Review of "The Case of Samuel Gregor"

The Case of Samuel Gregor is a Z-code 5 interactive fiction game written with Inform 6 and is © 2002 by Stephen Hilderbrand.


Review by David Welbourn

You play a female psychologist hired to find a missing person, one Samuel Gregor, and the blueprints he stole. This task is hindered by wretched conversation menus that are a pain to use, a severe lack of synonyms for most objects, and an unnecessary inventory limit.

So, after wandering all over the city trying to find not just a clue, but also anyone responsive—for example, there are beggars, but you can't give them any money—I finally win my way far enough to get the missing blueprints. However, for some odd reason, I can't return them and even stranger, my character is now male, which I don't discover until I try to enter a washroom. Bizarre. There was no transition effect at all, and my inventory is unchanged. I return to what was my office and discover my former self there, and only then learn that I'm now playing Gregor.

Obviously this is some wacky bug, so I check the walkthrough to see what I did wrong. Oh, dear. It's not a bug. Fine. The game no longer makes any sense at all, and I stop playing.

Rating: 2.

✍️🏻 See my handwritten notes.