Spring Thing 2012: The Rocket Man from the Sea

This is a review for an entry in the Interactive Fiction Spring Thing competition 2012.


We kick off with a kid left home alone by his parents on an island. This seems to be ploughing very familiar territory: yet another children's adventure in which a kid gets to do grown-up stuff in a world without adults. After some exploring, and some background about a distant war between Earth and Mars, we switch to the kid's playtime fantasy: the island has been invaded by martians and only you can save the day! This follows the tried-and-tested video game formula of an "A-world" and a "B-world" which are in fact the same set of locations, just dressed differently. So the kid's house becomes the "military HQ", an outcrop of rocks becomes the "alien command base". It's cute.  Finally, after the inevitable destruction of the aliens, we get to the meat of the game: the mysterious "rocket man" of the title washes up on the island and asks for the kid's help.

The Rocket Man from the Sea is a hodge-podge of familiar elements, many of them already seen in earlier works of interactive fiction. The kid by himself routine? Seen it already in Grounded In Space. Kid's playtime described as if it was real? See Six. Alien invasion from a kid's point of view? Did it in The Arrival: Attack of the B-Movie Cliches. A writing style designed for tween to young-adult readers? Bought the t-shirt from Aotearoa, The Lost Islands of Alabaz and probably dozens more. I could at this point complain about how the text adventure medium is gradually turning from an experimental interactive art movement into a children's reading comprehension tool, but this seems to be merely reflecting the growing Harry-Potterization of literature in general.


Despite the unoriginality, the assembled second-hand elements all work well together. The opening exploration phase sets up the martian invasion section, which feeds into the arrival of the rocket man seamlessly. There is some perfectly judged writing, especially in some of the descriptions of mundane everyday items during the martian invasion. The simple puzzles during this section are equally well-judged, neither insultingly easy nor too difficult to frustrate the young target audience. 


The moral of the story is not particularly profound, but it doesn't need to me. This is not a game about hitting the player with a sledgehammer to make its point, there is some politics and some subtext, but it stays out of the way.  The realities of interplanetary war would seem strange and far-removed to a kid living on a remote island. It is an exercise left to the player to make the connections with the global conflicts of today.

Spring Thing 2012: The Egg and the Newbie

This is a review for an entry in the Interactive Fiction Spring Thing competition 2012.

This is the first chapter of long alternate-history science fiction saga in which the Tesla Corporation took control of the USA in the early twentieth-century, inventing wireless electricity and teleporation in the process. It's also a chicken farm time management game. These two things do not go together. At all. 

I commend the clever implementation of a Farmville clone as a text adventure, and indeed the author has taken care to provide a neat balance between challenge and accessibility. The player is required to raise $1000 dollars, within a time-limit, through the process of buying chickens and selling their eggs, ensuring supplies of chickenfeed and water are kept topped up while dealing with random coyote attacks, killing your chickens and damaging the fence. Initial playthroughs will invariably lead to failure at the end of the time limit, as veteran text adventurers have been trained to explore all locations thoroughly, examining and experimenting with everything. The time limit ensures that this is entirely the wrong approach. This is not a game designed for completion on the first playthrough, and with some practice you should be able to comfortably find the optimized, streamlined route to success. 

So an interesting coding exercise, which seems to have achieved its goals. But are those goals worthwhile? Is there any reason to want to play a text-based farm-themed Diner Dash? This is a genre that is ideally suited to graphical form. Three mouse-clicks would be sufficient to complete the primary player actions: collecting the eggs from the coop and selling them in the buy/sell room. As a text adventure, this is more than ten individual commands, not including spelling mistakes and incorrectly compass directions. Sure, there is an optional "ZAP" command to jump from one room to another, but it doesn't eliminate the tedious typing that acts as a road-block to the player rather than enhancing the experience. 

Meanwhile, there is this Tesla Corporation thing, presumably the main focus of the "Heartha Saga". They are engaged in some kind of industrial espionage with the rival Tearth Corporation, and have hand-picked you for a dangerous mission that will pit you against a fearsome enemy, your life and your wits will constantly be in peril, friend will turn out be foe and vice versa, all against the backdrop of a stunning alternate world gone mad! Or, they could, you know, just send you to some backwoods chicken farm to sell eggs. This is exactly the wrong way to set up a "Chapter 1" of a long-running saga. As an introductory "teaser trailer", the key highlights of the saga need to be sold to me from the very beginning: Who are the chief protagonists? What is the conflict about? How and why is the player-character important it all? These should be clear from the end of Chapter 1 if the author wants players to look forward to Chapter 2. Instead, its a series of text dumps about Tesla-world, which is then promptly ignored as we go to play Farmville with some technobabble flavour-text for a while, The End.    

Review: Cryptozookeeper by Robb Sherwin

Robb Sherwin is the author of the incredibly gloomy yet compelling superhero tale A CRIMSON SPRING, the ambitious retro-futuristic horror of NECROTIC DRIFT, the oddball sci-fi gumshoe story PANTOMIME, and the twisted semi-pornography of his debut CHICKS DIG JERKS. Playing any two of those reveals a startlingly clear and consistent authorial voice, which is in evidence again in his latest adventure CRYPTOZOOKEEPER.

As a courier of rare/undiscovered animals, you unwittingly become the target of an alien plot. Kidnapped and imprisoned, you make a daring escape with the help of some college friends and the use of a dna-splicing machine. A mysterious agent makes contact. She you access to a dna-splicing machine of your own, and makes a request for you to retrieve as much animal DNA as possible, then build and train a cryptozoological army to take on the aliens.

