Ultimate Escape Room: IF City - Mark Stahl

Walkthrough please?
Hint? Help? About? Xyzzy?

I can help. (I didn’t write it, but I finished it.) Where are you stuck?

Sorry. I really just wanted to see if anyone could beat the escape room for real (which a couple of gritty people have already done in the first couple of days), and it’s not easy to determine that if you release a walkthrough. For now, I’d like to continue to observe people’s genuine attempts to solve the game. If it proves to be too difficult for a majority of people, I may release a walkthrough at some time in the future. I apologize for the inconvenience.

No problem. I got help from jbdyer.

Okay, after getting unstuck by the aforementioned Jason Dyer, I zipped through the rest. Jason’s review, which relates an impression similar to my own, would have gotten me unstuck by itself, as he mentions the verbs…

SEARCH, LOOK UNDER, and LOOK BEHIND

…which he calls “old”. They are indeed somewhat out of fashion, used they way they are used here, but certainly not unfair. Some answers were not what I was expecting due to the style of the game, but it’s really just standard oldschool IF stuff. As Jason mentions, not everything in this game is implemented cleanly or clearly, but it’s playable enough.

To me this game highlighted how typical parser IF is not too far from escape-the-room type scenarios in quite a few cases. This one didn’t even need that narrative encapsulation to feel normal.

I think this is a good game to NOT have a walkthrough released, if the author feels like seeing how that will play out. There’s not much to lose because the ending–and therefore the story itself–was just a token effort, and it’s the puzzles that count here.

I recommend this game to the non-parser people out there. I think it might be fun to just give it a shot. Yes, the game expects you to know the standard parser commands, and there’s no help in sight, but this might not be a bad place to poke around in and see what you can do.

Well said.

I do feel that the game would be improved by adding some help/about/info/hint about the somewhat unusual verbs.

I was stuck in the green room until i read jepflast’s post.

I have posted a review and some transcripts here: blog.templaro.com/review-ultimat … room-city/

  • Jack

Short review: xenoglossy.dreamwidth.org/80253.html#cutid5

I understand the desire to avoid having a walkthrough, but I would strongly suggest considering hints. Real escape rooms sometimes have them, even!