COMP97: Zarf's comments
Andrew Plotkin
Now hear this:
My scoring system is very simple: I ask myself "How much did I enjoy
playing this game?" There is no question of whether a game deserves to
win, or whether my scoring is biased. If I enjoyed it, points. If I
didn't enjoy it, no points. Any particular aspects of the game (writing,
puzzles, characters) are included in the overall score only to the
extent that they affected my enjoyment.
The scores are normalized, so that I give a 10 to the game I enjoyed the
most and a 1 to the game I enjoyed the least (of the entries that I
played.)
Also, I played all the games as they were uploaded at the contest
beginning. I ignored later releases of games *and* walkthroughs and
hints. Sorry; there is a deadline, and meeting it is part of the contest
conditions as I see them. (Exceptions: Whizzard uploaded a changed
release of "Spring" almost immediately, and there was an early
re-release of "Bear" which the author said he had gotten Whizzard's
approval for.)
I did not play every TADS or Inform game. This was due to my lack of
attention span, not lack of time. (Every game that I did play, I played
during October.) I did glance at all the games, and the ones I skipped
were the ones that seemed least interesting; I think that I would have
given them scores of 3 or less. But of course I'm not certain of that.
I was a beta-tester for two games. In the interests of fairness, I did
not vote on those two. I did pick the score I would have given them if I
had voted on them; they're included below.
My scores:
10: Sunset Over Savannah (savannah.gam) [BETA-TESTER]
10: Babel (babel.gam)
9: The Edifice (edifice.z5)
9: Sins Against Mimesis (mimesis.z5) [BETA-TESTER]
9: Zero Sum Game (zero.gam)
8: A Bear's Night Out (bear.z5)
8: Glowgrass (glow.gam)
7: Poor Zefron's Almanac (almanac.gam)
7: The Lost Spellmaker (lost.z5)
7: She's Got a Thing for a Spring (spring.z5)
6: VirtuaTech (vtech.gam)
6: Travels in the Land of Erden (erden.z5)
5: The Frenetic Five vs. Sturm und Drang (frenfive.gam)
5: Symetry (reflect.z5)
5: A New Day (newday.z5)
4: Friday Afternoon (friday.z5)
3: The Tempest (tempest.z5)
3: A Good Breakfast (agb.z5)
2: The Obscene Quest of Dr. Aardvarkbarf (aardvark.gam)
2: Phred Phontious and the Quest for Pizza (pizza.z5)
2: Temple of the Orc Mage (temple.gam)
2: Sylenius Mysterium (sylenius.z5)
2: CASK (cask.z5)
1: E-MAILBOX (emailbox.agx)
1: Aunt Nancy's House (house.z5)
1: Coming Home (home.z5)
Now, my comments. Hear this also: these are neither reviews nor
explanations of my votes. These are brief comments on what I thought was
good or bad about each game. Sometimes I spend more time on the good;
sometimes on the bad. It's whatever caught my interest. You may consider
me to be speaking to the author -- describing bits which can be
improved, or which made the game for me, or which ruined it. I may
comment on the worst thing about a good game, or the best thing about a
bad game. So don't expect the tenor of my comments to match the score I
give.
Consistency wasn't a big factor either. Do I contradict myself? Hot
damn, then I contradict myself.
It is not my job to be encouraging or polite. If you want to hear
pleasant lies about your game, please read somebody else's post.
The following comments are given in the order that I played the games.
(Note that I never got around to writing comments for "A Bear's Night
Out", even though I did finish it. Attention span again.)
Oh, one other thing. A *lot* of the Inform games were released with
debugging mode still turned on. It's hard to feel challenged by a game
when "purloin" works. Pay some attention, folks.
----------
Glowgrass -- Nate Cull
A short SF story. The puzzles are a fairly standard mechanical brand;
make the machine work by putting part A in slot B. The game puts in its
effort on the plot -- you, a xenohistorian, stranded while exploring an
archaeological site -- and the character you meet.
The plot is presented extremely well; you discover things along with the
protagonist. I'm not sure the story quite measures up. It's not bad,
mind you; the writing is fine, the pacing is good, the scenes are vivid
and they have a point. I'm just not completely moved by the story
itself. The ending didn't quite seem to go anywhere interesting.
