Tass Times in Tonetown

The Good
The good thing about this game is, that it takes you onto a journey to a really cool place. The word "tass“ actually means "cool“ in Tonetown tongue. And the games title does indeed not promise too much.

Your starting-point in this Interactive Fiction is the real world, more exactly your grandpa's domicil. Gramps has vanished without a trace and a clever little boy like you would of course not call the police, no, you take on investigating yourself. Doing so, you're quickly discovering a secret lab and some strange machinery, which turns out to be some sort of dream-fulfilling cross-dimensional travelling-device.

Thus you arrive in the bizarre place that is Tonetown and surely would be a cool place to move to. To me it seemed, like the Tonetowners were always in a relaxed and happy mood. Very crazy at the same time, they all dress up like maniacs and surely have a heart, when it comes to parties and Rock'n'Roll. In fact, their official currency are guitar picks!

Being an ordinary young boy from our dimension, where Rock hasn't freed the minds of so many people yet, you surely look a little out of place here. You have to get more "tass“, which basically demands getting a lunatic outfit and and a mohawk-haircut. Getting socially accepted that way, was quite funny and in my eyes almost as surreal as a talking dog becoming a star-reporter (an important side-character in this game).

One thing, that's remarkable about "Tass Times in Tonetown", is actually its interface. The screen is divided into three parts: in the upper left are slightly animated graphics giving you first-view-impressions of your surroundings, while right from that some icons are placed, which make simple orders like "look“, "take“ and "talk“ possible by clicking on them with the mouse. Below that you find a text-window, in which places and events are described.

"Borrowed Time" and "Mindshadow", two earlier Adventures by Interplay, both had quite similar interfaces, which means that this company brought the mouse to the genre even before the folks at Lucas Arts had that idea. Contrary to "Maniac Mansion" though, it is not possible to handle "Tass Times in Tonetown" solely with your mouse. More complex or seldom used actions still require the good old typing. Regardless of that, the interface established here was ahead of it's time and feels even today not totally uncomfortable. You move through the world by simply clicking on a compass-rose and all simple actions are easily done with the mouse. The only thing I found strange about the interface is, that among the icons also the possible action "hit“ can be found, which is of no use in the entire game.

Which brings us to another topic: violence might be no way to progress in Tonetown, but therefore it is a good way to die.

Right, death comes in many ways, when you travel through Tonetown. An especially frequent kind of dying is getting eaten. My personal nightmare became a weird animal that is called "crocogator“ and strives through the wetlands northwest from Tonetown. Any encounter of that kind (and I had many of them) leads to a graphic showing a close-up view of a fully opened jaw armed with razor-sharp teeth, while the text-window is telling you that you just died. Therefore, to save often is important, when you want to prevent some frustrating moments. At least were the developers nice enough to build in a quicksave-function: to calm down a little, you just have to press F7.

Actually, the games puzzles quite often involve figuring out ways to bypass the numerous death-traps. The procedure is the classical trial&error-one: you die, you reload, you try to solve the problem, you die again, you relaod again and repeat this until you (hopefully) suceed. The creativity of that puzzles is certainly not overwhelming, but I have to say, they are way more entertaining, than it might sound here. The solutions are neither illogical nor ultrahard and sometimes even quite amusing, once you got it. If you get stuck, it's most likely that you've missed some important object, so you simply should explore a little more.

The quality of the graphics heavily depends on the system used to run the game. On the PC it looks rather awful, on the Amiga quite nice. Animations are seldom to be found, but nevertheless there's style. And the images also make orientation easier. As the amount of explorable terrain stays relatively easy to remember, you don't need to draw a map in this game. (By the way, the existence of gamers who actually enjoy mapping their virtual playgrounds always irritates me a little. If there's one thing about games from that era that annoys me, it's propably the need of drawing maps, which plagues so many Interactive Fiction Games.)

The Bad
On the other hand though, vaster areas to explore might have had some positive effects, either. As it is, the game isn't very long and the "Tass Times in Tonetown" are over pretty soon. I would have liked more places to go, more people to meet, more things to do. Most of the things you can do in this game are elementary for progressing, there is little extra. Interacting and experimenting with your surroundings is quite limited and unfortunately often not even interesting.

The writing is overall a little disappointing, I would have expected a bit more in that section. Sure it isn't to be called bad and it makes a correct use of the English grammar. But all is said in a rather brief and sober tone, which in my ears just didn't sound like the right style for this game.

Apart from that, there are only minor problems, as they are found everywhere on closer examination. Annoying is the limited inventory. As you can carry only a maximum of eight objects with you, you're forced to leave some behind and travel back once you need them. I really had difficulties in detecting the purpose of that design-decision. Might it be realism? Mhm, but who cares for realism, when you're in a weird, surreal world like Tonetown?

The Bottom Line
Despite its weird setting, Tass Times in Tonetown is not really an extraordinary experience. In the end, it simply feels a bit too shallow to be called that. On the other hand, it features an interface, which makes playing relatively fast and easy, compared to other games from the mid-80ies. And it really can make you smile sometimes.