GAME: Horse
AUTHOR: A. Ninny
PLATFORM: TADS 2 http://www.tads.org/
SOUND: no
GRAPHICS: no
REVIEWED: 29th May 2007
WALKTHROUGH: n/a
DOWNLOAD: http://newsletter.aifcommunity.org/minicomp2007.zip


This frustrated me from the word go. Considering it had three testers and was written by one of the foremost members of the AIF community, it seemed remarkably rough around the edges. First of all I had to look into a closet to see what was in it, simply examining it not being enough. There was an item in the closet which didn't seem to exist as far as the game was concerned. I was advised I could pull stuff out of the closet, but the game wouldn't let me. USE MOP didn't work, but CLEAN COURT did. Ahghghhghg!

Finally my co-worker, Ana, who I have the hots for, showed up. We played some basketball. Or tried to. I kept throwing the ball and missing whatever I tried throwing at. It was only later, when re-reading the README file, that I discovered I needed to SHOOT BALL instead of THROW BALL to actually get anything to work. Aahaahgaaa again! I then saw this in the room description

[TADS-1008: invalid datatypes for binary '+' operator]

which didn't really raise my opinion of the game much. Did this lot really get past three separate testers? By this time, I was pretty much ready to throw in the towel (or should that be SHOOT in the towel?) but decided to persevere a while longer to see if I could win the game of Horse and get to score with my sexy co-worker. Unfortunately I couldn't either win the game or score. I played 40+ rounds of the game and hadn't won. And the only thing I lost was my willpower to play any longer.

I'll give the game a thumbs up for the writing which was certainly better than average, but for the gameplay side of things? A definite thumbs down.

Arousal: non-existent.