Maybe I'm expecting too much. It's more a mood piece than a story, and
so it doesn't need to *go* anywhere. Well, that's not right either,
because it does (although the story ends open-endedly, it does end.)
Heck, I don't know.
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Friday Afternoon -- Mischa Schweitzer
Another one for authorial telepathy. Well, it wasn't that bad: the magic
command seems to be "ask person about thing". Pretty much every time I
checked the hints, that was the answer.
Puzzles aside: the scenario was cute, but it's been done before. Somehow
the "Build my college / office / house" approach never fails to turn me
off. (Except of course in "Kissing the Buddha's Feet," which only goes
to prove that I'm open-minded.)
The gameplay had some irritating holes: I tried several ways to call
people on the telephone (dial 123-4567, push 1, dial phone, call
123-4567) before I checked the hints and tried "call fred". Not that
"call fred" is an unreasonable way to handle things -- it's actually a
good solution; but none of the others *told* me that "call fred" was
sufficient.
The time limit, though very long, was still something of an irritation.
I never actually hit it, but the warnings made me feel like I shouldn't
experiment, which drove me to the hints faster.
----------
A Good Breakfast -- Stuart Adair
Nice start, and some memorable bits. The cuter-than-Floyd robot is
possible the most irritating object I've come across in a game; I
approve highly. And the description of the photos made me laugh.
Unfortunately, I could not find a way to put the cornflakes in the bowl.
The command in the walkthrough doesn't work. I must assume the game is
unsolvable.
----------
The Lost Spellmaker -- Neil James Brown
I am amused. The conceit of the Cute Little Dwarf Village comes across
well, and without being disgusting. (Which, of course, it really is. :-)
Short but clear plot. I got stuck in a few places, notably trying to
find a container -- there's one listed in a room, but it's hard to pick
it out of the scenery.
The dialogue and characters are, again, brief but clear. You can't
dislike the cow. (Almost said you can't *argue* with the cow. Heh.)
I suspect there is some sort of Metaphor going on, but I can't imagine
what it is.
(Bonus point for the wackiest title screen in the competition.) (That's
a moral bonus point, not a competition vote bonus point.)
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E-Mailbox -- Jay A. Goemmer
Oookay. Not so much a game as a sequence of pieces of text, each leading
to the next via a specific command. It pretty much tells you what to do.
(This game took me somewhat less than two hours.)
The "commands" are somewhat arbitrary; "examine letter" seems to be the
same as "open box". Maybe this is deliberate. It's hard to tell.
Funny idea, not carried through into much more than a one-liner.
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Sins Against Mimesis -- One of The Bruces
Ok, I was a beta-tester. But I found this really funny.
I don't think there's anything more to be said about it. Play it
yourself.
Wuss.
----------
A New Day -- Jonathan Fry
Promising beginning; you start out in an unfinished adventure game.
Unfortunately, it becomes pretty arbitrary after that. Weird commands:
"push cat northwest"? There's a park bench which is described as
"unsteady", which turns out to be because it has something in it; then a
later bench which is described as "steady", which apparently also means
that it has something in it. This is not what works for me.
At the end the plot turns into "computer program tries to leave computer
and take over the world", which, I hate to say, I am thoroughly sick of.
Nonetheless there are things I liked. The scene with unimplemented ducks
in an unfinished room works great. (Everyone's been in a game where the
author forgot to implement some object. This is what it feels like.)
Peculiar time limits. (In one place there's a ticking bomb, which turns
out not to be a time limit, and then there's an unexpected time limit
anyway.) Many one-way "doors", and it's possible to leave vital objects
behind.
Be sure to watch the "exits" list in the status line, since many exits
are not mentioned otherwise. I don't like this.
----------
Sunset over Savannah -- Ivan Cockrum
Well, I was a beta-tester and I sank some serious commentary into the
game. So my biased opinion is, it's terrific.
There's a huge number of things to play with; just plain old beach
stuff. You can dig holes and build castles and jump on the castles. You
can tie things to other things. (This is the most complete set of
ropes-and-straps code that I've ever seen in a game. Most of it is just
for fun.)
