ISSUE #23 - December 29, 2000
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The |___/ociety for the |_|romotion of |_|_|dventure \___|ames.
ISSUE # 23 -- 2000 IF Competition Special
Edited by Paul O'Brian (obrian SP@G colorado.edu)
December 29, 2000
SPAG Website: http://www.sparkynet.com/spag
SPAG #23 is copyright (c) 2000 by Paul O'Brian.
Authors of reviews and articles retain the rights to their contributions.
All email addresses are spamblocked -- replace the name of our magazine
with the traditional 'at' sign.
REVIEWS IN THIS ISSUE -----------------------------------------------------
Ad Verbum
And The Waves Choke The Wind
At Wit's End
Being Andrew Plotkin
The Big Mama
Desert Heat
Dinner With Andre
The Djinni Chronicles
The End Means Escape
Guess The Verb!
Kaged
Masquerade
Metamorphoses
My Angel
Nevermore
1-2-3
Planet Of The Infinite Minds
Prodly The Puffin
Rameses
Shade
Transfer
YAGWAD
SPECIFICS
=========
Shade
EDITORIAL------------------------------------------------------------------
I've been spending a little more time on ifMUD lately, and recently one
of the denizens there asked me a question: "Why does SPAG have an annual
competition issue?" I'm still turning this question over in my mind. Of
course, there's an obvious, easy answer: tradition. SPAG had extremely
close ties to the comp in its first few years, because the founder and
then-editor of SPAG, Kevin "Whizzard" Wilson, was also the guy who *ran*
the competition. It was only natural that the zine celebrate the comp
with reviews, author interviews, in-depth analyses (precursor to the
modern SPAG Specifics) and such. Since then, SPAG has chronicled the
comp each year as a matter of standard practice.
Still, tradition alone isn't a satisfactory answer to the question.
After all, the zine and the comp are run by different people now. Too,
competition reviews are hardly in short supply. In fact, reviewing comp
games has become so de rigeur that by the time the comp issue of SPAG
comes out, the community has already been treated to opinions from
dozens of different comp reviewers, myself included. This is, of course,
a great thing (as it would be if non-comp games got the same treatment),
but it does tend to call into question the usefulness of an annual SPAG
full of comp reviews.
However, after giving it some thought, I believe there are several
points in favor of an annual comp issue. One, SPAG solicits reviews that
go into greater depth than the majority of the treatments that appear on
rec.games.int-fiction. Looking through the reviews collected on Stephen
Granade's site at http://interactfiction.about.com reveals that many
consist of just a few sentences, transcribed notes, fragmentary
thoughts, or offhand reactions; many also include spoilers, which make
them unfriendly to people who haven't yet played the game. As the number
of comp games increases, so too does this tendency toward brevity and
skimming. SPAG reviews, on the other hand, try for a bit more cohesion,
a bit more depth, and work hard to avoid spoilers. Even the comp reviews
reprinted from rgif are selected with these qualities in mind. Including
these reprints allows SPAG to feature a selection from some of the best
reviews to appear on the newsgroups in the post-comp review glut.
Reviews are chosen for their insight into particular points, their
humor, or sometimes their sheer enthusiasm for a game that may have been
overlooked by the majority of other respondents.
It's important to me, though, that the comp issue not be dominated by
these reprints -- I've always tried to keep the ratio of new reviews to
reprints at least one to one, if not greater. In fact, I believe that
original content is another good reason for a SPAG comp issue. The
majority of comp reviews come in a massive deluge the day after the comp
ends, and I think there's a value to comp reviews that are written after
that initial flood, and that perhaps even respond to the points raised
by some of those early assessments. Of course, this idea is predicated
on people actually *writing* these reviews, and though fewer people seem
to be drawn to this type of assignment, the output of those few can be
quite valuable. This issue's original reviews were provided by Mark
Musante, Duncan Stevens, and Tina Sikorski. Tina's reviews in particular
are in a format which differs a bit from the traditional SPAG review --
she assigns and explains letter grades for Writing, Puzzles, Plot, NPCs,
Technical skill, and a final factor called "Tilt", which functions
similar to the wildcard points in regular SPAG scores. In addition, she
provides an overall grade and the score she submitted for the game.
Though these reviews aren't SPAG's usual style, I found their
postdiluvian perspective intriguing, and have included a healthy sample.
One last justification: the SPAG comp issue has always contained more
than just reviews. As in previous years, we've interviewed the authors
of particularly successful comp games -- this time around we've got
interviews with Ian Finley, Emily Short, and J. Robinson Wheeler,
authors of the first, second, and third place comp games, respectively.
All three of these authors took the time to give long and thoughtful
answers to SPAG's questions, and their thoughts are likely to be
interesting even to those who are a bit weary of comp game reviews.
In the end, I've decided that the annual comp issue of SPAG is a
worthwhile endeavour after all, but there are ways to make it even
better. For next year's comp issue, I'll be soliciting creative ideas
for comp-oriented material to stand alongside the reviews. This could be
anything from authors' notes to humor pieces to essays looking at the
patterns created by the comp games as a whole. The future of the comp
issue, and the future of SPAG in general, is in the hands of its
contributors as much as mine. I'm optimistic that the energy and
creativity of the IF community will keep that future a bright one.
NEWS ----------------------------------------------------------------------
COMPETITION RESULTS
There's been a general consensus that the 2000 IF competition was one of
the best ever -- not only were a record number of games entered, but an
impressive number of those were significant achievements. As usual, we
all owe a debt of gratitude to organizer Stephen Granade and vote-
counter Mark Musante. This issue is full of reviews that examine the
comp games in depth, but for posterity's sake, here are the final
results:
1 Kaged Ian Finley
2 Metamorphoses Emily Short
3 Being Andrew Plotkin J. Robinson Wheeler
4 Ad Verbum Nick Montfort
5 Transfer Tod Levi
6 My Angel Jon Ingold
7 Nevermore Nate Cull
8 Masquerade Kathleen M. Fischer
9 YAGWAD John Kean aka Digby McWiggle
10 Shade Andrew Plotkin
11 Guess the Verb! Leonard Richardson
12 Letters from Home Roger Firth
13 Rameses Stephen Bond
14 The Djinni Chronicles J. D. Berry
15 The Best Man Rob Menke
16 And the Waves Choke the Wind Gunther Schmidl
17 At Wit's End Mike J. Sousa
18 Dinner with Andre Liza Daly
19 Planet of the Infinite Minds Alfredo Garcia
20 The Big Mama Brendan Barnwell
21 The End Means Escape Stephen Kodat
22 Punk Points Jim Munroe
23 A Crimson Spring Robb Sherwin
Enlisted G. F. Berry
25 Futz Mutz Tim Simmons
26 Return to Zork: Another Story Stefano Canali
27 Unnkulia X Valentine Kopteltsev
28 Desert Heat Papillon
29 Got ID? Marc Valhara
30 Castle Amnos John Evans
31 The Masque of the Last Faeries Ian R Ball
32 The Pickpocket Alex Weldon
33 The Trip Cameron Wilkin
34 Happy Ever After Robert M. Camisa
35 Prodly the Puffin Craig Timpany & Jim Crawford
36 Withdrawal Symptoms Niclas Carlsson
37 Aftermath Graham Somerville
38 The Clock Cleopatra Kozlowski
39 Wrecked Campbell Wild
40 Threading the Labyrinth Kevin F. Doughty
41 VOID: CORPORATION Jonathan Lim
42 1-2-3... Chris Mudd
43 Escape from Crulistan Alan Smithee
44 Stupid Kittens Pollyanna Huffington
45 Marooned Bruce Davis
46 On the Other Side Antonio Márquez Marín
47 Jarod's Journey Tim Emmerich
48 Infil-traitor Chris Charla
49 Comp00ter Game Brendan Barnwell
50 Little Billy Okey Ikeako
51 Asendent Sourdoh Farenheit & Kelvin Flatbred
52 What-IF? David Ledgard
53 Breaking the Code Gunther Schmidl
NEW GAMES
Even though the competition is over, the flow of new games has not
stopped! Among the new arrivals are another fiendish Andy Phillips
puzzler, an innovative storytelling experiment from the 6th place author
in this year's comp, and the first game (to my knowledge) using the SUDS
development environment.
* The MONDAY Adventure by Mikel Rice
(http://www.geocities.com/mondayadv/mdayndex.html)
* Heroine's Mantle by Andy Phillips
* Hortulus by Florian Edelbauer (a game in German, available at
http://www.textadventures.de/hortulus/hortulus.html)
* FailSafe by Jon Ingold
* Snow Night by Chuck Smith
(http://www.ksu.edu/wwparent/story/nature/)
SO FIND
A new website by the name of ifFINDER has recently appeared at
http://www.corknut.org/ifFinder/. This site catalogs a collection of IF-
related pages, sorting them by category and offering a search engine for
those more specific requests. There are currently 109 pages indexed
there, and the site offers a submission form if you know of a site that
should be on there but isn't.
INFOCOM POSTMORTEM
It's been 11 years since the last Infocom text adventure, and in that
time there has been no definitive resource chronicling the rise and fall
of the most important company in Interactive Fiction history -- until
now. A group of students from MIT, the same university that spawned the
original group of Imps, has released a paper entitled "Down From the Top
of Its Game: The Story of Infocom, Inc." Their conclusion: "Infocom did
not fail simply because it decided to shift its focus to business
software... Behind the scenes, the transition created a litany of
problems that hurt both the games and the business divisions of the
company. Combined with some bad luck, these problems -- not simply the
development of Cornerstone -- ultimately led to Infocom’s downfall." The
paper is available at http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/infocom/
UPTHUMB AND I
Have you ever wanted to endorse a game personally, but not felt up to
writing a review? Brendan Barnwell has the solution for you. It's called
Upthumb, a web site at http://members.aol.com/brenbarn/upthumb.html.
This site allows visitors to register their appreciation for IF games
and be added to a list of that game's endorsers.
REVIEWERS? ANYONE? ANYONE? BUELLER?
SPAG lives or dies by the contributions you provide to it. If you want
to review a game, but aren't sure which one to pick, consider choosing a
candidate from the following list of my deep desires:
SPAG 10 MOST WANTED LIST
========================
1. The Best Man
2. Dangerous Curves
3. FailSafe
4. Gateway 2: Homeworld
5. Heroine's Mantle
6. Letters From Home
7. The MONDAY Adventure
8. The Mulldoon Legacy
9. Snow Night
10. T-Zero
INTERVIEWS-----------------------------------------------------------------
In addition to the innumerable hours they poured into their comp
entries, the top three authors in this year's IF competition were kind
enough to spend some time answering SPAG's questions about their lives,
their work, and their opinions. J. Robinson Wheeler even took those
questions and changed the whole thing from an interview to... something
slightly different. You'll see when we get there. SPAG is proud to
present the following interviews with Ian Finley, Emily Short, and J.
Robinson Wheeler.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Ian Finley, author of "Kaged"-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
SPAG: When SPAG last spoke with you, you were a 17-year-old high school
student living in Bountiful, Utah. Aside from being three years older,
what else has changed in your life between now and then?
