Enceladus by Robb Sherwin (2019)

The Little Ugly, Evil Guy On My Shoulder’s Verdict:

So this ship has a lady captain on the rebound (death rebounds totally count!) and a female crewmember whose primary interest is drinking vast amounts of alcohol yet Ja’Rod still can’t get laid. He has no game whatsoever. Varick would be deeply, deeply ashamed. I’m ashamed too, so much so that my new name for this guy from here on out is Ja’Rodless.

The Little Nice, Handsome Guy On My Shoulder’s Verdict:

I personally feel that Wikipedia continues to be an example of the very best the Internet has to offer. While I didn’t enjoy the aspersions cast on the finest online encyclopedia known to man and robotkind alike, I did enjoy the rest of the game, especially the bouncy tunes!

My Verdict:

I’m no mathematician, but space plus werewolf plus hot sauce plus Robb Sherwin equals fun squared, baby! Or an extremely disgusting porn flick.

Game Information

Game Type: Hugo

Author Info: Robb Sherwin is the guy I originally started this website with back in 1999, one of the best IF writers of his generation, and surrogate father to all the demented denizens of Jolt Country.

Download Link: https://ifcomp.org/play/2045/download

Other Games By This Author: Chicks Dig Jerks, A Crimson Spring, Necrotic Drift, Cryptozookeeper, and many more!

I’ve been trying to put my finger on what makes this game feel a little different from all previous Robb Sherwin games. The best I can come up with is it’s a matter of luminosity. Enceladus doesn’t shy away from depicting evil, but it isn’t encompassed by darkness. In the past, I think Robb has often used his writing as a way of exorcising personal demons, and the result of that has been darkly funny games that are like nothing else in the world of IF. In this game, it feels like Robb is using his writing to accomplish a slightly different goal: sharing joy. The result is a light, funny game that is like nothing else in the world of IF. My guess is we haven’t seen the last of Dark Robb, but Enceladus should expose his work to a whole new audience who might not have been able to handle the darkness of some of his previous works. That’s a good thing!

For newcomers to Robb’s IF work, this game is a fun, accessible space adventure that will serve as a great introduction. You play the role of Ensign Ja’Rod Butler, crewmember aboard the starship Plagoo which is currently traveling in outer space near Enceladus, one of Saturn’s many moons. Everything is going well except for the fact that a werewolf has boarded the ship and is killing people. The werewolf is probably the most Sherwinian thing in this game, but the explanation is that the werewolf is the result of an elective genetic engineering procedure. In other words, he is a highly modified human being. That makes sense. I mean — let’s face it — that’s the sort of thing that’s definitely going to happen in the future. Some people will do the werewolf procedure in order to become better criminals like the one in the game, some people will do it because Teen Wolf is their favorite movie, and some people will do it because they’ve always felt like they were werewolves on the inside. The point is they will definitely be doing it so Enceladus is giving us a glance into our futures which is exactly what science fiction is supposed to do. The battle against the werewolf (who, it turns out, isn’t really the mastermind here) will ultimately continue on the surface of Enceladus, a frozen wasteland best known for hosting the only hot sauce bar this side of the galaxy.

For those of us who have played Robb Sherwin games before, we will inevitably come into this one armed with a certain set of expectations. These expectations might vary a bit depending on which game is your favorite, but, personally, I expect a Robb game to take place in a dystopian world or at least an environment where justice is in short supply, to feature numerous bursts of virtuoso writing, to be hilarious, and to be populated by a host of fascinating and weird characters. Enceladus is very funny, well-written, and features some interesting and quirky characters, but it also feels a little restrained compared to some of Robb’s other games in keeping with the lighter atmosphere. If we were talking about music, we’d say Robb’s latest release was a little tighter and less experimental than his previous work. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; in fact, I found it refreshing. We want artists to keep trying new things, especially when the results are good as they are here. Plus, “a little restrained” in this case still leaves room for a character as over the top as the thong-wearing Finnian, a case of near death by hot sauce, and the aforementioned werewolf. I also wouldn’t say the world of Enceladus is dystopian. Even though the crew of the Plagoo face danger in the harsh reaches of outer space, most notably because people are trying to kill them, the game environment never feels entirely unpleasant or hostile. Admittedly, Grimes might disagree with that assessment for good reason. Even so, this still feels like a game world where the AIDS Archer may well have hung up his bow long ago, where having pets is still a perfectly legal activity, and where Varick still works 9 to 5 because he hasn’t been driven to raid the last resting places of the dead by sheer economic necessity.

