SOMETHING ABOUT THE BUNNY
             An Inform text adventure by GLYPH
                     (Part of Disk 1268)

                    Review by Bev Truter

This was a short entry in the 1998 Mini-Comp, which apparently is
not the same thing as the annual I-F competition run on the Net.
Anyhow, SOMETHING is a well-written text game, containing several
really excellent little poems about various objects in the game -
more on this later. In fact, these little poems were the best
thing about the game, as I found SOMETHING irritatingly
illogical and overly difficult to play. The inputs you are
required to enter when conversing with people over a telephone are
so annoyingly obscure that I reckon without a solution to refer to
(frequently) SOMETHING is unplayable and unfinishable. There is an
inbuilt hint system, which provides a few hints for the easy
earlier sections of the game, but none for the later and much
harder sections. It's the most useless hint section I've yet
seen in an Inform game. The solution I refer to is one I
downloaded from the Net, and it's a step-by- step walkthrough of
SOMETHING.

SOMETHING opens with almost no introduction, but very soon you
discover what is going on, and you are quickly drawn into the
plot.  You are at some kind of family reunion, when your Uncle
Ogdajon bursts through the front doors with the cryptic news that
a close relative, Biff, has apparently been killed very recently
by the Mafia. Uncle Ogdajon then unfolds a crumpled napkin he's
carrying, which contains Biff's hastily-scrawled last will and
testament. It appears he has left his entire estate to whichever
member of the family can retrieve most items from the following
list, where the items are listed in order of importance. Your
uncle enters his study, and makes several photocopies of the
napkin to distribute to the various relatives. You can get the
napkin, or a photocopy, to read what the list of items are, but
apart from the top item on the list - one medium-sized cute little
bunny - most of the items appear to be red herrings, and you can
win the game by finding just the bunny.

There is no score in SOMETHING, and all you have to do for the
first 20 moves or so is WAIT until the game reaches the point
where you can take the napkin. So far, so good; and up to now the
game is breathtakingly simple. If you UNFOLD NAPKIN you notice a
logo on the reverse side, and this is where things start turning
difficult. You have to get the phonebook from the study, read the
logo on the napkin, look up <name> in phonebook, and then phone
the number. And from here onwards the game takes a sudden turn
into the impossibly difficult category. You have to conduct phone
conversations with, and meet, 2 different people; and the inputs
required for these phone conversations to end in the desired way
are totally obscure, with no clues as to what you should type to
move the conversations along. As an example, when ringing either
person you have to use the following form of address: PHONE, HI.
Then when one of the characters responds with a "Hi", your
response to that has to be:  PHONE, I SHOULD GO. (?) Typing
anything else results in the character at the other end of the
line repeating "Huh", or "Ummm", and you'll have no idea of what
you're meant to do next.

Progress through the game relies entirely on you conducting 2
phone conversations successfully, and finding 3 addresses (from
the phonebook) to drive to. So if you don't type in the exact
inputs required while talking on the phone, you'll never discover
the information you need to complete the game. Driving to the 3
locations is simple enough - enter car, drive to <name>; but
talking on the phone was impossible without resorting to the full
solution.

I had the feeling this could have been a much better game if it
were made more user-friendly, with a far simpler method of talking
on the phone. Other games I've played where the use of a phone is
involved have handled the phone conversations much better than
SOMETHING, requiring only short or even monosyllabic inputs, with
clues sprinkled about as to exactly how you should phrase phone
queries.

There were only a few locations in SOMETHING, so there were no
problems with mapping, and the short poems that kept on popping up
in boxes were gorgeous, particularly the one about the bunny.
There is a twist of sorts at the end - yes, you do find a bunny,
and you do inherit Biff's entire estate - but the game didn't end
quite as I expected; in fact, it didn't seem to have a really
conclusive ending at all.

This is certainly a different type of game to play, relying so
heavily as it does on telephone conversations and driving to
different locations. Apart from these activities, there are no
"puzzles" in the traditional sense to solve, and yet I wouldn't
describe SOMETHING as a "puzzleless" game either. It's a hard one
to categorise!

I'd recommend SOMETHING to anyone who has loads of patience, a
complete walkthrough for the game, and is not easily frustrated.
Otherwise, give it a miss - I'd give it 4/10, or thereabouts.




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