IF: Certainly not my maturity level ;) I'm currently studying acting at
the University of Utah with vague hopes of going on to study directing
at Columbia or NYU, and have graduated from a Byronic gay teen to full
fledged glamour boy and queer activist. My focus lately has been on
performance, including a series of original performance art pieces done
as benefit for the Utah Gay and Lesbian Community Center, as well as
playing the Logician in a production of Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" that's
going to tour California in February. Unfortunately neither acting nor
IF quite pays the rent (let alone the tuition) so I've also been
teaching at the university's Theatre Conservatory during the summers for
the past couple of years, which has been incredibly rewarding.
SPAG: Do you do any other kinds of writing besides IF?
IF: Most of my writing lately has been for the stage (unsurprising,
given the focus of my current studies). In the past three years I've
written several plays and other theatrical pieces that have been
performed around Salt Lake in different venues as I've slowly crept up
the ladder towards competent writing.
SPAG: What's your assessment of the current shape of IF?
IF: Multifaceted. It's rare to find a "niche market" that has something
for everyone. More than ever before, I think IF has broadened its scope
and appeal; producing works ranging from comedy to tragedy, puzzle-based
to puzzle-less, massive to miniature. Authors are beginning to see just
how much this medium can accomplish (and becoming more aware of its
weaknesses) and pushing the boundaries of that. This is an exciting time
to be involved with the IF community.
SPAG: You've been a perennial entrant to the IF competition. Now that
you've won, what's next? Do you plan to write any more IF, and if so, do
you think you'll submit it to the comp?
IF: Good question. The reason I enter games in the competition is for
the promise of response: I'm an actor, I need direct response to my
craft to really feel it's working. On stage that's easy, (are they
laughing? are they crying? are they cringing?) but with IF you have to
hope and pray that if someone responds they'll be gracious enough to
tell you. The competition greatly increases that chance. At the same
time, part of the purpose of the comp is to encourage new authors, not
glorify old ones, so I am wary of entering again.
SPAG: Last year, you chose to enter anonymously (in fact, to enter twice
under two different pseudonyms!) This year, you entered under your own
name. What was your rationale for that decision?
IF: Last year I didn't want people to see the name Ian Finley and think
"Oh, this will be like Babel" and be utterly disappointed or confused by
Exhibition. I also wanted Exhibition to stand or fall on its own merit,
as opposed to people thinking they SHOULD like it because they enjoyed
Babel. On the other hand, I entered Beal St. anonymously for very
different reasons: I wasn't at all sure I wanted my name associated with
it at all! If Adam Cadre and several others on the MUD hadn't figured me
out that game might very well have gone unclaimed by any author to this
day!
Why then did I enter Kaged under my own name? Because I wanted it to get
noticed. ;) People have certain natural feelings going into a work by an
author they know: I sit down to open a volume of Camus in a totally
different mindset than when I settle in to read Oscar Wilde or Jane
Austen. This is neither good nor bad, just different. Repeatedly, I'd
seen with "Hunter, In Darkness" in '99 the remark that if players had
known it was Zarf they would have rated it higher, not just *because* it
was Zarf but because they would then trust the author enough to take
certain risks with him. Instead of "I'm in a maze, I'll quit playing
now," players said they'd be more inclined to think, "This author
wouldn't put this maze here without a reason, I'll keep playing." So, I
figured this time around, since part of my overall concept was to appeal
to as broad a base of players as possible, I'd submit under my own name.
I can promise though that any games I do enter in the future will be
under various cryptic pseudonyms.
SPAG: What gave you the idea for Kaged?
IF: As always happens with me, several different images came together in
a sort of stew. The original idea came from reading some very clever,
very short horror stories, all with one neat little twist and wondering
how many times I could twist a plot, lie to the PC in some way, and
still get away with it. Then I saw an amazing production of Kafka's
"Metamorphosis" at the Lab Theatre here in Salt Lake. That same week I
started studying the German expressionist silent films, most notably the
classic "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari." I began wondering how an
expressionistic world-view wedded with Kafka's dark, to the point,
bureaucratic style might work for IF. The visual style of "Cabinet,"
filled with monstrously skewed perspectives and slanting, terribly acute
angles, was one of its most memorable devices, so I began wondering how
I could adapt that to non-visual IF. As a result, the descriptions of
almost all the rooms in Kaged mention their odd angles, acute corners,
and lack of perpendicular stability. After brewing for a bit, these
random images crystallized into the backbone of Kaged. Interestingly
enough, though many reviewers have likened the game world to 1984 or
Brave New World, I have never actually read anything by Orwell or Huxley
(I'm behind, I know, I know) and indeed if I had I may well have been
too daunted or swayed by their worlds to attempt to create my own
dystopia!
SPAG: Some people have noted that Kaged is a more traditional IF game,
and wondered if that's why it placed ahead of more experimental works
like Rameses and My Angel. Did you set out to give Kaged a broad appeal,
or was its form dictated by its content?
IF: There's some truth behind both statements, but my return to a more
traditional form was largely an intentional move to appeal to a broad
audience. After Exhibition, which I felt accomplished the goals I had
set out for it, I felt slightly guilty that I had somehow let the IF
world down, after the popular success of Babel. Moreover, both
download.com and AOL, which have distributed tens of thousands of copies
of Babel, both refused to distribute Exhibition, apparently having no
category it fit into. Add to that a seeming trend towards more
completely puzzle-based games that's started to mirror the recent growth
in puzzle-less games and which seems popular among many people on the
newsgroup. For all these reasons, I made a little deal with myself,
saying: "I'll alternate. For each experimental game I write I'll write a
more traditional game with a broader appeal." I figured in this way I
could reach audiences at both ends of the spectrum at one point or
another, produce "games" which wider distribution mechanisms like
download.com might be interested in (thus bringing more people into the
IF community), and still have an opportunity to write experimental,
story-oriented works, which are my biggest interest in the area of IF
today. Sure, it could be said why don't I try to integrate both elements
into one game, and I'm working on that (and I hope Kaged has at least a
few unique, somewhat experimental elements to it) but I've not quite
reached that level of proficiency yet. However, now that I have written
a game that seems to have won the popular vote, I do intend on focusing
my energies more towards experimental forms, like Exhibition and like
this year's very unique and laudable experimental entries like Rameses
and My Angel.
SPAG: Of all the conversation systems on display in the comp, the one in
Kaged was arguably the least interactive: the player simply types "TALK
TO " and the game dictates the dialogue from there on. What were
the advantages and disadvantages of using this method?
IF: This is owed entirely to The Last Express, the finest piece of
interactive storytelling I've ever seen. NPC interaction has always
baffled me, and one of my primary efforts in writing IF has been finding
ways to sidestep the issue. Babel was written to have no NPCs at all the
character could interact with; Exhibition was written about themes
isolation and the impossibility of communication at least in part to
justify the inability to talk with the NPCs in the gallery. Oh, I'd
tried other ways. The first season of Vivaldi, a massive IF epic that I
started right after Babel and has gone down unforeseen and interesting
paths since then, involved a NPC that responded with the usual ask/tell
system. After coding responses on some seventy-five topics that varied
with the given situation, I realized that writing NPCs in this way
wasn't going to work (the fact that Emily Short somehow made it work is
why I consider Galatea to be one of the true landmark games of modern
IF). So, after tearing my hair out and attempting to program menu-based
conversations for Kaged, I played The Last Express and hit upon the most
elegant solution. If the PC is a well defined character, as I was hoping
Aackmann would be, then in any given situation the plot will dictate
what he is going to say if he chooses to talk. Of course, this required
some puppeteering from behind the scenes and led to some slightly
artificial almost-cut-scenes at some major plot points, but I felt that
on the whole it allowed me to keep things under control without
overloading my programming skills or utterly breaking mimesis. It was a
good compromise for this game and may be something I return to,
depending on its suitability, for other works in the future.
SPAG: Speaking more generally, what are some of your thoughts on
balancing the need for interactivity with the need for telling a story?
IF: It's damn hard. ;) As a storyteller, I feel that I have to remain in
control a great deal for the story to come through and I think that the
best "story" games from this years comp (BAP, Rameses, etc.) were all
fairly tightly controlled. Possibly the greatest "story" game of all
time, Photopia, was a very controlled game, but I think there are ways
of offering interactivity in other ways that don't necessarily
relinquish that control. Level of detail is one of these for me.
Essentially every object in Kaged is described, including the walls,
floor and ceiling of every room, and down to the moss of the tiles in
the showers in the bathroom. Several objects, and every single actor,
has several different descriptions, based on when you look at them. Of
course, there's always room for more detail, but the more you can add,
the more time you're willing to put into that step the richer the world
becomes and the more apparently interactive. There are scenes in Kaged
where you're forced to stand about for several turns, but I felt if I
could at least offer lots of different things to look at and poke at the
more engaged the player would be. I don't think however there's any
"right" balance of interactivity to story, there are just ratios that
are more suitable and less suitable for what you're trying to convey and
the audience you're trying to convey it to.
SPAG: What did you think about this year's competition? Any favorite
games?
IF: SPLENDID competition. It was terrifying to see so many wonderful
games. Shade, Rameses, Ad Verbum, My Angel, Masquerade; these were all
fine and memorable games that have definitely earned a place on my hard
drive. Above all though, I must say that Being Andrew Plotkin (which I
waited for with great excitement since first seeing the title in an
e-mail sent to all the authors) and Metamorphoses (which I waited for
with even greater excitement since Emily first declined to test Kaged
because she was putting together something of her own for the comp)
especially charmed me and I'm honored to share the top rankings with
them.
SPAG: Any advice you'd care to offer for prospective competition
entrants?
IF: Beta-test! I know this sounds like old hat to everyone by now, but
testing really is what makes a game successful. And I'm not just talking
about cleaning up bugs here, but also cleaning up text and design
errors. Hoooo boy, you should have seen Kaged (or any of my games) on
their first drafts. Doubt you'd even recognize them. Get testers. Get
LOTS of them (I think I sent inquiries off to about twenty people
initially this year). Spend time with them, a period of time at least
half as long as the time it took you to write the game, if not an equal
period. Kaged took two months of steady work to program and another two
months of steady work to test.
And be gracious. These people are doing a tremendous job for you,
absolutely for free, while trying to juggle lives of their own. These
are the people who can really "make" your game and they deserve respect
and gratuitous thanks. ;)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-Emily Short, author of "Metamorphoses"-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
SPAG: For starters, could you tell us a little about yourself? Who are
you, what do you do for a living, and so forth?
ES: I'm a PhD student in Classics, which means that I have a teaching
assistantship and go to classes. Whether or not this counts as doing
something for a living is open to question.
I also travel as much as I can, write fiction and nonfiction, teach a
course in writing for home-schooled high school students, collect
Requiem masses on CD, read the occasional romance, cook the occasional
elaborate dinner. I frequently develop passionate fascinations with
topics that have nothing to do with Greek, much to the frustration of my
advisors: being an undergraduate was more fun. The world is an intensely
interesting place and I would like to see as much of it as possible from
as many angles as possible.
SPAG: How did you first become introduced to IF?
ES: My mother has held various computing jobs since the early 80s, and I
have dim childhood recollections of watching her play Adventure and
Zork, and then a bit later of trying my own hand at Infocom games. I was
really fascinated by Deadline despite the fact that I had no idea what
was going on or what I was supposed to be doing. Enchanter was another
favorite of mine. I don't think I completely solved one on my own until
Plundered Hearts, though. I even started (in BASIC, heaven help us, with
the most primitive conception of a parser imaginable) a game called
'RingQuest,' about which the less said, the better. I was twelve, so
there may be some excuse.
