Dan Shiovitz's 2004 Comp Reviews
Dan Shiovitz
If you are viewing this post-comp you may wish to use that version
instead, which may have some corrections/updates)
These are my reviews of the games I played in the 2003 Interactive
Fiction Competition. I play/review as many games as possible depending
on my current platform (windows or linux); this means tads, inform,
hugo and usually also alan, adrift, quest, and windows/msdos
executables. When I'm on a windows machine I use multimedia
interpreters where appropriate.
I've sorted games into three categories, "highly recommended" (the
best of the competition), "recommended" (worth the time spent
playing), and "not recommended" (not worth playing); and then sorted
the games alphabetically within those categories. Some of these
reviews may contain minor spoilers. Unfortunately, for some games,
even knowing that there is a spoiler in the review may itself be a
spoiler. I don't know what to do about this short of the Magic Amnesia
Stick. If you have the time and inclination, I recommend playing the
games first, but if not, go ahead and read the reviews. Nothing major
is spoiled.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Highly Recommended Games
----------------------------------------------------------------------
All Things Devours
by half sick of shadows (Z-Machine)
Like the author says, All Things Devours is not a particularly new
premise: you invented a time machine, and now you have to get rid of it
because in the future it blows up the world. You know, the usual deal
with time machines. Wisely, though, the author ignores the angst and
the what-is-the-moral-philosophy-of-science stuff and cuts straight to
the good bit: zipping through time to solve puzzles and fight
paradoxes. There's one extremely tedious bit (c'mon, no >WAIT UNTIL?),
and the whole thing ends up feeling a little slight -- the author
mentions plans to release a harder version post-comp, but I think
what's required is something with a few more puzzles, not harder as
such. On the whole, though, All Things Devours is a fun little puzzle
game with one great thing to play with.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Blue Chairs
by Chris Klimas (Z-Machine)
I don't know how this game will be received by the crowd that thinks
fancy writin' is bad, puzzles should be hard, and real adventurers are
AFGNCAAPs. On the one hand, Blue Chairs has some puzzles, and it allows
all the poking around and stealing people's stuff that we all love so
much. But on the other hand, it's also fundamentally unconcerned with
that sort of thing. You start out the game drinking a bottle of
something unidentified but probably weird, and the rest of the game is
mostly hazy speculation on what's real and what's not -- except since
this is IF, you don't have to speculate, you can actually wander
through the semi-real landscapes and poke at them.
In short, this is the closest thing I can think of to an IF version of
Waking Life or Mulholland Drive (or, as someone pointed out, Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and in general it's a pretty successful
experiment. There are some weaker bits (the place where it dips into
current politics is going to feel extremely dated in six months), bits
that go on too long, or puzzles that feel thrown in for the sake of
being puzzles. And, ok, it's frustrating that the game raises a
question and then doesn't answer it: it claims it will show you how you
got this way, and really only shows you how you are now. But Blue
Chairs is really fairly incredible; I can think of vaguely similar
games, but none that take things to such an extreme without losing
control of the narrative and crashing, and Klimas walks that narrow
line like a pro.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Great Xavio
by Reese Warner (Z-Machine)
The credits to The Great Xavio explain that this is not the first
adventure the author has written with the intrepid academic
protagonists, and it shows: he tosses in just the right amount of
characterization for the various characters, sketching out their
personas without shoving them down our throats. Warner's steady hand on
the controls also shows through in the plotting -- despite it being a
mystery, always tricky to get right, the crime is totally solvable,
things move along at a reasonable pace, and in general the whole game
is brought off with pizzazz. There are unquestionably a few rough
spots: some of the trickier bits of character interaction lead to bugs
in the game, and in a few places the story ground to a halt as I tried
to figure out what to do next. Oh, and the LLP is far more finicky than
it needs to be. But all in all, this is an extremely well-done game (by
a first-time IF author, no less), and I highly recommend it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Luminous Horizon
by Paul O'Brian (Glulx)
Well, here it is, the crashing conclusion to the Earth & Sky series.
O'Brian keeps in the motifs of previous games: sassy dialogue,
comic-sized BAMs and ZZAPs, weird alien technology, and goofy aliens.
Unlike the previous two in the series, Luminous Horizon actually gives
you a choice of whether you'd rather play Emily or Austin, with a
command to switch between them in-game (and this is more than just
optional: many puzzles are designed so that it requires effort from
each to complete). The game has a few really nice scenes, and one in
particular that totally floored me, even though it was perfectly set up
and I should have been expecting it.
So, hmm, why was I a little disappointed by the game? I think Luminous
Horizon has two major rough spots. First, gameplay: while many of the
scenes are nice, the actual play through them is not. I don't want to
give too many spoilers, but it seems like finding the fortress,
battling the robots, and the two battles beyond that all have a great
setup but then the actual thing the player ends up doing is being a
little confused and wondering what to do instead of blasting on through
in dynamic superhero fashion. The other rough spot is the story. This
may just be a taste issue, but for me the overarching storyline in
Earth & Sky ends up coming off as kind of silly. There's this bad guy
who's a cat-alien, which is already borderline, and he's a mad
scientist, which is fine, but he's a stupid mad scientist, who isn't
all that good at what he does. It may be that genre-wise, this is how
it works, but for me it made the big conclusion a little less big.
