An office game--you're dealing with irritating coworkers, malfunctioning vending machines, and the like--but with twists that send it way beyond the office-game genre. The author calls it a "rushed and uneven mixture of gonzo humor and surreal horror," which isn't entirely inaccurate, but it's still an impressive game--by turns nastily subversive and darkly funny. The ending, in particular, is surprising, and it's easy to miss what the author was really driving at if you don't read carefully. The main problem (and, in my book, the only thing keeping this from a five-star rating) is that it's often hard to figure out what to do next; your motivations are often unclear unless you happen to know what the trajectory of the story is already. NB: it's possible to reach what seems to be an okay ending after about 10 moves, but there's much, much more to the game than that, so if you reach that ending, go back and try again. Has adaptive hints (which you're likely to need). Highly recommended both as a game and as an object lesson in IF theory.

Rating: ****

Reviewed by Duncan Stevens (16 Jul 2000)

bluemen.z5 (170.50 KB)

Z-code 5 executable (version: Release 1)