Babel and Shrapnel: highly recommended

Games written in Inform, Glulx, TADS, CAT, HUGO and similar. Pleas for help, puzzles, bug reports etc.

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Gunness
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Babel and Shrapnel: highly recommended

#1 Post by Gunness » Thu Jul 26, 2007 3:08 pm

No, I'm not stuck, I just wanted to weigh in with a couple of recommendations for those, such as myself, who feel that the selection of modern IF titles is a bit overwhelming ;)
None of the games are sparkling new (in fact, the first dates back to 1997), but they're both very different and well worth checking out.

Babel: You wake up in an Antarctic science station, with no idea who you are or how you got there. While the amnesia plot device has been overused in the IF genre at this point, Babel simply has some of the best writing I've seen in a long time. The characters are well rounded, the atmosphere is top notch, and the puzzles are expertly integrated without being too difficult. Take a trip down the long, dark corridorshere (TADS format)

Shrapnel: At first glance, Shrapnel looks like a Zork parody, but that's probably as far from the truth you can get. In fact, this quite violent and highly original game doesn't resemble much else out there. I don't want to spoil too much of the plot, so suffice it to say that the game plays with the concept of timelines and of what a real adventure game should be like.
You'll probably encounter a lot of "Huh? What happened?" moments along the way, but that's the whole point of the game. Puzzle-wise, this is not challenging at all, but try to get your head around the story...! Unfortunately it's very brief (30 minutes?), but it's a very worthwhile experience. Get it here (Inform format)

Let me know what you think.

Marco
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Joined: Mon May 21, 2007 8:08 pm

#2 Post by Marco » Thu Jul 26, 2007 11:17 pm

I would second the recommendation for Babel. It's a very atmospheric, sometimes downright creepy game. Make sure you've downloaded the most recent version -- over the years, the game has been updated a couple of times. I don't know if it was just bug fixes, or if they made substantial changes.

I haven't tried Shrapnel, so I can't comment on that one.

Marco.
www.aboutfilm.com

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