Downloading the hefty (by text adventure standards) 500MB package gives you a Hugo interpreter (yes, Hugo) and a data file. Load one with the other and you're up and running. Immediately you are greeted by multimedia! There is music! There are pictures! The pictures change! Yes folks, in 2011 we can now replicate what Magnetic Scrolls was doing in 1983. Progress! So, now understanding the reason for the file size, you can crank up the volume and sit back, absorbing some pretty damn good ambient techno beats, some with voice samples. There is a decent number of tracks, ensuring you won't be hearing the same number over and over in one session, and they do provide a great atmosphere that perfectly fits with the world of CRYPTOZOOKEEPER. Yes, you can switch the sound off, but you would be losing a large chunk of the experience without it.

The graphics are incredibly amateurish. That's not a criticism, considering it is amateur i.e. unpaid. Sherwin has righly figured out that he's not going to be competing with MYST in the photo-realism department so has decided to emphasise the deliberately ramshackle homebrew feeling of the production by badly digitising photographs of his friends and family and mashing up pictures off the net. This leads to some golden visual gags. The Beast of Bodmin, for example, is represented by a portrait of an Asian girl (who I assume is an ex-girlfriend) - a non-sequiteur in-joke at her expense that is just mindlessly funny.

Like all his previous games, CRYPTOZOOKEEPER is jam-packed with allusions to pop culture, witty dialogue and a parade of slacker characters. His worlds are dark and unpleasant, yet filled with humor at every turn. His characters feel alive, with a sense that they continue to lead their lives both before and after the events in the game. It feels unlike any other text adventure, as if Sherwin has developed the game while remaining totally isolated from the modern "interactive fiction" community. This means that, for once, you are not a lonely NPC, wandering around an empty unpopulated world, finding scraps of "diaries" to uncover the backstory (because of your amnesia, natch). From the outset, you are meeting PCs, having long conversations (through a somewhat clumsy keyword-based conversation system), and many of these guys will actually join you, accompanying you for long swathes of the adventure. What's more, these characters are pretty dynamic, reacting to, and speaking about, your actions and the events going on around them. This isn't like dumb chatbots, spouting "quips" randomly and irrelevantly, this is actual conversation. Neither is it a glorified "hint system", nobody is talking about how you should be using the green key on the green door, they are far more likely to be insulting each other or the player-character. Yes, these are characters who are not necessarily "united by a common goal", but actually have antagonism towards each other. How often have you ever seen things like this in a text adventure game? It's the total oppposite of the prevalent mode of "PC-Centred" game design, i.e. the world is a static toybox that only comes to life in the presence of the PC, the story progresses only through the action of the PC, and, like Zaphod Beeblebrox, the world only exists for the convenience of the PC. Sure, CRYPTOZOOKEEPER still follows this mode deep underneath, but it does a great job, better than any other text adventure I can think of, at hiding it on the surface.

Gameplay-wise, CRYPTOZOOKEEPER is a bit more traditional. There are puzzles, although only three of them are particularly taxing. One of these, annoyingly, is the very first puzzle in the game. Don't be put off, things get a whole lot better after this. The usual text adventure skills of reading everything carefully and examining everything pay off. Other puzzles can be solved with the use of a new "secondary examine" verb: SCAN. And talking to everybody about everything will pretty much resolve the rest. There are nuisances. Guess-the-verb rears its ugly head from time to time, there are some glaring spelling errors, and an insane bug where you can literally skip an entire imprisonment-and-escape sequence of the game by choosing to walk east to the alien's house instead of northeast the shack. If you're familiar with any of Sherwin's previous games, these kinds of implementation issues will be no surprise, its obviously the aspect this author is least interested in.

I should close by mentioning the mini-game: CRYPTOZOOKEEPER implements an entire Pokemon-style monster-rearing RPG. Create your animals in the splicer, take them to fight in barbaric animal-battles at a local bar, raise their stats, let them rest for a while when their hit points get low, rinse and repeat. What purpose does this serve? Very little. There is one boss-battle where all your level-grinding proves useful, but outside of that is is entirely irrelevant. The battles themselves are hands-off, they play out by themselves without any strategic decisions from you, other than deciding if you want to end the battle every three turns. Why is it here? No idea. But, again, if you're familiar with Sherwin's previous work, you will be used to this kind of nonsensical idiosyncrasy. Think of it as the author's personal stamp of authenticity.

IntroComp 2011: The final verdict

Here is my final summary of the games entered in the Interactive Fiction IntroComp 2011. See the earlier blog posts for the full detailed reviews. I have avoided the Choose-your-own-adventure games as they are a very different medium from text adventures and it would be unfair to compare the two side-by-side. So, in order, from worst to best:

Seasons

1/10

An unmitigated disaster. Author, kill yourself.

Bender

2/10

An unusual puzzle mechanic, but needs a much better "game", and better writing, surrounding it.

Parthenon

2/10

Only gets points because it does its job as a teaser, and I can easily imagine the possibilities of DAY OF THE TENTACLE-style past/present time travel adventure.

The Despondency Index

3/10

Get rid of the pointless coffee fetch-quests and there could be the faint glimmer of something interesting here.

Chunky Blues

3/10

Another unusual puzzle mechanic, but this time with a more interesting setting. Reduce the difficulty, have a bit more forward momentum in the opening, and this could go places.

The Z-Machine Matter

5/10

A step up in class from the entries above, although it still needs a lot of revision to meet its ambition of being a DEADLINE-lite.

Stalling For Time

6/10

An intro that fails to really go anywhere, but the narrative voice is strong enough, and the possibilities of potential future directions for this project are intriguing enough, that I can (just about) give it a pass.

