Shrapnel By Adam Cadre

http://www.wurb.com/if/game/645

My Review: An excellent game which forces the player to come to grips with the variable nature of ? in an environment where a simple twist of a dimension creates a story...a nightmare...

 Site review:    This is one of those games that you can't say very much about without weakening the impact, but I'll say what I can. The content can be broadly described by two words: violence and gimmicks. Despite some structural allusions to Zork, it's story-driven (or possibly gimmick-driven) with no puzzles, except insofar as the story itself is rather puzzling. Nightmarish, disjointed, short enough to be played at one sitting, does some interesting things technically (including some tricks that I didn't notice until poking around in my second play-through). Far from perfect as a work of art, but I don't count the time spent playing it as wasted.

Rating: ****

I-O by Adam Cadre

http://www.wurb.com/if/game/114

My Review: Adam Cadre is a genius! A tremendous number of possible outcomes for your loveably erotic character...Might need to download the walkthrough for this one...

 Site Review:   Here's one game that actually allows you a gret deal of freedom to determine the plot. As Tracy Valencia, a nearly-18-year-old college student, you're stuck in the middle of the American desert with a broken car. Has sexual content that can vary from merely suggestive to downright raunchy, depending on how it's played. Any particular session will be quite short, but the game is highly replayable due to its many alternate paths and solutions. Has a large time limit. Some paths require long periods of waiting.

Rating: ****

Fotopia by Adam Cadre

http://www.wurb.com/if/game/255

My Review: Perhaps the best game in this strange form of fiction. A simple game driven by a storyline...Theres almost no gameplay involved as you watch the strangest story take place under the strokes of your fingertips...An odd and strikingly beautiful place indeed...

 Site Review:     Scenes from a handful of ordinary lives alternate with chapters of a child's colorful science-fantasy. Sweet and sad, and complex enough that you may need to go through it twice in order to fully understand how all the fragments fit together. Very story-driven, with menu-based conversations and virtually no puzzle content. My only complaint is that it isn't terribly interactive - indeed, you're practically driven through it on tracks, and any actions that you don't take tend to be rendered unnecessary. But the story is intriguing enough, and well-written enough, and moving enough, that this seems a small quibble. This is probably the most successful example I've seen of interactivity at the service of fiction, rather than vice versa.

The author intended this game to be played with colored text. Although I normally dislike such things, I agree that it works in this case. A monochrome version is also provided for those who feel differently.

Rating: *****

Slice of Life by Papillion

http://www.wurb.com/if/game/1793

My Review: A short game, hence a fun game for those long and lonely nights when no one is around to watch you dwell in highschool fantasies...Has great replay value as you spend hours and hours working out bits of the story line you never saw the first time you played it.

Site Review:     Uses the CYOA interface to produce a remarkably cohesive and entertaining game about juggling the demands and problems of a high school senior. (Unlike some CYOA, this one returns to the same decision points instead of branching out wildly -- but what you've done already affects what options you have at future decisions. You can only spend money you've earned, for instance, and if you've spent the week goofing off instead of working, well, you're out of luck.)

Your choices over the course of the week described in the game create a profile of your character -- morally, socially, and academically -- leading to one of a very large number of endings. There are no puzzles, except inasmuch as the player may want to try for specific outcomes. Fun.

Virtua School By Dana Lodico and Josh Noe

http://www.wurb.com/if/game/668

My Review: Almost Exactly like slice of life, except more fun in my opinion. The designers of this game had a far more warped sense of humor (which I enjoy tremendously)...

Site Review:    A short-but-broad CYOA-style game (input is through a menu of plot choices) about a guy's first day at a new high school, trying to win popularity. It took me a while to realize it, but it's actually fairly sophisticated as CYOA goes: the choices you're given in a situation depend on what you've been doing all along, thereby lifting the game above mere hypertext status. Some objectionable content - notably, in one plot branch, if you refuse to cheat on an exam, the authors deliberately leave the PC internal speaker on in order to punish you for making the wrong choice.

Rating: ***

 Losing your Grip by Stephen Granade

http://www.wurb.com/if/game/1243

My Review: I would rate this the best game listed here if it wasnt for the fact that this game is tough! Download the walkthrough before you frustrate yourself! Not only is it tough, its long (took me a few days to complete whereas the others took me a couple of hours at most). After all that abuse: ITS A FANTASTIC GAME with incredible characters you can truly feel; real emotion and a complex surrealistic gameplot which feels like a dozen hits of acid more than anything else...

Site Review:     Large, highly complex and introspective game. You're a fellow named Terry, in rehab for nicotine addiction, and the drug you're put on sets you on an internal journey of sorts. Nearly everything in the game functions on a symbolic level, and trying to unravel everything is challenging--there's been no little debate on the rec.*.int-fiction newsgroups about what everything means. Thematically rich, but also plenty of fun as a game--the puzzles are challenging but fair, on the whole. What's notable about this is that, for the most part, the puzzles serve the purposes of the story rather than getting in the way of the story--the author manages to weave the plot into the obstacles to be overcome. The central relationship in the game is a puzzle in itself--much as the protagonist doesn't fully understand the relationship, you the player spend most of the game trying to figure out the dynamics. At two points in the game, the plot branches (in a sufficiently subtle way that you may not realize there was another choice), such that two lengthy sections of the game have two entirely separate paths through them (after which the paths rejoin). Complex, but thoroughly rewarding. Originally shareware, but the author has now released it as freeware.

Rating: *****