Chlorophyll - Review

An excellent original parser game with nice puzzles, good implementation and excellent writing. It feels very much like an Infocom game, though it is shorter and a bit more verbose. Some may think that more objects could have been implemented. It is not a big deal for me, as it simply means that you don't have to worry about those objects. In some games, when -all nouns can examined, all those nouns can seem like two many red herrings that can't be interacted with anyway. So I think Steph Cherrywell finds a nice balance. I noticed a single bug (something about turning something on that already was on) but it was fairly easy to notice the bug and take it into account.

At least one puzzle could be solved in two different ways. The puzzle difficulty ranged from easy to challenging but they were never underclued.

Overall, a very good game.

Parser/Vocabulary (Rating: 8/10)

The Inform parser was utilized correctly, so it was strong as usual, though I encountered a disambiguation, that didn't behave as expected. The displayed nouns were all accepted by the parser, so no noun guessing, but still, more synonyms could speed up the game play, e.g. it would be nice if a "substation" could be referred to simply as "station", stuff like that. But it wasn't a problem.

Atmosphere (Rating: 9/10)

A very impressive setting with nice descriptions.

Cruelty (Rating: Merciful)

It is my impression that the game cannot be unwinnable. It is very well designed.

Puzzles (Rating: 9/10)

Some of the puzzles are easy, some challenging but several original and fun puzzles.

Overall (Rating: 9/10)

Overall, this is a great game. My favourite Cherrywell game so far.