Speculative Fiction

10/10

By far the most confidently designed and written game in the competition. I can imagine something LOST PIG-level emerging from this intro. More please!

IntroComp 2011: The Z-Machine Matter

This is a review for an entry in the Interactive Fiction IntroComp 2011.

A DEADLINE throwback, designed to appeal to Infocom detective-nostalgia geeks: there's been a myserious death at a physics laboratory, the cops have called you in as an insurance detective to investigate if there was anything unnatural going on. There are hints of some cold war espionage, some industrial intrigue, and a cast of characters with dark secrets.

The game of the PDF! By which I mean more effort has been spent on creating the accompanying documentation than on the game itself. It's clear the author loved Infocom's "feelies" back in the day and has set out to create a perfect facsimile of such material for this game. And highly impressive that material is too, down to the "back cover" with ISBN attached. It's just a shame the game itself is so average in comparison.

Most glaringly obvious are the bugs. The gun used in the second murder was in my possession during the crime. The undercover FBI guy had no problem with me rifling through his wardrobe and searching his bags in front of him. Attempting to randomly kiss a strange woman causes her to reply "Maybe we can meet in my bedroom later?" Seriously? Strange design decisions abound: the ridiculous size of my inventory at the end of this intro for example. I had over three pages of objects in my posssession! I am Johnny Dollar, Strongman Detective! There is a guaranteed combinatorial explosion problem here, both for the author and the player. If all these objects dont play any part in the game, they should be defined as scenery, and should certainly not be takeable.

I like developer journals. But they should generally be by experienced developers with a proven track record. Why? I cringe when I see a first-time author enthusiastically announce their first game as the diaries invariably follow the same pattern: "my new game is gonna be the best ever!" - "i'm building a cool website and all kinds of awesome supplements!" - "damn this coding is hard" - "this is taking longer than i planned" - "not feeling too much motivation to continue" - radio silence. I would like to see this project go down a different path, as the central mystery here is very interesting, and the cold war setting is fresh, but I suspect the feedback from this IntroComp may prove to be a morale-killer. I hope not. A heavy round of bug-fixing, beta-testing, and design revisions could really knock this into shape as something worthy of standing alongside the best "modern-era" detective IF (MAKE IT GOOD, SHELTER FROM THE STORM etc).

IntroComp 2011: Stalling for Time

This is a review for an entry in the Interactive Fiction IntroComp 2011.

You drive down the freeway to pick up your uncle, who has a friend in tow, and spend the night at a motel. You wake up to find your vehicle gone! *INTRO ENDS*

I didnt really know what to make of this. Was this introduction merely intended as a preamble before the real action kicks in, or was it an actual taste of the final release's gameplay? If the former, then there is really no conclusion that can be drawn about the final game other than it may have some above-average writing. If the latter, then we could assume it is designed as a lazy road trip where the journey, rather than the destination, is the thing. That is something rarely seen in text adventure format (I can only think of Adam Cadre's INTERSTATE ZERO as anything close) and would certainly be interested in seeing more.

A bug in the game prevented me from talking to the strange Japanese gentleman who was tagging along, and I have no idea if the Jack Kerouac reference early on is supposed to clue me in on something or not, so I would have preferred the intro to last a little longer. Will recovering my lost vehicle the goal of the game? Is it just a side-track? As an intro, it just didnt sell the game as well as it could have.

IntroComp 2011: Speculative Fiction

This is a review for an entry in the Interactive Fiction IntroComp 2011.

This is more like it! After a batch of disappointments we finally hit paydirt. From the opening, this does everything right:

"Babe, I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to cancel dinner. Yeah, I’ve got to stop the boss from being executed."

If that opening sentence doesn't draw you in, nothing will. It follows up with a great subversion of expectations: here you are, stuck in a medieval prison cell, time to escape the room... hold on, EXAMINE ME gives a strange response:

"Right now your body is in the corner, unconscious. You’re wearing your completely awesome purple robe, but your hat got lost in the arrest fiasco. The stupid fat guy searched you and took all your stuff, but maybe there’s something he missed. I don’t know."

Let's try EXAMINE YOU:

"I’m W.D., your familiar, and I’m awesome. Check out these feathers!"

Not only does this cleverly twist your frame-of-reference, it also provides the solution for the first puzzle. Excellent misdirection. Once out of the cell, standards remain high. W.D's super-snarky style is very amusing, examining everything is no chore here. And although I was unable to complete the next getting-some-cash puzzle, I had a very clear *idea* of how to solve it, so I can't blame the game, I didn't need to read the author's mind, it's clearly my own incompetence (specifically my inability to find a fire-source) to blame.

Do I want to see more? Yes, definitely! If the completed game can keep up the level of humor, continue the deft use of first-person perspective, and expand on its apparent critique of capitalism (as evidenced by title, subtitle and the appearance of both a stock market and a bank) we could have a classic on our hands.

IntroComp 2011: Seasons

This is a review for an entry in the Interactive Fiction IntroComp 2011.

SEASONS is the exact opposite of PARTHENON: where the previous game showed a shaky grasp of English, SEASONS has a nice, confident writing style with well-measured sentences. It's easy to read, flows nicely and has a pleasingly poetic touch. Unfortunately, PARTHENON showed some basic technical competence and again, SEASONS is the mirror-opposite: its a mass of "Programming Error"s showing everywhere: even changing locations with a basic compass direction can lead to a series of six "Programming Error"s.

