The Chronicler

A touch of Planetfall, with the abandoned space facility, but without Floyd. But with a time-travel function, which was interesting and had a lot potential. I certainly found the mechanic interesting -- if a little flawed in that my location sometimes changed between jumps, for no apparent reason.

Science fiction generally doesn't do much for me. This one was fortunately short, and the ability to jump between past and present piqued my interest slightly. It is good that this one thing caught my interest, because there was an absence of many of the other things that I expect to see before something can hold my interest. A protagonist with personality, for one thing; some sense of a populated universe, even if the population is absent from the protagonist's current location; a story....

I have no idea what the story here was to begin with. I am offered, at the end, two possible endings. The protagonist could go home, in which case he just vaguely wonders what fate has befallen the facility. Or he could -- and I suspect this is the proper ending -- sacrifice himself. This second ending comes without any in-story build-up, rendering it meaningless. I have no idea what I've just done, or why.

Apparently the game is incomplete. Presumably a lot of exposition was left out. At least the coding seemed competent: I was puzzled at first by the objects disappearing from my inventory, until I realised that some sort of paradox rule was in play, removing duplicate objects.

Cornflakes, milk. Cornflakes. An egg that may or may not have been boiled, sitting innocently in an eggcup.