Back To Life… Unfortunately

By David Whyld

DavidW's newest game, 'Back to Life…Unfortunately' puts you in the reluctant royal robes of a recently un-deceased king, and it's the player's job to get him deceased again, permanently this time. It's an original premise, one I don't recall seeing in an IF game before, and it's delivered in a consistently funny manner that keeps the tone light enough that it never sinks into the realm of the morbid (which would have been all too easy, given the subject matter), while at the same time not having the restraint not to go completely into the over-the-top humor I've never been too fond of.

With only four rooms, it m ay seem small on the surface, but David has managed to pack in so many creative ways to off yourself that it actually feels more substantial than a lot of games three times its size. Paying close attention to details in room and object descriptions is a necessity; players who are accustomed to skimming text are going to miss out on a lot, and may find it impossible to get the full score. I'm the kind of person who likes to scrutinize every noun, and I still missed a couple of important things in the starting room on my first play through.

There are about a dozen puzzles in all, and except for one that I'll get to later, none of them are overly difficult as long as you follow the advice in the paragraph above. A nice touch that adds to the replay value is that you can actually beat the game after only solving a couple if you so desire, but of course the typical (read: obsessive) IF player will have to keep playing until they get the highest score possible.

And that brings me to my first real complaint. One of the puzzles, the one involving the king's son that's required for the optimal ending, is decidedly unfair. Unless I'm just missing out on some hints that were given elsewhere, there's no way in a million years I would have thought to try the action that's required. Not only is it inadequately clued, (actually, not clued at all, as far as I can tell), but the result doesn't make much sense, either.

So even though it's a very good game, it's not without a few flaws. For instance, in one room I kept running across a bunch of weird ambiguity errors that got annoying fast. 'x pentagram' would result 'Which pentagram? The pentagram or the pentagram?' (this was doubly strange as there was only one pentagram there in the first place). In the same room there was a collection of potions that were similarly frustrating. Part of this might be Adrift's fault, but it doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to notice this and work around it during testing, or at the very least, if it's a known problem it could have been avoided by having objects with different names (red potion, green vial, purple flask, etc.) that served the same purpose.

In another place, the text in a room description changes to mention a previous event, whether or not the event actually played out that way. It's not really a big deal and doesn't effect gameplay, but it does make some of the text directly contradict itself. The same thing happens in one of the endings, where you're told you didn't accomplish something, and then a couple of paragraphs later you're congratulated for accomplishing it.

Still, nitpicks aside, 'Back to Life' is a thoroughly entertaining game that's well worth the time it takes to play. The descriptions, as well as the writing itself is excellent, and obviously a lot of time was spent proofreading, as I only spotted a couple of tiny errors. Definitely recommended.

(8/10)

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