Then Infocom went under and I kind of figured that was that. I didn't
hear about Inform or the new community or r*if until 1996 or 97, when a
college friend of mine who knew about my old fondness for Infocom games
introduced me to Curses. At which point it became clear that I had to
learn the language and do one of these things myself.
SPAG: So far, you've created a game with a very deeply implemented
character (Galatea) and a game with very deeply implemented objects
(Metamorphoses.) What is it about this kind of depth that interests you?
ES: I'm not very interested in the kind of game that consists chiefly of
a series of puzzles with single solutions. (Especially if the puzzles
are hard. At Wit's End is a perfect example: it's probably quite well
done and very appealing to certain people, but it turned me off
completely as soon as I realized how it worked. I play IF more for
atmosphere and story than for the sake of enjoying the frustration
factor.)
Better, in my opinion, to set up a system with a set of rules that the
player can learn and then manipulate in various ways to achieve various
goals. In Galatea, there's not even a set problem -- you decide what you
want to try to do. Metamorphoses is a lot closer to being a puzzle game,
but the simulationist element means (I hope) that the player will feel
as though the solutions are a seamless expression of the possibilities
inherent in the world.
I think this issue first came into my consciousness when I played Spider
and Web. There's a two-stage process: figure out how the stuff you have
works, and then come up with ways to use that knowledge. The experience,
it seemed to me, was a lot more satisfying than your average get-thing,
use-thing puzzle, no matter how trickily disguised.
Ultimately I'd like my work to be effective as toy (richly implemented
and fun to play with), as game (actions lead to progress towards a
goal), and as story (actions fit naturally into the scheme of a plot).
SPAG: You've become known as someone whose games are liable to feature a
large number of endings. Tell us a bit about why you employ this
strategy.
ES: I'm not committed to writing only games where there are multiple
endings; it just happens that both of the games I've released so far
have seemed to demand it. In the case of Galatea, I wanted to keep the
player a little off-balance all the time; I wanted to make a character
who seemed a bit unpredictable. I particularly did *not* want there to
be one "answer" or "explanation" that could be spoiled for people in
advance. And I also wanted the process of discovery to be guided by what
the player was interested in. It's a game designed to be as responsive
as possible to the player's personal approach.
With Metamorphoses I had a plot reason rather than a mechanical reason.
The development of the PC is from slavery to freedom, from restriction
to choice. So I wanted the freedom she gains to be reflected in the
game-play. There's been some discussion, but I think this is the right
choice: different players have liked different endings for the story.
SPAG: What was your process for writing Metamorphoses? I'm wondering
things like how long it took, what inspired it, how you went about
coding it, and the like.
ES: I talk about this a little bit more on my web page
(emshort.home.mindspring.com/games.htm), but the basic gist is that I
began it as a coding exercise for a materials-simulation library I was
writing, and then it developed a life of its own.
How long did it take? I spent a lot of time during the summer of 1999
writing stuff that eventually found its way into the game -- room
descriptions, objects, most of the puzzles -- as part of a much larger
and more ambitious game under the working title "Practical Alchemy." The
thematic material was broader -- Hermeticism, Kabbalism, Della Porta's
natural magic, some strands of Chinese elemental theory -- a wide range
of the stuff that fed into the alchemical tradition, rather than the
simplified Neoplatonism of the game as it now stands. It was also going
to have an extremely complicated Inquisitor NPC; a demon-possessed cat;
divisible liquids and measurement puzzles; a 'copy' machine that would
let you replicate any of your inventory... it was a mess. There were
some bits for which the coding was cool: I had a mystical book coded up
to produce randomized Latin gibberish that would still consistently scan
as dactylic hexameter, for instance -- but WHO WAS GOING TO NOTICE? So I
threw it out. And I did have the object-copying machine worked out, with
a cute little copy room for it to go in. Along with the parse_name code
that distinguished formerly identical objects one of which had been
modified in size or material.
So all that was there, sitting around, as of last November or so, and I
shelved it to work on other projects.
When it came time for comp registration I signed up without being
certain which of several things-in-progress I'd wind up entering. Around
the beginning of September, I came to the conclusion that none of my
other projects was worthy of notice yet, that I liked the setting for
this game better than anything else I had going on, and that I could
make something workable out of it if I stripped the design down to
basics. From there in it was a month of focused work. I cut extensively,
designed the last couple of puzzles, reshaped the plot, and, as They
say, raced like the wind to finish on time.
The coding is not exotic. Everything difficult -- timed burn routines,
divisible liquids, copied objects, breakables that leave behind shards
sharp enough to be used to cut other objects -- all that got edited out
of this game. I have a class of Changeable objects that have properties
representing their materials and shapes and sizes. Verbs are reworked to
behave appropriately, so that for instance hitting a glass object with a
hard object breaks the glass -- there are some minor complexities
involving containers, but mostly this was all just handled with a lot of
switch statements. And then the puzzles check for the presence of the
right physical characteristics. So instead of coding up a condition as
if (noun == persian_rug) { blah blah blah; }
I have
if (noun.size > 2 && noun.shape == PLANAR && noun.mater == CLOTH)
{ blah blah blah; }
Then I did a lot of tinkering around -- and had my beta testers do a lot
of tinkering around -- trying to come up with interactions I hadn't
thought of yet. It didn't occur to me that someone might try to hang
cloth objects on the hook, obvious though that is, until it showed up in
my sister's transcript.
This pretty much describes how I seem to write IF in general. First I
get some hair-brained idea for a system (conversation, material
interactions); in the process of coding it up, an appropriate story and
setting suggest themselves; then I play with the game a lot, and have
other people play with it, in order to find the places where the
implementation needs to be deepened. Of the changes I made between
versions of Galatea, a couple stemmed from extra ideas I'd had in the
meantime, but the majority came from looking at people's transcripts and
listening to their complaints about what they wanted to be able to do.
SPAG: Can you talk a bit about the relationship between the PC and her
Master in Metamorphoses?
ES: It's not quite as monolithically dark as some people seem to
believe: he's somewhere between adoptive father, teacher, and
slave-driver. He doesn't hate her; he just considers his ultimate goal
more important than her comfort or his own, which means that he has to
push her harder than is humane. And so far she hasn't done a very good
job of standing up for herself -- *and* she's rather intrigued by this
strange stuff she's involved in, isolating and difficult and painful
though it sometimes is.
SPAG: Do you plan to write more IF in the future?
ES: I am writing more IF currently.
SPAG: What did you think about this year's competition? Any favorite
games?
ES: Kaged, Shade, Being Andrew Plotkin, and Masquerade. BAP and Shade
both earned points for producing a strong personal response: BAP was the
funniest game I've played in a long time, and Shade the scariest. And
Kaged and Masquerade were both engrossing, Masquerade because I wanted
to find out what happened in the plot and Kaged because the atmosphere
was so effective.
I share the general opinion that the competition was a strong one this
year, though there were also some things that I think should've been
left in the oven a little longer. That's always the case, though.
SPAG: Any advice you'd care to offer for prospective competition
entrants?
ES: Don't submit a game that's not ready. If you can't tell whether it's
half-baked or not, get beta-testers with some experience with IF.
(Showing it to three of your closest friends doesn't help if they don't
know what the state of the art looks like.) This is obvious advice, but
I think it's important.
SPAG: Finally, you have a reputation as a passionate advocate of cheese.
Is there anything you'd like to tell us about what drives this passion
of yours? Are you planning to write the definitive cheese game?
ES: Cheese is a glorious thing. All dairy products partake partially of
this glory, but cheese stands at the apex. For those who are interested,
I have a cheese-centric ratings/review page at
emshort.home.mindspring.com/cheese.htm.
If you look at that page, though, you'll note that there's a sad dearth
of games that explore the pleasure and wonder of cheese in all its
varieties. I'd like to write such a game, but I alone cannot be a
sufficient advocate. Which is why we need a CheeseComp in the very near
future.
-=-=-=J. Robinson Wheeler, author of "Being Andrew Plotkin"-=-=-=
We sent our SPAG correspondent-at-large, Snappy Von Beakerhead, to meet
up with IF Competition winner Celie Paradis -- or rather, J. Robinson
Wheeler. His previous IF release was the comedy 1998 Competition entry
"Four in One," a game about the Marx Brothers set in the glory days of
the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio. His entry this year, "Being Andrew
Plotkin," another movie-related comedy, placed third and garnered
positive reviews, including a few raves.
Von Beakerhead writes: "I met up with J. Robinson Wheeler, or Rob as he
is familiarly known, in the upstairs section of a coffee house in
Austin, Texas. He arrived about fifteen minutes late, wearing blue
jeans, a blue button-collar shirt covered by a worn flannel overshirt
(in a third shade of blue), and a blue fedora. He made polite apologies
about traffic, and as we chatted he sipped alternately on a pint glass
of coffee with milk and sugar and a pint glass of ice water.
"When we started, he seemed moody, as if the world were weighing down on
him, and he rarely made eye contact. As we talked, he seemed to
brighten. When I asked about his upcoming TADS game, he lit up. I talked
with him about 'Being Andrew Plotkin,' about this upcoming full-scale
text adventure, and about what he sees for IF's future."
SPAG: For starters, could you tell us a little about yourself? Who are
you, what do you do for a living, and so forth?
Rob: (laughs) These are actually the kinds of questions I have the most
trouble with. The normal ones -- "So, what do you do?" "How are you
today?"
SPAG: Why is it a problem for you?
Rob: I think it's that I have to gauge who I'm talking to because
there's a number of ways I could answer, from superficially to very
personally.
SPAG: Well, feel free to answer however you like.
Rob: I grew up in Austin, got a bachelor's degree from Stanford, pursued
and then dropped out of graduate film studies at USC, where I also
studied music. I was a cartoonist for a while, and a screenwriter, then
I worked as a sound mixer for independent films, and as a freelance Web
designer. I'm currently unemployed. My main activities this year have
been directing and editing a movie and writing IF. How's that?
SPAG: Fine. How did you first become introduced to IF?
Rob: When I was in fifth grade, which was 1980-81, I had a friend named
Mike Benedict. One day, Mike started raving to me about this "adventure
game" called Zork. Our fathers were both professors in the astronomy
department at UT-Austin, and so we'd walk over there after school, log
into the VAX computer, and go to the games section. Later they took the
games off the university computers because people were abusing the
system resources. But before that, they had "Advent" and "Zork," as well
as ones that are now lost to the mists of time -- one called "Haunt,"
another one called "Aardvark."
SPAG: I think "Aardvark" is on the gmd archive.
Rob: Yeah, I downloaded it recently and sent it to my brother, who was
obsessed with that game for a while. So anyway, after that I discovered
there was a BBS [bulletin board service] in Austin called the Black Box,
and they had Infocom games on-line. You could dial up and play. I
remember playing "Starcross" on that, until we abused it so much they
took the games off. (laughs) Then we used to get Infocom games for
Christmas and birthdays and stuff. And from those earliest times, I
tried writing my own text adventures using BASIC.
SPAG: Did you finish any of them?