Enceladus does a nice job depicting the chain of command and job specialization on a well-run starship. As Ja’Rod, you are not the head honcho. Like everyone else on the ship, you have a job to do; in your case, you use your special X-ray glasses to scan nearby locations for DANGER. Like everyone else, you answer to the captain. Not doing your job and not following orders can get you and the rest of the crew killed. At the same time, you are given the creative freedom needed to problem solve and can speak freely without fear of retribution. This is an efficient outfit that clearly works well together. Linus Torvalds and Jeff Bezos could probably learn a lot about leadership from the unnamed but badass and utterly competent captain in this game. As a general rule, I like being in charge whether in an adventure game or in real life, but Enceladus does a great job of making you feel like your role is important even when you’re not the one giving the orders. All space games tend to remind me of Red Dwarf to a degree, and mentally I did classify Ja’Rod as Dave Lister in an alternative universe. Like Ja’Rod, Lister isn’t an insubordinate man by nature, and he would likely have served a capable commander with perfect rectitude. Ja’Rod probably wouldn’t have amounted to much if he had to work under Rimmer either, but placed in a positive work environment such as aboard the Plagoo he has everything he needs to shine.

Robb Sherwin remains a big believer in the potential of multimedia to enhance interactive fiction. In this game, there are just a couple of graphics that you see when you start the game and visit the about section, but there’s music throughout the game. In the past, I haven’t always been a big believer in the use of music in text adventures. I kind of like having text adventures be a silent, almost meditative experience, and it can be difficult to find music that truly complements a game. I even felt that way playing Cryptozookeeper at times because it felt like the music was doing its own thing, largely independent of the action in the game, and sometimes it actually distracted me from the job at hand. In Enceladus, however, the music perfectly complements the game and each song seems to match the scene it is featured in very well. Rather than serving as a distraction, it actually reinforces the mood set by the text. Robb has proven with this game that music truly can add something to the text adventure playing experience just as it does in other types of games. The loud red background color also seems to fit the game very well. Most importantly, it reminds me of AGT so it gets some bonus points based on that alone.

I served as a beta tester towards the tail end of this game’s development, and I’m very pleased with how everything turned out all in all. Some bugs needed to be squashed and typos eliminated along the way, but it’s a downright smooth and almost flawless playing experience now as long as you type all the same things I do. If you run into the text, “I aren’t in anything at the moment,” in the mine, I’m very sorry and have no idea why I only noticed that after the comp version had already been released. Finding a way to get Alexandra safe and sound and inside the airlock proved to be one of the most serious game development challenges. It’s much less confusing now than it used to be, but it’s still a little odd that Alexandra is listed as being present Before the Airlock and also said to be inside the airlock at the same time. Oh well, nobody likes a pedant. Apart from those small quibbles, the game works great now and I’m very happy to have played a very small role in getting it into its present form.

For better or for worse, Enceladus is a comp game through and through. It’s short and easy enough for just about anyone to finish. In practice, this means that the game ends very soon after it reaches its crescendo. You play through the best part, and then it’s just…over. I definitely found myself wishing there was more adventure to be had and that I could spend some more time with my crewmates, but at the same time I know authors can struggle to find the perfect length for a comp game so it’s perfectly understandable why Robb would want to keep it short. Even though Enceladus is about as straightforward as interactive fiction can be, there are probably a few people who still will have a hard time finishing it. I imagine any hardcore Twine fans who crossed over to play this game likely needed to ice their fingers after every few typed commands so that two hour comp game time limit really can be reached more easily than one might imagine. When I give out my numeric ratings, I’m mentally comparing a game to all the interactive fiction I’ve ever played even though that’s probably not fair. This can make it difficult for a short game to get a great score from me, but I really had to think a while about what rating I should give this game. You could consider Enceladus to be about as good as short and simple IF can be. It really is among the best of its kind, and I’m not sure a better game was entered into Comp ’19 — if one does exist, I definitely haven’t played it yet. At the same time, I still prefer my IF to be lengthier and a little more challenging. Be that as it may, the annual IF competition is all about celebrating short form IF, and Enceladus is fantastic short form IF so I’m expecting it to do very well.

