IFComp09 Review: Broken Legs
The Interactive Fiction Competition is an annual event that’s been running since 1995 (this is the 15th iteration). Anyone can participate, whether by submitting a game or by voting on the entries. I’m doing the latter.
There are major spoilers in the following review; consider yourself forewarned.
Broken Legs by Sarah Morayati is the sordid tale of a drama school audition and some very desperate applicants. The ostensible protagonist is Lottie Plum, a manipulative and conniving young woman who is so well-characterised as to make me love to hate her. She’s definitely an anti-heroine, with a pushy mother and some pretty big ambitions. Unfortunately, she’s just fluffed her audition, and the player’s mission is to make sure that none of the other applicants succeed in theirs.
I enjoyed this game very much, despite finding the puzzles fiendishly difficult—I eventually resorted to the built-in hints and walkthrough, and wouldn’t have been able to finish the game without them. On that subject, I thought that having the hints as part of the game world (you phone your mum) was clever and appropriate for the character and setting. Really nice touch.
The game is rated Cruel on the Zarfian Cruelty rating, and that’s accurate: there seems to be a specific order in which to do things (and no real indication of what that order is until you’ve played through a few times), the timing is critical, and it’s easy to make the game unwinnable. If I’d been less engaged with the story, I probably would have given up, but then my preference is for slightly more forgiving games.
While I spotted a couple of small errors and things that could have been better implemented (I have to put the paper in the window, but I can’t put it on the window? That one had me seriously stumped! Also, one of the music stands would only respond to “stand”) this game was, on the whole, well-realised and well-executed. There are a lot of NPCs to deal with, all of whom move around and change what they’re doing depending on what stage of the game you’re in, but their coding is solid. The writing, as I’ve mentioned, was impressive. The plot was satisfying and built up nicely to the conclusion, what with the pacing of the auditions and the tension racking up as each girl failed and grew more annoyed/suspicious.
The twist is pretty daring, being a variant on the “it never happened/it was all a dream” trope, but I found myself willing to go along with it. I think that’s mainly due to the fact that, having just played one viciously narcissistic and ruthless character in a world of other nasty characters (even though they were Mary’s inventions), I was perfectly able to accept that there was someone even worse—she wasn’t out of place in this cut-throat world of auditioning. Another nice touch is the fact that you can replay the game after its true nature has been revealed, with comments from Mary’s audience on her fabrication.
I’d love to see more from this author, but I would plead with her to make the next game just a teensy bit easier for us mere mortals.