Adventure games may struggle with many aspects of static fiction -- plot, characterization, pacing -- but they nail setting. The place is, after all, right there for the player to explore, with all its atmosphere and complexity, and a half-decent designer can set in layer on layer of subtle clues about how this strange world works. Not every player will be equally interested in all of it, but the mechanisms of exploration serve to dole out exposition in tolerably-sized pieces, and let players discover the aspects of the game world that they're most interested in.
So goes the theory, anyway. In practice, sometimes the settings so delivered aren't very well thought-out (does the original Myst make much sense? no, I mean, really, does it?), or the designers decide they don't want to give too much information that might prove distracting (notice how much of the late-game scenery in Portal just reinforces what you already know, rather than providing any new insights into the game world).
Worlds Apart goes in the other direction. It takes place in a science-fiction world Suzanne Britton spent years thinking about and developing. Its plot episodes are there in large part to illuminate the world she has imagined, rather than the other way around. Implementation is deep and meticulous. There is a great deal to learn, and a great deal to dig into.
The textual presentation helps as well. Graphics are great for striking awe into the player, but there are other kinds of information that are much harder to depict in images. A text world to explore, on the other hand, can deliver surprising amounts of information, not just about geography and physical objects but about culture, belief systems, and personal histories.
Worlds Apart's game design is set up to put as few barriers as possible between the player and that exploration. The puzzles are mostly fairly easy, and the game will provide help with all the non-optional ones. The real focus is on understanding all the things you're seeing and interacting with -- whether through moving and examining the environment, or through long and deeply-stocked conversation with the game's chief NPC.
N.B.: Worlds Apart was built using TADS, an interactive fiction engine created by Michael J. Roberts. To play the game on systems other than Windows, you need to install a TADS interpreter on your machine, and download the game file. We link to TADS interpreters for Mac and Linux above, but you may be able to find TADS interpreters for other systems. (The Windows link is to a playable exe.) Those new to interactive fiction may also be interested in the introduction found here.
Astoundingly good. I
Astoundingly good. I briefly lived (twice so far) inside an excellent novella. My emotions were moved, and my curiosity was immensely rewarded. I only wish there had been more of it: that more of the things I wanted to speak about and examine and interact with were modeled with meaningful responses. But just the same, my curiosity about mysterious things was immensely rewarded.
To be relocated to an astounding place is one of the great desires I try to satisfy with games, and this game did that better than almost any other I've experienced, and without pictures!