The writing is detailed and embellished -- some will probably say
overembellished, but you can live with it. It does tell you things a
little more than it should, as opposed to showing them; this is mostly
in the "score" messages. But that's mostly to clue the player about
which way the game should go.
Simple, affecting storyline.
Also, may I note that this game brings new meaning to the way of easter
eggs. Try "xyzzy" on the end of the pier, or "say 'hello sailor'" (and
then ask the old man about the girl, several times.) Rich stuff.
Too bad I'm not voting on this game, because this is the most positive
review I've written thus far. Heh.
----------
Poor Zefron's Almanac -- Carl W. Klutzke
A nifty little fantasy story (billed as "cross-genre", but I think one
can legitimately talk about the genre of fantasy that includes goofy
spaceships. :-) You're a wizard's apprentice, the wizard has
disappeared, and a dragon is ravaging the town.
This game doesn't strain the boundaries of IF literature, but it's
well-filled-out. There is a whole range of gradations of "An End",
including more than one which might be considered fully ideal.
The writing is funny, albeit in a generic-silly-fantasy sort of way.
Several minor NPCs that run and hide in uniform, unashamed cowardice.
(Worth a chuckle.)
It's possible to get stuck, and there are also various ways you can lock
yourself into satisfactory-but-not-perfect endings. There are some
fairly restrictive time limits, particularly in the ending. (A
temptation often succumbed to, one admits.)
The title conceit is worth mentioning -- your master's Almanac contains
a huge array of useful game information, useless information,
background, poetry, and bad jokes. Also the game's credits,
instructions, and hints. It's a good plot device, or maybe I should say
scenery device.
----------
Babel -- Ian Finley
Now this doth please me very much. A genuinely creepy piece of science
fiction (not "horror") set in an isolated Arctic biological research
lab. Your memory is gone -- you do not know who you are -- but you have
a strange ability to pick up memories of past events, imprinted on
objects. So you move around the game, learning more about the laboratory
and what has happened there.
I think the word that comes to mind is "integration". Everything in this
game fits together. The station is plausibly designed as a research
facility, but also forms the structure of the puzzles and the plot. Your
imprint-reading ability and its effects are the keystone of the plot,
but they also are the mechanism through which the background and
storyline are revealed to the player. The devices and tools you find are
the equivalent of magic spells in a fantasy game, but they make perfect
sense in a lab. The atmosphere is both frightening -- creeping through
darkened halls -- and realistic -- an underground facility low on power.
(Speaking of darkness, this game demonstrates the use of darkness
without resorting to a flat "It is pitch black." There are many dim
areas, which conceal secrets until you can find light, but which are
still navigable. And you *are* scared of the dark.)
There are several characters, seen only in flashback -- an old but
effective technique; the imprint-reading episodes are "cut scenes",
uninteractive but full of dialogue, the best way to define character.
The added gimmick in this game is that one of the characters must be
you, but you have no memory of which it is.
There is no way to lose or get stuck or run out of time, but again,
Babel demonstrates that you can have the emotional effect without using
classic IF limits. The power is slowly failing throughout the game, with
periodic warnings; but it does not actually fail during play. I felt
hurried by the warnings, and afraid I would run out of time, but it did
not prevent me from winning.
The puzzles were mostly very good -- well integrated, as I said. A
couple may have been too obscure. (The cabinet and the exit combination
in particular.) But these are minor problems.
----------
The Obscene Quest of Dr. Aardvarkbarf -- Gary Roggin
Well, what can I say... vaguely irritating and not much fun.
You run around a college campus trying to deliver a letter. The
descriptions are sort of funny, but not in a very interesting way. All
the professors are weirdos. This can be done well (I've been re-reading
Daniel Pinkwater novels) but it can also be done badly. Sigh.
There is an annoying inventory limit, an annoying food limit ("If you do
not eat soon, you will pass out," we're supposed to be past this by now)
and a large swath of missing synonyms. (Up a tree, you can't go "down",
you must "climb down tree". This occurs in several places.) And missing
alternate solutions: you have a hammer and a screwdriver, but some
things can only be pried with one of them. The author needs to pay some
more attention to state: some descriptions don't change when they ought
to (e.g., the torch); and there's a glaring plot hole in the ending if
you don't take an optional action in the beginning. (Hitting the panel.)