Rob: Only one, and it was an end-of-year project for a Latin I class in
7th grade. You wandered around ancient Pompeii and typed Latin
vocabulary as commands. The teacher was impressed, since she'd never
seen anything like it before.
SPAG: So let's cut to the present. You just placed third in the 2000
Comp with "Being Andrew Plotkin." How does that make you feel?
Rob: Terrific.
SPAG: So you're content, or would you rather have placed even higher
than that?
Rob: I'm content. Third place actually feels pretty good. "Kaged" and
"Metamorphoses" were great entries. I still get to be interviewed by
SPAG, so it's all good.
SPAG: You've mentioned that you used some specific techniques to
simulate the Zarfian mode, and also that you employed a different
writing style for each viewpoint character. Can you go into a bit more
detail about how you achieved these effects?
Rob: I'm a little unclear on what you mean by "the Zarfian mode."
SPAG: What I mean is, a Zarfian atmosphere to the game.
Rob: Well, that effect was mostly achieved by cribbing bits of Zarf's
actual writing and sticking it into the game at selected points. The
game starts out in kind of style-neutral mode, with nothing particularly
Zarfian going on. The first hint of it is when you start to move the
file cabinet, and you get a little wisp of cool air -- an effect
borrowed from the beginning of "So Far." I wanted people to think, hmm,
obviously we're about to enter a Zarfian world, the same way you are led
into the strange other worlds of "So Far" from a fairly mundane starting
location. The next thing was to write a very detailed description of the
weird tunnel that you enter. I was trying to describe the tunnel that
was used in the "Being John Malkovich" movie, but with Zarf's diligence
to detail. Evocative adjectives, active verbs. I spent a while writing
that one description. I like the reference to sharkskin that it uses --
it's slick and smooth in one direction and resists any movement against
the grain. I think that it's a metaphor for the way that the game
railroads the player along and doesn't give any rewards for straying off
the track. The game doesn't go anywhere but forward.
SPAG: Did you really mean it that way when you wrote the tunnel room
description, or are you making that up in hindsight?
Rob: I think I meant it but I didn't know it until later. I often find
that there's a part of my brain that's smarter about making connections
than my conscious mind is.
SPAG: About the different viewpoint characters --
Rob: Oh right. Well, it's not true that I used a completely different
writing style for each character viewpoint. The writing style was
basically the same for the Valerie and Peter characters, but being
different people, they would see things differently.
SPAG: For example?
Rob: Oh, for example -- the window in the file room. Peter sees it as a
"measly window letting in one tiny square of sunlight," as if it's this
pathetic thing that aggravates him. It does so little to help brighten
the confines of the room, that it might as well not be there. Valerie
thinks the window gives the room -- which she sees in a positive way,
because it's so tidy -- a sense of openness. She thinks it's a bonus.
SPAG: Okay, but when the player character is Zarf --
Rob: When the player character is Zarf, I decided to have some fun. How
would Zarf see the world? And when I say Zarf, I kind of mean the
mythological Zarf.
SPAG: (interrupting) Who is the mythological Zarf?
Rob: Well, I think it mostly comes from "So Far," which was such a
surreal journey. You get the idea of a Zarfian landscape from there. And
when Zarf writes this game, which is so provocative, and then refuses to
explain what it means at all, that enigmatic silence seems Zarfian. So
the mythological Zarf stems first from this notion of "Zarfian-ness." We
collectively created the mythological Zarf as an attempt to fill in the
blanks. I guess. By his silence he leaves it up to our imaginations, and
we're an imaginative group.
SPAG: The IF community is.
Rob: Yeah. So I thought the mythos was a fun idea. How would this
mythical Zarf see the world? What would be inside his head? The building
blocks that created the real Zarf's creative output. As if to say, he's
written this stuff because it's inside his head. And he puts a lot of
detailed descriptions into his writing because that's how he sees the
world. So that's what my fictional Zarf does. If I hadn't done that,
people might have said, "Aw, I was hoping to see what the world looks
like through Zarf's eyes." A lot of people noted that the
world-through-Zarf's eyes was one of the things that made them laugh out
loud in the game. It played directly to the Zarf mythos that we're all
carrying around despite ourselves -- those of us who have played his
games or have interacted with him on ifMUD, anyway -- and kind of nailed
it. It wasn't even exactly in Zarf's style, but the excessive attention
to detail and use of adjectives was enough of a nod for people to get
the joke immediately. I think it's cool that we have a guy like Zarf in
the community, a guy who has this funny reputation, a sort of public
image that's a shared, tongue-in-cheek joke. Zarf plays along with it;
we all do.
SPAG: BAP is full of allusions and tiny homages. Can you mention a few
that some players might have missed?
Rob: Whew. Let's see. The first ones that come to mind are ones that
people probably did catch. The dinner that Zarf is cooking in his
kitchen is from his 1998 Xyzzy Awards acceptance speech. He had nothing
to say, so he gave a recipe, and at the end he said we'd "better
remember all that, because it's the solution to the endgame puzzle in
next year's game." I couldn't work it into the endgame of BAP because of
the plot structure, but it would have been a double or maybe triple joke
if I had.
SPAG: I think people probably caught that one.
Rob: Well, let me try to get more obscure, then. In the game's opening
text, there's a reference to a "bizarre interview with Human Resources"
-- which was an allusion to "Human Resource Stories," the infamous game
from Comp98, as if you got this file room job by having *that* be your
interview. It mentions that the character Peter entered a previous comp
and came in 16th -- which is an oblique "Four in One" reference.
Melvin's last name, Prufrock, comes from the name of the detective in
the first Choose Your Own Adventure book that I read, "Who Killed
Harlowe Thrombey?" I think it was the ninth one in the series, and you
were Inspector Prufrock. I might be wrong about that, but I think that's
the memory I summoned when I was trying to think of a funny name.
SPAG: Okay, that is definitely obscure. But it's distantly related to
IF, so it counts.
Rob: People might not know about the Zarf Classified/Declassified jokes.
One is that the word "zarf" means a type of cup holder, which is what's
in the Classified folder. The other is that there was this government
document about something called "Zarf" which was stamped "Declassified"
-- meaning only that the existence of some secret government project
code-named "Zarf" was allowed to be known about, not the actual project
itself. So, the code word "Zarf" was moved to "declassified" status.
Zarf had a scan of this on his web page, but lost it in a disk crash,
and unfortunately no one had a backup. I always thought that was sad, so
I resuscitated it for the game. I could go on, if you want more
references.
SPAG: Maybe just a couple more.
Rob: There are others that don't relate to IF at all. If you try to
taste the secret door, it tastes like snozzberries. Which is a "Willy
Wonka" reference. Peter's middle name, "Danielson," is the name of the
female lead in the movie I'm making. For the name "Zefferelli" I was
thinking of the film director who did "Romeo and Juliet" and "Hamlet."
In the endgame, Melvin brandishes these razor claws, which is obviously
a reference to the superhero Wolverine -- but I was also thinking about
Freddy Kreuger from the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies, who had razor
blade fingers and would always end the movie by chasing the heroes
through a twisty dream landscape.
SPAG: Hard on the heels of the competition ending, you announced that
you're in the testing phase of a massive TADS game called "First Things
First." Tell us a little about this game.
Rob: Aha. Well, this is actually the first real IF project I started
writing when I discovered TADS and the IF newsgroups in 1996. All those
years, following that Latin Adventure game, I'd had an itch to write IF.
I don't know why it was there, because it was a strange impulse. Just
this itch I couldn't scratch. "I want to write a text adventure game."
Always kind of there, especially if I had an empty Saturday afternoon or
something. Not to play IF, but to write one. Then my brother bought TADS
-- it was shareware then -- and when I looked at it, I could instantly
understand the language. Suddenly, I was free to unlock my imagination,
because TADS just made perfect sense to me, unlike the other adventure
game languages I'd looked at in those long intervening years. My brother
and I both sat down to test out TADS. He wrote a one-room, one-puzzle
game in about two days. I wrote a few rooms, then some more rooms, then
some more rooms, and then found myself coming up with plot and puzzles.
A few weeks later, he wondered when I'd be done. I told him just another
week or so, but the thing kept growing. Now, four years later, it's
finally almost done.
SPAG: Okay, that's good, but what I really meant was: what is the story?
What's the game about?
Rob: Oops. It's a time travel story. The game is set in basically one
location, outside the PC's house. The PC is a time travel buff who's
always going to the library to read about it, about time travel. When
the story starts, you're coming home one night and discover you've
forgotten your keys and are locked out of your own house. How will you
get in? In the course of wandering around trying to solve this most
basic of IF puzzles, the locked door, the entire plot unfolds, taking
you to the same physical location in five different eras -- twenty years
ago, ten years ago, the present, ten years ahead, and twenty years
ahead. And the future doesn't look as rosy as you might have hoped.
Maybe there's something you can do about it. Or maybe not. Am I spoiling
it?
SPAG: If you stop there, probably not.
Rob: Okay, good. Anyway, the people that are testing it seem to be
enjoying it for the right reasons. I think it'll justify the work went
into it, and I'm really looking forward to having it off my plate.
Finally! Done! I'll do a little dance when I finally release it,
sometime early in 2001 I guess.
SPAG: Are you planning a post-comp update to BAP, and if so, do you
foresee any significant changes to the game beyond bugfixes?
Rob: Actually, I'm not planning a post-comp update to BAP. It was sort
of part of the game that I would take a month to write it, and then I
would be done with it. The bugs that are in it, I knew about them before
I submitted it to the Comp, but they didn't seem essential to fix. The
game kind of works anyway. BAP was never intended to be note-perfect. I
think I just want to let the Comp version stand as the one and only
official release.
SPAG: Each of your newsgroup posts ends with a web address for something
called "The Krone Experiment." What is this?
Rob: This is the digital video movie I'm producing and directing, one
with an interesting pedigree. It's an adaptation of a science thriller
novel that my Dad, J. Craig Wheeler, wrote. It came out in 1986 and then
in paperback in 1988, and sold fairly well both here and in the UK and
Japan. Since my Dad's an astrophysicist, he paid careful attention to
the science of the science fiction. We collaborated on the screenplay a
few years ago, just after I left the graduate film program at USC. We
sold it to a producer, then the rights reverted back to us. I decided
that I wanted to make the movie myself rather than keep trying to get it
produced by Hollywood. It's coming together well, and everyone involved
is kind of excited, kind of confident that we might have a hit
independent movie on our hands. We'll see. I don't want to get my hopes
up falsely, but there is kind of a vibe.
SPAG: Do you plan to write more IF in the future?
Rob: Definitely. I kind of have to wait for the good ideas to hit me.
There is another work in progress, a collaboration, but it's been top
secret. I just learned that another IF author is working on a similar
game, which is a bummer -- I had always intended to resume work on it
after FTF was released. But there's also a new piece I just started
cooking up a week ago. Maybe it'll end up being my Comp entry next year,
because I can already tell it's going to be slow to develop.
SPAG: Are you going to stick to comedy, or are you planning more serious
works?
Rob: Well, FTF isn't exactly a comedy. It starts out in a lighthearted
mood, that sort of general Infocom style, and then gets darker as the
story progresses. I think it might get too dark, though. I guess I'm
going to keep searching for just the right balance, because that's the
most satisfying for both the author and the player.