Looking back I see I've given more lines to my problems than my
praises, and that may give the wrong impression. So let me say that I
liked Luminous Horizon very much; it is big and bright and and a lot of
fun. Oh, and it has really spectacular feelies -- a very nicely-done
comic to get people up to speed on the events of the previous two
games.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sting of the Wasp
by Jason Devlin (Z-Machine)
The protagonist of Sting of the Wasp might be best described as a
nastier and more capable Bridget Jones; or perhaps a better description
would be a prospective member of the First Wives' Club attempting to
remain married. Sly, slutty, and shallow, she nevertheless has enough
ingenuity to remain near the top of the pecking order at her
broken-down country club. Most of the game, and most of the fun of the
game, comes from being nasty to other members; Sting of the Wasp could
even have stood to have a few more of these incidents, or perhaps more
elaborate backstabs. The intervening time is filled in with wandering
around the club making and overhearing catty remarks. Again, a few more
to be overheard would have been nice -- Melissa's comments through the
game are just right, and it's a pity Beverly didn't have much to say.
The coding is solid, the writing is pretty good, the puzzles are
generally well-clued with multiple solutions, and the subject matter is
superb.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Recommended Games
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bellclap
by Tommy Herbert (Z-Machine)
I should really be giving this game a lower score. The main puzzle
seems to have one massive read-the-author's-mind action, and, really,
it's never clear what the goal is except in the most general terms (or,
rather, there is an obvious goal, but it can't be accomplished -- you
have to do something random which turns out to lead the way to your
goal). But I can't mark Bellclap down too much, because its setup is
just too charming. You're a god, the parser is your respectful
assistant, and the protagonist is your humble worshipper. Commands get
relayed down the chain of command and the description of the effect is
relayed up again, and if you're either actually omniscient or check out
the walkthrough, you can help the poor lil' guy out.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Big Scoop
by Johan Berntsson (Z-Machine)
I saw some "how to write a movie script" page that said that the main
problem with scripts these days was that modern audiences are jaded and
need a twist ending. I'm not sure I'm all that jaded, really, but it's
true The Big Scoop had a disappointing non-twist ending. You find out
pretty early on who the bad guy is, and then the rest of the game is,
well, them still being the bad guy and eventually you catch them and
save the day, hooray. This is a pity, since the story is otherwise
pretty decent -- kinda railroady, but a nice combination of stuff that
you would do as a bold investigative reporter. The writing follows the
same pattern: no real flaws, but it doesn't take any chances, either.
Room descriptions are short and to the point with hardly any color.
This may be because the author isn't a native English speaker and is
writing versions of this game for both languages. Still, I'd rather
have seen some errors and a more colorful game than the way The Big
Scoop is now, playing smoothly but unexceptional in any way.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Blink
by Ian Waddell (Z-Machine)
A Photopia- or Photograph-style temporal-cutting narrative, Blink
focuses its attentions on the classic question, "Is War Bad?". The
problem is that this isn't really an interesting question. It's too
large and too vague to relate to. What is interesting is "What does war
do to this specific person?" We get a tiny amount of that in Blink, but
it's a short game and the characters never develop far enough beyond
stick-figureness for us to care.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chronicle Play Torn
by Algol (Z-Machine)
Chronicle Play Torn, from the author's description, is trying to be
kinda Lovecraftian, but despite the few bits depicting Things Man Was
Not Meant To Know, I think it mostly comes off as one of those games
where you're exploring your crazy uncle's house and get transported to
a magical world where you have to solve puzzles. Not that there's
anything wrong with that. Really, the readme included with the gamefile
summarizes the issue pretty well: the author isn't a native English
speaker and consequently the writing has some bumps to it; the game was
intended to be small and grew big, so it has a somewhat ungainly
layout; and the game didn't get sufficient beta-testing, so, while I
didn't see a lot of actual bugs, a lot of the puzzle solutions are
fairly mysterious and not well-clued. I guess if there's going to be
another release of this one, I'd wait, since it could really be
tightened up with some more work.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A Day In The Life Of A Super Hero
by David Whyld (ADRIFT)
This isn't really Whyld's fault, but I have reached the point in my
life where it is not inherently funny for a superhero to 1) have a
goofy name 2) have a lame superpower or 3) be incompetent. Since the
premise of A Day In The Life Of A Super Hero is that you're a
semi-competent superhero running around battling semi-competent
supervillains with goofy names and/or lame superpowers, I didn't get as
much out of it as I could have. That said, the concept was executed
fairly competently. I found a few minor bugs, the menu-based location
navigation was a little peculiar, and the game came off more as a
series of setpieces than as a single meaningful story, but I still
thought it was ok, and someone who likes the basic premise better would
probably like it a little better than ok.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Gamlet
by Tomasz Pudlo (Z-Machine)
I'm recommending Gamlet, but the writing and story are so highly
stylized that it's probably not going to be to everyone's tastes.
Sentences are ornamented and elaborated to the point of gaudiness, and
then a few other decorations are tacked on ("A tall cabinet cleft
between darkness and dusk stands at the northern end of the landing.",
"Thickets of weed sizzle and seethe along the almost vertical walls of
sediment and vegetation."). The story is pretty stupid but it doesn't
really matter; it's mostly an excuse to have the PC, a little Orthodox
Jewish boy, wandering around at night looking for a book in a big house
and beyond. And, hmm, what the PC finds is rotting and nihilism*. The
puzzles are not very well-clued and not usually that fun, although the
study has a few which require some interesting poking around. Overall,
hmm, I think Gamlet is an interesting failure. It's got a theme it's
working on, and some nice images pointing there, but the playing
experience is so rough and the writing so florid that I couldn't get
into the game enough to appreciate the theme.