Ok, I'm complaining a lot. Many of these problems can be fixed. Good
points: there's a lot going on around campus, and much of it has nothing
to do with your quest. I still don't know what's up with the janitor.
This kind of side detail is nifty. And, hey, you can hit a lot of things
with your hammer.
Footnote: I hate to whine, but it's spelled "fluorescent".
----------
Phred Phontious and the Quest for Pizza -- Michael Zey
This would be the "magic fantasy forest" genre. You are attempting to
find the ingredients for a pizza.
The game is, on the whole, badly constructed. I think the combination of
strictly timed sequences and inventory limits is about the most annoying
design mistake you can make. So after a few minutes of getting killed by
the gravedigger, I switched to the walkthrough and didn't look back.
Unfortunately, this didn't help, since the dragon seems to want to fry
me before I can follow the commands in the walkthrough. I must consider
this game unsolvable.
I can comment on the part of it I saw, though, and my main comment is
"Don't do that." Puzzles based on puns are not a good idea. Let's talk
about "mimesis" here for a minute. Better yet, let's not.
----------
The Tempest -- Graham Nelson
What a clever idea! (Which, together with a ha'penny, will buy you a
brick.)
I couldn't figure out what the hell to do. Even reading the beginning of
the original play. I got as far as when the King's party jumped
overboard, and then I was stuck. So I split. I split, I split, I split.
----------
Temple of the Orc Mage -- Gary Roggin
A "dungeon crawl" if ever there was one. There is no story; you crawl
through the dungeon and collect treasures, magical artifacts, and keys
which unlock doors to more treasures and magical artifacts.
I didn't actually finish the last few commands of this game; a critical
item refused to come loose. I think this is because I left a magical
book behind somewhere. I was not motivated to go back looking for it.
The game area is very large and tolerably well described; the writing
works pretty well. I did, indeed, feel like I was wandering around a
gloomy -- er -- dungeon.
There's just a numbing sameness about it all. A piece of scenery will be
mentioned only if there's something hidden in it. There is a long string
of locked doors and locked chests. And most of the things you find don't
do much (although some do); you generally find things in order to have
them.
As with Gary Roggin's other game ("Aardvarkbarf"), there is some weak
parsing, notably "climb down" instead of "down" or "d". And there are --
again -- food requirements and an inventory limit, neither for any good
reason.
----------
Travels in the Land of Erden -- Laura A. Knauth
This cleanly sketches out the advantages and disadvantages of very large
games. (And I mean large in terms of area, not necessarily in terms of
plot length. Although the plot is fairly involved as well.)
Erden is huge; I spent half of the allotted time just mapping the place
and trying to examine everything. It does a very good job of the "Beyond
Zork" scale -- outdoor locations, ranging from forest to swamp to
mountains, with lots of detail. And it doesn't fall into the "Zork Zero"
extreme of having a whole forest be a single room. This is very solid
background.
The down side is, there's too damn much stuff. I think, in a game this
large, you have to be very careful *not* to ask the player to examine
every single scenery object. There are too many of them. Most of them
are very well described, which makes matters worse, since then you have
to examine all the sub-objects. If there are a few rooms in a game, this
is reasonable; here, it is not.
I wound up with a headache, and I missed several critical objects -- the
walkthrough doesn't say how to get them, so I guess they're "obvious".
Not all that obvious. I was unable to finish because of this. (Couldn't
find any spyglass or silver coins.)
The author has gone to effort to make multiple solutions available to
many problems. This is good. However, many of the puzzles are somewhat
undermined by bad programming. (The behavior of the raft is rather
arbitrary and crashed the game at one point. The ladder can be leaned
against all sorts of things, without much clue as to what is really
happening. Out of four magic words, one is critical, but the other three
generate "That's not a verb I recognise.")
Fixable problems, yes. But overall I think I would have solved the game
on the walkthrough rather than by play. (Even if I'd found the damn
spyglass, I mean, wherever it was.) Too much stuff, too little guidance
about what you're supposed to pay attention to.
----------
Zero Sum Game -- Cody Sandifer
A goofy idea -- you are at the end of an adventure, and you have to work
your way back to the beginning, losing all your points. ...Because
you've been *killing* and *stealing* for those points, and your Ma is
very *disappointed* in you.
