FROZEN: A NIGHT AT THE LAB
             A text adventure by Jeremy Farnham
                     Part of Disk 1174

                   Reviewed by Bev Truter

The title of this game ("frozen") is rather misleading at first
glance.  It has nothing to do with snow, ice or the weather; and it
takes about 5 minutes before you realize what the title refers to,
and why it's very appropriate. The setting for FROZEN is a campus
somewhere in America, and I assume the author is a college student
himself.

This fairly short text game written with Inform appeared to be the
prologue for another, longer game, as the ending definitely hints
at a continuation of the saga at a later date. Assuming that this
game isn't a prologue, it doesn't quite manage to pull off the
macabre horror atmosphere as well as other games have done.  There
is a choice of sorts in the ending(s), and none of them seems to
work fantastically well. As far as I know there is no
"continuation" of this story in a larger game, so I found all the
ending(s) felt as though something was missing, with events in the
game never fully explained or understood. Ah well, on with the
plot, as the saying goes.

You play the role of an American college student, and it's close to
the end of term. There's only two days to go, and you still haven't
finished writing that story due for your English Professor. Your
own computer has packed up, so here you are in the Engineering
Computer Lab, along with a half dozen other desperate students,
trying to cram a month's worth of work into a single night. You
jerk out of a light doze and decide it's time to get some coffee.

If you examine the other students, and try picking up your
backpack, you'll soon realize that something very strange seems to
be happening. Everything moves so s-l-o-w-l-y, and your fellow
students look still enough to be statues. Exploring further afield
in the building, you find a man apparently frozen in the act of
opening a door. Work your way downwards to the Basement Lab and
you'll discover a peculiar machine with a glowing sphere on the
top, a diagram on the wall, and several people frozen in poses of
jubilation.

If you fiddle about with this machine you'll eventually be
transported to another place...or another time? Certainly it's a
different kind of reality, where rooms look as though they have
been thoroughly searched and ransacked, and thick layers of dust
cover everything. You'll find some strange objects with unfamiliar
writing and symbols on them, and ultimately you'll have the chance
to return to your own world; or an altered version of your world,
or perhaps not return at all.

FROZEN has been written with style and polish, and contains several
puzzles to solve as well as the idea of a different reality or
parallel universe to explore. But I found the sudden jump from
everyday campus goings-on to a rather macabre world disturbing at
times, mainly because nothing was ever explained.  There seemed to
be no logic or reason for this "other" world, and you (literally)
have to grope about in the dark for a while, trying to make sense
of what you see and find. A lot of the eerieness in FROZEN comes
from the juxtaposition of the familiar (a kitchen, a study, an
attic) with the bizarre and unfamiliar.

I must confess to having used a hint sheet downloaded from the
Internet to get me started in this game, as a series of inputs
needed to send me into the "other" world were too elusive for me;
but once in this other world the puzzles were fairly
straightforward.  FROZEN contains about 20 - 30 locations (I didn't
make a map, so I lost count). There is a scoring system displayed
in the usual fashion, but it always remains at 0/0.

FROZEN accomplishes what I think the author intended - it portrays
a different world and maintains tension with a decidedly peculiar
atmosphere. I enjoyed playing this game for its above- average
writing and programming, but it wasn't "fun" in the sense of
light-hearted, charming or witty. It's a clever game, but not an
amusing one. On the whole I think I prefer my text adventures less
grim and more entertaining, but that's just my own personal taste
in games.
                              - o -