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Well-deserved first place winner of the ninth Annual Interactive Fiction Competition, Slouching Towards Bedlam is a modern-day classic from Daniel Ravipinto and Star Foster. Mike Russo's review as posted on the rec.games.int-fiction newsgroup says it all about this amazing game. The game involves eschatology, a British insane asylum, a player character whose mental state is very much in doubt, gnosticism, a memetic word-virus, steampunk, the "Second Coming" of W.B. Yeats, the Kabbalah, and a Benthamite panopticon of the type deconstructed by Michel Foucault in his seminal work Discipline and Punish (and I wouldn't be surprised if the authors had also read Madness and Civilization). The endgame is perhaps the most impressive of Slouching Towards Bedlam's many achievements. Once the mystery is solved, the player must make a difficult choice. While some answers are easier than others, there is no facile "right" solution; ambiguity is inevitable. Even acting on one's choice can be quite difficult; the Logos is a powerful entity, and arresting its growth requires sacrifices far more terrible than merely the player character's life: to be humanity's savior is to be a monster. |