This is something I could fight through, if there was any reason for me to do so:why am I wandering around an overly-dense countryside map, experiencing random nightmares/visions/hallucinations? Why should I pick up these random objects? What does the game want me to do? I did eventually stumble through seemingly a hundred locations onto an NPC that could actually talk. She sent me on a fetch-quest to retrieve her hair-brace. What clues did she give me about which of the hundred locations I needed to revisit to find this needle-in-a-haystack? None at all. Try to talk to her again: "Programming Error". And again. And again. Author: even intros need playtesting before release.

IntroComp 2011: Parthenon

This is a review for an entry in the Interactive Fiction IntroComp 2011.

You're a tourist, wandering around the Parthenon in Greece with your husband. You find an ancient coin, give it a polish and zap! You're not in Athens any more.... Oh wait, you are. But it's ancient Greece! And your husband is lying dead the floor! But don't despair, we can rebuild him, Cue collect-the-pieces plot #33, the three parts of the magic key must be-united etc etc.

This smacks of a game created by a puzzle-adventure fan with enthusiasm and some technical skill, but no real writing prowess. From the outset, I encountered spelling errors (seriously, "hanckerchief"?), punctuation mistakes, incorrect capitalisation, and even strange grammar ("Be sure to remark the majestic walls" - okay, I'll let this pass as it could be an accurate representation of a Greek tourguide with a shaky grap of English as a foreign language). I recommend the author gets a good copy-editor to work with them if they choose to continue the work.

But it does its job as an intro, which the previous reviewed entries have singularly failed to do. You get to explore a few locations in the present which I assume you will explore again in the past during the main portion of the game, you are given a sense of place, a sense of character, a sense of direction, then suddenly this mundane tourist simulator becomes a life-or-death time travel adventure: game on.

IntroComp 2011: The Despondency Index

This is a review for an entry in the Interactive Fiction IntroComp 2011.

A seemingly straight-forward police procedural that follows genre conventions to a tee: opening with a murder-scene, then jumping to the PC examining the evidence in his office. A rudimentary attempt at introducing interactivity to the pre-credits murder does not succeed: "which way does the victim run?" is a pretty meaningless choice that does little to provide any empathy between the player and the victim, either this sequence should be expanded to actually give some hope of survival (with the rug pulled away at the last moment), or it should be straight text.

Once the investigation kicks off though, we are into the real meat of the interaction. What kind of cunning detective tools and tricks will we be using? How will the tense and intricate world of clues and deduction be simulated? By, erm, making a cup of coffee. From a murder in the woods to the PC's Great Coffee Making Adventure in the space of one turn. That's quite a tension-killer right there. For this kind of game to succeed, every action needs to be meaningful, every action needs to relate to the task in hand. You can't afford to dissipate any atmosphere like this, always keep things moving moving moving...

IntroComp2011: Chunky Blues

This is a review for an entry in the Interactive Fiction IntroComp 2011.

1920's-themed detective noir? Okay, that's new. Waking up in a trash can? Interesting. Too drunk to stand up? This seems to be a variation on the Hitch-hiker's Guide To The Galaxy opening puzzle.... but without the analgesic. Taking inventory and examining everything reveals the prime game mechanic: uncovering memories, and 'chunking' (connecting) them to create hypotheses.

Some PONDERing and CHUNKing later, I'm still stuck in the trash can, having discovered my connection to the missing socialite. There seems to be an interesting mystery to solve here, not that I can do anything about it as I'm seemingly stuck in this damn trash can forever! Does the entire game take place here, with me just manipulating memories in my head? That would be unique, original and interesting. Or is this just an overly-difficult roadblock puzzle disastrously placed at the very beginning of the game?

IntroComp2011: Bender

This is a review for an entry in the Interactive Fiction IntroComp 2011.

After an awkwardly written description of the protagonist being shot and the perpetrator running away, you are presented with a Magic Device (some kind of wall-bending green bullet), and explicitly presented with Your First Puzzle: use your magic device to move walls around to block your assailant from reaching the escape jeep before you do.

The major problem here is that too many elements are presented at once. The author wants to do an in medias res action-packed opening, but at the same time wants to introduce a Magic Device with a function and operation unknown to the player, while simultaneously setting up the first puzzle. This is overkill: players really need some hand-holding to get to grips with all this. Throwing them into an uber-complex time-limited puzzle involving shifting geographies and path-finding, before they have even had a chance to examine themselves, check their inventories, experiment with the Magic Device, or get any kind of clue about who the PC or NPC is, is asking too much.

The minor problem is that the map doesn't seem to display correctly in Gargoyle: all the important locations are marked with multi-coloured question marks. Presumably non-ASCII characters are being mangled on this interpreter?

Annual Interactive Fiction Competition 06 Reviews

Presented here are my capsule reviews (all spoiler-free) of the IF Competition 2006 games, for all platforms EXCEPT Inform, Quest, Web and Windows. While there was nothing here in the league of last year's VESPERS and BEYOND, there were less "clinkers" than normal, and a surprising number of decent Adrift entries. So, in reverse order:

PTGOOD (Adrift)

"The objective of the game is to kill Slan Xorax for terrorizing the IF community with terrible games". I assume Slan Xorax is a pseudonym for Sartre Malvolio, who authored this unplayable mess set in a Cancer Centre. Unimplemented objects in descriptions abound, available exits are often not even listed. After putting on a coat and goggles and finding nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, I realized I was wasting precious time that I could have been spending poking myself in the eye with a sharp stick, and quit.