A goofy idea, as I said; and like all goofy ideas, it stands or fails in
the writing. This one succeeds brilliantly. Between your hillbilly
mother, the dimwit Sidekick Maurice (you find him mourning his dead
adventurer comrade, but he'll be happy to follow you instead), and of
course Chippy the Chipmunk, the game whizzes past with a manic grin and
the occasional whack on the back of your head.
I dunno if I can say anything else. There's comic style and there isn't.
This is.
I didn't have much trouble playing. I missed one puzzle because I didn't
know it was something I was supposed to do (getting to where I could
take the scroll.) Probably this was because I never examined Benny after
he retrieved his stuff. The ending was also a little confusing, but this
was more because the hints were badly written than any problem in the
game itself.
----------
Cask -- Harry M. Hardjono
The author says "My first stab at Interactive Fiction," which sums it
up. I try to allow for technical bugs when playing these games, but
there are just too many here. The author didn't have (or take) the time
to polish things up, get descriptions of containers right, make sensible
synonyms, etc.
The up side: the single puzzle is fairly well conceived, although it's
not well enough described to really understand what's going on. That is,
when I *did* understand it (after reading the walkthrough), the
mechanics of it made sense. I would add a little more information
(probably having lights go on/off when you flip the light switch.) But
the idea is fine.
I would say one thing about the writing... don't use the word "hehehehe"
in a game. Just don't.
----------
The Frenetic Five vs. Sturm und Drang -- ?
Well-written but unsolvable. Need I say more?
Ok, I should. This is a superhero parody romp; credit is given to "The
Tick", if I recognize the name aright. It is unusual in that you are the
leader of a superhero *team*, the Frenetic Five.
The fun here is managing your team and their powers. And their
personalities. There's a lot of detail here; they make smart comments,
react to your actions (or lack thereof), and they each have their own
annoying habits. This is all very good. And I loved the lobster.
Unfortunately, the parsing is weak ("adapt fork" produces "You don't see
any adapt here," when your super-power is supposed to me adapting
anything into a tool.) The syntax for commanding NPCs is also shaky, and
usually works only for the few commands which are relevant to the plot.
This is obviously a problem in a team game.
And the ending seems to fall apart completely. The problem of untying
yourself is solved by a rather contrived sequence which, at the least,
needs more synonyms. And when you face Sturm and (I mean "und") Drang, I
really don't know what the hell is going on. You're separated from them
by a skylight, but this doesn't seem to prevent you from touching them
or their evil device. The commands in the walkthrough don't seem to do
anything, and following the walkthrough doesn't actually end the game.
I feel like the author didn't finish writing the game. When it is
finished, I'll highly recommend it.
(Footnote: I tried it again, and I saw what I was doing wrong. I managed
to finish now. I still hold to my judgement; there needs to be a lot
more detail text in there. I was confused because the wrong character
was holding the bedsheet, and nothing at all happened instead of the
wrong thing happening. As I said, needs more work.)
----------
Aunt Nancy's House -- Nate Schwartzman
Er... "There are no puzzles, the idea is mainly to wander about in an
interactive environment and have fun." Well, it's a house. You can do
stuff.
I apologize if I'm taking this wrong, but somehow I get the impression
that the author has spent a lot of time being *bored* in this house. I
mean -- I wandered around, I turned on the tv and the video game
machine, I turned them back off, I poured myself a soda. Then I went
back upstairs. Yeah, I've spent a lot of time at relatives' houses that
way. I suppose that means it gets realism points...
Technically, it's fine; everything pretty much works right. Although the
tv in the master bedroom can be heard all over the house, which seems
pretty loud. Heh. There do need to be a lot more synonyms. ("book"
"shelf" as well as "bookshelf", that kind of thing.) And the
implementation of a room with two hot water taps and two cold water
taps, while functional, can probably be approached more realistically.
:)
----------
Symetry -- Rybread Celsius
This is terribly, terribly unfair. I'm really sorry. But I just started
laughing hysterically, and it's not what the author intended. In the
middle of an intense ending sequence, I read the line:
"My blood pumper is wronged!"
