The game is full of cleverly written, funny moments, and has layers of detail I didn't even recognize until I read the postscript of amusing things to do. However, all the funny pictures and sounds in the world couldn't make Arrival a good game if it wasn't, at its core, a well-written text adventure.

I'm not used to my text adventures making noise! But a moment later I was laughing, because the noise was just so fittingly silly. The sounds, though sparse, are equally good - the sound of the alien spaceship crash-landing startled the heck out of me. The game also includes a couple of very well-done non-crayon graphics, one an excellent faux movie poster and the other a dead-on parody of a web page, both of which I found very funny. The spaceship (two pie plates taped together) and the aliens (in the author's words 'the finest crayons and modelling clay $2.83 could buy') are a scream - I laughed out loud every time I saw them. The pictures are delightful - the crayon drawings evoke a great sense of childhood and wonder while continuing the humorous feel of the whole game. Just for good measure, the game chooses 'Attack of the B-Movie Cliches' as its theme and subtitle, thereby making the cheese factor of the special effects (which is pretty high) actually enhance the game rather than embarrass it. The game's ingenious strategy is to cast an 8-year-old as its main character, which makes the fact that most of the graphics are really just crayon drawings not only acceptable, but completely appropriate. But Arrival dispelled those fears, handling both pictures and sound brilliantly.

I wasn't sure that a lone hobbyist could create visual and musical elements that wouldn't detract from a game more than they added to it.

A quirky, fun game about alien abduction starring you as a kid, The Arrival is one of the first HTML TADS IF titles, The Arrival is also the first IF Competition game ever to include pictures and sound.Īs usual, Paul O'Brian captured the pros and cons quite eloquently in his review: 'I was quite curious as to how these elements would be handled, and maybe even a little apprehensive.

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