Author: Robb Sherwin Year: 2004 Development System: Hugo Cruelty Rating: Tough (save frequently and you’re fine) Length Of Play: 2-3 hours
My Rating: 5
Awards: Best Individual NPC — 2004 XYZZY Awards
I fell in love with New Haz and its universe while playing Sherwin’s Fallacy of Dawn. The story in Necrotic Drift occurs mostly in a nearby town with an entirely different cast, though frequent references are made to the events in the first game. And while this entry into the series is more focused, I unfortunately found myself missing New Haz and its citizens.
Author: Andrew Plotkin Year: 1995 Development System: Inform Cruelty Rating: Cruel Length Of Play: 2-4 hours, depending on how quickly you look up a walkthrough
And so sets the mood for A Change in the Weather: dark, dreary, and unforgiving.
I tried this a couple of times in my youth and could not get into it. I think knowing going in that you could lock the game out victory near constantly kept me from immersing myself in the world. I recently gave it another shot and I’m glad I did.
Author: Eric Eve Year: 2006 Development System: TADS3 Cruelty Rating: Polite Length Of Play: 2-3 hours
My Rating: 5
Awards: 3rd Place: 12th Interactive Fiction Competition; Best Game, Best Individual NPC: 2006 XYZZY Awards
The Elysium Enigma is a competently made game that easily drew me into its world of intergalactic politics and subterfuge and I eagerly rushed through it. Unfortunately, the story and plot turns were unsatisfying and I felt like a spy left out in the cold.
Developer: Fully Ramblomatic Publisher: Fully Ramblomatic Year: 2006 Platform: Windows
Score: 5
The third game in Yahtzee Croshaw’s Chzo series, this game brings back Trilby himself but in a slightly different manner than in 5 Days a Stranger. The results are mixed, but it’s a refreshing change of pace and a solid entry for fans of the series.
Developer: Fully Ramblomatic Publisher: Fully Ramblomatic Year: 2004 Platform: Windows
Rating: 5
Winner of Best NPC and Best Use of Sound at the 2004 AGS awards, 7 Days a Skeptic is a worthy follow up to 5 Days A Stranger, if for different reasons.
Developer: Fully Ramblomatic Publisher: Fully Ramblomatic Year: 2003 Platform: Windows
Rating: 5
Winner of five AGS awards in 2003, including best game, best puzzles, and best script, 5 Days a Stranger uses every horror cliché in the book to create a chilling and absorbing game.
Author: Adam Cadre Year: 2002 Development System: Inform 6 Cruelty Rating: N/A Length Of Play: About 5-10 minutes for each run through; took me a few hours to solve the puzzle.
My Rating: 7
Awards: Best Individual Puzzle; Best NPCs; Best Individual NPC — 2002 XYZZY Awards
I was a senior in college when this game was released and played it the moment it dropped. I took copious notes while playing and brought those notes to my classes, occasionally ignoring my professors to hammer out this puzzle. No regrets.
Author: half sick of shadows Year: 2004 Development System: Inform 6 Cruelty Rating: Cruel, but the game has a finite number of moves Length Of Play: 5-15 minutes each playthrough; about 3 hours for me to solve the puzzle
My Rating: 9
Awards: 3rd Place — 10th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition Best Individual Puzzle — 2004 XYZZY Awards
“The encounter could create a time paradox. The results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe!…Granted, that’s the worst-case scenario.” — Doc Brown, Back to the Future 2
And such is the world logic of All Things Devours. The inventor of a time-travel machine, Natalie Williams comes to the same realization about paradoxes and sets out to destroy the machine. However, she soon realizes that her plans have been taken and she must find them so that the machine can never be made again. And soon the player realizes that time travel is necessary to find those papers, and there’s a total span of nine minutes in which to work to avoid the guards, avoid your present self, and avoid creating a paradox for your present self.
Martha is, indeed, quite dead. At the same time, she is quite lucky. I spent six hours in this world and grew increasingly jealous of Martha every minute. Because by being dead, Martha never had to play this game. Despite my jealousy, I would like to think Martha’s spirit was looking out for me, as a repetitive game-crashing bug kept me from finishing.
Publisher: Fullbright Company Developer: Fullbright Company Year: 2013 Platform: Windows, Mac, iOS, Linux, PS4, XBox One, Switch
Rating: 6
Walking simulators (a game where there are virtually no puzzles and you walk around unveiling the story) are fairly popular now, but they were few and far between for the first thirty years of gaming. An early one that comes to mind is Infocom’s A Mind Forever Voyaging, though being a text-only game it still felt like there was quite a bit of work to do. The Dark Eye comes close, though there’s a lot of guessing as how to advance the story and there are some binary choices to make. I would guess the first big modern version of the genre is Journey, though it wasn’t ported to the PC until 2019; no doubt it inspired the wave of PC games to come. And it appears the wave started with the excellent Gone Home.
Death By Troggles 
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