Review of "Not Much Time"

Not Much Time is a TADS 2 interactive fiction game and is © 2002 by Tyson Ibele.


Review by David Welbourn

This adventure at your aunt's farm follows a standard IF storyline: you've been called in to solve an unusual problem, and after a bit of sleuthing, you determine that you must find a group of specific unusual objects and give them to someone (in this case, your aunt), and this will solve the problem. And no, she won't help you, or tell you where she keeps her stuff.

Fortunately for you and your aunt, all the needed unusual objects are hiding somewhere on her farm, so a trip to the local mall to buy these things in a sensible manner won't be necessary.

It's a fairly straightforward and mostly pleasant game, but there are problems, most of which should have been caught by testing. Logical problems like the knife in the washing machine, and the crowbar that's too big to carry. The game doesn't know the verb "cut", even though there's a knife. Solving the pillow's puzzle was made unnecessarily difficult because the game didn't recognize alternate ways to phrase the commands. And spelling errors like "Translyvanian" and "thouroughly" provided some unintentional laughs, but my favourite howler was when a flower bulb lodged itself in my "throught".

Rating: 5.

✍️🏻 See my handwritten notes.