* Eventually they also find a statement saying "if you played to the
end of the game, you've wasted your time, ha ha on you," but it seems
like the author does not in fact have any say in whether the player
wasted their time, though a weak ending may sway the player's opinion.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Goose, Egg, Badger
by Brian Rapp (Z-Machine)
Goose, Egg, Badger is a curious game. I think it's intended to be a
gently tall-taleish story of a young woman who lives alone on a farm
with just her yak and her ape and her other animals for company. Plus
her x-ray machine. Of course, this doesn't explain why she turns into a
robot some of the time, or why her electrical system is so tedious to
use (forcing you to traipse back to the socket each time to turn off
the power when changing appliances, and leaving trails of wire
everywhere). It also doesn't explain why there is a very clever pattern
for getting the extra points which seems pretty much impossible to work
out without looking at the walkthrough. In addition to these gripes,
some of the puzzles are a touch more tedious or unclued than they
really need to be, and the end of the story kind of tapers off rather
than ending with a bang. But despite these problems, Goose, Egg, Badger
is a fun game. It's got a pleasant setting, a nice mood, and a series
of enjoyable puzzles.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I Must Play
by Geoff Fortytwo (TADS 3)
You've ended up locked in an arcade overnight due to your fondness for
videogames, but the tone of I Must Play is much more like The Cruise
than Fallacy of Dawn. Playing the videogame throws you into a related
text adventure (as Fortytwo points out, this is rather like the IF
Arcade), and you must hop from game to game to complete them all. It's
a cute premise and I didn't find any bugs in it, but, well, it's hard
to make this slight a premise into a really satisfying game, and I Must
Play doesn't pull it off. Cute, though.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Identity
by Dave Bernazzani (Z-Machine)
One of the two games in the comp where you start out in a cryotube,
Identity proceeds in kind of the way you would expect from there: you
get out, explore the weird not-all-that-alien planet, find some
semi-friendly natives, and call for help. Some of the implementation is
kind of bumpy, and in particular, the number of commands required to
mess with the circuit board is just ridiculous. In general the puzzles
could have been clued a bit better but they were basically ok.
Story-wise, I would have liked to see more of the plot with the other
explorer; it was a divergence from the somewhat generic feel of the
rest of the game and hinted at something better. Bonus points for the
yak, though.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Magocracy
by Scarybug (TADS)
I think this is going to do pretty badly in the comp, since it's not
standard IF. It's got the trappings of IF -- the king has called
together all the powerful mages in the land plus, rather inexplicably,
you, this little ragamuffin kid, to determine his successor. There is a
dragon and some treasures and a secret passage and a maze and stuff.
But despite all this, Magocracy isn't IF, it's IF's close cousin, a
MUD. Only not multi-user. Gameplay consists mostly of watching the NPCs
wander around somewhat aimlessly and fight each other, which reminded
me pleasantly of all the time I wasted in college. These days, though,
when I'm playing IF I am looking for a story or some puzzles, and those
were pretty much absent from the game. For a while it was fun to grab
treasures and fight the monsters, though.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mingsheng
by Deane Saunders (Z-Machine)
Mingsheng has a good premise, to adapt an old story about the origins
of tai chi. It has some good scenes: the stork on the crane-still lake,
the grinding boulders in the ocean, the row of statues, the mountain
peak. So why didn't it do much for me? I think there were a couple
problems. Most notably, pacing. The scene with the crane should be one
of the peaks of the game, but in my play it came very early on, before
I had any idea what the need was for it. Furthermore, it wasn't
something I was trying for; just a random scene that showed up as I was
moving along, and then it was followed by a passage that might as well
been labelled "This is the part with the moral." Similarly, the box
opening ought to have been either something cool or something that
would lead to something cool, but instead the game ends shortly
thereafter with another Educational Segment and then a fizzle. A
double-fizzle, really, because it's likely that you'll get the bad
ending first, hit undo, and then get the good one. Speaking of the box
opening, that puzzle was weird too -- there didn't seem to be any real
reason to think it would work when, eg, throwing the box down the
stairs didn't. Even with these problems, the Mingsheng is worth playing
for the beautiful individual scenes; it's just a pity they weren't
stitched together into a more coherent whole.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Murder at the Aero Club
by Penny Wyatt (Z-Machine)
I guess it is the year for rough-but-good-hearted Aussie games; at
least, Murder at the Aero Club and Redeye both fit the bill, when most
years we don't even get one. Based on the title, you will not be
surprised to hear that this game casts you as a detective investigating
a murder at a flight club. Based on the earlier description, you will
probably also be unsurprised to hear that the club is filled with a
number of zany NPCs who only occasionally deign to answer your
questions with anything other than their default response. Still, even
without their help, the mystery is pretty easy to solve (unlike the
mystery of why nobody at the club seems especially bothered by the dead
