Interactive Fiction review #5 - Episode in the Life of an Artist

Episode in the Life of an Artist by Peter Eastman (2003)

Episode in the Life of an Artist details the daily routine of the everyman/simpleton protagonist, from getting up and dressing, to preparing breakfast and taking the bus to work.

This game does a good job defining the personality of the protagonist by showing his view of the things he encounters. The mundaneness of his (apparently lonely) working-class existence is juxtaposed with his favourable self-view. The protagonist even considers himself an artist of mechanical genius, when ironically his job is so simple a machine is developed to replace him.

The counterpoint to some very interesting writing is the defectiveness of the programming. While still very playable, there are instances you will curse the author's tendency to require very specific inputs. (The final turn of the game is especially bad with this.) At least one one-time-only event is repeated every time you perform a certain action. The final (of fortunately few) puzzles is pure guesswork. You cannot read the victory message of the game because it is unfortunately automatically skipped. The scoring system was left in the game but is never used.

While, like mentioned above, the writing is interesting and done well, there are some weird instances that jar with the rest of the story. Putting fantasy elements in otherwise realistic settings is something I have a strong dislike of and in this game does not benefit this story in any way. In fact, the author's decision to let this story take place in a Zork-based universe is baffling and serves no obvious purpose.

Episode in the Life of an Artist is an interesting piece of work that is unfortunately hampered by abovementioned flaws but certainly worth being tried out.

4/10