SPAG: What did you think about this year's competition? Any favorite
games?
Rob: My three favorites, the ones I voted for Miss Congeniality, were
"Dinner With Andre," "Shade," and "Rameses." After I read all the
reviews, I played a few more games, and I was definitely impressed with
"My Angel." I think it was a great step forward in storytelling IF as
opposed to puzzle IF. I liked "Kaged," too, which I hadn't played before
the judging was over. It gives me a good idea of what I might have to
come up with if I want to place higher than 3rd next time.
SPAG: Is that your goal?
Rob: I would like to place first in the Comp someday, yes. Not just to
have done that, but for the satisfaction of having written an excellent
IF game.
SPAG: What do you see as the future of the IF medium, and what's your
place in it going to be?
Rob: I'm intrigued that there's now the ability to integrate multimedia
into IF with the standard languages and tools, but that not very much
experimenting has been done yet. There were also these teasing
developments this year, what with the notion that there might be a
market for text games on mobile phones and such. I actually had a dream
one night, last year I think, where I foresaw a commercial future for
IF. I flipped open a Wired magazine in the dream, and saw this elegant
advertisement for an IF company. They were marketing IF the way
champagne is marketed, or any luxury item, as this high quality product
for discerning tastes. Not as a broad appeal, but as a niche market, one
with snob appeal. I think that might be one strategy to use if one were
going to try to sell IF on a regular basis. Then again, it was just a
dream. Maybe I ate some cold pizza before going to sleep, and that's all
it was. But if it did go that way, I would love to work for that
company. I'd love for there to be a business model that would work,
where IF authors could at least make some good money on the side even if
it can't ever be their sole income. I don't think it would work if it
were a real company with a corporate headquarters, renting office space,
with all of that overhead. I think it should be a virtual company, an
organized version of the creative anarchy that we've already got in the
community. With elegant advertising in Wired. How we'd pay for the ads,
I have no idea.
SPAG: Any advice you'd care to offer for prospective competition
entrants?
Rob: Let me see if I can think of something non-generic to say. Like,
besides "Test, test, test your games, give yourselves enough time to
finish," blah blah blah. Here's what I did. I wrote a Comp game,
submitted it, and saw how it did, which was middling. I determined to do
better the next time, so I listened to the reviews my game got. I also
listened to the reviews the top games got. I played the top games. I
then sat out for a year, and just watched the Comp play out from the
sidelines. I read all of the discussions, again looked at how things
did, the way that judges approach games, the way they're often
short-tempered but will walk a mile with you if you give them what
they're hungry for. There's no formula, but you can kind of suss out the
rules of the game. This is assuming you're playing to win, but it's not
crass to do that. It means you're endeavoring to write something good.
By that I mean, there's no way to cheat. You either write something
people like or you don't. And I don't think it's pandering to the lowest
common denominator to please a large number of the judges with your
work, because most of the judges are smart, creative people with good
taste. That's what's been attractive to me about the IF community. So
anyway, I guess my advice is, play to win. Enter the best you've got in
you to enter. Swing for the fences. Oh, and be original.
SPAG: Or be Zarf.
Rob: Right, if you can't be original, be someone else. It worked for me.
KEY TO SCORES AND REVIEWS--------------------------------------------------
Consider the following review header:
NAME: Cutthroats
AUTHOR: Infocom
EMAIL: ???
DATE: September 1984
PARSER: Infocom Standard
SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters
AVAILABILITY: LTOI 2
URL: Not available.
When submitting reviews: Try to fill in as much of this info as you can.
If you choose, you may also provide scores for the games you review, as
explained in the SPAG FAQ. The scores will be used in the ratings
section. Authors may not rate or review their own games.
More elaborate descriptions of the rating and scoring systems may be found
in the FAQ and in issue #9 of SPAG, which should be available at:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de:/if-archive/magazines/SPAG/
and at http://www.sparkynet.com/spag
REVIEWS -------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Mark J Musante
NAME: Ad Verbum
AUTHOR: Nick Montfort
EMAIL: nickm SP@G nickm.com
DATE: October 2000
PARSER: Inform
SUPPORTS: Z-Machine interpreters
AVAILABILITY: GMD
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/adverbum.z5
VERSION: Release 1 / Serial number 000925
One line summary: Nord and Bert with attitude.
This isn't Nick's second game, but it is the second game of his that is
fairly widely known. The first one was "Winchester's Nightmare" which
took an interesting tack in trying to get the player to be really part
of the story. Instead of the usual ">" prompt, the player is presented
with "Sarah decides to", and you get to fill in what you would like her
to decide to do.
This really made you feel part of the action, but it had the drawback of
eliminating the standard commands we came to know and love over the past
20+ years of IF. Notably, 'i' for inventory, 'n' for north, and so on.
"Sarah decides to sw" doesn't make much sense as a sentence.
"Ad Verbum" takes this into account in a thoroughly amusing and clever
way. If you use commands like 'up' and 'north', the room descriptions
will also use them. If you instead use 'u' and 'n', so do the room
descriptions. Some people might find this off-putting. I found it
grin-worthy.
But enough of that. The game itself presents the player with a seemingly
simple stint: acquire all objects from a house and dump them in the
Dumpster. The catch is that the house once belonged to the "cantankerous
Wizard of Wordplay", so it's not as simple as going through each room
and picking up the objects. You have to obey the rules.
For example, in one room, you can only use words that begin with the
letter 's', however the only way to leave it is to the north, which is a
word you can't use. You also have to be able to pick up objects in those
rooms, again only using 's'-words.
Naturally, when you're in an 'n'-, 'e'- or 'w'-only room, it's hard to
save the game, so Nick has you read a warning message before entering
those rooms explaining the situation. It's a bit on the defensive side
and it definitely breaks the flow of the game, but I'm sure that
beginning players would find it useful. I, on the other hand, would have
preferred to see that as a puzzle one discovered during the course of
play.
After all, the game is short enough. Too short, really, because these
are the kinds of puzzles I love to see. Reading the text, thinking up
possible solutions, a bright flash of discovery, the eagerness to see
what's next... that's what IF is all about.
The only downside to the game is that it didn't recognize quite as many
words as I thought it ought to. It's frustrating to think of a perfectly
good word ('scarper' to leave the 's' room, for instance) and then have
it not work. I'm sure Nick will be getting plenty of suggestions from
others, if he hasn't already.
That being said, this was the game that made the whole competition for
me. I enjoyed it from intro to quit. Nick, if you're reading this, keep
writing more! I'd love to play a full-size game with this sort of wacky
wordplay and perplexing puzzles.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
From: Duncan Stevens
Infocom, in its heyday, produced some games the likes of which has never
been seen since, either because there's no perceived interest in such
games (the mysteries in particular) or because amateur IF writers don't
have access to the proper technology (the more graphical games). Neither
of those objections necessarily applies to Nord and Bert Couldn't Make
Head or Tail of it, a wordplay game, but Nick Montfort's Ad Verbum is
arguably the first free- or shareware IF game to follow in Nord and
Bert's footsteps. (Dennis Cunningham's T-Zero had some points in common,
but there was more going on than wordplay--pop culture references and
such.) Ad Verbum is a worthy successor: like Nord and Bert, not all of
it is particularly inspired, but the moments that work really, really
work.
The plot, again like Nord and Bert, is simply an excuse for wordplay
puzzles--you're looking through the Wizard of Wordplay's mansion and
moving through various rooms that are devoted to specific types of
wordplay, thereby to collect objects. Many of the puzzles are a bit
obscure, and some are only tangentially related to wordplay--or, rather,
involve forms of wordplay that aren't necessarily familiar to anyone but
the most hardened of GAMES magazine addicts. (One puzzle that involves
moving a sofa down a flight of stairs is particularly baffling to those
not on the author's wavelength.) Another, involving a little boy who's a
dinosaur fan, I found simply misleading--at least, the solution
suggested in the hints was something of a surprise to me.
The heart of the game, however, lies on the "initial" floor of the
house: there are passages lying to the north, east, west, and south, and
going north yields this:
"LISTEN WELL!" a sonorous voice booms out, in attempted hollowness.
"Know ye that passage back through here is difficult for some,
impossible for others! Should you wish to transport yourself -
without your cherished possessions - out of these constrained
confines, utter the magic command: NEW!"
Neat Nursery
Nice, nondescript nursery, noticeably neat. Normally, nurslings
nestle noisily. Now, none. No needful, naive newborns.
Nearby: ... nifty nappy.
The parser, as you might have guessed, has been rewritten to require
that every word of every command begin with N. Violating the rules
elicits "No! No! Negative, novice. Nasty notation." or "No! No!
Nefarious nomenclature. Narrate nicely, now." The NEW command mentioned
above is your only way of getting out of the room: RESTORE, QUIT and
everything else has been disabled. Needless to say, in the rooms to the
east, west and south, the parser has been similarly reworked for the
appropriate letter. You have a goal for each room--extracting some
objects and getting out of the room, using only the appropriate
letters--but even after the goal is accomplished, it's worth hanging
around to experiment with the alliterative parser. The results are more
often than not hilarious, as with the following:
>nip nappy
Naughty, naughty! Nibbling nappies not normal.
Or:
>examine effigy
Enemy effigy. Extreme enormity evident. Execrable evildoer!
There's plenty more amusing stuff in each room: the parser-rewriting was
done with plenty of intelligence and wit. (WAIL in the appropriate room
elicits "Waaaah!", which amuses me no end for some reason.) In short:
nicely notated, Nick! Erudite, esoteric effusions entertain endlessly.
Winsome, witty wizardry will woo wordsmiths, who will whisper "Wow!"
without wearying. Surely, such semantic skill should solicit
stratospheric scores.
There are some variants on the alliterative parser--another S room with
another restriction, and a room with objects whose content suggests that
the proper TAKE replacement for each object will involve
letter-avoidance of one sort or another. (There was a nasty bug in the
competition version of this room that has been squashed--naturally, the
game in the updated version reports a literal squashed bug.) The parser
is not, however, rewritten for each object, so most of the fun of the
alliterative rooms is lost, and only the wordplay puzzle remains. It's a
fine puzzle, of course, but it doesn't have the same effect. The other
puzzles are likewise not nearly as inspired--there's a "twin bedroom"
that requires that all commands be in the form >HAMMER HAMMER, but there
isn't nearly as much room for experimenting there.
To the extent that Ad Verbum works--and it depends mostly, I think, on
the extent to which the player is amused by the alliterative rooms--it
works for different reasons than Nord and Bert worked. The latter called
for all sorts of cleverness from the player, and getting through it
produced a real feeling of accomplishment; some of the puzzles were
quite difficult. In particular, certain scenarios required that the
player deploy various clichés or idioms, often in amusingly twisted
ways, to get through the scene--and not a small amount of creativity was
required. Ad Verbum doesn't ask nearly as much of the player--the most
difficult feat of wordplay is clearly coming up with the appropriate
alliterative words, and in most rooms that's not especially difficult.
(Getting out of the N room is a challenge--sufficiently obscure that if
you go in there without first encountering the fellow who wanders around
dropping hints, you're unlikely to get it--but the others are pretty
straightforward.) But the author here has put his own skills on display,
much more so than the Nord and Bert authors did, and the result is just
as amusing. In other words, the fun is more passive here than it was in
Nord and Bert--the interactivity isn't as important--but there's still
fun to be had.