body lying there). Murder at the Aero Club started to fall apart for me
at the end; I think the author was trying for a more dramatic chase
scene than she was really able to pull off (although this was sort of
an interesting departure from normal mysteries, where it's usually over
once you accuse the right person). It's not really profound, but Murder
at the Aero Club is reasonably fun and worth the time.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ninja v1.30
by Paul Allen Panks (Windows Exe)
True mastery of the way of the ninja reveals that all things are
connected; this, I suspect, is why looking at the sky repeatedly
increases your chance to fight the enemy ninja later on. Panks wrote
this, I assume, to make us aware of the sort of game you can write in
BASIC. Well, I am certainly aware now.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Orion Agenda
by Ryan Weisenberger (Z-Machine)
The Orion Agenda puts you in the (oddly first-person, for no good
reason that I can see) role of "Jon Stark" working for "SciCorps", the
"galaxy-spanning mega-corporation that is in charge of secretly
monitoring promising new alien species" with the "number one rule" to
"not contaminate the native culture." I assume this was all part of the
settlement Weisenberger reached with Paramount. Anyway, naturally you
and your new partner get a mission to go down in disguise onto a
planet, and something goes wrong, and the future of the galaxy is at
stake, and so on. In addition to the hackneyed premise, it's irritating
that it becomes obvious early on (from the very beginning, if you do
any research on the InfoNet) roughly what's going on, but aren't
allowed to do anything except be "surprised" by it later on. (Other
nitpicky irritations: your interactions with your companion border on a
dating sim, and what is up with primitive cultures having the ability
to do magic without scientists from all over flocking to be surprised
at this?) Despite these flaws, though, The Orion Agenda's skeleton is
fairly solid in terms of puzzle design, pacing, setting, and general
gameplay, and this enables the game to pull through as an enjoyable
play.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Redeye
by John Pitchers (TADS)
Redeye is in the no-shit-there-I-was genre, exemplified by games like
At Wit's End and Narcolepsy. This one is set in Australia; you wake up
in the middle of nowhere wondering where the guy is who you told your
wife you'd look after -- ah, there he is, in the biker bar, harassing
the drinkers. The writing style comes off as more enthusiastic than
skilled, the coding is a little rough in spots, and the twist ending is
one of those irritating ones that's telegraphed extensively but you
can't do anything with the info except wait to be "surprised" when it
shows up. Despite all that, though, I really can't dislike Redeye. It's
short enough to not overstay its welcome, and so good-hearted that I
couldn't help enjoying it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Splashdown
by Paul J. Furio (Z-Machine)
The best of the games in this comp where you awake in a cryotube and
have to save the ship, Splashdown suffers mainly from a time limit, an
attempt at a cute sidekick, and a few problems with command phrasing.
Besides that, it is a pleasant little sf romp with a nice variety of
puzzles, writing that does a good job at capturing the feel of
wandering around a semi-derelict ship, and a chance to read other
people's e-mail. What more can I ask for?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Square Circle
by Eric Eve (TADS 3)
The actual square circle construction comes off as kind of a goofy
intro: I think the phrase Eve is touching on doesn't have nearly the
resonance for me that it does for him. But despite this, Square Circle
is a pretty good game. It skillfully captures the feel of an Orwellian
police state, and if the twist is a bit predictable, well, it could
really only have been one of a couple things. The implementation is
smooth, there're only one or two puzzles that sent me to the
walkthrough, and overall, a satisfying experience.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Stack Overflow
by Timofei Shatrov (Z-Machine)
Clearly Shatrov is a fan of the old-school game. One of the first
puzzles in Stack Overflow directly recalls one of the Infocom games,
and much of the rest of the game is a series of fairly old-school
puzzles (the darkness/light source puzzle, the elevator puzzle, the
time limit). The game kept me reasonably amused and with the help of
the walkthrough I got through it all fine, but there wasn't much of a
spark here, and any bits where it tried to get into actual plot/story
were pretty silly. (I don't know if Shatrov was playing down the
writing because he's (I would guess) not a native English speaker - I
found a few quirks in the writing but on the whole it was very solid).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Trading Punches
by Sidney Merk (Hugo)
Trading Punches is an interesting mix; it combines a really pretty good
premise and backstory with terrible game structure and plot/character
development. I think the problem is that Merk has this massive sf epic
all mentally sketched out, and he decided the best way to present it
was to provide four short scenes from various points along the way. The
problem is that even though the four scenes are significant plot-wise,
they're not (save the last) actually interesting to play through. The
middle two scenes are the worst offenders here, forcing you to perform
a long series of tedious actions that are totally unrelated to the
story or anything else. Furthermore, as Trading Punches skims over the
narrative, character development is almost totally sacrificed; the only
characterization in the game is really what we automatically supply
based on the conventions of the genre -- the scene with Elora is the
most blatant example of this.
