Radicofani.

(spoilers below)

The blurb of Radicofani. had led me to believe that it’s a game about a man obsessed with another woman who isn’t as committed to their relationship as he is. Maybe he’s even a bit of a stalker. However, once I started playing it, it didn’t take me long to realize that’s not the thrust of the game at all. While it’s true that your girlfriend, Amelia, is rather into her work, the real crisis in the game is that she’s gone missing. You’ve come to meet her at her apartment, but she’s not there, and there are indicators that something sinister is going on. Radicofani., then, is about discovering where Amelia is and what’s happened to her — and then rescuing her.

Once I realized what I was supposed to be doing in Radicofani. I was intrigued. The hints in the apartment are handed out slowly and teasingly, with ominous overtones. I was eager to play through the game and save Amelia. I had some trouble with that, though. First, the game is on a timer, and I ran out of time on my first playthrough. On my second playthrough, I got stuck in Amelia’s apartment; I couldn’t seem to trigger the right event that would allow me to leave, even when I followed the walkthrough exactly. With some help from Mike Russo on intfiction, though, I was able to narrow down the possibilities and figure it out. From there things went fairly well with the game, although I did consult the walkthrough frequently (more on that later).

Radicofani. does some interesting things with multiple screens. While you’re searching Amelia’s apartment a new window occasionally pops up with information about what’s currently happening to her. It’s a bit creepy — both what’s going on with Amelia as well as this new window jumping out at you. How are you learning this information? Is it from some stalker? Is it some voice in your head? Examining Amelia’s diary, research notes, and a few other items in the apartment also produces new windows, as does using the cellular phone or the remote control for the TV. It’s an interesting effect, especially when it’s used to input a number to the phone or a channel to the remote, but it eventually got a little hard to manage: By the time the game ended I had well over a dozen windows open.

In general, Radicofani. did a good job for me of building up that slow-burn horror feeling. In addition to the clues in Amelia’s apartment and the extra windows, the game’s sound effects added another layer to the general sinister experience I was having. There’s also a picture of Amelia that begins popping up on the screen after a while, where she’s speaking directly to you in ever more insistent tones. The picture also changes as the entity menacing her does so more overtly. I was quite creeped out by the end of my first playthrough, when I ran of time. On subsequent playthroughs that feeling was somewhat lessened since I had seen most everything before, but it was still present.

I believe Radicofani. is translated from Italian. The translation is mostly sufficient, in the sense that I never misunderstood anything in the game. However, the English often doesn’t flow as smoothly as it could. There are also a few outright errors, such as the use of “nord” instead of “north.” And there was one instance I found — the “beside table” instead of “bedside table” — where the game misspelled a word and then only accepted that misspelling.

Implementation could also be better. For example, there aren’t as many synonyms accepted as I would like. The most confusing aspect of this is that several nouns featuring two-word names must be referred to by their full name. For example, the hotel manager has to be referred to as “hotel manager” and not “manager.” In addition, the bedside table (mentioned above) cannot be referred to simply as “table.” I was misled into thinking at first that the manager has nothing to say to me and that there’s nothing interesting about the table, when in fact neither is the case.

Several of the puzzles, particularly in the second half, could also be clued better. Because of this and my difficulties with the implementation, I found myself regularly referring to the walkthrough in the second part of the game.

Overall, Radicofani. is, at its core, a solid horror game. The game does have some problems with implementation, translation, and puzzle cluing, but they’re relatively cosmetic, and it might even be easy to fix some of them. Where Radicofani. excels is with the growing sense of dread and fear it creates over what’s happened to Amelia, and technical features such as the sound effects and extra windows enhance the experience. Looking through the other horror games I’ve played in this IFComp, I think Radicofani. may have succeeded the most at creeping me out.