Lastly, the fact that I have now reviewed two games in a row that both featured Enceladus has to be about the weirdest thing to have happened in the history of this site. Yeah, it’s even weirder than having all three of the original Trotting Krips review Pass the Banana. I had absolutely no idea Robb was working on an Enceladus-themed game until I’d already started writing my review of Saturn’s Child. What this all means I have no idea, but I think I can state with more authority than anyone else that Enceladus is the best Enceladus-themed text adventure there is. Admittedly, Saturn’s Child did feature an awesome space birth scene (though in my opinion it would have been better if the baby had been named after Jim Bexley Speed), but Enceladus is pretty much superior in all other respects. So, if you can just play one Enceladus game, make it this one!

Simple Rating: 7/10

Complicated Rating: 34/50

Story: 7/10

Writing: 8/10

Playability: 8/10 (Whoever beta tested this game did a fantastic job!)

Puzzle Quality: 4/10 (It’s not that the puzzles are bad per se; it’s just it’s pretty much always bleeding obvious what you should do next so it’s not very challenging.)

Parser Responsiveness: 7/10

Special Ratings For This Game:

Looks Like AGT: 8/10 (Color is good!)

 

Saturn’s Child by Jerry Ford (2014)

The Little Ugly, Evil Guy On My Shoulder’s Verdict:

If Wednesday’s Child is full of woe, then Saturn’s Child is full of cable up the butt. Seriously, in this game your character has a cable up his butt for most of the game, as does your girlfriend. When you and your girlfriend have a baby together in space, your kid eventually gets a cable up the butt too. This just reinforces my feeling that all space games are ultimately variations of Xtrek. Every. Single. One. Especially Planets: TEOS.

The Little Nice, Handsome Guy On My Shoulder’s Verdict:

What an epic space adventure! I was totally absorbed from beginning to end, especially during the scenes on Titan and Enceladus. Admittedly the butt stuff was a little weird.

My Verdict:

I loved the adventure, the setting, and the developer’s ambition. I hated the bugs and the excessive focus on procedure. Also, the butt stuff made my butt wince which is never a good thing.

Game Information

Game Type: TADS

Author Info: Following his unfortunate death in 2006, ex-president Jerry Ford decided to set politics aside and focus on a new way to reach the masses from beyond the grave: interactive fiction! No, this particular Jerry Ford actually hails from the mean streets of Pleasant Hills, CA, a veritable world away from the gilded cage of Rancho Mirage. He’s written several games that cover everything from crime to demonic seduction to space exploration. That’s why my nickname for him is Detective Jerry Ford, Demonfucker of Mars! Let’s see if that catches on.

Download Link: https://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/saturns_child.zip

Other Games By This Author: Dark Angel, The Devil in the Details

Before we begin in earnest, I have to tell you something I’ve never shared with anyone else: I’m biased when it comes to space games. That’s because I love space games. I love science fiction in general. I read the books. I watch the movies. I listen to Dimension X. I think about things like space colonization, alien culture, teleportation, and daily life aboard a spaceship on a regular basis. This is an enduring interest for me. Furthermore, I also tend to particularly enjoy interactive fiction set in space, whether it be Infocom classics like Planetfall, graphic adventure game classics like Space Quest, or shooter that occasionally bothers to tell a story classics like Mass Effect. If you want to know how deep the obsession goes, let’s just say I am a genuine fan (present tense) of the BASICA classic Alien and Super Z Trek. Robb reviewed both games fairly on the original incarnation of Reviews From Trotting Krips; I didn’t review either one because I knew I was way too biased to be fair.

So if you want a completely unbiased review of Saturn’s Child you’re not going to be satisfied here because this is definitely a space game and so I’m definitely going to be biased. I’m not so biased that I won’t tell you that the game has both flaws and bugs because it does have both. I’m not even going to write a glowing review because there are as many things I disliked about the game as I liked. It’s just that I have a feeling I enjoyed this game more than most players of interactive fiction will primarily because I love space games. If you don’t share my bias, you could very well think that this is an absolutely terrible game, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to convince you otherwise. When the average interactive fiction player (who also happens to be a stereotypical teenage girl) plays this, the results are predictably combustive:

“The bugs make this game sooooooooooooooooo annoying! Like there was one which made it so I couldn’t go back to my ship. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!”

“Why do I have to press so many buttons and pull so many levers anyway? This is hella boring! Wouldn’t they have self-flying spaceships or voice-activated controls or something like that in the future?”

