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Getting Back To SleepAuthor: Patrick Evans (IceDragon)Language: Windows Score: 5
Summary:
Rounding out the "wake up from cryo-sleep" trio, Getting Back To Sleep
is a Windows-only game that implements a new IF game engine and runs
entirely in real-time. Not surprisingly, it doesn't have a lot of
features that IF veterans have come to expect from their games.
Writing:
Since this game had the unfortunate distinction of being the last of
the cryo-sleep trio in my randomly generated list of comp entrants, the
story had gotten a little stale by this point. I found the writing
adequate enough for a game of this type, but the rest of the game rather
unremarkable. I didn't care for the hydroponics forest "maze", which
really wasn't so much of a maze as a looping series of near identical
rooms that seemed somewhat out of place.
Technical:
You can tell a lot of work went into this game. Having written my own
crude IF parsers in the past, I know what an endeavor something this
polished was. And in real-time. Which makes it all the more
disappointing that many of the staples of modern IF are missing.
There's no transcript (I'm reviewing entirely from memory and some
notes), no pausing of the real-time clock, no 'it' pronoun, no save and
restore, no undo, and no scrollback. And unfortunately the reason for
the custom parser, the real-time aspect, didn't really contribute
anything to the game. I didn't encounter any part that was enhanced by
having events occur in real-time. Instead here's a game that you can't
take a break from because there's no pause and no way to save, so you
can either finish in one sitting or risk running down the built-in 10
minute clock.
Fun:
It was not too bad at the beginning. The real-time thing felt more
like a gimmick than a real feature, since I didn't see anything yet take
advantage of it. However, after a while the lack of save and no undo
lead to my death, and I didn't have any interest in starting over from
the beginning.
Final score: 5
High point:
This game didn't really have one that I can recall. And I have no
trascript to review.
Low point:
Dying and not having an undo or restore command to reverse it.
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