Birmingham IV

Okay. So this, apparently, was originally written 1988, which means it comes from the old, old school of interactive fiction. Its protagonist never remarks on being suddenly dropped into the distant past. It contains a maze. It contains puzzles calling for a bit of outside-the-box inductive thinking. It contains an inventory limit. It's perfectly happy to let you keep going after having unwittingly entered an unwinnable state -- though, to be fair, it's often quite clear when things have gone places they shouldn't, and I haven't yet seen situations where you're forced to blindly choose between paths that may or may not close off victory some two hundred steps down the road.

All that being said, it can be quite nostalgic. It's also put together very competently, and I never got the sense that I was limited to a very narrow walkthrough. This is clearly something that one should return to later, once one has a bit more time to spend on mulling over the more obscure obstacles.

How old school is this breakfast? I think we're going back beyond the classics, to good old oatmeal porridge. Maybe add a dash of cinnamon and brown sugar, and a mug of whole milk to finish. Very well done, but people tend to go for flashier fare these days.