Eric The Unready

Okay, originally I liked it ...... until I got to the part with the gods. What the heck? The puzzles are completely absurd, no logic or sense. I was not able to finish that part even with walkthrough lol. So thanks but no thanks.

Need info that came in game manual, cant find it anywhere

A fun and humorous text adventure with additional quality of life features. To play you can interact with the lists of text verbs and items, click the graphical representations in the picture box, type a string of commands directly into the input box -- or even a combination of all three! At times I played with my mouse, other times with my keyboard, depending on how I was sitting or whether I was petting kitty. This flexibility was nice, made the interface more palatable and less daunting.

The dialogue has lots of surprises, jokes, and easter eggs related to the (at the time 80s/90s?) pop culture. The puns and jokes were my favorite part of the game and made the whole experience really enjoyable. You can try punching or kicking random NPCs and you'll usually get unique/silly messages or perhaps even a death screen. Deaths aren't a big deal because the "Undo" after death brings you right back to where you left off.

The humor really did it for me and there was a lot of detail put into the games descriptions and dialogue. Though the interface may look daunting (all the words) the gameplay is rather straight forward and I rarely found myself typing commands that didn't exist or were met with resistance. The puzzles get a bit abstract and silly towards the end, as with most Point N Click Adventure games, but for the most part I felt I was able to solve about 80% of it myself without needing to look something up. Way more forgiving than say King's Quest and more logical in terms of puzzle solving.

A real gem of a game for any adventure fan that doesn't mind doing some reading. I'm soon going to rabbit hole the other games from this same game engine -- like Spellcasting 101, Timewarp, etc.

Old style word game so not for those who don't like nostalgia but if you just want a simple game with a lot of heart you could do worse. Played this decades ago when it first came out with a friend of mine and relived some fond memories playing it again on Steam. Great if you like Puns and 90's trivia!

To start with, paragraph one, i had already had an "oh if it's how the story/comedy starts, this is going to be fun" chuckle sesh.
So, first thing I thought could change, after i realised i was laughing hard for five minutes; at paragraph four, is to give it a Steam overlay -
Ok not really essential... but i really wanted it, to write this review, and then again a bit later to upload a screenshot for sharing responses of e.g. 'Talk to Pig"

It isnt my style to write a review until I have finished the game - so you see, i quite highly recommend this game to gamers who..
.. have a broad sense of humour
.. Quest & Puzzle Lovers

I had added on my to do list, "Find Quality Text-Based Games, like sheldon on BBTheory"
This feels just what i was looking for, with the added bonus of attention to details & dialogue, i feel immersed in a fun and funny experience.

Despite the timestamp, I only been playing about 40min, including 'what does this button do' and cant imagine the adventure becoming less than the joy of events already.

Note: The cut scenes run automatically. Reading dialogue without prompting the next page is new to me, and glad for the large font, on large TV screen, while i was optically challenged. The pace has no need for speed reading tho i did miss a few bits, purely as my eyes were too tired that night, and there - as far as i can see - are no ways to re-read missed dialogue.
When done promptly, the accompanying graphics are delightful to enjoy, if you need a bit of that visual engagement.

Technically - im new to this genre, tho i found the controls mouse and keyboard really user friendly.

Comes with a manual to download - did it - didnt read it - if i read it, i would have learned typing 'quit' is how to exit the game.
I had typed quit, after it took 5minutes to realise the Esc clears the dialogue, instead of bring me to a Main Menu. (edit: and if i really read it i would have learned that typing 'UNDO' would have undone my curious choice of putting pig love potion on the farmer before it vanished, tho i ddnt learn to type SAVE at this point, so suppose I would have had to play it from the start...again...anyway)

Doing this, like my slow reading moments, I had missed dialogue that auto popped up as i was trying to find a way to save/quit game. As far as I can see, there is no tabs/function to back track/ re-read what happened and who said what so far.
Could be on a quest - we will soon find out.
Could be a challenge to recall whats what, if i play a few other games and come back to this later.
(edit: yep didnt matter, I presumed it was auto-save - IT IS NOT :see below)

As for challenges, so far have completed one 'puzzle', (could be that it's the first/intro one that it was easy) despite simple graphics, i feel like i am really interacting with items and tasks, which gives me game satisfaction, if the puzzles are standard, i would still be content with the journey's memories.

