GAME: Escape From St Mary's
AUTHOR: Ryan Menezes
PLATFORM: Windows
SOUND: no
GRAPHICS: no
REVIEWED: 9th January 2006
WALKTHROUGH: n/a
DOWNLOAD: http://rinkworks.com/adventure/


This was one of only a few times I'd played a HTML game over the internet (the recent IFComp being the first) and I'm still not convinced it's a better idea than simply writing the same game in a standard text adventure system. There's a noticeable lag even on a broadband connection between clicking on an option and the screen refreshing to display the next page of tag. The interface is kind of okay. It's split down the middle, with the 'happening now text' (for want of a better phrase) in a little box on the left hand side and the room description on the right, with a list of clickable options beneath. Takes a bit of getting used to but is simple enough once you've been playing for a few minutes.

The aim of the game seems to be to get out of school (the St Mary's of the title), although best of luck to anyone who has the patience to figure out how to do this. Ten minutes into the game and I was still stuck in the first location. Eventually I hit upon the solution, but as this came after being hit first with several error message screens my enthusiasm for the game was seriously beginning to wane.

Making progress is slow and frustrating. Clicking on the various options takes you to different sets of options, most of them almost identical to the previous set. There are constant errors popping up on screen from time to time: trying to open or drink from the bottle displays an error message page, as does clicking the 'nothing' option. Strangely, click the same options on a different page and they work fine. Then again, the whole system is frustrating. Clicking on an inventory option brings up a list of other options for that item. Clicking on some of them bring up still more options, while clicking others take you back to the main menu and if you want to go back to the item options again you need more clicking to get back there. Some of the errors seemed to occur when I used the back button on my browser to move back a screen to try a different option; others just seemed to occur purely at random. A lot of persistence is required.

The game opens up and becomes more interesting once you're out of the classroom with a fairly large number of locations to explore. There are quite a few NPCs scattered around, although I wasn't able to interact with the majority of them, and the few who deigned to speak to me didn't tell me anything I found very helpful.

Overall I had mixed feelings about Escape From St Mary's. The system was flawed due to the sheer number of error messages I kept encountering, and the game itself, while reasonably well written, just wasn't that interesting.

More of a novelty item than something I would recommend.

4 out of 10