Ad Verbum is not an unqualified success; without the alliterative
parser, I don't think there'd be much interesting about it. But I got
enough laughs out of those rooms that I can't give it anything less than
a 9.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
From: Alfredo Garcia
[originally posted to Usenet on rec.games.int-fiction]
TITLE: And The Waves Choke The Wind
AUTHOR: Gunther Schmidl
E-MAIL: gschmidl SP@G gmx.at
DATE: 2000
PARSER: Inform standard
SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/competition2000/inform/atwctw/atwctw.z8
VERSION: Release 1
Here's a story that starts with the meat. It's a classic 'What the...?'
moment for our PC, who awakens to find himself on a lifeboat, floating
in an empty sea, bound and (it would seem, rather unnecessarily) gagged.
The introductory puzzle is good, as it encourages us to examine the PC
down to the smallest details, all of which are implemented well. Here's
an ambiguity you don't have to clarify too often:
>CUT HAIR USING THE KNIFE
Which do you mean, your dreadlocks or your pubic hair?
And if you think that's going a shade too far, you'll find that even
your anus is implemented - a smuggling puzzle later on, perhaps? At
first I thought this all a little excessive; in fact it was totally in
keeping with the theme of (at least) this preview - self-scrutiny. The
generic theme is more immediately obvious - Lovecraftian Horror. The
author does well to create a sense of foreboding throughout the piece,
and generally it succeeds in maintaining an atmosphere of dread. This
was only occasionally deflated by a poorly chosen phrase ('butt naked'
and a reference to 'the enemies you've wasted' seem anachronistic) or an
unsuitable quotation (Lovecraft and the Necronomicron are fine -- but
Nine Inch Nails?)
As we progress, the PC is revealed to us through a series of flashbacks.
It sounds like this shouldn't work, but it does. Too much pathos is
injected, yet it's nice to feel something for your character by the end
of the game, and I did.
It's a shame the author didn't enter a more interactive section of his
work. All there is to do here is explore. The descriptions are well
handled, but I found very little for me to *act* on. I really didn't
like the proliferation of talk menus towards the end - but then again, I
really don't like talk menus generally. (More on this later)
So then, as a game this seems a little uneven, but as a preview it
really whets the appetite.
Rating: 6
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
From: Sean T Barrett
[originally posted to Usenet on rec.games.int-fiction]
TITLE: At Wit's End
AUTHOR: Mike J. Sousa
E-MAIL: msousa SP@G efortress.com
DATE: 2000
PARSER: TADS standard
SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/competition2000/tads/awe/awe.gam
VERSION: 1.00
TITLE: Dinner With Andre
AUTHOR: Liza Daly
E-MAIL: liza SP@G retina.net
DATE: 2000
PARSER: Inform standard
SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/competition2000/inform/dinner/dinner.z5
VERSION: Release 1
>GET OUT OF THE FRYING PAN
Take the PC and put him or her in a situation where everything has gone
JUST RIGHT. The PC is on top of the world.
And then something goes a little wrong. Just a little wrong, not
ludicrous or unrealistic. But, hmm, a tad unfortunate.
And then the player gets the PC out of the situation and things just go
from bad to worse.
AWE starts better: the PC is in a tough situation where things could go
bad or things could go good. (Heck, it may actually be possible to fail
the first puzzle, or it may not, I don't know.) Then by solving a really
easy puzzle, *then* the PC is on top of the world. It's a really nice,
cheesily happy moment--and then trouble starts. But the player got to
participate in hitting that top of the world. You were pretty sure it
was going to happen (although it was possible you'd fail and it would
instead be a redemption story), but even so, it was a good moment. Oh,
and then the accident. It doesn't rob the PC of being at the top of the
world--the PC's achievement isn't called into question or offset in any
way--the PC just starts having a (largely unrelated) misadventure.
DwA does not start quite as strongly--your character is already (almost)
at the top of the mountain, and you don't share in the experience of
having gotten to the top. As well, DwA turns out to be a farce, but
holds off on revealing this until things start going wrong--which makes
it all the more crazy, but can get a player invested in the game the
wrong way. Still, the waiter comes over, and if the player makes the
obvious choice of answer, there's a nice moment of feeling "yes,
everything is perfect" that is triggered by player action. Oh, but then
things start going wrong. And where none of the problems of AWE relate
to the achievement directly (the PC has already climbed back down the
mountain he'd climbed), in DwA its the mountain itself being put at
risk. A tremor, a threat of a landslide, and then wooosh...
I think of these sorts of games as "out of the frying pan and into the
fire" games because at every moment, once you resolve the situation, a
new peril threatens. (The movie "After Hours" pops into mind as well.)
The last half of Kaged was more explicit that way; in some ways it was
more effective, since the peril threatened in Kaged was your life; the
peril threatened in AWE is, well, your ability to return home; and the
peril threatened in DwA is public humiliation.
One of the reasons "out of the frying pan and into the fire games"
tickle my fancy is because they make the character's motivation
explicit. At any moment, I know what I'm supposedly to be accomplishing
in the short term (crucial to being able to play the game) and I also
know why that action fits in with my end goal (not getting humiliated,
or returning home). Far too many games put you in a situation where all
you can do is poke around at suspicious-seeming objects and solve the
puzzles related to them.
To me, this is what storytelling in IF should be about; giving the
player a high-level goal (a story to achieve) and then giving the player
enough information (e.g. a low-level goal) to be able to carry out tasks
*for the purpose of achieving that goal*. Why is this storytelling? When
the player of DwA confronts the challenge of the four waiters at once, I
can imagine the zany British TV sitcom where this exact sequence of
events plays out. Whereas many games, say, The Pickpocket or The Planet
of the Infinite Minds or even Transfer, I can't imagine comprehending
this go by on a screen; the motivations of the protagonist would be
incomprehensible. Or maybe you could imagine it as a mystery where the
audience is left in the dark; but when, in IF, the audience is
controlling the protagonist, that way of looking at it makes little
sense.
"Out of the frying pan and into the fire" isn't the only way to achieve
such "storytelling"; when I change the color of an object in Kaged it's
for a pretty obvious reason, to achieve a pretty obvious goal that has
to do with the overall situation; but when I create a library in Planet
of the Infinite Minds I'm just doing it 'cause it's there. In fact, "out
of the frying pan and into the fire" may not be the most effective way
of giving the player lower-level goals; letting the user set her own
pace is probably a better experience most of the time.
In fact, an "out of the frying pan and into the fire" sequence can end
up just feeling like a series of set pieces--the mouse sequence in
Transfer is a fairly good example of a set piece, although it does rely
on one piece of game-specific knowledge--so a game that integrates its
puzzles, rather than leaving them a series of disconnected events, may
turn out to be a stronger work. In the case of DwA, though, I thought
the pieces meshed together really well; they all tie into the initial
scenario, and the pacing is superb: a series of linear puzzles, then the
game "goes wide" with a tough multi-element puzzle, then tightens down
and is at peace briefly, easy, relaxed, everything is going right... and
then BAM, ouch, followed by an easy end game. Perfect. As an added plus,
the elements of DwA end up serving as a bit of a parody of some romantic
genre cliches, indeed with the ending almost coming off as
(unintentionally) mocking Masquerade, which uses those cliches to create
its archetypal romance genre story.
AWE gets off to a rollicking start with simple, tight, timed puzzles,
but then goes much too broad and much too hard, at least for my tastes.
While all the puzzles seemed reasonably logical, but the breadth meant a
lot of time pursuing irrelevant alternatives, and the difficulty would
have required an awful lot of player time to solve without excessively
relying on hints/walkthroughs, which I was unwilling to do. Therefore I
can't comment on how successful the pacing is beyond that point. But up
until it goes broad, it is an amusing alternation of "oh shit" and "ho
hum, what now?" which I quite enjoyed, since at each moment (say,
walking up to the house), I was tensing up waiting for what would go
wrong next. (And the title helped--it was GOOD that I knew I was doomed
to be going into the fire.)
I'll go out on a limb and make a specific design suggestion of the sort
I think is pretty pretentious of me to make, but what the hell: the
spine of the story was trying to return (which generally meant escaping
each situation); as far as I played, *everything* that happened was on
the spine of the story, except having to eat. Having to eat jarred me
horrendously because of that. Realistic? Sure. Related to the story? Not
at all. I'd cut it. (You can argue that it's on the spine if the central
peril of the story is dying, but that was how it felt to me
anyway--tangential.)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
From: Sean T Barrett
[originally posted to Usenet on rec.games.int-fiction]
TITLE: Being Andrew Plotkin
AUTHOR: J. Robinson Wheeler
E-MAIL: wheeler SP@G jump.net
DATE: 2000
PARSER: Inform standard
SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/competition2000/inform/bap/bap.z5
VERSION: Release 1
TITLE: Prodly The Puffin
AUTHOR: Craig Timpany and Jim Crawford
E-MAIL: timpany SP@G pingus.cx, pfister_ SP@G mindspring.com
DATE: 2000
PARSER: Inform standard
SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/competition2000/inform/prodly/prodly.z5
VERSION: Release 1
>SAY "PARODLY IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY"
I don't like Pokey the Penguin.
In fact, Pokey the Penguin ranks right up with jerkcity in terms of
massively annoying me, simply because *several* different people have
recommended it to me, and each time I go check it out, look at it, and
say "I still don't get it". Am I annoyed at other people for thinking
it's funny? Am I annoyed at myself for not getting it? I don't know. I'm
just annoyed.
Like I said in my review of Asendent and Comp00ter Game. Misspelling?
Funny once, maybe. For Prodly (PtP), non sequitur? Funny once.
Ok, PtP is better than Pokey in this regards. I dutifully avoided asking
myself about anything because that led to the stupidity that I fail to
see any humor in. The rest of it was mildly amusing and surreal, along
the lines of "Stupid Kittens", with a few great touches: the mysterious
hovering beak, and the one bit that made me laugh out loud, the "bug in
the menu system" bit.
PtP is, then, a game which is sort of a parody and sort of an homage to
an existing property which is itself (supposedly) humorous, and it
managed to make me laugh out loud once.
BAP is an homage to an existing property which is itself humorous, and
it managed to make me laugh out loud twice. (And no other comp games
made me laugh out loud.)
Starting off, I was very worried about BAP (although perhaps not as much
as I was PtP after seeing its opening quote), fearful that it would
slavishly imitate "Being John Malkovich". And, in fact, it did at first.
Worse yet, the initial scene's trivial puzzle is underwritten in an
implementational sense: not only do you have no particular reason to
push the button (indeed, the game will advance at that point simply
because it triggers an unrelated event), but you can open the lid of the
copier, and there's nothing in it to copy; and you're not carrying
anything to copy, either.
The game stayed pretty close to the movie for quite a bit longer, which
continued to worry me, along with the questionable decision to make
"open drawer" and "pull drawer" distinct commands--is there some other
way to open a drawer? Still, it was managing to amuse me, and I stuck
with it, and it turned out that the author very carefully both stuck to
and deviated from the movie, in exactly the right way so that he could
work economical fragments of humor by referencing the movie, and yet
deliver jokes all his own. For example, Melvin, the character who maps
onto the old lecherly guy with a secret in "Malkovich", is both wimpy
and lecherly, but he not only has a different secret, but this secret
explains those two behavior patterns in a totally different way--and
indeed his POV was the first laugh-out-loud moment for me.