I just lost it. It's a very "Eye of Argon" sort of line.
But I don't want to focus on that line. Let me back up.
This is a horror short-short. The writing is quite good; the prose is
quite bad. Or vice versa. What I mean is... the idea for the story, and
the events, do work. It's a creepy situation.
The actual text is, well, not very skilled work. Lousy spelling,
grammar, general clumsiness. Not much I can add about that. Read more
good books, practice more. (I wish I could believe that the title was
misspelled deliberately. Sigh.)
Technically, also pretty bad. ("in" works to get in the canopy bed, but
"get in bed" screws up dramatically. And the business of the lamp needs
more detail text; it's not obvious that you can only reach it from
inside the bed.) The central puzzle is, again, a good idea; but it's
implemented weirdly. (Your clothing, which is critical, seems to appear
only after several turns. And "stab me" should work the same as "stab
chest".)
But, on the other hand, I thought the hidden text (in "amusing") was
pretty nifty. "...communism, silver and various isotopes of uranium."
Good!
----------
Sylenius Mysterium -- ?
The gimmick is, a real-time arcade game. The problem is, it's buggy.
I actually managed to play some of the arcade game under MaxZip. (I have
an advantage here. I'm the interpreter author, so I was able to jigger
MaxZip to ignore certain Z-code errors. Most people would just see
crashes.)
I wasn't able to get very far. The text adaptation of a platform
scroller was a cute idea, but it didn't really give enough information.
When a monster appeared, I had no idea what to do in order to attack it;
the basic positional information was lacking. (Is the monster in front
of me or behind, is it tall or short, etc.) I was able to get halfway
through the level by jumping madly, but then I jumped into a bottomless
pit. Again, in an actual video game, I could see the pit coming and at
least try to jump *over* it. Didn't work here. I felt like I was playing
blindfolded.
This approach *can* work, but it would require much, much more
descriptive text. Of course then the player is forced to absorb that
much information once per second.
There is a frame game which is in the usual Adventure mold; it's also
pretty buggy. (What *was* up with the New Age rock melody with the
backbeat? And Margot gave me the cold shoulder for buying tokens with
*my* money. And I don't think the keys are mentioned anywhere in the
game, except the walkthrough.) The three NPCs are well-developed,
however.
I can't evaluate the plot, since I only saw the beginning of it.
----------
The Edifice -- Lucian P. Smith
A surreal little story, in which you witness three epochal events in the
history of civilization. You start out as an arboreal ape of some sort;
but your species and your understanding change in each scenario.
This is very clever work, with a number of nice touches. (At the
beginning, you see the Others, your Enemies, and Rock. Later Rock turns
into Useful Rock. Everything is personal. I like that.) The Edifice of
the title is history reified, a tower with a stairway up the inside. It
also provides hints, another clever touch -- murals on each level record
what you've done and show what you might do next.
The scenarios themselves are concise and well-written. I solved the
first with no trouble (well, almost no trouble -- see below.) The second
ran me out of patience just a little early, and I went to the
walkthrough to get the language straight. (I like the puzzle, I just
feel like I'm in a hurry with 35 competition entries. Yes, it's a
problem.) The third was harder; I didn't have much idea how to control
what was going on, or what range of actions were possible.
(This is a general problem in this game; looking at the walkthrough, I
saw commands far outside the range of what is "expected" in IF. "hide
from enemies" and "look for food" are early examples. Those particular
commands are provided entirely for color; it's not necessary to use
them. So that's no problem. In the third scenario, however, you have to
do some things which are pretty odd. I don't know if I would have gotten
them without the walkthrough. On the other hand, I solved the puzzle
using the walkthrough commands as examples; I didn't have to follow it
step-by-step.)
There are multiple endings, or rather multiple *denouments* (which I
think I prefer.) It's suitably open-ended and allegorical. Heh.
There were a lot of bugs, which I spent some time working around. In
particular, the first scenario refused to register "solved" when I
solved it; I had to go back and follow the walkthrough. I think this is
a by-product of the detailed hint system; I did some early step in an
unexpected way, and the hint system didn't track me the rest of the way
through. In any case, this is fixable.
