I've spent a good span of years now writing reviews or commentary about the games I've played. Not all of them! I write a game up if I'm moved to say something about it. Might be a few lines; might be a long review. Might be a rumination on game design which just uses the game as a starting point. This is for fun.
Most of the games are narrative or adventure games, or puzzlers, or both. There are exceptions, though. I've even included a couple of book reviews, if the books have a puzzly or game-ish nature.
Most of these reviews reviews appear on my blog; this page serves as an index. Older reviews (1995-2010) are linked only on this page, not on the blog, because the blog didn't exist yet. Bracketed dates are when the review was written, not when the game was released.
(All reviews are copyrighted by Andrew Plotkin.)
As you see, 2009 was when I started blogging game reviews. Before that, and back to the 1990s, I just added pages to this site. (There was a bit of a transitional period in 2009 when I used both schemes.)
The items listed below are not cataloged on my blog. Each full review starts with a set of ratings. "Mini-reviews" and "non-reviews", well, those are the ones where I didn't bother with the ratings.
I also have a page of quick takes -- one-paragraph comments on games that I never wrote full reviews of.
Original introduction, circa 1995:
Since I write games, I'm interested in how other people write games -- even the massive CD-ROM art-fests that I'll never be able to produce on my own. When I play a commercial adventure game, I try to write a detailed review of it. Here are all the ones I've written so far.
Yes, I'm still a Macintosh person, so I prefer to play (and review) games that run on the Macintosh. However, I now own Virtual PC (an emulator), and a Playstation, and even -- honest, I barely use it -- a Windows box. So that range has increased some. The label "PC game" indicates a game which is available only for PCs.
If you have any suggestions for games I should play and review, feel free to email me. Of course I reserve the right to spend my money where I like. (Equally of course, if you give me a free game, I'll be happy to play it. Hey, it's happened before.)
Update, circa 2017:
The above blurb was written in the 1990s. Although, amusingly, I still own a Playstation (2 and 3 but not 4) and a PC emulator and a Windows box that I don't use much. But the games don't come on CD-ROM any more!
My reviewing these days occurs on my blog. I've linked those posts on this page, because it makes a nice index.
Last updated December 10, 2024.