Andrew's reviews (summary & awards)
Andrew Krywaniuk
With my reviews, I have given a score on a scale of 1-10 and a grading on
the basis of 4 factors (novelty, interest, fun, polish). Although these 4
ratings have an influence on the final score, I prefer not to use any kind
of rigid formula. Basically, if I like the game then it gets a good score.
If I don't like it, it gets a bad score. (So if there's one category that
counts more than the others, it's "fun".) Any game that I enjoyed playing is
likely to get at least a 5.
Was there a game that I enjoyed more than last year's winner, Slouching
Towards Bedlam? In my mind, yes. Was there a game that I would pick over
last year's runner up, Risorgimento Represso? Perhaps not.
Regarding the novelty score, I have to admit a certain bias. Sci-fi and
fantasy games abound in IF, and they win the comp year after year. I don't
give a game a high novelty score just because it is set on a different
planet or in a different dimension, simply because it has been done so many
times before. I also tend to reserve the highest novelty scores for
non-fantasy games that tackle areas not covered by other IF. I someone ever
writes a compelling sports game, I may consider that novel. Or maybe a
Seinfeld-style game about nothing.
Andrew's IF Comp 2004 Awards
---
Best Game: Square Circle
Runner Up: Sting of the Wasp
Most Potential: The Great Xavio
Runner Up: Gamlet
Best Puzzles: Square Circle
Runner Up: All Things Devours
Most Novel: Goose, Egg, Badger: An Eccentric Girl's Birthday
Runner Up: Gamlet
Best Story: Sting of the Wasp
Runner Up: Trading Punches
Best Prose: Gamlet
Runner Up: The Great Xavio
Most Polished: Goose, Egg, Badger: An Eccentric Girl's Birthday
Runner Up: The Orion Agenda
Most Intriguing PC: Bellclap
Runner Up: Gamlet
Best NPCs: The Great Xavio
Runner Up: The Orion Agenda
And finally...
Most Surprising: All Things Devours
Runner Up: Splashdown
(These were the entries where my first impression was negative, but the game
turned out to be quite a pleasant surprise.)
I found myself playing the games mostly in order of interest (by title),
although I did try to bounce around between the various interpreters.
Actually, you really can't judge a game by its name, since many of the
better games came near the end.
And did I mention that annotated transcripts are available for any author
who wants them? Just e-mail me with your request (and mind the spam filter).
As for the languages... as usual, most of the better games are written in
Z-Code. The Tads3 games were also of generally good quality. The authors who
chose Adrift, Alan, or home-grown parsers were duly punished. (Why do you
inflict such pain on yourselves and me?) Then there was the phenomenon of
the Tads games. The Tads interpreter that comes with the comp package (HTML
Tads) has the most godawful default colour scheme. Most of the games are
completely unplayable unless you change it. I don't know exactly how much
control a Tads author has over the colour scheme of his game, but I do
wonder who chose that scheme in the first place.
And one final comment... what is with the IF community's obsession with
elementals? At least four games in the comp made use of the
earth/water/air/fire elements.
Summary of ratings:
Highly recommended
---
10: Square Circle
10: Sting of the Wasp
9: The Orion Agenda
9: All Things Devours
8: Gamlet
8: MingSheng
8: Blue Chairs
Also recommended
---
x: Goose, Egg, Badger: An Eccentric Girl's Birthday
x: Bellclap
Worth a try
---
7: Splashdown
7: Trading Punches
7: The Great Xavio
7: EAS3: Luminous Horizon
6: Magocracy
6: Identity
6: Kurusu City
5: I Must Play
5: The Big Scoop
5: Typo!
5: Chronicle Play Torn
5: A Light's Tale
5: Escape from Auriga (disqualified)
Not recommended
---
4: Blink
4: The Realm
4: Order
4: Who Created That Monster
3: Murder at the Aero Club
3: Redeye
3: A Day in the Life of a Superhero
3: Stack Overflow
2: Ninja
2: Blue Sky
2: Zero One (01)
2: Zero
2: Ruined Robots
1: Die Vollkommene Masse (withdrawn)
1: ptbad3.gam
Greg Boettcher
> Then there was the phenomenon of
> the Tads games. The Tads interpreter that comes with the comp package (HTML
> Tads) has the most godawful default colour scheme. Most of the games are
> completely unplayable unless you change it. I don't know exactly how much
> control a Tads author has over the colour scheme of his game, but I do
> wonder who chose that scheme in the first place.
What do the default TADS colors look like to you? It's black text on
white background for me.
Greg
Katzy
Greg Boettcher wrote in message ...
You can change the colors in HTML Tads: Edit - Options - Customize theme -
colors, though it might not work out everywhere... In DOS you can use the
TADS Runtime Color Setup - trcolor.exe - from Michael J. Roberts.
Greetz, Katzy.
Andrew Krywaniuk
> You can change the colors in HTML Tads: Edit - Options - Customize theme -
> colors, though it might not work out everywhere... In DOS you can use the
> TADS Runtime Color Setup - trcolor.exe - from Michael J. Roberts.
I know how to customize the colour scheme (and did so). I just wondered who
chose the defaults (multimedia theme). They didn't look on any game I
played, and in fact the text was usually unreadable (a lot of bright colours
with low contrast).
Andrew
Greg Boettcher
> You can change the colors in HTML Tads
Yes, I know. I was wondering whether Andrew thinks black on white is
godawful, or whether something weird is going on with his interpreter.
Not that I meant to make a big issue of it, and not that I'm the best
person to fix any such problems, but I was just curious.
Greg
Papillon
Still confused - every tads game you played had weird colors? Or just a few
of them where the author had some strange ideas of what was pretty?
Do you or do you not get the standard black test white background when you
open the average gam?
---
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Sophie Fruehling
>Do you or do you not get the standard black test white background when you
>open the average gam?
I don't. I've recently come to the conclusion that the reason for that
must be that the Tads terp remembers the old settings when you install
a new version. I'd always thought it was strange that the default
colours were black on orange. ;)
--
Sophie Frühling
"El arte no viste pantalones."
-- Rubén Darío
Andrew Krywaniuk
few
> of them where the author had some strange ideas of what was pretty?
>
> Do you or do you not get the standard black test white background when you
> open the average gam?
Nope... I get something called "multimedia theme" which is a blue background
with white text and a green status bar. Text I type is in purple (that's the
really unreadable part), and additional status windows (in some games) were
also purple.
Actually, once I changed it to a different shade of purple, I can read it a
lot better. But I thought this was the default since I reinstalled all the
terps for the comp. I guess Sophie must be right that the upgrade process
remembers the themes from earlier versions.
Andrew