Sunday, 24 December 2017

Interactive fiction review #13 - Tears of a tough man

Tears of a Tough Man by Brian Humphrey

A debut title - and it shows

Tears of a Tough Man by Bruce Humphrey is a short mystery murder memento game in which you are meant to restore your main characters's memory by wandering around and triggering his recollection by doing various things. What might sound interesting is held back dramatically by writer's inexperience and ineptitude.

In a forum post, the author stated that he planned to implement multiple features missing from the final version but couldn't (for some reason) - it shows. (e.g. multiple endings) Grammar and spelling errors, whilst not overabundant, distract. Some of the puzzles are made unneededly tedious by poor syntax and logic. The in-game environment feels unnaturally constructed to the point of being ridiculous. Likewise, quest-important items just happen to be lying around in your path. The ending (if you'd like to try this out, the point you're likely to miss is "x stains") does not really reveal or conclude anything.

To sum things up, Tears of a Tough Man is an author's debut work that does show some promise but in its ineptness cannot be salvaged even by mending and polishing.

2/10

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