Trouble is, it's not easy to convey to the uninitiated what that story is. A relationship that may or may not be broken is at the center of it--as the game begins, you appear to have been stood up by Aessa, the object of your affections, and everything that follows picks up the thread in one way or another. You repeatedly encounter machines and devices that don't work properly, usually because of neglect; you repeatedly find yourself in situations where verbal communication seems to be impossible; you repeatedly navigate through hostile and uncomfortable settings. Does all that reflect the relationship in question and the problems with it? Presumably, but nothing is ever spelled out as such; in a sense, you learn about the relationship that drives the game by observing the game and guessing at what pieces are supposed to be allegorical or metaphorical, and in what way.

What's interesting about the thematic elements, though, is that they're not just window dressing: at several points, puzzle solutions are solutions because they reflect the themes. In other words, there's no particular reason that could be expressed through any deductive process why something should work, but an attentive player who recognizes the parallel should try the correct solution because it seems to fit into the story. So described, it sounds fairly crude--"gee, I think I'll have everything in my game in threes, and then require the player to knock on a door three times"--but it's done much more effectively than that; the theme in question isn't just an arbitrary motif. To say that you have to think on the game's terms overstates the case a bit; it's more that you have to recognize where the game's sending you. Still, it's an unusual twist.

The genre, to the extent there is one, has been called magic realism: the settings aren't taken from fantasy as such, but the rules of the game's world are surreal in some respects. It's a limited surrealism, though: the "magical" aspects are few and limited, and many of the reactions you set off, or problems you solve, are firmly rooted in the ordinary and explicable. Moreover, for the most part, the game keeps the fantastic and mundane elements distinct: with a few exceptions (and those exceptions form an obvious pattern) you won't be wandering along through a conventional setting and come upon something wild and weird. Magic realism, like straight fantasy, can sometimes lead a player to suspect laziness--"rather than trying to make sense of all this, I'll just call it magic"--but So Far mostly resists that characterization: the departures from realism eventually (though not right away) are revealed to be part of a larger pattern and follow rules of a sort.

And the writing--ah, the writing. I'm reminded of a saying to the effect that an master or expert is someone who knows when and how to break the rules, because the writing in So Far breaks a lot of rules and gets away with it every time. The prologue, for example:

Hot, foul, and dark. How did indoor theater become so fashionable?
Well enough in spring rain or winter, but not in the thick, dead
afternoon of high summer. And though Rito and Imita looks very fine,
shining with electric moonslight in the enclosed gloom, you're much
more aware of being crammed in neck-by-neck with your sweaty fellow
citizens.

Damn the crowd, in truth: your mood was hot, foul, and dark when you
sat down. Aessa was supposed to meet you here. She's made excuses
before, and you don't think about what it might mean. Try not to
think, rather. Just watch the story. One of your favorites. But it's
miserably hot, and you just aren't caught up in the play...

Another example:

Grassy Hilltop
Not a flat tame greensward, mind you; you are surrounded by wild,
waist-high, reed-yellow growth that hisses and rattles in the dry
breeze. The grasses roll to every cloudless horizon. Above you towers
an immense tree -- the only one visible anywhere in this prairie
world -- and its shadow slices blackness past your feet. A path of
flat, trampled grass cuts south down the hill.

In the gameplay department, So Far breaks some rules as well. For instance, the game begins with a lengthy noninteractive sequence--you can look around and examine things, but that's about it--which is hardly a surefire hook. (And there's no hint at anything more interesting until the noninteractive sequence is over.) Even after the game gets going, it takes quite a while for the player to get a handle on where it's going--and given the nature of the story, or lack thereof, most players are likely to feel directionless for a while. It's rare that you encounter IF with no clear goal, and a new author might not be able to get away with such a move. Arguably, though, that aimlessness is unavoidable, given what the game is trying to do; the alternative is to give the player an ostensible plot that gives way to the introspection that happens here, but there are problems with that as well.

There are also various unfairnesses--plenty of learning by screwing up, and in one respect it's easy to send the game into an unwinnable state simply by progressing too far in a certain direction without progressing enough in another. (On the other hand, the point-of-no-return moment is about as obvious as such a moment can be, and it's also fairly obvious that more lies down the other path.) The game bills itself as "cruel," and while it isn't as cruel as Change in the Weather, it's far from forgiving-it's easy to waste essential resources, and at one point it takes only a few moves of waiting to game the game unwinnable.