"Malkovich" is about a puppeteer who gets the once-in-a-lifetime chance
to control another human being. Of any funny movie one might choose to
adapt into IF, this one gets the obvious thumbs up for the thematic
relevance; indeed, I believe in the very old days some people would
explain text adventures to newcomers by describing the PC as a 'puppet'
under the player's control. (In fact, the first thing I tried to do
after my tunnel ride was type something like "ZARF, DRINK"--and I was
disappointed when this was misdirected at an object I was carrying.)
In the end, I had so much fun with BAP I couldn't deny it second place
of all the games I played (and no, I've never been on ifMUD). Of course
it was horribly on rails. Why didn't this bother me? I don't know.
Scenes I would have like to have seen:
* a puzzle that required typing "x yz zy" instead of "x zy"
* the player controlling Peter controlling Andrew Plotkin controlling
Zarf, if you know what I mean
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
From: Tina Sikorski
TITLE: Being Andrew Plotkin
AUTHOR: J. Robinson Wheeler
E-MAIL: wheeler SP@G jump.net
DATE: 2000
PARSER: Inform standard
SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/competition2000/inform/bap/bap.z5
VERSION: Release 1
Walkthrough? Yes
Genre: Mixed/Movie tribute/In-Joke/SF
+------------------------------------------+
|Overall Rating B |Submitted Vote 8|
|Writing B+|Plot B+|
|Puzzles C |NPCs A |
|Technical B |Tilt C+|
+------------------------+-----------------+
*** Initial Thoughts
Although I had not ever seen the movie _Being John Malkovich_, I had
been fairly certain from the moment I saw the title that it was, in
fact, related somehow. Reviewing this from the perspective of someone
who doesn't know a -thing- about the movie may change things a bit; if
you -have- seen the movie, you're probably better off with someone
else's review.
You'll notice I had a hard time classifying this into a specific genre.
I'm open to other suggestions...
*** Writing (B+)
Throughout, the writing was consistently good. At times, it was actually
far better than that. And what's best is that I often felt like the
author was just having a plain old great time writing it, which for some
reason always appeals to me. For instance, this line:
Valerie plummets into the big hedge with an unladylike
ka-thump-krickle.
...was the kind of thing that, had I written it, I would've been
giggling a bit to myself when I did, not at my own cleverness but rather
at the sheer delight of creating a line like that. I hope I'm right
about this; people who have fun creating things tend to create more.
Too, there were little bits like this: "There are sweat stains on them.
Stifling the urge to make a comment, you adjust your grip to touch only
the dry spots." Not really necessary, just color -- but what color it
is! I read this and I think "Okay: So, Marvin is a loser, and you really
don't care for him; he has COOOOOTIES." [Okay, well, maybe the author
wasn't thinking of cooties, but hey, -I- was.] No need to spell it out
explicitly; it's all about the feel.
I also enjoyed the way things changed a bit when there was a perspective
shift, but I'll get into that more under NPCs...
*** Plot (B+)
To be honest, this would probably have been different if I knew anything
about the movie beyond the very, very basic premise. I found the
execution of the idea hilarious (and I'm beginning to think I may have
to go rent the movie if it's -anything- like this) and particularly with
the bits and pieces that let you see the world in different ways (again,
more under "NPCs"). To be perfectly honest, I didn't get the optimal
ending, and I was in too much of a hurry to try replaying and fixing
this, but for some reason that didn't faze me; perhaps just because what
I'd experienced up to that point was... cool.
The thing is, I can't actually narrow down what about it was cool --
which is a major fault in a reviewer, I admit, but alas, remains the
case. Maybe it was just the entire idea of being in ZARF'S head (a scary
idea to me). Maybe it was just the whole concept of your boss (I swear
I've worked for this "man"). I wish I could explain.
Suffice it to say: it was worth doing.
*** Puzzles (C)
Hmm. My notes don't go into a lot of details on this, which pretty much
supports the mid-range rating. Taking a quick look through, the only
time I seem to have gotten outright stuck (other than, I'm ashamed to
admit, the recursion problem) was because it just didn't occur to me to
type "look at mud" -- for some reason I wanted to "look at computer"
(which didn't give me any more detail) or "type" (which just didn't
work). For some reason, specifically thinking of the MUD as an object
just didn't occur to me.
*** NPCs (A)
This was really, really the big strength of the game. Not only did we
have several NPCs, we actually got to -be- some of them. And every time
we did, something changed a bit about the perception of the world we
were in.
I thought -all- the characters were interesting. While they were a bit
limited in conversational style, they still feel fully developed, and
even better, when they look at -each other-, they see the people they
interact with differently. This, to me, is primo stuff. I know that
people like saying "Ho, hum, just character switching again, everyone
does it", but... folks, not everyone does it WELL. In fact, it's quite
rare. Again, as with the writing in general, the little touches are what
makes this category absolutely superb, for instance, both Valerie and
Peter dislike Melvin, but they still see him differently, and the rooms
have some minor differences depending on who you are.
*** Technical (B)
Actually, in retrospect, I'm not sure I know why I gave this a B. Maybe
just the sheer impressiveness of writing x number of different
descriptions of each area based on who would visit it and keeping
correct track of something on that scale. Too, I found no bugs, which is
generally a good thing. So, er... (*fumbles*) Okay! Nothing to see here,
move along.
Oh wait. One -bad- thing:
>go through secret door
You can't, since the secret door is in the way.
*** Tilt (C+) and Final Thoughts
In retrospect, I think this deserved a higher 'tilt' from me. I suspect
I was a bit frustrated with not finding the recursion puzzle answer when
I handed out the 'tilt' score (which is always my initial score), and
not seeing the last bits of the game. And some of it was just that while
I enjoyed the game, it really was a one-time sort of joke.
Here's a few other things that I have in my notes, for amusement value:
You give the stuck cabinet drawer the old heave-ho, and instead of
merely opening, it yanks loose from the wall, revealing a strange,
small door in the wall!
>of course it does
That's not a verb I recognize.
[I frequently talk to the games. This is probably not something you
needed to know.]
****
that code (Melvin) for some reason reminds me of COBOL, which is scary.
****
No Ikea! Ikea bad!
****
I don't WANT To be Zarf! It scares me!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
From: Adam Cadre
[originally posted to Usenet on rec.games.int-fiction]
TITLE: The Big Mama
AUTHOR: Brendan Barnwell
E-MAIL: BrenBarn SP@G aol.com
DATE: 2000
PARSER: Inform standard, with conversation menus
SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/competition2000/inform/bigmama/bigmama.z5
VERSION: Release 8
I don't think the author was trying hard enough. If you're going to put
the phrase "the big mama" into pretty much every response, why stop
there? Why, it could've appeared in every paragraph or, indeed, every
sentence. (The big mama.) I mean, if it's good ten thousand times, why
not a hundred thousand? Why not write in the style of Henrietta
Pussycat, only swapping in "the big mama" for "meow"? What a missed
opportunity. Also, the big mama.
So, let's see. I do like the idea of a sort of multi-turn AISLE. But the
thing about AISLE was that most of the endings were really well-written
and interesting in and of themselves, not to mention diverse. The same
cannot be said of THE BIG MAMA. There are a lot of games in the comp for
which I scribbled down notes like "rocky prose" or "semi-literate," but
this game proves that you can have an excellent command of the language
and still provoke winces. (The big mama.) Let's see, there was the bit
where a sign warns you about how the next 1.5 miles of beach are
private: "'Stupid imperial measurement,' you mutter." Urgh. Why not just
give the player-character a renaissance flute while you're at it? Oh,
and the little boy. "Almost every day I billa cassel." Throw this kid
into the nearest wood chipper, please. I mean it. Stop him before he
soliloquizes again. Also, the big mama.
Even the less egregious paths all seem to lead to inane conversations
and fairly ham-handed passages desperately trying to hammer home the
theme that the ocean is pretty. Sometimes the inane conversations result
in relationships, but none of these sequences is really even remotely
convincing -- I'm sure every day there are beach encounters that lead to
hookups, but I doubt that any of them have resembled even one of the
paths set forth in this game. Also, the big mama. There are also some
quirks with the way the various characters are programmed: the surfer
alternates between sunbathing and surfing about every eight seconds, and
the teenage girl seems to have no memory whatsoever -- you can scare her
off with some creepy line, watch her wander off, and two turns later
she's back and seems to have no idea who you are. This is the sort of
thing that makes characters look like chunks of code rather than
representations of people. Also, the big mama.
More bugs of note: jumping the rail takes you to the beach, but once you
get there, the game tells you that "You're not up for that kind of
leap." Sounds like some routine is neglecting to return true somewhere
in there. Oh, and while the game notes that "everyone in town speaks
Spanish," I have to wonder -- "las" is a plural article. The only way
that works with "Lorena" is if "Lorena" is a last name and the name of
the town is a reference to a all-female family: "The Lorena Sisters", or
some such. Which I could buy as a novelty musical act from the early
70s, but not as the name of a city. Also, the big mama.
Perhaps my favorite bit:
| 0: Say nothing.
| 1: "Yeah, let's watch a movie."
| 2: "A walk sounds great."
| 3: "Let's play a game."
| 4: ""
Me, I thought it was a bit early in the evening to propose illegal
object number 357, but hey, turned out she was into it. Kinky!
Score: a low THREE. Also, the big mama.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
From: Tina Sikorski
Walkthrough? No
Genre: CYOA/Mixed/Romance
+------------------------------------------+
|Overall Rating C |Submitted Vote 6|
|Writing B |Plot C-|
|Puzzles n/a|NPCs C+|
|Technical C |Tilt C |
+------------------------+-----------------+
*** Initial Thoughts
As a few other people have mentioned, I would have expected the sea to
play a larger part in this work, which is basically a choose-your-own-
adventure with no particular focus on the sea. I called it a "romance"
genre game in part because a LOT of the routes seem concerned with
romance, but there are a few other routes that don't contain it.
*** Writing (B)
I can't help but take a moment to compare this to last year's entry by
this author (Lomalow, which I, quite frankly, did not like). Although
the styles are different, there's an element to both of them that is
similar: the attempt to evoke some specific emotions. This year's entry
does a much better job with the writing; it doesn't feel as forced, as
heavy-handed. It's still got some flaws, but overall I feel much less
preached at than I did last year and there were times when there were
hints of excellence. I don't know if you can attribute this to the
different format, practice, or even the different topic matter, but
whichever it is, I'm actually quite glad to see something I like from
Brendan.
If I had any complaint it was that at times it was too long, a hazard, I
think, of the CYOA format choice. I do enjoy longer text breaks than
some people will accept gracefully, but there were a few times when too
much happened on a trigger.
What I enjoyed the most, I think, were occasional clever or cute turns
of phrase, such as these portions of some room descriptions:
"These little establishments sell everything from shrink-wrapped,
dessicated muffins to decent hot dogs."
"The breeze is straight out of some beach-blanket B-movie: salty,
soft, and refreshing."
But even the more serious writing is honest, and while there isn't a LOT
of substance to this as a game, (see "plot", below), I enjoyed reading
it.