(1/10)

BALLYMUN ADVENTURE (Tads2)

What is created for the classroom should stay in the classroom. "Through the medium of text adventure I hoped to persuade my students to explore their surroundings afresh" says the teacher-author. Yeah right. The idea that teenage boys would suddenly be inspired by even the masterpieces of Infocom, Legend and Magnetic Scrolls is ludicrous. And Ballymun Adventure is no masterpiece. No sir, its a long way from that. About as long as its possible to be, in fact. If the students had to write a book review of Ballymun adventure, "boring as hell" would be the consensus opinion. Wandering around empty school corridors forever would be nobody's idea of "inspiring", least of all teenage boys. Yuck. This is the kind of thing those very students could knock up in half-an-hour in an IT class themselves, with the minimal implementation to match. Could do better.

(1/10)

TENTELLIAN (Java)

The standard IF languages are usually ignored by authors in favour of bespoke systems when they want to do something the existing languages can't do: in this case, there is nothing here that couldn't have been better implemented in Inform, TADS, Adrift or Hugo. As such, its clearly a programming exercise rather than a viable game. As a programming exercise, its functional but lacks a lot of features: no UNDO? No RESTART? As a game, the early stages at least are well-written, logical and error-free. There is a sense of geographical consistency to the generic fantasy-world proceedings. But with so few verbs and nouns actually implemented, there is little impetus to continue: on getting stuck at a blue door and unable to get past (even with hints), I was happy to end the session.

(2/10)

ENTER THE DARK (Alan)

The introductory paragraph (in italics) makes so little grammatical sense it is almost a kind of perverse poetry. Deliberate or not, it does build an atmosphere of fear that nicely suits the creepy graveyard goings-on and gothic ghoulishness that follows. The tension rapidly dissipates as standard IF commands like "X" and "PRY" are not recognized. Enthusiasm builds again upon encountering a strange ghost in the crypt, but disappears immediately as I battled the parser to let me use a crossbow. The walkthru suggests a whole lot more but the game is just too frustrating to persevere with.

(2/10)

THE SISTERS (Adrift)

Okay so waking up from a car crash is not the most original premise - several competition games have done it before. And a mysterious girl causing the crash and then disappearing smacks of Silent Hill. Nonetheless there is enough forward momentum and goal-driven gameplay to keep you at the keyboard. Unfortunately this enthusiasm will be drained by the generally lacklustre implementation. Even the simple task of undoing your seatbelt and getting out of the car becomes a major headache with misleading contradictory descriptions claiming your seatbelt is still attached and unattached. Getting past this stumbling block sadly only leads to another: a guess-the-verb nightmare to stem bloodflow from your head with bandages which even the supplied walkthru doesn't help with.

(2/10)

LAWN OF LOVE (Tads2)

The sight of the words "Santoonie corporation" inspires shudders, but they are soon dispelled with a pleasant enough experience of teenage first-love summer romance. The pace is gentle, the mood is relaxed, the implementation is seemingly acceptable, the writing is fine. However, finding myself stuck at the spa with no apparent exits, I searched in vain for hints or a walkthru, and finding none, I quit. Writing these words several days later, I find almost nothing memorable about the experience.

(3/10)

XEN: THE HUNT (Tads3)

The opening "generic american college campus" setting is instantly off-putting, spending time with white american college kids is unappealing at the best of times. But that is nothing as to what is in store for you when you type FLASHBACK: a back-story of such hideous, ridiculous, stupidity featuring aliens and magic powers that I was convinced the game would be a spoof. It's so long, so detailed, yet so inane and stupid and pointless, it feels like nothing more than the "Xenu" history of Scientology. Sensibly, this embarassment is not dumped on you but hidden behind the optional FLASHBACK command, and if you can ignore it, you are rewarded with the surprisingly strong puzzles, which are far more dynamic and action-oriented than most (in some ways reminiscent of Infocom's Borderzone without the real-time aspect). Author Ian Shlasko injects a sense of urgency to proceedings by framing the game as on "on-the-run" adventure, with omniscient bad guys at every corner. It's a pity, then, that the difficulty level is ramped so high - I had to give up on the train.

(4/10)

THE WUMPUS RUN (Adrift)

Highlights the problem with randomization in IF. While the implementation of this Hunt the Wumpus update is fine, with decent descriptions, an elaborated back story, lots of gadgets to play with, and sensible responses, I fearlessly trekked north expecting a decent hour's entertainment, only to find the sleeping wumpus in the very first room! Okay, so now backtrack one room (expect the big twist any minute...), fire the arrow (still no twist), go back and retrieve the spoils from the dead wumpus and climb the ladder. *** You have won ***. Oh, so no twist. Just Hunt The Wumpus. Was there something more? I never found out, having completed the game almost immediately. So the only impressions I have are of yet-another Hunt The Wumpus game, competently handled but without anything to distinguish it from the crowd, and certainly not in the league of Zarf's similar competition effort HUNTER IN DARKNESS.

(5/10)

A BROKEN MAN (Tads3)

Breaking into a mansion to seek revenge on the terrorist that killed your child. The mansion location is well-designed and feels authentic, the puzzles are pleasingly simple, the writing is straightforward while subtly denoting the PC's state of mind ("the piano sits evilly in the corner"). The lack of objects to interact with is neatly explained with a humorous Zork-referencing scene (one of several Zork references that don't go anywhere). The twist ending is yet another variation on the BLISS (by Cameron Wilkin http://wurb.com/if/game/619 ) formula - but I didnt really buy it - why pick such a wilfully undistinguished and unmemorable book and film as the catalyst of events? Still, its a pretty good attempt, though it doesnt have the zip that somebody like Adam Cadre (whose 9:05 may also have been an influence) could have brought to the same material.