I took the walkthrough pretty early on and struggled through the first
two scenes: the third started to show some promise and the fourth was
really pretty good. It's a pity, then, that the game ended there right
as I was starting to get interested. I think what Merk needed to have
done with Trading Punches was to focus on what he himself found
interesting. It seems pretty clear that this isn't the characters: the
brother is the most developed of any of them and he's clearly in there
mostly as a plot device, not a person. What's cool is the backstory,
the prophecy, and the future, and that's where the attention should
have gone.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ZEROONE
by Shed (ALAN)
I know I've seen more capable parsers than this in an ALAN game, so I
don't know if ZEROONE's parser flaws (most notably, trying to refer to
any door in this game is a nightmare, and there are plenty of doors)
are due to it being an ALAN game or due to the implementation being
sloppy. But, as a friend of mine points out, the author did remember to
code a respond for jumping on the corpses. Anyway, this is one of those
games where you wake up in a prison cell with amnesia and have to
wander around the complex to figure out what's up, and then you do, and
then you escape, the end. It has some shooting and some gross bits and
some violence and stuff, but nothing too bad. I wasn't really gripped
by it, I guess because it is pretty much identical to all the other
games where you wake up in a prison cell with amnesia.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Not Recommended Games
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Blue Sky
by Hans Fugal (Z-Machine)
I would like to go to Santa Fe someday, and it is evident the author is
fond of it also, but nevertheless being set there isn't enough to make
Blue Sky into a good game. Possibly this is a result of mismatched
expectations: I was figuring it would start off with a touristy bit and
then have me be magically transported back into Santa Fe's past or
something. But no, the touristy bit was pretty much it. And, really,
Blue Sky wasn't even well-designed for tourism. There was a certain
amount of historic detail in the different locations, but hardly
anything about the actual experience of being there; I wonder if Fugal
has actually been to Santa Fe, or if he's just reading about this from
a guidebook. The lack of local color plus the confusing map and fairly
humdrum and not-well-clued puzzles made this game a disappointment.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Getting Back To Sleep
by Patrick Evans (.NET)
Ok, it is once again time for another lecture on why not to write your
own IF system. No, I take that back. It is time for me to say "If you
actually want to write a good game, there is no reason to spend time
writing your own IF system instead of working on the game, unless you
actually make real use of whatever special features your IF system has
(and if it has no special features, why did you write it again?)." Ok,
I guess that was a lecture, but whatever.
Anyway, Getting Back To Sleep's special feature is that it has
real-time events. Putting aside the fact that the Z-Machine, Glulx, and
T3 all support real-time events, let us consider what use this game
makes of its real-time events. Exciting thing #1: the game ends after
thirty minutes real time (I assume, anyway -- I didn't feel like
waiting around a half hour to find out if it was lying). Exciting thing
#2: NPCs wander around aimlessly in real-time (difference this makes
compared to them wandering around aimlessly on a game-time timer:
none). Exciting thing #3: Uh .. I guess there's a message that is
printed after N seconds instead of N turns.
In exchange for that, what have we given up? Well, for starters,
there's no undo. Nor is there save and restore. Nor is there even
restart. Combine those with the game's several ways to kill you or
become unwinnable and you have many exciting episodes of quitting the
application and restarting. Syntax-wise, the game is correct that it
supports both >GO DOOR and >GO THROUGH THE DOOR, but then it makes up
for this by failing to support >OUT or >ENTER DOOR. Similarly, >X is a
permitted shortcut for >EXAMINE but not >L for >LOOK; >INV works but >I
does not. One of the benefits of using the standard library is not just
that you don't have to write the standard verbs, but that you are
encouraged to use them -- people are used to certain verbs and
phrasings, and using alternate ones (another example: the game uses
>SAY HI instead of >ASK ROBOT ABOUT MONKEY) just confuses people.
Anyway, putting aside all the parser issues (ok, one more: >X NOTEBOOK
kept resolving to the note I was carrying in my inventory instead of
the notebook I was carrying; no idea why), was this game any good? Enh,
not really. It's another (man, the third) game where you wake up from
cryosleep on a ship in trouble. You wander around and die suddenly a
few times, go through a maze, search absolutely everything, read a
couple notes left behind, and eventually win. The writing is generally
fine, although the "library" writing is less so ("The bobcat has left
via north"). I guess the summary is that the four or six weeks the
author spent on the system could have been better spent on the game.
Which is the usual deal with people writing their own IF systems. Which
is why you don't write your own. End of lecture.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Kurusu City
by Kevin Venzke (TADS)
Well, this is the only game in the comp I couldn't figure out how to
finish. No walkthrough and the hints are inadequate, so it loses a
point for that. I guess I could decompile it, but the storyline doesn't
really inspire me to do so -- the idea seems to me that you're this
annoyingly spunky high-school girl, in a city where the government has
been taken over by robots for the humans' own good. You don't like
that, and being the revolutionary type, have decided to overthrow the
robots. So you run around plotting and skipping school and so on. I
assume the robot conspiracy has something to do with removing all the
men, since out of the seven or eight NPCs in the game, the only one
who's male is your dad, and he spends all his time in his room working
for the robots. The game at least has the sense to realize the PC's a
little annoying ("Julie Agnavo is a skinny blonde girl with a couple of
inches on you. She has pledged loyalty to you at your insistence.") and
that its fascination with teenage girls is a little creepy (you're
attending "Peak of Ripeness Orthodox High School"), but this doesn't
make you less annoying or it less creepy. Anyway, the major issue with
this game isn't the story so much as the puzzles. In a perhaps
realistic depiction of a high school student trying to overthrow the
government, you don't have any idea how to go about it, and the game
fails to provide any real direction even to start looking. With the aid
of the hints I found out to start looking for an ID card, and to try
and get to see somebody to ask for advice, but I don't know that these
ideas would have struck me as important if the hints didn't direct me.
