The initial premise is that your boss's car breaks down and you want to get help, but it's a thin veil, since you promptly witness soldiers hijacking a convoy of trucks and evidently forget all about trying to get your car started again, since you decide you want a piece of whatever action the soldiers are after. Weird coincidences drive much of the plot from there on: you defeat a security device to get into this supposedly ultra-secret plant by using stuff lying around, which seemed a tad absurd. The puzzle you solve to get into the underground laboratory area is clever but relies on everyone in the complex being either blind or thoroughly stupid; other puzzles function on similar assumptions. As such, the tone varies somewhat; what might have been a sinister feel, created by the opening section, is subverted by the story's failure to develop any real sense of menace. The Plant works better viewed as a series of obstacles to overcome than as a real story, since the story is not always engaging.

The author consciously decided to make it impossible to lose or otherwise make the game unwinnable, a design choice that works well in some contexts but not in this one. The story, after all, to the extent I could make sense of it, involves some danger; breaking into heavily guarded top-secret complexes usually entails negative consequences if caught. But there are several points where harm should be imminent, logically, and knowing that the danger will just keep getting closer but never arrive, Zeno's-paradox style, destroys the illusion of the story and takes away the tension. This is particularly true at one point late in the game, when guards see you through a window, carrying out nefarious acts, and pound on the window. There is, of course, a door right next to the window, but you can examine everything in the room, take a nap, make faces at the guards, etc., and they will never, as far as I know, walk through the door. What might be an exciting moment is fairly ho-hum. Now, admittedly, with an IF engine that supports UNDO as well as SAVE/RESTORE, any "death" is but a passing setback--but avoiding death does affect a player's emotional experience, and knowing that there was no death to avoid reduces whatever emotional effect there is. What might be a good choice in another sort of game does not, in short, serve this one well.

Nevertheless, there is much to enjoy here. The puzzles rival those of Enlightenment as the best in this year's competition: they are challenging but fair, with the exception of the one where an object is discoverable only with the command READ AUTHOR'S MIND. There are also enough of them for the player to feel like he or she has accomplished something, but few enough that the game is finishable within two hours. Several of them involve more than one object, or require manipulating the environment in creative ways, though a few rely on a few rely on random scenery-searching. The ones that involve opening passages or passing obstacles provide short cuts once the initial puzzle is solved, a great time-saver. The author also fairly consistently rewards the player for solving a puzzle by supplying more story, usually via cut-scenes of sorts--the player witnesses something going on. Some of the cut-scenes actually are cut-scenes--the text all goes by at once--and some aren't, and the logic of the distinction was not obvious to me. (The ones that force the player to keep typing Z don't actually give any potential for difference in how the player experiences the scene--at least, not obviously so.) The nature of the puzzles solved does make the player feel like he or she is coming closer to the goal, and getting glimpses of the McGuffin when obstacles are cleared reinforces that feeling to great effect. Your boss, along for the ride, is directly relevant only occasionally, though it seems like he might provide information about a few things if asked; still, he's a vaguely comic figure that helps lighten the feel of the story (another reason why the tone is a bit inconsistent).

The Plant feels well-crafted as a whole; bugs are few, the writing is outstanding, and objects, even complex ones, largely do what they're supposed to do. That feeling of polish helps overcome the flaws in the story--or, more accurately, the flaws in the story don't detract much from its enjoyment because the game is so playable as a whole. The best puzzle in the game leads directly to its most ridiculous moment, but as long as the player can suspend disbelief, it doesn't really matter--because there's no question whether the moment works as the author intends it to. The Plant illustrates how a skillful IF author can spin an entertaining yarn even with a contrived or silly plot, as long as he or she attends to the details that matter to the player; this one works well enough that I gave it an 8.