If text-based games are new to you,
this is what I learned last night,
the hard way,
ie not reading the manual first.

"""""ESC - ERASES ALL THE TEXT"""""

**SAVE = save menu : THERE IS NO AUTOSAVE :
**Restore = Load saved game
""Quit = Exit game
**UNDO = undoes last command
**F1 = other screen modes and functions
""TAB - toggles between mouse and keyboard.
""There are tabs and directive words and images to use with mouse, if you're no fan of Keyboard/Touch typing.

Unsure how long the game goes for - if the comedy continues like this, i may have to savor it by playing it a little once a week.

In the beginning was the word-and the word was INFOCOM (Zork circa 1980). The creators of interactive fiction (all text, audio and graphics had not yet been invented), INFOCOM had a history of "guess-the-verb". There was no list of usable verbs or nouns in their games and all too frequently game players knew how to solve a puzzle but could not figure out just what word the developer thought fit the situation. Second generation developers such as Legend Entertainment had modest "still shot" graphics and displayed allowable verb/noun lists.

Eric is a prime example of this second gen interactive fiction story telling. The game displays a "suggested list" of verbs and a much longer list of allowable verbs. Supposedly, entering the alternate verbs would provide humorous game responses. As mentioned in another review Eric does not recognize the verb "use" which produces interesting head scratching at times. Additionally. Eric is one of the few games where "wait" and/or "wait" several times is actually the necessary solution to a problem. Unfortunately, most of these "wait" situations and locations are not all that obvious.

Eric has a lot of in-game puns/humor which is all very dated to the TV and movies of the 1970s and 1980s. A game player's enjoyment will definitely depend on one's knowledge of those times.

Eric is divided into sections (you could call them chapters, the game calls them days). Each day is self contained such that the "tools to find" are all readily obtainable within that day's locations. Occasionally
tools carry over from day to day, but the verb/noun lists cleans this up for you and items which are no longer usable just disappear from your inventory and word lists.

Eric (like the INFOCOM) predecessors) has game ending death resolutions if you do something untowards.
But saving is only required about once or twice a "game day" and there is also an "undo" command that will restore before the last game input. So, in general, Eric is player friendly and with the "undo" you can experiment with humorous input.

Enjoy for the crazy humor-Eric is the most clumsy, idiotic knight in the kingdom and the bad guys picked him to rescue the princess because of his ineptitude. Just remember to Kiss The Pig.

Played this game 10 years ago, was hyped to know it was on steam! Awesome game, awesome narrative, 10/10 elite humor 👌 timeless.

Take this review of "Eric the Unready" with a grain of salt since I think I've just grown too old to play these types of games (semi-graphical, basically text adventure). But, besides the genre, another problem is that the game is OLD (1993) and feels like it. The interface is bad, the graphics are terrible, and the sound is horrible. Surprisingly, it also seems to load and run a bit slowly on a modern machine (I assume that's an issue with the DOSbox it runs in). That probably would have been acceptable, but the game just didn't grab me (and I don't know why). So, after a mere 1.2 hours, I gave up and I'm Not Recommending it.

I don't know if this is allowed, but, if you're at all interested in the game, you could try it out for free at the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Eric_the_Unready_1993

It's a crude amazing game. It helped define my sense of humor, along with the BBC.

Absolutely delightful. Fun, and a flashback to good old text-based games. I've had this game for 2 days and at work all I could think of was coming back to see what happened next. I highly recommend this game if you like 90s style, action packed adventure-stuffed gameplay!

This game is amazing, I normally like my point and click adventures where I can see my character on the screen however this game works really well in its first person view thanks to a really good and flexible control layout. You can type in text commands to execute actions or use the preset menu vocabulary. Clicking on the compass to move around between areas is quick and easy too. You can even execute multiple commands at once quickly and easily.

The intro is absolutely hilarious and the music in the beginning area is amazing. Everything is well written and there is a lot of attention to detail and brilliant humour.

I haven't got far enough yet to judge how the puzzles play out however I will update this review later on.

So far its very charming and I love that old ms dos font and beautiful pixel art, this game was originally released in 1993 and I didnt know that when I purchased it but so far im having a blast with it.

Highly recommended for adventure game fans, even if your not a fan of the first person style.

Charming, Hilarious and well executed.

9/10