To me, the story is one of the game’s strongest points. Once you get over its implausibility (instead of calling the police, the lone security guard decides to lock everyone inside the building *with* the insane killer - and the fact that there were no eyewitnesses to the numerous murders in a party filled with guests is slightly unbelievable), you actually find that the story is quite interesting and morbidly compelling. Deaths are varied and interesting (head in the microwave, dagger sticking out of head, that kind of thing), you nearly always have something to do as a result of the fast-paced narrative, and lots of red herrings mean the player is kept guessing right until the end as to who the murderer actually is. Although it is a murder mystery, there isn’t really much to tell you actually *who* the murderer is, and even if you do guess, it doesn’t influence the game. So in that respect, it’s a bit like reading a book. I personally wasn’t taking it too seriously, and that way, I think I was able to enjoy it more.

The descriptions, too, are just about good enough. There has been some obvious effort put into them, and on the whole, they are okay. For every really good piece of writing, however, there is one equally bad. They do often tend to slip into the unimaginative, and there are quite a few instances of bad spelling and grammar. It also gets a bit confusing when the game is told in the present tense, but the author decides to switch to past tense for certain events. Oh, and the way the author switches from first to third person. But other than all that, the writing’s okay.

Unfortunately, that‘s where the good stuff ends. The actual way the author has handled game design and playability leaves a lot to be desired. The environment background interactivity seems to just have been added on at the last minute as a kind of afterthought - with the majority of objects mentioned in room descriptions not backed up with objects at all. You can’t interact with many objects, and I found myself discouraged from trying as a result of all the guess-the-verb - for example, I can’t "open door", but instead have to "open stall" - and at an equally essential command, I first did "look at microwave", then typed "open it", but the parser processes this as "open a microwave", where the author has only accounted for "open microwave". To me, this is lazy programming. In fact, the game does give a strong sense of laziness from the author. The lack of interactivity, GTV, and especially the player’s inability to examine lots of objects (which includes several essential objects - I couldn’t look at "the pile", but I had to "move pile" in order to progress), take away much of the enjoyment and are pretty annoying. [6]

Characters, which the game really depends on, aren’t brilliant either. They’re not written particularly well, and whereas I’d of thought this would be a great chance for good characterisation and interaction between guests, the author has almost completely passed this opportunity up. No characters stick in my mind after finishing. "Bad" characters, like Trey, are all bad, with nothing else to them. "Good" characters are liked by everyone, with nothing else to them other than one aspect of their personality. The "ask about" conversation system is lacking with a small number of subjects to ask each character about, and vital ones missing. As a party guest with a murderer on the loose, it must be pretty worrying when you ask the security guard about security and he says "I don’t know anything about that". Yet another demonstration that "ask about" is the inferior conversation system. Another damaging aspect to the NPCs believability is that they are completely uncreative (other than when they’re killed). I mean, if your co-workers are dropping like flies and there’s a murderer set out to kill you, you don’t just hang around sipping drinks, do you? Another indication of an author that couldn’t be bothered?

Game design isn’t anything to write home about, although its not terribly bad. Due to the GTV, I did find myself floating around wondering what to do next on a couple of occasions, and several times I was confused by object ambiguity. Some events seem to happen conveniently for the game to progress (for example, the computer handily turning on when you need to research a character). Other annoyances are having to do a specific action that the game will only understand in that situation - for example, trying to syringe anyone other than the murderer, or giving anything to anyone other than when you need to progress the game. There were some bugs at the end scene on the roof, involving the character and interactivity. Actually, the whole end scene was a bit of a letdown. After being unfairly killed with no indication that it might happen, and having to restart the game, I was then stuck on how to kill the killer (shards of glass couldn’t be picked up, dagger couldn’t be taken, no other items could be used to fight with) so I had to resort to looking in the generator to complete the game. This, with the unimaginative ending text (another of my pet hates - a completely boring and summarising end text which offers no reward, twist, or anything to keep you thinking), leaves the player on quite a low.

Overall, despite the interesting storyline and the occasional good piece of writing, the game is quite a let-down, so I can’t really recommend it. The linear act structure worked well, I thought, but all its failures in interactivity, logic, game design, GTV, and bugs, make for an uninspiring, unenjoyable, and tiring experience. It’s a shame that this came from Mel S, an otherwise good author, but I’m sure he’s destined for better things in the future.

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