Posted 27 March 2000 to rec.games.int-fiction

I expect that my review will be the least wonderful review of this most wonderful work. It reads more like a book report from high school than like actual criticism. I know you can do better.

This review has (of course) massive spoilers.
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The prologue for this game, by which I mean the four documents you can read before even starting the game, is excellent. The author spent a good deal of effort producing a very mixed emotion: adventure, sadness, even nostalgia (for old Colossal Cave dungeon crawls). I really had no idea what to expect from this beast when I started it. The prologue ends when you connect to the MULE to begin the game. You are asked to enter your last name to identify the MULE; this simple act sets quite a stage.

The first third of the game consists of very ordinary dungeon-crawl type investigation. You dig holes, you go around the house to an open door, you look under the mattress. At the same time as you are concentrating on these ordinary goals, like "how do I get through the steel door" and "how do I get this weird TONE-LOCK safe open", the author is setting the stage. You are learning bits and pieces about what this site was like in the era of slavery.

The author then throws you completely off track (or does he?) by making you read a journal from the War. You get all wrapped up in the lady scientist's troubles. You fully expect when thrown into the past to interact with HER.

Finally you get upstairs and you activate the simple booth and you find yourself in the past. And what happens next? Just as you're trying to do the ordinary thing and investigate your surroundings, you are found and GRABBED and DRAGGED DOWNSTAIRS and WHIPPED until you bleed and then SALT is thrown in your wounds. Your character has never experienced pain of this nature before, and I daresay you haven't either.

After the pain is through for the MULE, the pain begins for the (human) player. What do you see next? (paraphrased)
  The master says "NIGGER, GET THE GOWN".
  The master says "NIGGER, WEAR THE GOWN".
Forcefully making it clear that in ordering your MULE around you are treating it like a slave.

You the human player are then treated to a brutal vignette of the slavery era. There are several ways to exit it, and several options along the way, and all of them hurt. By the time you get back to the future, by whatever means, your sympathy for the slaves and for the MULE is completely engaged.

Soon after you get back to the future your MULE becomes aware of what you are already painfully aware -- that it is being treated as a slave. If you continue to treat it like a slave -- giving it orders, perhaps causing it pain or threatening its life -- it eventually rebels, like Nat Turner did so many years ago. If you instead give it freedom, it is grateful, but makes it clear that it is not gushing with gratitude.

All in all, this work felt much like the brutal whippings it described. Emotionally, I felt whipped and salted. I personally didn't have the strength of character to replay it much; after getting two different endings I txd'd it to see the rest of the text. That's a shame; there are many scenes I missed that would have increased the already significant emotional impact (the argument, for example, or the MULE's reaction to an attempt to shoot Momma.) I didn't even attempt to start any fires, which apparently the author spent a great effort in coding.

This game probably would not have been eligible for the comp, because it takes more than 2 hours to play; at least it does if you get the impact the author is intending. But it deserves the highest praise; higher praise than I could ever give. The little touches that drive the parallel home -- "NIGGER, GET THE GOWN" vs. "MULE, DIG HOLE"; "MULE Presser" vs. slave-names; the white/black conflict in the journal -- qualify this work immediately for a place in the canon alongside A Mind Forever Voyaging and Spider And Web.

Recommended.