Shareware

Seth had me play Hugo's House of Horrors for MS-DOS.

Developed by Grey Design Associates and released in 1990 as Shareware, Hugo's House of Horrors is a text parser-based adventure game where you must explore a mansion looking for your girlfriend, Penelope.

The game is dated,

as a lot of text parser games tend to be.

And there's another thing this season reminded me of, which is perhaps a little less comfortable, the importance of being willing to listen when somebody tells you you've missed something.

A couple of weeks ago, the Shareware episode received a one-star review on Apple Podcasts.

The review pointed out that I hadn't made one important part of the Shareware story clear enough.

Shareware wasn't one single model, and some versions could restrict features, limit usage, or lock parts of the experience until you registered.

Now, the episode does touch on these limitations, but the criticism was fair.

I hadn't given that part of the history enough attention.

It's very easy to see a negative review, disagree with the rating, and move on, but it's much more useful to ask whether there's actually something underneath the criticism that you can learn from.

And in this case, there was.