When I attempted to play Shade, I just go increasingly frustrated with the lack of commands and how little you can do in the game. Most of the commands are not understood by the computer, so you just have to keep guessing until you find one that works. The goal of the game is also not apparent in any of the descriptions so you’re not even sure what to do. Every time I managed to get a command that worked, I would get excited and think that I was moving the story forward, but then I would spend five minutes trying to figure out what I was supposed to do next. The game takes place in a single room apartment so there is not much to explore and even when I would try to get up and walk around, the game would say that I walked enough the night before.
It is interesting however how the game describes the area around you and you have to take what is being described to you and use that as context for what actions you will make. If you are in the kitchen, you can grab a glass of water. But you have to type every command in order to fill that glass with water. As Douglass talked about in Enlightening Interactive Fiction, it is interesting that the game is focused on making you feel like you are the character, as instead of error messages, it displays messages for why the character can’t do that, such as saying you broke the habit of drinking from the sink when you were eleven. Interactive fiction focuses on making the reader a part of the story and Shade makes up for its lack of graphics to help paint a picture or set the mood by giving vivid descriptions of the mood and setting in order to drive the reader forward with its decisions.
However, the game is really frustrating to play and I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to move the game forward.