(6/10)

REQUIEM (Adrift)

Elmore Leonard-style gumshoe fiction with an odd supernatural twist. Subverts expectations with the PC's death very early on. The story carries the game, although the constant punctuation problems (e.g. apostrophes appearing at odd places) let it down. The level of "interactivity" is pretty low, essentially compass directions and TALK TO are all that is required, but the tale is nonetheless a good, entertaining one with plenty of twists and turns, a low-brow "page-turner" that will keep you hooked to the end. Multiple endings/death sequences, although the one I managed wrapped up neatly with the opening, it was possibly not the optimal one, as I was still left with no real explanation of the vague "powers" that set everything in motion.

(6/10)

UNAUTHORIZED TERMINATION (Adrift)

Murder on the planet of the robots. Initial doubts about the sparse descriptions and lack of detail are swept away by the sheer level of consistency in the game world. Everything is brief, to-the-point, logical, as you would expect on a planet of robots. All the default responses, descriptions and dialogue are cleverly tailored to role-playing the character of an emotionless "robo-cop". While its blindingly obvious that your superior is somehow involved in a cover-up from the get-go, and the PC is given a surprising amount of leeway given the supposed massive conspiracy, it doesn't detract from the fun of going through the investigative routine and uncovering the pieces of the puzzle bit-by-bit. The conclusion is a little weak, with some rather odd character actions, but overall its a good romp well worth playing - despite some minor intermittent implementation issues.

(6/10)

FLOATPOINT (Glulx)

Sci-fi diplomacy on an alien world, in the typically thorough Emily Short style, though this time with more implementation bugs and rough-around-the-edges lack of polish than usual. The point being made (that there are no "right answers") is done effectively and without preaching, although its rather obvious at the end that your simply choosing from one of nine endings in a 3*3 matrix. Nevertheless the writing and the characters are good enough that you will want to see all nine endings. There is plenty to see and do, all very well described, although a number of loose ends remain (what was the purpose of the dais, the datacompressor, the slot in the portable computer, the shuttle leaving at 9:30?). One point off for not working with Gargoyle - not the fault of the game, but clearly insufficient cross-platform testing was performed.

(7/10)

TALES OF THE TRAVELLING SWORDSMAN (Hugo)

So many puzzles in modern IF are static lock-and-key variations that when something comes along that harks back to the puzzle-style of the Infocom classics it somehow really feels fresh and interesting. Such is the case with TotTS, an old-fashioned fantasy adventure with excellent implementation quality and a variety of very well thought out puzzles. Chasing a girl through multiple locations, setting up barriers and timing your movements to corner her is something innovative and fresh, and is just one example of the level of creativity on display here. The generic "fantasy-land" environment is less innovative and fresh, but is explained in the "twist" ending, which sadly is not as original as it thinks it is - I urge everybody to go and play BLISS by Cameron Wilkin (http://wurb.com/if/game/619) to see how to pull off an ending like that. TotTS is a simple tale, well told.

(7/10)

THE ELYSIUM ENIGMA (Tads3)

Star Trek-type adventure: explore the isolated outpost planet, interact with the locals, maintain the control of the Federation. The game makes full use of clever TADS3 features: an elaborate conversation system (with tons to talk about), a spellchecker (effective - although the correction of WAKE to WADE is annoying considering the ease of putting NPCs into a "sleeping" state), an invisiclues-style hint system etc. Best of all Leela, an excellent NPC who behaves dynamically, independently, responds to all kinds of questions and even fires back with questions of her own, while maintaining her own independent activity and helping and hindering your quest in equal measure. The game has much to explore, and many optional puzzles, providing very high replay value: despite reaching the "winning" ending with 20/30 points, I was very willing to play more for the last lousy (ten) points.

(8/10)

Annual Interactive Fiction Competition 05 Reviews

Three standout entries in this year's competition, one of which deservedly won:

VESPERS is an exceedingly well-crafted darkly satanic tale of murder and mystery in a monastery, in the style of Umberto Eco's NAME OF THE ROSE. Some spot-on phrasing perfectly builds a sense of "voices in your head" leading to temptation, and the ending (one of them at least - there are at least three paths) is fantastic.

BEYOND is an exceptional murdery-mystery with an almost equally wild conclusion. The setting is contemporary (a small Italian town), the conversation system is cunning, the story takes some wild giallo-esque twists and turns as it rattles to its conclusion.

DISTRESS is not quite in the same league, but is an excellent example of the IF subgenre of "interactive OUTER LIMITS episodes". These short sci-fi themed games take generic sci-fi stories and add a big twist ending - the other 2 obvious examples are THE WEAPON and FAILSAFE (play them both if you haven't already!). It can be quite tricky, with its timed puzzles and constant danger of death, but its short enough to be replayed multiple times.

I'm surpised by the high placings of CHANCELLOR (I found it a way-too-difficult conventional fantasy quest), and A NEW LIFE (seems very dull from initial impressions).

Other games failed to have much impact on me (FUTUREGAME made me laugh, once), but I have to say three potential XYZZY-award winners in one competition is not bad going at all.

Annual Interactive Fiction Competition 01 Reviews

What the hell is "interactive fiction"? Remember the classic 80s text adventure Infocom games like Zork? The tradition is alive and well with a dedicated freeware development community running an annual talent contest. I've dredged up my batch of reviews from 2001...

Presented here are reviews of every TADS game entered in this year's comp, in order from worst to best. Overall, there were no classics in this line-up, but then again no clinkers either. Unsurprisingly, the actual winners turned out to be all Inform games.

Kallisti (2/10)
A Galatea-style conversation piece... not being a fan of Galatea, I didn't get much out of this one. I ASKed and TELLed as much as possible but soon ran out of ideas. Didn't give it a high score as this kind of thing can't be hard to implement.