“What’s the deal with the whole cable in butt thing? Like ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! I bet the guy who did this is a total sicko!”

I bring up the average interactive fiction player’s potential criticisms of this game because they are totally valid. This game does have annoying bugs, it does have an excessive number of buttons, dials, switches, and levers, and it does feature troubling cable-in-butt action. But all that stuff doesn’t absolutely define the game, at least not for me. I prefer to think of the high points. For example, this game features an outstanding sequence where you help your girlfriend give birth to a baby on a spaceship (if your character is male) or actually give birth (if your character is female). This scene and its leadup are pretty intense. During my first playthrough as a male character, I found myself feeling deeply worried I was going to fuck up. After all, I didn’t know nothing about birthing babies. It turned out to be relatively straightforward in terms of what I had to do (which definitely was the easy part), but I was still sweating bullets by the time we were done. The magnitude of what had just happened — the birth of the first baby (human at least) off Earth — awed me. I’m not privy to the development history of this game, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Jerry Ford started out with a more neutral title like Mission to Saturn and then changed the name after writing the birth scene. This is a game that can and will alienate a player with its annoying bugs and insistence on procedure, but the birth scene is interesting enough to draw you back in if you get that far. You could certainly argue that the birth scene is too passive if you’re playing a female character — you don’t even get to push — but it remains powerful because you still get the overwhelming feeling that you’re doing something no human has ever done before. It feels genuinely fresh and exciting, too, because this just isn’t a theme that gets covered in adventure games all that often. I also really enjoyed exploring the Saturnian moons though I was disappointed they felt so similar to one another. To be fair, I should note that you’ll only see one moon in any given playthrough depending on whether you’re the male or the female player character.

The basic premise of Saturn’s Child is that you are in the space program and are on a mission to Saturn together with an opposite sex partner. Your task is to retrieve two probes lost on Titan and Enceladus, two of Saturn’s numerous moons. You can choose to be either the male or the female astronaut. This choice affects your path through the game ever so slightly; most notably, it changes the perspective of the birth scene and determines which moon of Saturn you’ll personally land on. Whether male or female your space duties will be extremely similar, and I wouldn’t say it’s strictly necessary to play both paths. Technically, you can also choose to have no sexual organs or be a hermaphrodite, but this just leads to an early game ending. According to this game, NASA doesn’t accept hermaphrodites into the space program. Even if true, pointing this out in a text adventure seems a little unnecessarily mean. Suffice it to say that hermaphrodites will always have a place in my space program, if you know what I mean. If you DO know what I mean, you definitely have the edge on me because I have absolutely no idea.

The game starts out with you and your partner in training. The first scene is a little similar to the beginning of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in that you find yourself in a dark room with nearly no sensory information to go on. If anything does smell a bit this time around, it’s likely to be the cable you find securely inserted in your ass. You also don’t have any memories. Starting the game out in this manner made me think I wasn’t really an astronaut but rather a kidnap victim. In fact, the first character you meet actually makes an alien anal probe joke. Not exactly the best way to earn my confidence. I had a bit of a hard time buying that my loss of memory was somehow connected to my training as well. Later on, I started to suspect the government might be involved in the pregnancy too, especially when a scientist referred to my child as an extraterrestrial. For whatever reason, the game seems to go out of its way to downplay this possibility — you get your memories back, your baby appears completely human, and a short timeline for the impregnation (which suspiciously no one really seems to remember in any great detail) is provided. Even an explanation for the anal cables is given: the little buggers dispense medicine and report back important health information! In other words, they’re basically a more advanced smartwatch for your butt…who wouldn’t want one? So, no, I can’t exactly prove a secret government research project and alien sperm were actually involved in the birth of my child, but I was totally expecting an ending where my kid sprouted feelers and exhibited telekinetic powers. I’m afraid you’ll have to play the game for yourself to find out if that’s what really happens.

