IFReviewed by
Greg Boettcher on 2006-05-22 08:48
Solitary is a one-room character study of an 18-year-old female freshman in college who is having problems with her boyfriend (or ex-boyfriend?), James. While the game has flaws, it's a decent first effort for a new author, and might interest some people.
The gameplay consists of examining and interacting with the items around you, thinking about things (THINK ABOUT [topic], WHO IS [person]), and ultimately performing the necessary actions to win the game. In the course of all this, you get a fair number of details about your character and the important people in her life.
The game's biggest flaw is that it includes an unpleasant (and totally unnecessary) guess-the-verb moment. On the other hand, the game partly makes up for this by including a hint system. It's a hint system with an unusual format, but I thought it worked pretty well.
Is there enough detail in this game to make you care about the characters? I don't know. I'm giving the game a thumbs-up, but it's not an enthusiastic thumbs-up. I'd like to see more from the author next time.
Maybe the no-NPCs format just isn't well-suited to a purely character-oriented piece like this. Maybe for me to get involved with such a character-oriented piece, I need to see the characters in action, as in Rameses. I don't know.
Still, if my description of this game interests you at all, I'd encourage you to give it a try.
