made in AGI

by Jeff Carroll

The second full game I stumbled across whilst searching for AGI games. And this one is ALSO set in and around a college. This time it's University of Rhode Island and it's pretty much the WHOLE FRIGGIN CAMPUS! There are over 190 screens that make up this campus and I bet if I went there I would be able to navigate around using this game. The story behind this game is... Well, to tell the truth I have no idea. There is no plot to the game when you start, so you pretty much just wander around aimlessly running into things. In the ABOUT section of the menu Jim Carrol, the creator says that the plot becomes apparent through playing the game and meeting more people.

The graphics are quite nice. Everything is nice and big and drawn with a nice attention to detail. The walls of the dorms are covered with posters as in most real dorm life and the rooms aren't always so clean.

As far as I have read, there are four parts to this game. You play four different characters throughout the game, each one a friend of the designer and each one with a different set of puzzles to solve. This is quite intriguing to me, it sounds like a huge game set in a huge campus where enough puzzles can be placed without the areas getting stale.

I just can't get past two major down parts to this game. The campus is SO large that it's terribly boring to navigate, especially after walking from building to building for the fifth time. There are 190 screens and only about 20 have something that actually furthers the plot. You are given a map, but it's a small 1 x 2 inch inventory item that is hard to read. Also, there is no speed function, I couldn't change the walking speed at all to try and get from place to place fast, I ended up having to go in and hack in my own speed switches to just get as far as I did. Also, in one puzzle you have to get past a crazy janitor to reach your work cubicle, however the janitor seems absolutely impossible to get past. Try as I might, I could not get past him. He always caught up with me. Mostly because he starts about 5 pixels above you, giving you no time to get away [lil' hacking took care of that too...]. My final problem with this game is that there are many items around the campus that I want to pick up, like quarters and a piece of string, but I can't because it's not the right time [or character?] for me to pick them up yet. I just wish for a better explaination for not being able to pick something up rather than "No, you don't need it for anything." rather, make it into a puzzle I can't solve with the current items in my inventory.

URI Quest is an interesting game with plenty of things to look at and a huge area to explore. If you are looking for a very large game and can look past a few difficult patches in coding, I recommend URI Quest to you.

eric

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