Home of the Underdogs
About News FAQs Contact HOTU GoogleGroup Music Manuals
Category Applications Action Adventure Education Interactive Fiction Puzzle Role Playing Games Simulation Special Sport Strategy War




Support the EFF
Welcome How you can help
Browse Games
Welcome Random Pick
Welcome By Company
  Welcome By Theme  
Welcome By Alphabet
Welcome By Year
Welcome Title Search
Welcome Company Search
Welcome Designer Search
Recommended
Welcome Freeware Titles
Welcome Collections
Welcome Discord
Welcome Twitter
Welcome Facebook
Welcome File Format Guide
Welcome Help: Non PC Games
Welcome Help: Win Games
Welcome Help: DOS Games
Welcome Recommended Links
Site History Site History
Legacy Legacy
Link to Us Link to Us
Credits Thanks & Credits
Abandonware Ring

Abandoned Places

dungeoncrawlers.org

Creative Commons License


Game #3481
Hall of Belated Fame Inductee  Enemies    View all Top Dogs in this genre
Interactive Fiction   Conventional

Rating: 8.04 (25 votes)

Enemies box cover

Enemies screenshot
The second game from Andy Phillips is Enemies, a fun modern mystery/horror adventure that has a much more interesting plot than his other games (with the exception of Heroine's Mantle, a true modern IF classic). As with Andy's other games, Enemies is extremely tough to beat and requires a lot of "guess, die, restore"-tactics to finish.

The game is extremely linear and episodic in nature like his other games: you're basically thrown into a specific location and given specific tasks to check off, before moving on to the next. The plot in this one is much more interesting, though: you play Charles Johnson, a nondescript layman who somehow attracts a lot of enemies – including a psycho serial killer who kills women in various gruesome (and imaginative) manners, leaving their bodies for you to discover. The writing is excellent and appropriately creepy – scenes of murder are described with such detail that you can vividly visualize them. The puzzles are consistently very difficult but fair; no puzzle left me wondering how on Earth the solution works, although more clues would have been welcome. On the downside, the game is very unforgiving like Andy’s previous games: you can get irrevocably stuck without knowing it for a long time, because the game doesn’t allow you to revisit many locations you explored in previous "chapters". The parser is also quite picky: sometimes you have to use the exact syntax it's looking for. And the plot has some holes that left me with many questions after finishing the game (what turned the killer into a total psycho, for example, was never explained).

In short, Enemies is one of those games that will frustrate you a lot (and if you're like me, make you think you are stupid), but still rivet you to the very end because much of the game is simply brilliant, and all the puzzles are logical even if they are so very hard. Highly recommended, but be prepared to restore often and peek at the walkthrough every now and then.

Reviewed by: Underdogs
Designer: Andy Phillips
Developer: Freeware
Publisher: Freeware
Year: 1998
Software Copyright: Andy Phillips
Theme: Modern, Horror
Multiplayer:  
None that we know of
System Requirements: Inform
Where to get it:   IF Archive
Related Links:  
Links:    
If you like this game, try: Anchorhead, No Time to Squeal, Heist

© 1998 - 2024 Home of the Underdogs
Portions are copyrighted by their respective owners. All rights reserved. Please read our privacy policy.