THE HOUSE OF THE STALKER
              A text adventure by Jason White
                     (Part of Disk 1074)

                   Reviewed by Bev Truter

This Inform game was another entry in the 1996 I-F competition
run on the Internet, and was placed 23rd out of 26 games
submitted for judging. The game title can't be read too
literally either, because the action does not take place in a
stalker's house, but in your [game character's] house. The gist
of the plot is that you are alone at home when you hear on the
morning news that an inmate has escaped from a Psychiatric
Institution, situated in your neighbourhood. He's armed and
extremely dangerous, and while you are busy scouting about your
attic clearing out some junk you hear ominous noises from one of
the rooms downstairs.  Uh-oh, you've guessed it, the
killer/stalker has broken into your house, and you'll have to
overpower him if you want to survive.

The author has tried to write a tension-filled game, with you
playing the role of someone who has to deal with a very nasty
situation - can you devise a way of capturing the stalker before
he kills you? As it turned out I couldn't, because the game
appeared to be bugged near the end and I was unable to finish
it.  I faithfully followed the inputs suggested in the HINT file
for two necessary actions to subdue the stalker, and neither
input would work no matter how I phrased them or rearranged the
sentences. So there I was, with the stalker all trussed, and
unable to kill him.  Yes, you apparently have to kill the
stalker - rather a drastic way to dispose of the guy, I thought.
What about ringing the police?  Or the Psychiatric Institution?
Perhaps it's just as well the game *did* appear to be bugged at
this point - it saved me wrestling with my conscience over the
morality of killing the poor nutter.  However, long before
reaching this crisis of decision, I began feeling a wee bit
sorry for the stalker, and slightly peeved with my game
character. You are genderless (i.e. it's never made clear
whether you're male or female) in STALKER, a politically correct
tactic which I loathe. I'd much rather just play the role of a
given character, male or female, rather than wade through a
sanctimonious INFO section which makes a big issue out of giving
you a "genderless" role to play.

And while I'm on the subject of griping about my game character,
there's more to whinge about. As you roam about your house you
discover that your partner has left you and taken the kids as
well, and there are a few obligatory pieces of dialogue to read
which indicate that you feel very sorry for yourself indeed, and
are plagued by wistful memories of your departed partner and
wonderful kids. By the time I'd got half way through STALKER I
realized exactly why the partner plus kids had left, and even
began feeling a surge of empathy for the stalker lurking about
outside the living room.

I'm sure the author wasn't aiming for this effect at all, but
somehow my game character was so...so...IRRITATING. But then you
can always bump your character off by ambling outside to where
the stalker is lurking, and get yourself killed. This provided
quite a good substitute ending for me, when I realized I was
unable to finish STALKER due to the suspected bug.  Bugs and
unintended endings aside, STALKER wasn't too bad a game viewed
from a technical point of view. All seemed adequate on the
spelling and grammar front, location descriptions were about
average for this type of game, and all the puzzles "worked"
(except for the semi-final two, possibly).  While the writing
appeared a bit stilted and heavy-handed in parts, it was
adequate enough to keep the plot trotting along at a fair pace.
STALKER covered about 10 or 12 locations, and would be easily
finishable in about an hour, that's if it can be finished and
isn't bugged as I suspect near the end.  On the negative side
though, there weren't many puzzles to solve in STALKER, and most
of them were concerned with finding and using various items to
overpower the stalker sufficiently so that he couldn't kill you.
Overall STALKER contained some interesting ideas for a plot, but
somehow the author didn't seem able to maintain the sort of
nervous tension needed in this genre, and the game didn't really
succeed as a suspense story.

                              - o -