Volcano Isle (2/10)
A white on yellow colour scheme? This author needs help! I hope they didn't decorate their own house... Volcano Isle is not a game I could get into. There's just way too many items lying around, too much mapping & exploration required, too much inventory juggling. In short, too much effort. The appearance of the Zork thief was enough to convince me that this was a strictly old-school adventure, not something I was willing to subject myself to.

Triune (3/10)
Apparently a game with lots of depth, but it's way too hard and unintuitive. There is a huge forest to explore and map (no thanks), and in the middle of it a castle where you receive a quest... to find and capture an unicorn. So I went and captured the unicorn and brought it back to the castle... and got the "losing" ending. Did I do something wrong? I didn't get any prompts to do anything different... The walkthrough indicates there is much, much, more, but I doubt many players are going to get that far, the rest of the game is so well hidden behind obscure puzzles. Not much is implemented in terms of verbs/actions, which hinders the game severely.

Journey from an Islet (5/10)
More of an art-piece than a game, Journey has some nice imagery, excellent HTML-TADS presentation, and... not much more. Its strangely unengaging to play, and the puzzles tend to be very unintuitive. By the end I was simply following the walkthrough. The appearance of some strange red herrings (the sharp rock and the string) left me thinking that perhaps something more was planned?

No Time To Squeal (5/10)
The legacy of Photopia lives on... here we have a game that starts off "in real life", shifts perspectives to different characters, then leaps into a fantasy world... all the while revealing different aspects of a central event. So no marks for originality. But there is one great technical innovation: the game saves the vignette you are currently in to an external file automatically, so when you quit and restart, you restart in the latest vignette, and as a result never need to manually SAVE. While this may not sound extraordinary, experiencing it for the first time is a real thrill. Game-wise, initially it follows the Photopia mould, with not much to do except perform the obvious action. Then suddenly you are presented with puzzles, and sadly they're just too damn hard. What killed the game for me was some bugs with the sword that made the game apparently uncompletable.

Grayscale (5/10)
A virtual-reality themed game.. but its no Matrix... Grayscale seems to be attempting to do something clever (are you playing this game or beta-testing it from the inside?) but unfortunately the implementation quality is not high enough to enable this aspect to come out. There is a surprising number of simple spelling mistakes (unusual for a game obsessed with poetry), puzzles are made much more difficult than they should be because certain actions/verbs are not available, and there is a very frustrating bug with the secret compartment, that almost makes the game uncompletable.

Fusillade (6/10)
Unusual and interesting, Fusillade is innovative in two ways. Firstly, a full midi soundtrack! This really works in adding atmosphere. Secondly, the game mechanics - you are thrown from one vignette to another, with little or no connection between them, and therefore are constantly having to work out who you are, where you are and what you're supposed to be doing (a bit like Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap). Credit to the author for somehow making this style of game interesting and absorbing, even though it seemed to me to be completely random. Perhaps a pattern to it all would have been revealed had I reached the end, unfortunately the game became uncompletable when i got stuck unable to throw rocks in the Doctor Who scenario.

The Cruise (6/10)
Pretty obviously a "my first game" effort, Cruise suffers from all the usual beginner's flaws: inventory limits, bugs (try dropping and picking up the suitcase) and a ridiculous plot ("get the 3 magic crystals hidden on a cruise liner to destroy a demon" or something). But what sets it apart from the more mediocre efforts is the surprising attention to detail (try entering the restaurant wearing a bathing suit), good writing, and puzzles that are actually fun.

The Beetmongers Journal (7/10)
Can't fault the quality of presentation in this one: it makes full use of HTML-TADS, with atmospheric pictures, a nice colour scheme, and generally a professional, polished look and feel. Game-wise, its playable enough, although there were often periods where I was wondering around looking for something to do, and when I did figure out what was next, I found the puzzles a little too difficult for my liking. This is the type of game that wins IFComps, but for me there's just something about the pretentious wordy writing style (that seems to afflict most "serious" IF these days) and the stories-within-stories that annoys me. Probably because its deliberately designed to appeal to the English Literature crowd that dominates the IF scene.

The Coast House (7/10)
A very straight-forward "uncover your ancestor's secrets" type of game that evokes Anchorhead in some respects. It's perfect for the IFComp as it hits just the right level of difficulty, is short enough, and intriguing enough to keep you playing to the end in one sitting. While one or two bugs were present, they didn't detract from the fun-factor. Rather abrupt ending.

A Night Guest (8/10)
Nothing more than an interactive poem... and even then, the interaction is limited, as the poem will remain unchanged whatever actions you perform as a player, all you must do is guess-the-verb in order to get the next verse. However, it must be said that the poem itself is very entertaining (in that old "jolly victorian" style), the woodcut style illustrations are *fantastic*, and the numerous responses to your incorrect commands are very humorous. In fact, it succeeds perfectly in its aim.. If that aim had been more ambitious (a "branching" poem based on the choices made?) this would easily have been a classic.

Annual Interactive Fiction Competition 99 Reviews

Check out http://www.ifcomp.org/ if you're wondering what the hell these reviews are about!