The puzzles become gradually more obscure until I eventually ground
down entirely on the monorail. And, since there's no walkthrough, there
I quit.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A Light's Tale
by vbnz (TADS)
It was hard to know how to relate to this game when playing it, let
alone when trying to review it. On the one hand, it seems hard to take
a game seriously when the main bad guys are are a gang of intelligent
(and I assume human-size) gophers. On the other, the game is filled
with this Matrix-ish look-beyond-surface-appearances stuff that would
be fatal in a comedy. Possibly the best summary of what sort of game it
is is this quote: You turn on the flashlight, producing a small, almost
insignificant beam of light -- yet it is light, and that is more than
enough to repel the darkness. Your flashlight scans and picks up a
gopher, whose name you know to be... BOB! So, er, got me. A Light's
Tale is about the right size, and it has some interesting scenes, but
in general the writing isn't to my taste, and the storyline would need
some serious fleshing out before I could make any sense of it. (Or, er,
I guess the whole thing could be a comedy. But if so I think it's
actually too elaborate to make that work, and gets too
faux-philosophical.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Order
by John Evans (Z-Machine)
Ah, John Evans. He exploded onto the IF scene with Castle Amnos,
described by many as "an interesting fantasy game premise, but with
some nasty bugs -- perhaps you should get some beta-testing." This was
quickly followed with Elements and Hell: A Comedy of Errors, two games
with interesting fantasy premises but in need of beta-testing and a
fuller implementation. Last year he made a stunning break from
tradition with Domicile, a game in need of beta-testing, though with an
interesting fantasy premise, and finally, this year Evans presents
Order, showing he has truly mastered the genre of games with
interesting premises but that are, nevertheless, sadly in need of
beta-testing. This one does have hints and is finishable, at least,
even if major objects are lacking nouns mentioned in the room
description. Anyway, Evans can't take a hint, so I guess the thing for
me to do is give his games lower and lower scores each year from now on
until I give up on them entirely. If you aren't feeling this jaded you
may enjoy bits of Order. Then again, you may not.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
PTBAD 3
by Xorax (TADS)
Almost completely incoherent. I can't remember if Rybread Celsius's
stuff was actually better, or if it was just more of a novelty then. On
the bright side, this game isn't actually offensive.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Realm
by Michael Sheldon (TADS)
You're a knight, somebody stole your sword and "leathery" armor in the
night, the king wants you to bring him the head of a dragon. Enh. The
Realm isn't terrible, but it has nothing really new or original about
it, and a couple of the puzzles are pretty much read-the-author's mind.
The one puzzle that did have a mildly clever twist also had an easier
alternate solution, so I didn't stick around it long enough to see the
clever part. I think Sheldon would be best-advised, in future games, to
try for more complicated puzzles, and to get some beta-testers and see
what they think of the game before releasing it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ruined Robots
by nanag_d (TADS)
A three-quarters-implemented game with some potential to be a fun
puzzle romp -- there are plenty of objects that look like they might be
used in complicated puzzles. In practice, though, there's a weird
hunger daemon that starts and stops seemingly at random, virtually no
clues unless you get exactly what the author is thinking of, some
sections of the game that actually say "sorry, this isn't implemented
yet", and so on. The main saving grace is the walkthrough, but even the
ending that gets you to is not entirely satisfactory.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Typo
by Peter Seebach and Kevin Lynn (Z-Machine)
Oof. Okay, see, based on Janitor, I was assuming Typo would start off
as an innocuous job fiddling with this big machine for Flavorplex, but
then it would swiftly turn into a zany meta-humorrific good time.
Instead, the bulk of the time is spent on the exciting task that is
reading a manual and trying to repair a label-printing machine, and it
is only in an ending cut scene that the game actually has any good
bits. Even the typo-correction which provides a nomimal theme for the
game isn't written by Seebach or Lynn, so it's hard to give much credit
for it. The only explanation I can think of for what the authors were
thinking is that they ran short on time and ended up having to rush the
part they'd expected to take up the majority of the game. But even so,
it's hard to imagine why they thought this game as submitted was going
to be at all, you know, fun.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Who Created That Monster?
by N. B. Horvath (TADS)
The fact that the game opens in the year 2026, at the first (and only)
McDonald's in Baghdad, says pretty much all you need to know about this
game. You run around the city shooting AGT-style terrorists with your
assault rifle and talk to diplomats, all in pursuit of the answer to
your question: which Western nation helped bring Saddam Hussein to
power? Gosh, I wonder. It is slightly to its credit that Who Created
That Monster? generally goes down the absurd path rather than the
heavy-handed satire path, but still, it's mostly throwing softballs to
the choir, as it were. That said, you may find it amusing -- I didn't
really, but I am so burned out on politics at this point that even this
sort of contact is painful.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Zero
by William A. Tilli (TADS)
See, unlike most people, I don't really object to the Amissville stuff
because it's bad. I object because I think it's a pity the authors have
semi-decent ideas but are too lazy, or too scared, to put real effort
in and develop them into something that might have a shot at being
decent. Zero combines a couple good ideas: you play someone
traditionally thought of as being a bad guy; you're cleaning up your
home after a raid instead of raiding a dungeon; you're not the most
powerful adventurer in all the lands, just some guy trying to live up
to his ancestors. Ok, they're not as original as Tilli thinks -- Knight
Orc and Zero Sum Game had this ground covered since a while back.
Still, the principle could have been cool. And it's not like Tilli is
entirely without skill, either: he's got a gift for coining words* and
getting across the flavor of the ill-mannered NPCs. But it's all
sloppy: the puzzles are weak and not well-coded, the implementation is
half-hearted (for instance, nobody seems to respond to the pixie spy),
the endgame is rushed, and even the areas where Tilli should be an
expert are flawed (when Ratfac comes in with a ranseur at his belt,
either Tilli means "rapier" or else Ratfac is a lot taller than I'm
thinking). Anyway, this is overall more of the same from Tilli, so you
already know what you think of it.
*I'm still laughing about "loinens", though it's hard to tell whether
this sort of thing is on purpose or because Tilli can't remember what
it's supposed to be.
