author of this nerd-joke Java homebrew, and he’s decided to give up with it altogether.

To be honest, I agree with other reviews.  This game is bad.  Typos galore, tired humor, and a system (while portable, apparently) that doesn’t appear to have heard that text parsers should, you know, parse.  But I want to make a point here.

Technical: Very limited. LOOK AT is the only choice for examining things, and even then, only some items give something besides the “NOT POSSIBLE” response.  This is, possibly, the worst culprit for the game – this response took up 90% of my interaction with the game.  And yet, it didn’t have to.  Only the objects the author felt like implementing give something other than this brush-off.  The game appears to be intelligent when you stumble on the actions it’s expecting.

Writing: As an example, I found a ‘beamer’ in the conference room.  The only thing I can think of is it’s a BMW, perhaps parked by a very late VP.  Thinking I might be wrong, I examine it – only to be told it’s an EXPENSIVE beamer.  Oh!  Well.  What could have fixed problems like this?  Let people play your game.  Encourage them to be brutal.  Because strangers certainly will.

Fun: I thought, initially, that I was supposed to, like, do my job.  ‘Fix’ the ’server’ and whatnot (I’m not hip to all the details).  But nothing reponds when I try to interact with it.  This isn’t fun.  This is just stumbling, and players do not like stumbling.  Encourage, redirect, anticipate.

Do I hope that the author writes more IF? Mister author, your game does not suck because of the system (though certain things really do not help).  It sucks because you didn’t create enough of a game.