The Great Infocom Replay: Infidel
These replay write-ups get shorter and shorter as I go. I think it’s because I’m growing more and more confident in what I like and don’t like, and what I will and won’t spend my time on. Infidel has a nice setup. I liked the setting, the starting plot, and the way the game got started. Soon enough, though, I got a “you’re quite thirsty” message, and I groaned.
I found water and food and decided I’d stick to it. I could suck it up and deal with hunger puzzles. Then I got to maze. Forget it!
There really was only one puzzle on the way to the maze, at least on the route that I took to get there. Maybe the rest of the puzzles in the game are great, but I’m not going to find out. At least, not by playing the game. That’s part of my problem with the replay, now. Because I’m willing to stop playing a game when I see that there’s a maze, I don’t see all the good stuff on the other side of it. If it was just a maze, I might pull out a map and skip the maze, but the maze and the hunger puzzle together are lethal.
I’m going to have to find some transcripts of full game plays, maybe.
The biggest killer to my enjoyment of games with these elements is that I find myself making a map with no real immersion, just planning out how to solve the puzzles faster on my next run. I complained about this [last time, talking about Enchanter]. I much prefer when I can make the map while I play, never worrying about figuring out a critical path. (And yet, I love Suspended.)
Next up is Sorcerer.