GAME: The Flower Opens
AUTHOR: BBBen
PLATFORM: ADRIFT 3.9 http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/new/adrift.cgi
SOUND: no
GRAPHICS: no
REVIEWED: 25th August 2005
WALKTHROUGH: n/a
DOWNLOAD: http://www.shadowvault.net/games/flower.zip

The first game in the Crossworlds series - Normville - didn't make much of an impression on me. I gave it 3.5 out of 10 which means it wasn't a complete stinker, but it didn't have much about it to recommend either. So why did I bother with the sequel? Well, there were bits about Normville that I did like. Hiding amidst the overly long sex scenes and cardboard cut-out NPCs, there was the makings of a good game trying to get out. Unfortunately, the writer seemed more concerned with the player having sex with every brainless bimbo he came across than with developing this storyline, so aside from a few instances where it looked like it might evolve into a good game, it never managed to elevate itself above the usual run of the mill AIF dross. Is The Flower Opens any better? Thankfully yes.

The emphasis here focuses more on the storyline and less on the sex and is a lot better for it. Following on from the events at the end of Normville, you and Janey (one of the brainless bimbos from game one) have been transported, along with a bed, into the middle of a field. Here you are outfitted in typical fantasy world garb: sword, armour (invisible armour as it happens because you're not able to examine it and it isn't listed in your inventory) and Janey has mysteriously become an elf. Scattered around are also Debbie and Lin (two of the other brainless bimbos from game one) who are likewise now elves. Good introduction? Not really, but it made such a refreshing change to actually play an AIF that bothered with an introduction which wasn't simply "you're a horny teenager, find some bird and do it with her!" that I was able to overlook its failings.

The fantasy world itself is a sparsely populated and sparsely described one. A moon is constantly said to be visible in many of the outdoor locations yet I never was able to examine it. Another location features a tower off to the west but YOU SEE NO SUCH THINGS flashes up on screen when I try and examine it. The same applies to a good number of the other items that would be covered in a regular IF game but not, unfortunately, in an AIF one. Pity really. From the start, this was looking like it might be one of those rare AIF games: one can function perfectly well as both IF and AIF, but the more I played it, the less I was inclined to believe that anyone outside the AIF community would give it the time of day.

But it was certainly engaging enough to keep me playing. I pottered around the fantasy world, I examined things, I encountered a weird error when trying to go west to a tower when the game just told me NO, without explaining why I wasn't able to go west any further. Fortunately, the writer hadn't thought to override GO WEST so I went west anyway. After that I came to a small village called Normville and wandered into the tavern. And, lo and behold, I found myself in the game's first sex scene. At which point, my enthusiasm for the game went downhill quite quickly.

Ironic that while playing the non-AIF portions of the game, flawed though they were, I was kind of enjoying The Flower Opens, but as soon as I was thrust into an AIF scene, my enjoyment level fell to zero. You see, this being an AIF game, the majority of the puzzles relate to how to have sex with the various females you encounter. As with the previous game in the series, this isn't just a simple case of **** [NAME]. Nope. You have to spell out exactly what you want to do. And with a game that suffers such painful guess the verb as this one does, it was… well, painful. Half the things I tried resulted in me and Cora - a halfling (ooh, kinky!) - repeating the same sex moves over and over again (remarkable stamina the people in these AIF games), or being told off for swearing. Yes, it's a poor AIF game when the most sexually explicit of all the swear words hasn't even been covered. Guess the verb puts in an appearance as well: LICK is covered, SUCK isn't. There are also certain parts of Cora's anatomy you can refer to, and certain ones you can't. Which ones? Well, you just have to try them all one at a time until you hit the correct one. By which time, if you have any enthusiasm left for the actual sex, congratulations. I was ready to slit my wrists.

For the most part, the puzzles are of the impossibly difficult to fathom variety that people are likely to either hit upon by sheer dogged persistence, pure luck or not at all. The game uses a strange command system of USE [NAME] ON [NAME/OBJECT] for getting some of the things done. Unfortunately, there's no real way of knowing just what result this will produce until you go ahead and try it, so if you manage to figure out how to reach the witch's cottage without looking at the walkthrough, you're either trying USE [NAME] ON [NAME/OBJECT] for everything in the game and hoping you find the correct one, or you're just a lot better at text adventures than I am.

As with most of the other AIF games I've played, the NPCs are poor. The women are portrayed as sex-starved bimbos who will happily have sex with the player any time he fancies it. Intelligence-wise they come across as about as dim as it's possible for NPCs to get without being forced to put on the Dunce hat and sit in the corner of the class. Seriously, give these girls an IQ boost of 5 and you'd double their brain power. Their dialogue is stilted and unrealistic. Then again, they're only in the game as an excuse for the player to indulge in a few sex scenes so maybe the fact that they're remarkably stupid is irrelevant.

At heart, there's actually quite a decent little game here with some neat ideas thrown into the mix. Strangely, it's the AIF side of things that tend to bring everything down. Aside from being unrealistic as hell, they're also unlikely as hell, feature the kind of guess the verb problems that would make even a dedicated fan of the genre shake his head in dismay, and often seem to be there for no other reason than this is intended as an AIF game and it wouldn't be an AIF game without the sex. Many of the game's biggest flaws relate to the sex scenes, many of which drag on for an age and are more tedious than erotic. A nice option might be to skip over the sex scenes for those wanting to play a game as opposed to fighting guess the verb battles.

Overall, The Flower Opens is one of those few AIF games that distances itself from the rest in that there's an attempt at a storyline and actual puzzles here. As a straight IF fantasy game, it would probably work quite well if the NPCs were improved and the guess the verb problems fixed. The AIF side of things, sad to say, are the game's weakest points. It's definitely better than average for the AIF world as a whole, but let down by some terrible guess the verb problems, poorly done NPCs and general lack of logic. Yet a better game than its predecessor? Definitely.

5 out of 10