--
Dan Shiovitz :: d...@cs.wisc.edu :: http://www.drizzle.com/~dans
"He settled down to dictate a letter to the Consolidated Nailfile and
Eyebrow Tweezer Corporation of Scranton, Pa., which would make them
realize that life is stern and earnest and Nailfile and Eyebrow Tweezer
Corporations are not put in this world for pleasure alone." -PGW
Raymond Martineau
wrote:
>Murder at the Aero Club
>by Penny Wyatt (Z-Machine)
>
> Still, even
>without their help, the mystery is pretty easy to solve (unlike the
>mystery of why nobody at the club seems especially bothered by the dead
>body lying there).
Have you determined the identity about the murder victim (or at least as
much as possible?) The author overdramatised it a bit too much, but it's
more like the people at the club are pleased that the victim is dead. It's
the standard cliche where the victim antagonises everybody, causing the
murder to happen in the first place (and the other people not being duly
affected by it).
>
>The Orion Agenda
>by Ryan Weisenberger (Z-Machine)
>
>, and what is up with primitive cultures having the ability
>to do magic without scientists from all over flocking to be surprised
>at this?)
Magic is "Magic".
For example, pouring an identical liquid into three different bowls will
"magically" change colours as it touches the bowl. (This is really a trick
involving a liquid pH indicator, but it appears to be magic to people who
don't know the secret.)
The same applies to the disappearing stones. The old Orionion knows a
trick that you don't... :)
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Ruined Robots
>by nanag_d (TADS)
>
>A three-quarters-implemented game with some potential to be a fun
>puzzle romp -- there are plenty of objects that look like they might be
>used in complicated puzzles. In practice, though, there's a weird
>hunger daemon that starts and stops seemingly at random,
To the right of the room title, there is a series of strange characters
that indicate the number of energy units left before you starve to death.
Took me a while to realise that but some of the puzzles are way too time
sensitive. (e.g. staying in the elf groove too long causes you to lose 1
point by being bitten by a mosquito, but that can occur before the elf
allows you to proceed.)
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Who Created That Monster?
>by N. B. Horvath (TADS)
>
> That said, you may find it amusing -- I didn't
>really, but I am so burned out on politics at this point that even this
>sort of contact is painful.
Actually, I found the environment more annoying than the politics behind
it. There was a bit too much placement on the fact that what appear to be
random people off the street give you important information on what to do
next.
One of the puzzles would be annoying as well - dropping the assault rifle
in the basement so that you could get it in the French embassy. I always
hate puzzles like that - they're not even close to what should be a valid
solution...
Dan Shiovitz
Raymond Martineau <bk...@ncf.ca> wrote:
>On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 05:56:01 +0000 (UTC), d...@cs.wisc.edu (Dan Shiovitz)
>wrote:
>
>
>>Murder at the Aero Club
>>by Penny Wyatt (Z-Machine)
>>
>> Still, even
>>without their help, the mystery is pretty easy to solve (unlike the
>>mystery of why nobody at the club seems especially bothered by the dead
>>body lying there).
>
>Have you determined the identity about the murder victim (or at least as
>much as possible?) The author overdramatised it a bit too much, but it's
>more like the people at the club are pleased that the victim is dead. It's
>the standard cliche where the victim antagonises everybody, causing the
>murder to happen in the first place (and the other people not being duly
>affected by it).
Yeah, but c'mon. Literally nobody at the club cares (except the
killer, I suppose), and they haven't even bothered to mention it to
everyone. The guy was murdered -- I'd expect *some* interest from the
crowd, even if just the kind you get gawking at a car crash.
>>The Orion Agenda
>>by Ryan Weisenberger (Z-Machine)
>>
>>, and what is up with primitive cultures having the ability
>>to do magic without scientists from all over flocking to be surprised
>>at this?)
>
>Magic is "Magic".
>
>For example, pouring an identical liquid into three different bowls will
>"magically" change colours as it touches the bowl. (This is really a trick
>involving a liquid pH indicator, but it appears to be magic to people who
>don't know the secret.)
>
>The same applies to the disappearing stones. The old Orionion knows a
>trick that you don't... :)
Yeah, see, that's my point -- looking at a magic trick and going "ooh,
magic" is an essentially premodern viewpoint. We like magic shows
today, too, but with the knowledge that they're tricks -- if something
that didn't seem to be a trick happened there'd be scientists all over
it trying to figure out how it worked.
>>Who Created That Monster?
>>by N. B. Horvath (TADS)
[..]
>One of the puzzles would be annoying as well -
>dropping the assault rifle in the basement so that you could get it
>in the French embassy. I always ate puzzles like that - they're not
>even close to what should be a valid solution...
A lot of people seemed to have missed the point on this one to some
extent. It's 1) a fairly subtle political satire in some ways and 2) a
homage to a certain kind of badly-implemented old-school adventure
game (the wandering "terrorists" who vanish when shot are a perfect
example of both points). I think the basement is purposely goofy as a
solution; taking advantage of the game's "poor design".
Michael Chapman Martin
> A lot of people seemed to have missed the point on this one to some
> extent. It's 1) a fairly subtle political satire in some ways
I tried very hard to come up with a way that this could be a subtle
political satire. The best I could come up with is "This is a stereotype
of how stupid Americans view the world, except we will have this viewpoint
*actually be real*." Having the actual statue of Thor in the Norwegian
Embassy was what basically made me write it off, though. I felt like I
was trying to rationalize away not having to hate it. I'm not very good
at that.
