Enceladus

Robb Sherwin. If there's one thing you can say about Robb Sherwin, it's that he's got style. Maybe he's not so great with solid implementation -- he's definitely more artist than craftsman -- but this latest outing seems to hold up better than, say, "Chicks Dig Jerks". Which, to be fair, was more than twenty years ago. What I'm trying to say here is that he's grown as an implementor, without losing his flair in the process.

I have a suspicion that, out of all the moons around Saturn and Jupiter, Enceladus was chosen largely so Mr. Sherwin can refer to the game as "Enchiladas" in private.

There's some shakiness still, if you dare or care to poke around a bit. Some information that should be in the room description is delivered via narration instead, and I know I saw at least one instance of narration delivered in the room description. There's a pistol whose actual ownership seems to matter little to the endgame. Sherwin's priority here is to tell a story, and the world is only fleshed out just enough to tell it. If I didn't care much about the places where the implementation fell a bit short of the mark, it's because the story always kept me going in the right direction. Most of the time, it's a matter of intuition: "Aha, I see where this is going." And go there it did. There was at least one place where the game just came out and told me what exactly I had to do, which isn't the best way of directing a player; but enh, it was fine. The story still flowed perfectly well.

The story itself begins with the appearance of a werewolf on a spaceship, of which you are a crewmember. Getting rid of it (and the villain who brought it on) is only the beginning: now you've got to go find a doctor for the crewmember who got mauled, and materials to effect the repairs. Along for the ride are a collection of flashy NPCs that I personally found charming and endearing -- Finnian in particular, whom I would probably hate in real life but who, framed within this narrative, just pops.

It's like having five espressos for breakfast. Did we also have a croissant or a raspberry danish, or did we forget to actually eat something? No one cares, because we are now wired and ready to rock and roll.