Presented here are my capsule reviews (all spoiler-free) of the IF Competition 99 Inform games. BE WARNED these reviews are not fair, balanced, or impartial (although the scores given are the scores I submitted on my voting form)! They contain plenty of unconstructive criticism and abuse, but I have tried to highlight any good points I could find in even the worst games. So, in reverse order:

Guard Duty
This could’ve been a contender. If the game lived up to the nice in-game instructions and sample transcript. Unfortunately it contains fatal errors, and so becomes unplayable.
(1/10)

LUDITE
There are four rooms in this game, and that’s all I can tell you, because I never figured out how to get out of them. Rybread Celsius’s reputation goes before him. I predicted the way to get out would be unfair and gave up.
(2/10)

Calliope
How much more incestuous can interactive fiction get? A game about writing an IF game. No offence people, but get a life! This is throw-away stuff.
(3/10)

Music Education
The fact that I didn’t like this shows the importance of a good hook. Something exciting needs to happen to grab your attention, or the writing needs to be really catchy, or the genre needs to be clearly defined in an opening scene. Music Education has none of these things. There is a reasonably well implemented college campus here. It is large, and may require mapping. There is no obvious goal, other than to practice your instrument. In a word: boring. IF authors, stick with this rule: make genre-specific games. Real-world scenarios are dull.
(3/10)

Pass the Bananas
An implementation of some form of puzzle that I didn’t understand. I managed to win by accident, but on the way I noticed a plentiful supply of bugs and some nice humorous touches.
(3/10)

Lomalow
You wake from an accident (how original) and find yourself in the woods. You stumble across a log cabin, and a couple who share a secret about a special type of phoenix. Apparently, the goal of the game is to ask the two characters about everything. Lomalow won’t maintain your interest long enough to reach that goal. The whole phoenix story is just too silly to take seriously, and there are annoying puzzles that veer towards guess-the-verb.
(4/10)

Beat the Devil
As soon as you load this up, you notice a rogue room description appearing before the intro. This does note bode well. In fact, it holds together pretty well although there are no ground-breaking ideas here. In fact, it is all eerily reminiscent of Perditon’s Flames: you have ended up in Hell, and need to outwit the Seven Deadly Sins (Sins Against Mimesis, anyone?). The big idea is that Hell has been transformed into the Mall of Hell. Well implemented and playable enough.
(5/10)

Outsided
Another one of those ‘eccentric’ entries in Comp99. The author has made the curious design decision of having very early line breaks. Whether the spelling mistakes and strange implementation issues are genuine design decisions or just mistakes is another question. Still, it certainly grabs your attention in the opening (how to prevent your own suicide?). I couldn’t answer that question, so the game ended very early for me. Certainly original, and an arresting writing style.
(5/10)

Death to My Enemies
Interactive silliness: you need to use the objects at your disposal to defeat the evil Dr. Whatsisname. Very neatly coded, with responses for almost all actions.
(6/10)

For A Change
An intriguing story, and an instant hook in the form of the strange language used. Its difficult to give any kind of summary because I never figured out quite what it was all about. I would certainly have played on beyond the judging time, but got bogged down in trying to interact with the NPC.
(6/10)

Hunter in Darkness
Oh no, a cave crawl! In fact, Hunter in Darkness is a technically accomplished, and probably very accurate, simulation of the real pot-holing experience. The author has put a lot of effort into making the cave areas sound different from each other, but he doesn’t quite pull it off. There is one stand-out scene where you are stuck fast, can’t move forward and can’t move back. The tension is palpable, and all the more so because the author has made it interactive rather than just a big chunk of text. However, the fact is, caving is boring. At the end of the day, this is just a big maze. As a result, I soon became impatient, and the sheer thought of having to map was enough for me to end my session.
(6/10)

Spodgeville Murphy and the Jewelled Eye of Wossname
The whole thing is set up nicely as an Indiana Jones-cum-Zork style thingy. The FULL score option is a great read. And then: the first puzzle. I simply couldn’t solve it. The Help system had no on-line hints either. That spelled the end of my session. A shame, because it looked great fun.
(6/10)

Chicks Dig Jerks
What the hell? Starting off like one of those ‘adult interactive fiction’ episodes (pulling in a night club), but then completely switching tone and turning into some kind of cyberpunk horror thriller thing, Chicks Dig Jerks is riddled with bugs, has a bizarre multiple choice conversation system, and makes no sense whatsoever. But despite all this, its one of the most memorable games in the competition. The writing has a real edge to it, and for some reason I was reminded of the book SnowCrash (don’t know why). A must-play, you’ll either love it or hate it.
(7/10)

Only After Dark
Woohoo, a genre game! My favourite, too: horror! Beware the moon, we got ourselves some werewolves here! As soon as I saw the words ‘Day One’, I was thinking Anchorhead 2, and I couldn’t wait to get stuck in. The opening scene certainly delivered, and then the dramatic second scene topped that. And suddenly, I was stuck. I simply couldn’t figure out a way to survive. If only a Help system was included. With a walkthrough, this will surely be a definite must-play.
(7/10)

Winter Wonderland
Yet another entry in the long line of children’s fairytale/ folklore adaptations. The excellent prologue sets things up very nicely, although the ugly ASCII art doesn’t help matters (what are those things? Snowflakes?). The writing is high class, as is the implementation. The puzzles are at a manageable level usually, and when they begin to get difficult, there is a full Help system available. Its not quite original enough for my liking, basically taking Firebird and just substituting a few winter-themed puzzles for Firebird’s ones.
(7/10)

Halothane
Well, this is high quality stuff. The Photopian influences are clear to see, and the implementation is pretty good for a game of this size (it is larger than most games in Comp99). Its not up to Photopia standards however, firstly because it uses the cliched "you fall asleep and find yourself... somewhere else" plot formula, and secondly because the Help system is not helpful enough (I eventually got stuck in a scenario that the Help system doesn’t even mention).
(8/10)

Jacks or Better to Murder, Aces to Win
Very much in the Varicella mould, Jacks is a tale of political intrigue in an unspecified location and era. You are an unspecified character, attempting to hold on to your position from unspecified competitors. The whole thing zips along at a steady pace, puzzles being just the right level of difficulty, the writing generally excellent, and a faultless implementation. Great stuff.
(9/10)