The story of Down--there are going to be some mild spoilers here, since it isn't really possible to review this without giving some stuff away--puts you, the protagonist, on a hill near a plane crash with a broken leg and, apparently, amnesia, since presumably you were in the plane at some point and you have no memory of it. Or do you, and the game just doesn't say as much? Either way, the premise is best if not thought about too much--a head injury significant enough to cause amnesia would probably have quite a few other effects as well, enough that dashing around being heroic wouldn't be an immediate option. At any rate, you only come to discover that there is a plane nearby--it's hidden behind a hill or some such thing--which is certainly an interesting device, but it didn't really have a shock effect on me. (Mostly, I thought, hey, if I were thrown that far from a plane, I think I'd just be dead.) Your mission is to repair your broken leg and do what you can to help the survivors of the crash.

Hugo, for its part, does well; most commands, including "undo", are implemented. The main problem I found was an occasional pronoun difficulty--under some circumstances, referring to an object by the pronoun gave strange responses. For example, at one point I referred to a woman somehow and then typed "examine her," and got this: "You haven't seen any 'husband's man's wife wife,' nor are you likely to, even if such a thing exists." Er, darn right I'm not likely to see that. (Other pronoun troubles indicate that the interpreter spewed out all the synonyms it knew for the noun at hand, for some reason.) Still, other than that, there were no significant bugs.

The story itself, even if improbable at every turn, isn't bad at all; the techniques of winning our sympathy that the author uses are not all that original, but they work the way they should. The initial air of urgency--there's a plane down; did anyone survive?--is deflated a bit by how amazingly _long_ it takes for anything significant to happen; there's more than enough time for a leisurely stroll around the premises to survey the sights, should the player care to do that. But that's not really a crime in IF, where basic sensory input comes along sort of slowly. A somewhat more significant problem is that the scene is a bit underdescribed--you're told that there are people helping injured passengers, but that's about it. Are there lots of injured people? Are they badly injured? Are there enough intact people to take care of the injured? There are almost no bodies, as such, mentioned; most people seem to be injured or pretty much okay--how did that come about? I also wished the game had told me why there were any survivors at all, since there aren't usually any--you seem to be in the middle of nowhere, so it wasn't that the plane never really got off the ground.

The puzzles also need some help. The final action just isn't realistic--both in that you take the risk you did and that it works so quickly. (Suffice it to say that actually doing what you do would require both a lot more time and a lot more persistence.) The way you get around the problem of your leg isn't bad, but the relevant objects aren't described in a way that makes it apparent that you can use them. (If they're immediately accessible from where you are, they're in a rather unusual position.) Moreover, what you do doesn't actually solve the problem-- you needed something very different to do that--it only helps prevent further injury. If what you do with the objects were changed ever so slightly, this would make sense--well, some; it might strain belief that you can make the new object with the materials at hand, but that sort of strain isn't a big deal in IF. (Your broken leg also pretty much goes away after that, not very realistic.)

Other problems include inconsistent coding in one of the NPCs you encounter--you can go through the process of befriending him repeatedly--and an object that you can't simply take from a character, somewhat illogically. Compass directions are only minimally provided, finding a certain object requires a bit of "guess what the author is thinking," and in general logic shouldn't require that you find a certain area of the game, all things considered. (It gives access to something, but that something should also be accessible elsewhere, with less risk.) The prose is good--sound grammar, reasonably compelling writing--but it often gives important objects rather short shrift in the description department. (Or misdescribes them completely--it doesn't seem like one key object should have the property it does from the description.)

There are a number of nice touches in Down, though. Primary among them is the couple you find near the plane--some might see the inclusion as pointless, but it gave the proceedings an element of realism. Your cracked watch at the beginning presages the rest of the game effectively. And despite certain improbabilities in the nature of the ending, it did avoid an easy everything's-fine approach, certainly a welcome detail. Finally, even with all the improbable elements of the plot, it did feel compelling--as in, I felt pressure to do something, right away. That suggests, I suppose, that attention to every small detail isn't really what makes a plot like that of Down compelling--a little danger and a time limit go a long way.

Down is a bit too short to get the player fully involved--there are only a few puzzles. With some more to do, people to rescue or dangers to neutralize, and some plot incongruities worked out, it might be a very strong entry. As it is, given its limitations, I give it a 4.