Preliminary: Wow, what a beautiful intro jingle and screen.

Thanks to the Instructions, what could have been controls too complicated for my taste (the original actually came with a keyboard overlay to help with that ha) seemed approachable now. The fact the only guide I could find online was a video one (always seems to be the case with ZX Spectrum games, ugh, I prefer written) and it's an hour long both proved daunting. Plus the Fatigue and Sanity elements--never a fan of Hunger/Fatigue/etc. elements in early adventure games cuz they abuse them imo. Just let me wander and trial and error ugh! But the Instructions are giving me hope I can engage with this, especially with how beautiful that intro is and--wow--I soon fell in love with the Look in general. The funny concept of a bunch of New Yorks, bad inflation, every city looking the same, the cute names and billboards for the stores, the Speccy colors, the great UI, and wow the way it turns to night over time and the amazing silhouettes of buildings (plus lol this 666) just ah! All amazing! Here goes another probly multi-day extravaganza. I wish it were summer so I could just crank it out in one day of many hours playing!

Look: 8/10 As already mentioned, I loved the intro screen, the change into night time, the colors, the UI, the buildings... well everything. It's interesting how prominent the World Trade Center is in so many of the screens. I also find it interesting how you "scroll" through screens, like it's the next screen but they sort of half-and-half the screens. Hard to explain. Give the game a playtest to see what I mean! It's an interesting early attempt at continuous scrolling.

Sound: 7/10 Mostly just annoying, but some really great jingles as mentioned!

Play: 6/10 This is a true adventure game and like most the early true adventure games, the controls are very complex. This overlay made it harder than just using the Instructions where it says Q=left, T=take and so on. Really was unnecessary to have so many buttons, but that's the way of these early adventures. Almost wish it were like King's Quest where it integrates text adventure parser. Instead of having to figure out what button to press, you'd just type in Hold X or Take X etc. And the game got more and more tedious real quickly, like having to precisely be on things to Take them or Throwing the bone to the dog being about precision. Really detracted from the adventure/puzzle fun.

Feel: 7/10 And more and more the mechanics and pride-in-convoluting-the-actually-quite-simple-gameplay got in the way of what could have been my next Below the Root. I was so ready to push through and play hours of this game like I did with Below the Root, despite frustrating gameplay and often clunky mechanics and overly complicated PC controls. In this case, these factors got too in the way. When I was trying to lure one of the Ghosts, and I had spent over 5 minutes just waiting for the AI, I finally just snapped and decided I was done ha.

Attachment: 6/10 So much potential, great idea and humor, amazing Look--but it stops there. Good example of an early adventure game with complex PC controls, if you wanted to explore that specific niche, but beyond that, worth a viewing of some of a playthrough for the Look--but not even worth watching through a whole playthrough tbh. I certainly wont be returning to this! Tho a part of me still kinda wants me to retry it when not fighting a flu/cold/covid/something ha.

Completion: I swore at the mother or whoever that was and collected a few items... was luring a ghost... Playtime: ~40 mins over 2 days of play sessions