Retro review: 3 in Three

Ah, now THIS is the reason I'll never be sorry I was a Mac Gamer.

3 in Three was developed by Cliff Johnson and published by Inline Design about 15 years ago. It deals with the trials and tribulations of "3", a number cruely forced out of a spreadsheet during a power surge and lost in the land of the letters. The game consists of 90 or so puzzles, arranged in chains. About 20 are open to you at first, and as you complete those, more open up.

The graphics and storyline are top-notch - Johnson imbues every character and scene with an electric, surreal sort of personality that looks perfectly fine even in this day and age. The writing is honestly funny, although people who hate puns will probably groan a few times.

The puzzles themselves are great. They range from sliding block puzzles to timed "Memory" style while about half of them can't be put into any category at all. They're extremely well designed - in fact, I'll go into one of them for a sec:


In the puzzle "This That and the Other", you're presented with the following letters:




If you click on any of the letters in the top row, they, along with the leftmost letter in the middle row, move left to right. So if you clicked it once, the E would move down to where the A is, the A back to where the other A is, and so on. The middle row, when clicked merely moves from left to right, while the bottom row along with the last letter in the middle row cycles from left to right. Your task is to figure out what three words these letters make up, and maneuver them into the correct positions. (if you want the answer, highlight the next sentence) The answer is ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, and MINERAL.
The game ends with a GIGANTIC meta-puzzle, which requires you to go back to all the previous puzzles and comb them for clues. It's a gigantic tour-de-force of a puzzle that will entail an entire ream of scratch paper to solve.

This game seriously is almost perfect - the puzzles are well-designed, the humor shines through everything, and it's just damned good fun. I extremely urge everyone to play this game as soon as possible. And thankfully, you can! Legally! Download the client here from the author's website, and a System 7 emulator here (It doesn't require a ROM, so it's %100 legal).

Cliff Johnson is also about to release his next game, A Fool and His Money (sequel to his earlier, also excellent game A Fool's Errand) sometime soon. I know I'm going to order it.