Posted 10 March 2001 to rec.games.int-fiction

I'm the sort of IF enthusiast who actually feels rather encouraged when he reads phrases like "This game is a piece of poo" in the "info" section of a game's credits. How exotic and Foucauldian, I think to myself. Then I try to wander the streets of New York in Mikko Vuorinen's game and find that his principal storytelling gimmick is to return you to the same room description no matter which direction you go in, or how far. After about twenty minutes of this (we reviewers are diligent souls) and in spite of the really excellent screwdriver that graces your inventory, you begun to feel...well, Lost.
Which helps this game to score big time as an accurate simulation of a real-life experience - hell, judged by these standards it beats anything we'll ever get to see from Sid Meier. As a piece of interactive storytelling, let's just say that works like this really do have to be judged in a category of their own. Within this category, Lost In New York does a bit better than last year's Pass The Banana from the IF comp (fewer in-jokes, and a much more impresssive display of obscenities written into the parser) and not nearly as welll as Dave Filmore's Perlious Magic, the tiny, stupid game to beat all tiny, stupid games, in this reviewer's humble opinion.