So Far is not a particularly long game, and the overall puzzle-count is relatively low, but the world you're exploring feels larger than it is. Part of the way the game achieves this effect is by scattering locked doors and inaccessible (for one reason or another) exits through the game, which constantly reinforces the sense that you haven't seen everything of interest in the game's world. It's been said that the effect is also to remind you that you're not the center of attention -- the game's universe doesn't revolve around you -- and that effect is particularly well achieved in one setting with a wide variety of characters who can't be bothered to acknowledge your presence (unless you break the rules somehow). Red herrings have always been with us, but obstacles that aren't meant to be overcome are an unusual breed of red herring; Infocom's Planetfall is the only game I can think of that used unsolvable puzzles to set the scene in a similar way. It should also be said, though, that puzzles that aren't meant to be solved at all and puzzles that can only be solved by figuring out the logic of the game's world make for a highly difficult game, and most players will probably end up using hints at some point.

It's obvious enough to be hardly worth saying that when So Far was released, in 1996, it was unlike any IF that had preceded it. Part of what made it unique (then) was the emotional content--the emotional impact of the game is, in many ways, the point. (For the PC, anyway, and arguably for you too.) The prevailing theme of the game is tension and separation: if you don't choose to feel that tension, you're unlikely to find the game involving. It wasn't unknown then (though it was far from common) to impute some sort of emotions to the PC, but generally those emotions weren't particularly complex--now and again the PC might be afraid of something, say--and usually things would be nicely spelled out. Here, by and large, you figure out what the PC feels by analogizing from the impact on you, the player. (The game also tracks your mental state to some extent--the status line, while not recording your emotional temperature as such, does note your general impression of each setting. Examples are "hot, sticky," "mild spring, quiet," and "cramped, crawling.") That reading points to the significance of the PC's emotional state.)

It might be argued that that's true for every game that has any kind of emotional content, and it simply doesn't matter what the PC feels--but here, I think, it does matter. You're given a choice at the end of the game, with two very different endings depending on which choice you make--and the choice that most consider "better" (though there's debate about that too) reflects a certain understanding of the emotional significance of the terrain you've traversed. That is, to the extent that the game can be understood as an introspective journey, the "better" resolution of that journey reflects a specific emotional reaction to the self-understanding you've achieved. Other games since So Far have given emotions their place in various ways--Sunset Over Savannah, for one, reproduced So Far's status line but made it describe the PC's mental state more precisely than So Far does (and had the status line reflect events that are likely to affect the PC's thoughts). Other games have aimed at affecting the player's emotional state rather than the PC's; Photopia and Exhibition come to mind. But it's the subtlety of the emotional effects that So Far conveys that make it notable: the feelings at issue are unfulfilled yearnings here, a sense of alienation there, a sensation of conflict between duty and sympathy at another point, and there are no full-orchestra emotional turning points. In this respect, as in others, it's a game that rewards careful reading.

It's difficult, in the end, to explain what it is that makes So Far so memorable. The settings are vivid, but not spectacularly so, and the strongest theme in the descriptions is decay and abandonment--compelling on an emotional level but not necessarily captivating as IF. A few of the puzzles are memorable, but there aren't enough puzzles here to make the game work on that basis alone. My own sense of why I found the game fascinating was that it demanded attention and analysis; indeed, without analysis, it's not even vaguely memorable, because very little of what's most interesting about So Far is there on the surface. More than any other IF I can think of--Losing Your Grip is the only game that comes close--So Far is best appreciated through poring over the transcript and drawing connections between events that aren't necessarily juxtaposed in space or time. (An example: dawn is a recurring theme throughout the game. There are several references to "dawn-tales," and at a key point you're told that "dawn is distant yet." As it happens, the woman you're seeking is named Aessa, and the Latin for "dawn" is "aes.") (Another example: a certain substance links two disparate scenes by protecting a road from erosion in one setting and sustaining a trapped character in another.) There's been plenty of IF that's been thought-provoking, but very little that calls for textual analysis.

Is that good, or bad? Shouldn't IF be capable of appreciation without transcript dissection? I dunno; I certainly wouldn't say that So Far is to everyone's tastes, and I do enjoy IF where the relevant happenings are closer to the surface. But much of the best contemporary fiction works in a way that's closer to the way So Far works, and it's exciting to see a work of IF that aspires in that direction. That the product is less than ideal as a game, in the final analysis, seems almost beside the point.