----------
She's Got a Thing For a Spring -- Brent VanFossen
(Very tempted to start this review "I was really screwed by the author
in this game." Nah.)
So, this is where everyone says, "Whoa, the author sure put in lots of
accurate detail from his own experience." Which is true. You wander
around a wilderness, full of, well, everything. With a guidebook (nice
touch.) More detail than you can shake a stick at, once you get the
stick. This is great to play but very brief to review, so I'll talk
about something else.
There is an NPC, Bob, who is -- well, more detail than you can shake a
stick at. Goes through this whole routine, drops golden nuggets of
wisdom, reminisces about everything, talks to you, listens to you,
offers you lunch. To be completely honest I wanted to throw a brick at
his head. But that's just me. He's a very well-done NPC.
There are a few puzzles, which rated fairly high on the obscure-ometer
for me. (I didn't understand the egg thing at *all*.) Again, the detail
problem; there's so very much around that it's hard to examine the right
things. For example, there are very specific "You can't go that way
because..." messages; most of them are scenery, but some are solvable
problems. There's no good way to tell which is which.
I relied heavily on the dynamic hint system, anyway.
(Footnote: I did in fact throw a brick at Bob. He said something patient
and sad and forgiving. Grrrn.)
(Footnote 2: "stalagtites"? Those are the ones that stick out from the
wall? :-)
----------
Coming Home -- Andrew Katz
An amateur effort. It mostly does not work. That is, the game works, but
the game design does not. You can't tell what's going on, nothing makes
much sense, you can't see most of the exits, there is no scenery, you
starve to death fairly quickly, and you can't figure out how to go to
the bathroom. Well, I couldn't, anyway.
You have to go to the bathroom.
You can't hold it in any longer and you go on the floor.
*** You have died ***
I'm supposed to be all encouraging here, so, please, try again.
----------
VirtuaTech -- David Glasser
A very short SF scenario; you have to get your computer working to print
out a school report. There isn't much story here. The game is
essentially a showcase for two nifty interfaces: the virtual computer
interface, and the hardware you can wire together. Both of these are
well-done, but not really enough to be compelling.
The setting, a futuristic university dominated by a megacorporation,
isn't much either. It's impossible to avoid being reminded of _The
Legend Lives_. Except in _Legend_ it was more than a setting; it worked
into the plot.
It feels like the game is actually too short, in fact. If there were
more plot, the gizmos would be useful background instead of a brief "use
the thing" foreground.
A game with this few rooms also has to watch out for repetitive
description. The main room, your apartment, is a good introductory
description, but the text reappears every time you type "look". It's
worth putting in some effort to be dynamic -- have it get briefer after
the first time. Or briefer when you "re-enter" it from a virtual zone,
with the full description repeated -- but without as much emotional
setting -- when you "look". That kind of thing. There are several
possibilities.
Similarly, the virtual space of your computer shows an "anomaly" even
after you've fixed the bug. And, not so similarly, the game should
automatically put the scanner on the desk instead of printing a "You
can't do that until the scanner is on the desk" message.
I don't mean to imply I disliked the game. I like gizmo puzzles, and
these are well-done. It's a very easy piece, but gizmo puzzles *don't*
have to be hard to be entertaining. They just have to make sense, and in
this game they do.
----------
A Bear's Night Out -- David Dyte
(Ran out of steam before I wrote comments about this. However, I did
play it and I liked it quite a bit.)
----------
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Neil Brown
At 20:40:29 on Thu, 1 Jan 1998, Andrew Plotkin wrote:
>She's Got a Thing For a Spring -- Brent VanFossen
>
>(Very tempted to start this review "I was really screwed by the author
>in this game." Nah.)
Actually, I was disappointed to learn that the game was not, as I'd
hoped, a tale in the 1950s sci fi B-movie style of a woman who falls in
love with a spring-like creature from outer space.
But then I thought that The Tempest was going to be about some elite
secretarial agency.
- NJB
Graham Nelson
In article <hylc5DAM...@highmount.demon.co.uk>, Neil Brown
<URL:mailto:ne...@this.address.is.fake> wrote:
>
> But then I thought that The Tempest was going to be about some elite
> secretarial agency.
Ah, so _that's_ where I went wrong.
--
Graham Nelson | gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom