Game review: Alter Ego

Alter Ego is a browser-based life simulation game by Choose Multiple LLC; originally written by Peter Favaro Ph.D. and published in 1986 on the Commodore 64, MS-DOS, Apple II, and Macintosh platforms.
The game's premise is simple enough: 'What if you had an opportunity to live life again.' Unfolding from birth and progressing through events and opportunities over the span of this new life, how the player chooses to live this virtual second life is what this game explores and illustrates.

Summary of analysis
Internet browsing knowledge-reliant new player experience, engaging and immersive gameplay that goes so far as to try and maintain situational plausibility and sociological expectations, mouse-controlled gameplay and easily-navigated interface, text and icons graphics, no music or sound.

Tutorial/New player experience
The new player experience of Alter Ego is largely implied as it flows through an interaction-enabled Javascript web-page. Most anyone capable of finding the game on the web will be probably be able to play the game. Though I feel that tutorial elements would've still been welcome, it's likely that without an experienced game designer the game would've suffered for it due to the level of attempted player immersion of game events and overall casual theme.

Gameplay experience
There's two routes for a player to go from my own experiences and that of some friends: either log into the game using google accounts in order to walk away and return at your leisure or prepare for a four to eight hour block of a game that really immerses you in it to the best of its ability. Alter Ego definitely has a lot of replay value due to its premise and that nearly every game event is optional. In fact, no age section gives enough turns to fully explore all of the events available, driving curious players to see what they missed out on and weigh their choices and sacrifices.
From what I've observed, it even tries its best to simulate social differences between genders to some degree by having a number of events change perspective or be unique to the experience. On a related note of simulated integrity, there are times when a set of selections determines outcome such as mood and action/inaction and certain combinations are locked out due to lack of plausibility (i.e. deciding to show up to a fight at school with a mood of unaffected by being called out).

Interface & Controls
As a browser-based, Javascripted game, the mouse is the whole of the control scheme and was an unsurprising design decision. The game has a simple and quickly-learned interface of going between choice windows and narrative text windows.
While certainly unnecessary (given it steps out of immersion) the game provides a stat window that is viewable from the main choices window, but given that the information it provides is akin to an internalized self-evaluation, it's doing a lot when it is considered necessary to a player.

Graphics
The game is comprised mostly of text and iconography, I honestly only recall one picture in the game's entirety. If I had the resources to, I'd love to invest into making a full graphics evolution, particularly one that would randomize features, ethnicity, and explore sociological differences in those experiences as it could make for a powerful serious genre game and help foster understanding at the same time as enticing players to seek out and learn from diversity.

Music & Sound
The game lacks music and sound, but I doubt it suffers for it. Alongside wishing to see a full graphics version, getting to see this remade or inspiring a similar title that is fully voice-acted and sound-rich would be a beautiful thing.

Commentary
I feel that I should note here that the reason I've had such long sessions of playing this game was because of how fun I found it to be, I've rarely felt any desire to skip ahead even though it's always an available option. This is a game that I've recommended to everyone I know and would definitely recommend it to more. For anyone wondering if I could possibly push my wish list for this game in the future further than already noted above: yes, I can, I've contemplated the possibility of an Alter Ego MMO and talked myself down from it knowing that it would be an epic undertaking and most-likely commercially (if not technologically) non-viable.
P.S. (No, Second Life doesn't count as it lacks both game-style motivation and sociological integrity/plausibility.)