The Binary

This game was short but excellent. A time travel story, we are given the opportunity to relive a segment of a timeline until we successfully prevent an assassination. Our hero may go through that segment of time as often as he needs -- I'm reminded of "Source Code", a movie with a similar premise -- although every so often, in between iterations, we get flashbacks that provide us with deeper backstory with regard to the hero and his organisation; I don't know how many flashback scenes there are, or if there are any that tell us anything about the assassination itself; they did, however, provide a nice counter-point to the main story.

The format here was hypertext, with a clean and functional presentation. It very handily limited the pathways available, preventing us from getting too far lost in the first few iterations and from wantonly abusing the timeline once we got used to the concept. It was very well-used, I thought, in terms of pushing the capabilities of hypertext. It might be said that the game could just as easily have been done with your standard parser-based IF, but perhaps the fact that this can be said at all may very well be proof of the author's triumph in handling the hypertext format.

Two poached eggs and a toasted bagel. Cream cheese. Instant coffee.