FRIDAY AFTERNOON - part of Disk 1291
           A text adventure by Mischa Schweitzer

                 Review by Bev Truter on PC

This entry in the I-F 1997 Competition reached the "Top 24" list,
and was ranked #16 by the judges. Like all the entries it is short
(6 locations) and has to be finishable in under 2 hours. The
puzzles in Friday are quite novel and varied, and it took me
longer than 2 hours to complete this game, even with the aid of
the in-built hint file (type HELP). Here's the introduction, to
give you an idea of the game plot and characters, and what you
have to do to win it.

In Friday you play the part of a computer programmer for MicroSun
Systems, and Tanya has finally agreed to go out on a date with you
tonight. But there's one problem - it's already 5 o'clock on a
Friday afternoon and the work you had to do this week isn't done
yet. The problem is, you are not allowed to leave until you have
finished the few remaining tasks. If you haven't left by 6 o'clock
you'll never make it to your house in time, and you can kiss your
date goodbye...or rather, you won't be able to kiss your date.

Apparently this is Mischa's first attempt at interactive fiction
(text adventures to most of the world outside the States), and he
used his own job / office as the setting, hoping his colleagues
would want to play the resulting adventure. (One colleague
eventually did, and thought the game a huge success). So he
rehashed his original game for the 1997 competition on the Net,
and removed some of the insider-jokes to make it more tolerable.
This, then, is how Friday Afternoon came into being.

The other characters in the game (your 2 colleagues) are well
described, and you can interact with them in many ways. You will
have to ask, show and tell them things to get a response, and
without their co-operation you will never manage to leave the
office in time for your date. The very first thing to do is pick
up that bit of crumpled paper lying on the floor, and read it to
discover all the things you have to do before leaving the
building; hopefully before 6 o'clock. One of the first events to
happen as soon as you attempt to leave your own office is that
your glasses fall off as one of the tiny screws has fallen out
again. Without your glasses you are unable to read anything, so
before you settle down to completing those tasks, you'll first
have to find a way of repairing your specs.

Your watch shows 5 o'clock at the start of play, and the current
time is displayed at the top right-hand corner of the screen,
inexorably moving closer and closer to the dreaded 6 p.m. It took
me ages to figure out how to do certain things, so saving and
restoring your place in the game is vital right from the
beginning.

Other things on your list are: borrowing a CD (Civilization 2)
from Benny, but he seems immersed in sorting out a coding problem,
and oblivious to your request. Hmmm ... maybe if you could repair
the printer and use it to print out something he would become more
co-operative. Nearly all the puzzles involve interacting with
Benny and William, and if you enjoy playing a text adventure with
you in the role of a male computer nerd, doing various things to
recalcitrant printers, computers and colleagues, then this is the
game for you. Problem is, I'm definitely *not* suited to this type
of setting in a computer game. I have enough problems with my own
computer and printer in real life to find fiddling about with
hardware in a game even faintly interesting or absorbing. Let's
face it - apart from their ability to load and run games,
computers and their peripheral odds and sods are exceedingly dull!

On the positive side, I can see how this could very well be a
fascinating game for others to play, as it's well written,
thoroughly playtested, contains about 7 or 8 clever puzzles; and
if you can get enthusiastic over a game set in a large office with
a host of mundane computer-related obstacles to overcome, then
good luck to you! I managed to solve 2 puzzles on my own (in 2.5
hours) and then plodded through to the end using the help/hints
function available. Friday Afternoon is competently written and
carefully programmed, but just not my mug of Milo.


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