Quintin Stone - Interactive Fiction Review

(none) Quintin Stone - Interactive Fiction Review

Delvyn

Author: William A. Tilli (writing as Santoonie Corporation)
Language: TADS2
Genre: Fantasy
Score: 3

At first, I thought this game required multimedia support to play. I mean, it was pretty inconceivable that the start room would be missing a description. So after a few minutes in Linux, I shelved it until I could give it a go on a Windows machine. That was when I discovered that, even though there are some graphics and sounds in the game, the start room's missing description remained inexplicably AWOL. A frustrated "x all" revealed that you can examine the bedroom explicitly to see it. Ugh. Oddly enough, this is the only room I found this to be a problem with. The start room. I mean, come on! It's the very first room you see. How could this get by the testers? It's inconceivable. When I died from hunger in my own kitchen, in front of my mother, I decided that I'd had enough of this game.

Revised: The author took issue with some of the statements in my review. Apparently the lack of a start room description was because "you had been living there for quite some time, to view any changes, would take x bedroom." This assertion, of course, is ridiculous on its face. The rest of the house rooms had descriptions. Wasn't my character just as familiar with them? Besides, room descriptions are for the player, not the player character. I haven't lived there for any amount of time. That's why I need a room description. Also, my character's death was apparently due to "the ineptitude of the puppetmaster". In other words, yours truly is a dullard. Silly me for believing that a person (even a "Grey Elf") could survive 10 minutes after gulping down a stack of pancakes without needing to eat anything else. "Delvyn is a Grey Elf, and the humidity factor in South Carolina created a very dangerous health risk for the albino elf.... You learn to excell [sic] or go home early."

Some people believe that A. P. Hill and the rest of the "Santoonie Corporation" are little more than elaborate trolls. I don't believe that. My own personal belief is that A. P. Hill lives in a different reality from the rest of us. In other words, he's crazy. The rest of the Santoonie Corporation are probably his multiple personalities or something. There's just too much work and effort here, flawed or not, to chalk it up to a person (or people) playing some kind of grandiose prank on the IF community over all this time.

(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)