As explained by the author, Will Hines, “Further is about a spirit of someone who recently died trying to gain strength to depart.” Hines is an actor and writer in New York and this is his first text adventure (another newcomer after Alex Warren), who says he had a lot of fun with Inform 7. Furher is a traditional parser-based game (not a Multiple Choice Gamebook), very short and without puzzles – or better, there is just one easy puzzle that is the engine of all the adventure.

Our ghost has no memories and, to rest in peace, needs to recall events of his life on earth. So, we wander through places and collect objects that evoke something in us. Then, once got aware of ourselves, we are finally free to leave.

The concept is not original, but it is interesting to see it developed into a text adventure and it’s challenging to discover the who’s really our ghost by visiting place after place, and by examining object by object. Though, Hines should have gone a bit deeper, offer more details, let us discover other sides of the previous life on earth of our ghost. This would have created much more empathy with the PC.

And too bad it is possible to examine only objects useful to go further, while with others it is impossible to interact (the parser doesn’t even recognize them). And I wonder why even the beta-testers haven’t noticed some inaccuracies in punctuation.

In short, as it is, Further is a very good opportunity not fully developed.