It is a cliché to say that something is "ahead of its time," and I've been doing that more often lately than I would like, but Deadline is truthfully difficult to even believe.
Deadline, either by way of its design decisions or simply by its premise, circumvents every pitfall common to other Infocom text adventures. Unlike Zork 1, Deadline is not mimicking another existing game. Unlike Zork 2, Deadline is not riddled with bizarre logic. Unlike Zork 3, Deadline consists of a singularly giant overarching puzzle and thus does not suffer in its pacing. Unlike Beyond Zork, Deadline does not ambush the player with arbitrary softlocks. Unlike Zork Zero, Deadline is confined to one manageable location of limited scope. Unlike Planetfall, Deadline holds a player's interest from start to finish and uses its clock mechanics for good.
Deadline is, at least to my knowledge, the first game to use an in-universe clock that advances as players go about their business, with time-limited events and NPCs who operate on pre-scheduled routines. It can be completed in a trivial amount of time by a player who knows exactly what they're doing, but for someone playing for the first time, it might take a steep number of runs before successfully solving the mystery and making a proper arrest, but very little is lost when starting over. It's an opportunity to be in different places at the same time, and see where that leads.
This is... a fantastic implementation of an investigation game, commanding only the tiniest fraction of the attention given to the likes of Zork. Let's fix that.
Deadline, either by way of its design decisions or simply by its premise, circumvents every pitfall common to other Infocom text adventures. Unlike Zork 1, Deadline is not mimicking another existing game. Unlike Zork 2, Deadline is not riddled with bizarre logic. Unlike Zork 3, Deadline consists of a singularly giant overarching puzzle and thus does not suffer in its pacing. Unlike Beyond Zork, Deadline does not ambush the player with arbitrary softlocks. Unlike Zork Zero, Deadline is confined to one manageable location of limited scope. Unlike Planetfall, Deadline holds a player's interest from start to finish and uses its clock mechanics for good.
Deadline is, at least to my knowledge, the first game to use an in-universe clock that advances as players go about their business, with time-limited events and NPCs who operate on pre-scheduled routines. It can be completed in a trivial amount of time by a player who knows exactly what they're doing, but for someone playing for the first time, it might take a steep number of runs before successfully solving the mystery and making a proper arrest, but very little is lost when starting over. It's an opportunity to be in different places at the same time, and see where that leads.
This is... a fantastic implementation of an investigation game, commanding only the tiniest fraction of the attention given to the likes of Zork. Let's fix that.