Inherent Evil was the first graphic adventure developed by Bryan Wiegele and the crew at Big Time Games, and was originally developed in an unusual way: It was supposed to be released episodically, one chapter per week, with a $10,000 cash prize to the first person to 'solve' the game. This structure led to some interesting design decisions; originally, each chapter dropped you to the desk-top on conclusion, and there was no way to save games during a level.
That would have worked fine, given the prize structure attached to the game--but as so often happens to independent game developers, the publishers changed their mind half-way through development, didn't provide enough funding to fix things, and when Inherent Evil was released, it got seriously mixed reviews--people liked the art, the story, and the actual gameplay, but found the fact that you got dumped to desktop, and couldn't save, highly annoying. Understandably.
With this revised version, the "dump to desktop" feature is gone, thankfully; you still can't save in-level, which is irksome, particularly as it is indeed possible to die during the game. But at least the most egregious problem is fixed.
And if you can live with the lack of saves, there's a lot to be liked here; a strong atmosphere of horror, a degree of humor, and intelligently conceived puzzles in a graphic adventure in the classic mold. The sort of thing Big Time executes so well in its Delaware St. John games.
We (and Big Time) like the setting and atmosphere of Inherent Evil enough that they're now working on a sequel--and we're looking forward eagerly to it.