Perhaps the best thing I can say about this game is that Jerry Ford’s ideas are generally good and his ambition is admirable. He’s genuinely succeeded in creating a virtual world that is distinct and memorable though not detailed. He captures some of the majesty and mystery of space and some of the dangers as well as the allure of space travel. The big ship, the lander, and the rover all feel like real environments — it’s easy to play this game and imagine yourself actually in space and actually manipulating these hulking machines. The problem is Ford seems so wrapped up in his ideas and his world that it feels like he sometimes forgets people will be playing his game for fun. I’ll take that back if it turns out NASA is actually using this game to prepare recruits for space travel. If that never happens, it’s very hard to justify what Ford puts his players through at times. For one thing, his favorite type of puzzle seems to be the puzzle of obscurity. One example is the treadmill. It takes multiple steps to get it working and to dismount it, but the most trouble users are likely to have with it is finding how to turn it on. It turns out the machine has an emergency power cutoff lever, but you have to stumble about for a while to find it. Looking at the treadmill won’t tell you anything about any cutoff switch. It’s much the same story with the difficult to find book or the first aid kit that doesn’t want to be used even when your partner is bleeding out. To be frank, it’s unclear if these “puzzles” are really intended to be puzzles or if the author just didn’t want to take the time to flesh his game out. Another point of annoyance is Ford’s love of procedure. Space travel naturally involves a lot of cool machines and electronics, and this game has a number of instances where you need to manipulate buttons, levers, and switches in a specific way to proceed. I can appreciate this to a degree because it does make the game seem more realistic, but it becomes downright ridiculous when you have to spend five minutes using a space microwave that’s exactly the same as its counterpart on Earth. Some parts of this game are downright tedious and dull. I think there’s a place for procedure when you’re doing something important and need to learn a skill you’ll use again in the game. For instance, I wouldn’t complain if I had to learn how to manually navigate a starship in a space game. I got absolutely nothing out of opening and closing the microwave, adding water to various food packets, putting the packets in the microwave, setting the power level, setting the cook time, and turning the power on multiple times, though. That’s just unnecessary tedium.

I’m afraid the bugs are going to get their own paragraph. Sadly, there are a lot of them. Some are easy to ignore, like the unmatched quote error early on. Some principally serve as an annoyance, like the way the scientist keeps telling you to dismount the treadmill even when you’re no longer in the same room if you fail to do the dismounting in time. I don’t think you actually CAN do the dismounting in time if you’re a male character, but it works if you’re a female. Maybe the game’s actually trying to make some sort of social commentary about the male tendency to monopolize exercise equipment. Women may take too long in the bathroom, but guys…uh…take too long on the treadmill? The little bastards just can’t get enough of walking without going anywhere, and Saturn’s Child is here to call them out on it. In any case, there’s a certain humor in having the scientist show up somewhere completely inappropriate, such as on Titan, but you’re likely to see that message about dismounting the treadmill a hundred times or more before you’re through with the game. That brings us to the last and worst category of bugs: the game enders. There are at least two bugs which will leave you stuck and unable to finish, and I ran into both of them. As a male character, you can get stuck on Titan through no fault of your own. I still don’t know what triggered the bug, but I somehow ended up in a position where the game said I had reentered my lander even though I was really still on Titan. My space helmet was removed automatically when I tried to reenter the ship so I found myself aimlessly wandering the surface of Titan, breathing in the atmosphere without a helmet and none the worse for wear. Weird all around. Jerry Ford’s strong belief in gender equality lead to him inserting a similar bug for the female character. This time the bug occurs during a radiation leak that occurs prior to your departure for Enceladus. If you don’t follow the proper sequence of actions, you can end up unable to advance the game no matter what you do. It turns out software bugs are ultimately more deadly than radiation. I think NASA knows exactly what I’m talking about, unfortunately.

In short, Saturn’s Child is a game for a particular type of person: someone who really, really loves space and doesn’t mind bugs, even game-ending bugs. Even though there were aspects of the game that I genuinely enjoyed, it turns out even I don’t love space quite THAT much. There’s just a few too many problems here to forgive and overlook or to expect others to forgive and overlook. The pity is that Saturn’s Child genuinely had the potential to be great…it just didn’t quite manage to realize that potential. In its present form, I suspect those who have some sort of weird cable-butt fetish will end up enjoying the game more than anyone else. If that’s you, this is definitely the game. If that’s not you, well, that’s why we have other reviews.

Simple Rating: 5/10

Complicated Rating: 22/50

Story: 7/10

Writing: 6/10

Playability: 3/10 (Sadly, Jerry Ford seems to struggle to look at his own games from a player’s point of view.)

Puzzle Quality: 1/10

Parser Responsiveness: 5/10 (The parser can be quite picky at times and some of the TADS rewrites for unrecognized inputs are downright bizarre.)