Under the Sea

We're a member of the Adventurers' Society, a London club for (presumably) adventurers, and we're investigating the wreck of an old Spanish galleon with the help of a nifty steampunk-ish diving suit. Imagine pith helmets and giant moustaches and lots of the jolly old stiff upper lip. And talking fish. Along the way, we've also got to keep track of our achievements by choosing which way to spin the story. So, pip-pip and hurrah, we're off to the races.

The story is pretty short. Meet wildlife, communicate, solve a couple of relatively simple puzzles, choose which bit of treasure we want to retrieve, and we're done. Our ending depends on the treasure we chose and on the story we tell when we get back, making for nine variants on a winning ending. Along with the talking fish, it's all very charming in a juvenile sort of way, like a stop-motion cartoon vision of old-fashioned pulp adventure. I certainly enjoyed the flavour.

The puzzles, as I said, are relatively simple. I was seldom stuck for long. I did trip a bit over the syntax when trying to get the napoleonfish to do stuff for me, though, oddly, not when trying to explain to the octopus the logic behind my solution for its riddle. IF veterans are probably already gaping at that last bit: the IF parser isn't exactly built for explaining logic to NPCs, so either the author got lucky, or I got lucky, or the whole thing is a LOT more cleverly put together than it appears.

Anyway, the game as a whole comes off like a French omelette for breakfast: seemingly simple, but with some fiddliness in the execution. Throw in some baked beans and strong English Breakfast tea, and we're ready to conquer the world.