Attention, attention, seasoned IFers, we have a new genre on our hands. Sam Barlow's Aisle was taken as an only-works-once experiment when it first appeared (at least, by me), but now we have a second entry in that category that expands considerably on what Aisle did. The category, of course, is one-move games, games whose exploration consists of figuring out the many and varied things you can do with your one move, rather than building on your explorations through a series of moves. You might think that would be limiting, since generally it wouldn't allow for multi-step tasks, but Andrew Pontious's technical wizardry in Rematch overcomes those limitations, and the result is memorable indeed.

The primary difference between Aisle and Rematch is that, while the former was purely about exploration of the main character, the latter is really a puzzle: something happens after your move, and it will happen again and again unless you manage to avert it. What you do is not at all simple, and you're likely to spend several hundred moves figuring out how to do it--but it's a rewarding several hundred moves, and well worth the time. Part of the reason it's difficult is that there are several things to set it in motion, as it were, and figuring out what and where they are and how they interact takes some exploring (one move at a time, of course). As such, in one sense, it's the ultimate learn-by-screwing-up game--like Aisle, of course, since in Aisle you drew on the knowledge you accumulated to explore your character further, but here the game depends much more on your ability to draw on past lives.

The puzzle you solve is complicated, and as such the action that you perform to solve it is fairly complicated as well, and the author has accordingly hacked the TADS parser somewhat to accommodate more complex input lines than most IF can handle: by my count, the Rematch parser can handle five nouns in some syntaxes, whereas the Infocom parser (on which neither Inform nor TADS nor any other freely available authorship system--had improved, to my knowledge--at least, not in terms of complexity--until now) could generally only handle three (HIT THE DOG ON THE HEAD WITH THE HAMMER). The expanded parser isn't perfect, but it's generally good enough; the real challenge, for the experienced player, is realizing that the parser has abilities beyond the usual. Once that hurdle is overcome, however, it's a marvelously liberating feeling to enter highly complex commands and see them executed more or less faithfully (in much the same way, I suspect, as the first players of Zork felt when they realized that they were no longer living in a world of two-word parsers). It's an impressive technical feat, in short, and while such complicated inputs might not be necessary in most games--since games that last longer than one move generally allow the player to accomplish quite intricate things by spreading them over multiple inputs--a perfected parser of this scope might well push the IF experience ever closer to mimesis, always a worthy goal. Larger possibilities aside, that technical breakthrough greatly enhances the experience of playing Rematch; indeed, the one-move game as puzzle wouldn't work nearly as well without it. (At least, it would have to be a whole lot simpler.)

The puzzle itself is well put together, though it's rendered more difficult by some enticing red herrings--i.e., there are some things that seem to be useful when they're not, and the game doesn't do much to suggest that they are, in fact, red herrings. Likewise, it's initially tempting to do directly what the game wants you to do indirectly, and there aren't many hints about the more indirect methods. There are a few in-game hints, but they're fairly general; if you spend a while trying to figure out the puzzle on your own, chances are you'll already have figured out what the hints have to say before you consult them. Not major sins, but they do increase the difficulty of the puzzle considerably, even if the solution ultimately proves logical; if you're not a puzzle maven, you may want to consult a friend or find a walkthrough.

Rematch highlights the real strength of one-move games, in that they make it easy for the author to provide for absolutely everything the player could come up with (since the combinatorial factor--objects being combined in unexpected ways--is limited). In giving you multiple views and variations on the central event of the game (not revealed here, since the surprise of it is part of what gives Rematch its impact), the game enhances its mimetic qualities: you can try just about anything logical, and the parser will handle just about anything you type. The AMUSING section at the end is well populated, and in fact there are many things worth trying that don't, in fact, show up in that list. It may be objected that limiting the player's freedom to one move is a sort of backwards--looking way to achieve mimesis, but we take it where we find it, I guess, and Rematch is plenty immersive even in its one move.

There's an odd disjunction in the playing experience, though. It can fairly be said without spoilers that the event at the heart of Rematch is rather grim--it's certainly not something to joke about, and indeed it's fairly shocking when read for the first time. Some of the various events that you harness to solve the puzzle, however, can only be considered absurd, and they would probably fit a little better in a more lighthearted game. The disjunction isn't as stark as it might be, I suppose, because the shock of the main event dissipates as it happens again and again and again, and after a while the player likely sees it as something to avert, not something grim or tragic. Still, there's a split personality there, and it's especially acute if the player happens upon the sillier aspects of the game early in the exploration process.

That aside, though, Rematch is an absorbing experience that in some ways goes beyond what the seasoned IF veteran might be expecting. Though the PC's exploration of the the environment is limited to some extent, it's still a richly interactive game.