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Few may agree with me on this, but this game felt special to me.

A first-time (sadly non-returning) author's "my apartment" style game. Only that apartment is the 70 room home of an affluent, three child household, presumably the author's own. The author even explicitly writes of the PC, Lungu, that: "Lungu is Anjan." Now, this could either mean that Anjan Chakrabarti intends the work to be autobiographical, or that he has created a fictional home which he wishes he could inhabit through the persona of Lungu. Either is telling, and drew me into the headspace of the PC in a weird way that absolutely insisted I follow these threads to their end.

So, despite all the game's copious first time flaws, I had to explore it because I wanted to learn more about this man. His sister is contemplating suicide and he wishes to soothe her with religion. He's a Trekkie who plays ping pong and hates the hats that his father wears. He's fascinated by his house's sprinkler system, he believes in the power of meditation, but his father drinks (in moderation?) and so he also has some esteem for alcohol.

Yes, it could have been better executed (getting the gold medal is a puzzle so illogical I would expect no-one to get it without reading the source code), and it fails to really innovate on the my apartment genre, but it's a first game. There is in this game and its code an attempt to innovate, which is where I think most of us start. Besides, the autobiographical theme is what's strongest here-- the goal involving the medals and all the "game logic" involved is superfluous aside from serving as a wrapper for the exploration and discovery of the game's environment and its main character.

For it's flaws, I can't say I actually recommend it as a game, but I do think it's worth more than a cursory glance. After playing this game when it was released, I wrote to its author and let him know I posted his work on IFWiki and such, but never heard back from him. It's been a long time since this game's release, but let's hope that Anjan Chakrabarti isn't lost to us, that he might indeed return to ADRIFT, find the Forum, and hone his skills.