If your satire is *so* subtle that it *really is* indististinguishable
from an utterly clueless author, you've failed, in my opinion. I didn't
really find any hint in-game that the author wanted the player to believe
the PC didn't have a perfect grasp of the world he was in. And that means
I'll blame all the stupidity on the author instead of on the naive PC.
I suspect an awful lot of the hostility towards this is probably just
due directly to the PC's nominal motivation -- to discover something that
was common knowledge to anybody even remotely politically aware, regardless
of their opinion on the Iraq war. Actually, any of the three in the past
25 years, come to think of it. Oh yeah. And then it undercuts it. That
fits with the theory I gave up top, but it does make the point of the
exercise even more mysterious.
--Michael
Joao Mendes
"Dan Shiovitz" <d...@cs.wisc.edu> wrote in message
news:cnh3s2$uf0$1...@drizzle.com...
> In article <5janp0pvnrou48sbu...@4ax.com>,
> Raymond Martineau <bk...@ncf.ca> wrote:
> >
> >Have you determined the identity about the murder victim (or at least as
> >much as possible?) The author overdramatised it a bit too much, but it's
> >more like the people at the club are pleased that the victim is dead.
It's
> >the standard cliche where the victim antagonises everybody, causing the
> >murder to happen in the first place (and the other people not being duly
> >affected by it).
>
> Yeah, but c'mon. Literally nobody at the club cares (except the
> killer, I suppose), and they haven't even bothered to mention it to
> everyone. The guy was murdered -- I'd expect *some* interest from the
> crowd, even if just the kind you get gawking at a car crash.
Also, if nobody cares, who the hell called the police in the first place?
Doesn't it strike anyone as odd that a detective arrives at the middle of
nowhere to deal with a murder and there's like nobody around to greet him?
Cheers,
J.
Dan Shiovitz
Michael Chapman Martin <mcma...@Stanford.EDU> wrote:
>Dan Shiovitz <d...@cs.wisc.edu> wrote:
>> A lot of people seemed to have missed the point on this one to some
>> extent. It's 1) a fairly subtle political satire in some ways
>
>I tried very hard to come up with a way that this could be a subtle
>political satire. The best I could come up with is "This is a stereotype
>of how stupid Americans view the world, except we will have this viewpoint
>*actually be real*." Having the actual statue of Thor in the Norwegian
>Embassy was what basically made me write it off, though. I felt like I
>was trying to rationalize away not having to hate it. I'm not very good
>at that.
>I suspect an awful lot of the hostility towards this is probably just
>due directly to the PC's nominal motivation -- to discover something that
>was common knowledge to anybody even remotely politically aware, regardless
>of their opinion on the Iraq war. Actually, any of the three in the past
>25 years, come to think of it. Oh yeah. And then it undercuts it. That
>fits with the theory I gave up top, but it does make the point of the
>exercise even more mysterious.
Yeah, I should expand on my previous comments a little more, I think.
Clearly, the main point of the game was absurdist semi-black humor; I
didn't list it before only because it's obviously a motivation. I'd
also agree that the game as a whole doesn't work particularly well --
like I said in my review, I was feeling pretty burned out on politics
when I played it, and I don't find absurdity to be inherently funny in
large quantities. That said, it's interesting to try and work out what
the author was trying for. I think that you're mostly right that it
was intended as a presentation of a clueless American-centric
viewpoint on the world, but I think the real point is that it's
basically a *concession* to that viewpoint, not a parody.
There's that famous quote from a Bush aide about the "reality-based
community", where the aide says "...We're an empire now, and when we
act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that
reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other
new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will
sort out." To me, WCTM is saying to conservatives "fine, you win,
here's the world how you want it." And for liberals, it's a perfect
encapsulation of their political situation: they go along nodding
their heads, patting themselves on the back for being so
historically aware and knowing all along that it was the US who backed
Saddam -- only to get to get the end of the game and discover they've
been completely outflanked. All their "education" and "diplomacy" and
"reality" is worth exactly squat compared to force and a determined
enough assertion.
The subtlety, then, comes because even though the author's presenting a
viewpoint they dislike but have reluctantly conceded victory to,
they've still fit in satire around the edges. Not the stuff about the
statue of Thor or the dancing diplomat, which are basically using
humor to reinforce the existing social order (they're a backslap to
"ha ha, foreigners are so funny and fundamentally unimportant", even
though nobody takes the presentation as a literal claim about the
other countries), but things like the terrorist, the inflationary
prices, the spy satellites -- in there purposely to undermine the
vision the author created.
So, yeah, when you say
>If your satire is *so* subtle that it *really is* indististinguishable
>from an utterly clueless author, you've failed, in my opinion. I didn't
>really find any hint in-game that the author wanted the player to believe
>the PC didn't have a perfect grasp of the world he was in. And that means
>I'll blame all the stupidity on the author instead of on the naive PC.
I think you're absolutely right -- the PC *does* have a perfect grasp
on the world they're in. The only question left is, if you disagree
with the PC, whose grasp of reality is really more absurd?
>--Michael
Gene Wirchenko
[snip]
>Yeah, see, that's my point -- looking at a magic trick and going "ooh,
>magic" is an essentially premodern viewpoint. We like magic shows
>today, too, but with the knowledge that they're tricks -- if something
>that didn't seem to be a trick happened there'd be scientists all over
>it trying to figure out how it worked.
IOW, they would be trying to figure out how the trick worked.
[snip]
Sincerelky,
Gene Wirchenko
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.