THE CORRUPTION OF ALEX
by Dr Fanfic

Review: A. Ninny

This is the only game in the competition that has a female PC. Given this opportunity to stand out, I believe “The Corruption of Alex” falls flat. Guess-the-verb problems and technical glitches are one big issue, but the main problem with the game is that you have a drab setting and empty characters, and puzzles that, while the writing urges you to solve them quickly, end up resulting in a totally anticlimactic ending to the game when you do.

Technically, the game just doesn't come together. Myriad serious guess-the-verb problems make the puzzles almost impossible to solve without using hints, even though the puzzles themselves have straightforward logical solutions. Also, many things about the characters that could have been described simply weren’t – the PC cannot even examine her own body parts, nor are any of Mark’s body parts described separately from a general description available when you ‘x Mark’.

The sex, while seemingly a main aspect of the story (after all, the male NPC becomes a sex-starved maniac after being infected by the powder) is in the end just an aside. You are driven to solve the puzzles in the hope that maybe Mark and Alex will be liberated by the experience and have sex freely, but instead, once you solve the puzzles, the game ends – a big letdown. If you want to experience the sex in the game, you have to time-out from puzzle solving and insert the sex acts in the middle of the game. The brevity of the descriptions reinforce the notion that there is something more and better to come once you finish the puzzles, but again, this is a false hope.

Scores:

Concept: 5.5. The idea of a space sickness causing horniness is promising, and the puzzles are fairly logical and even interesting. The game just doesn’t live up to its promise.

Characters: 2.5. Characters are given initial descriptions and nothing else.

Technical: 2. Nasty guess-the-verb problems and lots of things not described.

Playability: 2. Again, the guess-the-verb issues stand out in my mind as the main feature of this game. The hint file was helpful, but shouldn’t have been necessary.

Hotness: 3. The sex is a total sidetrack to this game and the sex act descriptions are too brief and lacking in detail or heat.

Enjoyment: 3. This game could be very good with technical work and a rethinking the of ending.