*** Plot (C-)
As with many CYOA games, it's so hard to rate plot. First off, there are
multiple "plots" here... although as I mentioned above, many of them
seem to have the same basic tilt, which is: romance. But what I saw was
a bit... thin. Not quite Calista Flockhart, but definitely thin.
Still, they weren't bad little plots. Just not a lot of substance, much
more the Twinkie of IF than the dinner at Ruth's Chris. [If you haven't
ever encountered Ruth's Chris, they are the most incredible steakhouse
ever.]
*** Puzzles (n/a)
Due to the CYOA format, I did not rate on puzzles, breaking my "formula"
but, ultimately, I think, being more fair.
*** NPCs (C+)
This game is basically NPC driven, in that it's almost entirely
conversationally driven. So you would hope that the NPCs would have some
depth to them -- and, actually, they do in spots. But you don't really
get a good glimpse about what they're -really- like, mostly because your
interactions with them are so short. Whether this is a shortcoming of
the format or whether they were simply undeveloped is hard to judge;
they DO have personality, but it's pretty focused.
*** Technical (C)
There was certainly nothing in particular that was outstanding
technically here, and only one bug of note, so I gave it an average
rating.
*** Tilt (C) and Final Thoughts
I found 4 or 5 different endings before I stopped playing, so there may
be more depths here I have not plumbed. Those of you with more patience
than I (and a CYOA roto-rooter) may discover more.
It was an amusing diversion.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
From: Tina Sikorski
TITLE: Desert Heat
AUTHOR: Papillon
E-MAIL: amethystphoenix SP@G yahoo.com
DATE: 2000
PARSER: None (CYOA)
SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/tads/
VERSION: 1
Walkthrough? No
Genre: CYOA/Romance/Bodice-Ripper
+------------------------------------------+
|Overall Rating B-|Submitted Vote 7|
|Writing B+|Plot B |
|Puzzles D |NPCs B |
|Technical C |Tilt C+|
+------------------------+-----------------+
*** Initial Thoughts
A lot of people don't like choose-your-owns, so to them, this will not
appeal. In truth, they don't always appeal to me. In this particular
case, however, I actually thought it worked fairly well. I didn't
explore all the possible choices (although I did double up on a couple
paths) so I don't know how flexible the game ultimately was, but it
looked to have at least some degree of freedom in it.
*** Writing (B+)
Despite some perhaps overly-lengthy prose in spots, the writing in this
was rather well-done. I found many of the descriptions quite enchanting,
bringing to mind a definite feel and genre that itself is quite magical,
and one in which it is easy to get drawn in and lost within when it is
(as it was) done correctly.
Take, for instance, this bit from the opening:
"The sound of windblown sand smoothing the dunes and scouring the
city walls is the only song nature produces in Hajima."
With the very first sentence, mood and setting are already firmly in
place, a setting which is only enhanced (and never contradicted) by
further room and event descriptions. And best yet, although the game
does tell you "this is who you are, this is what you can do", it never
seems to do it in a way that felt limiting (to me), though ultimately,
of course, it was rather narrow in scope.
*** Plot (B)
As with all CYOAs (and how many times have I used that phrase, anyhow?),
there is not a LOT of flexibility in plot, but as is more rare, there is
a rich plot here. It is true that it is quite stereotypical. It is also
true that sometimes that's a good thing. (See also NPCs, below.)
Stereotypical stories are sometimes, instead, more -archetypal-; they
use settings, people, and situations that we all are familiar with, and
merely attempt to display the story in a manner in which will appeal. I
believe that this was the author's intent (although don't know for
sure), and if so, it worked quite well for me. Others, looking for
something new and original, will probably prefer to give this a pass,
although I might add that there is not much in the way of either new or
original left in the world. It is merely the skill with which stories
are displayed that, ultimately, determines how people react to it.
*** Puzzles (D)
As a CYOA adventure, it should perhaps not really be rated on puzzles,
but as there are several critical decision points that can make a large
difference, in this case I elected to do so. And that is where things
fall short.
Could it have been done differently and retained the format? Yes. There
could have been more decision points; they could have been presented in
a way that combined both more internal world knowledge with more
difficult choices. When it came to a point where I had to make a choice,
often I felt as if I were presented with choices that the -character-
would understand the implication of but I would not. That, alas, was the
big flaw in an otherwise enjoyable experience.
*** NPCs (B)
Adam Cadre, whose opinion I quite respect but with whom I frequently
disagree, felt offended by the stereotypes in this game. Others saw his
point. I disagreed, because I felt there was no intent to hold up and
portray negative and shallow characters. I felt they were meant to be
archetypes (see also Plot, above).
So, be warned: there are no terribly deep characters in the game. You
see only glimpses of their true personality, and even those show
something fairly basic and, yes, cliche. But... it WORKS. This is not
the real world. This is the storyworld, where everyone has a defined
role, and everyone has a part to play. And it is the success in -that-
upon which I rated the NPCs highly.
Realism in NPCs is a prized thing, difficult to obtain, but the clever
and careful use of caricature and archetype can result in some lovely
story building. Desert Heat accomplishes this with flair.
*** Technical (C)
CYOA games are not difficult to produce. I found no bugs.
*** Tilt (C+) and Final Thoughts
This is definitely not a game for everyone. Simply the genre alone would
ensure that; I myself have a love-hate relationship with romances, if
you will pardon the potential pun. The format and style as well are both
potentially off-putting. Still, if you have any interest in a richly
told tale, I would suggest giving the game a chance. It was one of the
more enjoyable -- if not one of the longest lived -- moments of the
comp.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
From: Duncan Stevens
TITLE: The Djinni Chronicles
AUTHOR: J.D. Berry
E-MAIL: berryx SP@G earthlink.net
DATE: 2000
PARSER: Inform standard
SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/djinni.z5
VERSION: Release 2
J.D. Berry's Djinni Chronicles is one of the shortest games of the comp,
but it's also one of the densest--there's not much room for exploration
or experimentation without save-restore. There are some game-specific
rules, moreover, that make it likely that you'll have to do some
save-restoring. Still, there are some ideas worth exploring that come
across in those few moves.
You are a djinni, discovered and summoned by various masters, whose
wishes you strive to grant in one way or another--but you also have your
own purposes that are only somewhat compatible with those of your
masters. The nature of your existence is such that you can't stray far
from your "container," the vessel where you reside when you're not about
your business; indeed, the beginning of the game functions mostly as an
introduction to the rules of your world. You learn, for example, that
the tendency of wishes to come with unfortunate side effects isn't
simply djinni contrariness; rather, it's because they don't (generally)
have the power to accomplish the change by their own will, and have to
harness the power of another "undercurrent" with somewhat different
effects. You also learn that some djinni derive power from sources other
than their summoners, and seek to gain enough power to act
independently. The defining measure is known as "Purpose," here
expressed as a number, and maintaining Purpose, one way or another,
becomes your overriding goal. What emerges is an imaginative portrait of
djinni ethics, as it were: the djinni that you play aren't bound by any
particular ethical norms as such other than the desire to gain and
maintain purpose. Arguably, those djinni that aren't bent on destruction
serve their masters' wishes not out of any sense of loyalty, but simply
because they derive no advantage from acting independently. (The
anterior question, why some djinni are one way and some are another,
isn't addressed, but the game is complex enough; there's no need to
introduce another layer of cosmology.)
In a sense, the path of the game is fairly well defined simply because
the character's powers are limited; the player can't really expect to be
able to wander away, since that causes the game to end promptly. The
wishes of your masters also define your goals most of the time, and when
they don't, the game spells out your personal objective. And yet
figuring out your motivations at any given point can be complicated,
particularly if you assume that you feel some inherent responsibility to
your master--and it's not until about halfway through the game that you
learn what you're really doing, so to speak. Once you understand the
larger plot, it's intriguing; the only problem is that you don't have
much part in influencing where it'll go, other than figuring out the
command that will move things along. The linearity factor actually
serves the purposes of the story--the whole point is that your powers
are limited, and your ability to influence events doesn't go much beyond
your master's interests--but it might also be a bit more satisfying to
be able to affect how the plot turns out, not just whether the one
possible plotline progresses.
The end of the game suggests that the point isn't simply to devise an
inventive mythology of djinni and how they work and what motivates them;
rather, the behavior of the djinni suggests something about human nature
and the ways that these particular spirits (with their own motivations)
choose to manipulate their masters. In that respect, portraying the
details of djinni existence serves some of the same function that C.S.
Lewis's elaborate bureaucracy of hell did in Screwtape Letters: to
describe the spirit world in order to provide a context for the way
those spirits tempt and manipulate humans. Obviously, this is a little
different, since the relationship isn't entirely adversarial--you need
your masters to accomplish your purposes, which doesn't exactly describe
Screwtape--but the message is related: suitable manipulation of our
baser instincts can turn them into enormously destructive forces, and
the game suggests that the less noble impulses are considerably more
powerful than altruistic ones (since the djinni that serves a master
with relatively unselfish goals doesn't seem to accumulate much
Purpose).
As a game, apart from the theory and theology that might underlie it,
Djinni Chronicles works reasonably well. As noted, picking up on the
rules takes a while, and the limitations on the character are initially
frustrating when you're used to a great deal of freedom--but it doesn't
take long to adjust and to appreciate your new powers. (For instance,
walls are no hindrance.) The game is quite linear, true, but to some
extent that's inevitable if the author wants to tell a particular story
about the spirit world and human nature: if the player has the power to
put a different spin on the relationship between the PC and its masters,
the result is no longer what the author set out to tell. This sort of
thing might not have gone over well just a few years ago, but linearity,
I think, has come to be viewed as the inevitable price of more
story-oriented IF, and when the story is as intriguing as this one, it's
a price worth paying. There's another advantage to the linearity: the
puzzles are well integrated into the plot, rather than artificial
constructs that distract from the story. That's a feature not directly
related to the breadth of the game, of course, but it's inevitable that
a game with a large field of options doesn't really sustain much of a
story, since the author can't exercise much control over how the game
progresses--and by restricting the options, Djinni Chronicles ensures
that the task at hand is always part of the story. Moreover, the
linearity factor restricts the amount of things that can go wrong; this
is a technically solid game, in part, perhaps, because the nature of the
game prevents players from doing outlandish things that could violate
the game's expectations. The only real fly in the ointment is a lengthy
section that's written in not especially inspired verse; it doesn't
serve an obvious purpose in the game, and it distracts the player from
what was otherwise highly competent writing.
The main flaw in Djinni Chronicles, at the end, is that it leaves the
player wanting more--more plot, more character development--but there
are worse sins, I suppose. It's an imaginatively told story--intelligent
enough to earn a 9 from me.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
From: Adam Cadre
[originally posted to Usenet on rec.games.int-fiction]
TITLE: The End Means Escape
AUTHOR: Stephen Kodat
E-MAIL: skodat SP@G blazenet.net
DATE: 2000
PARSER: TADS standard
SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/competition2000/tads/endmeans/endmeans.gam
VERSION: Release 1
I really liked the first segment of this game. Not only were the animate
objects cool and funny, but the way the player is meant to go about
resolving the situation -- asking everyone about everyone else --
appealed to me much more than if the solution had been to perform some
clever engineering trick. I wasn't quite sure how the stuff I was doing
was getting me any closer to opening the door, but I went along with it
and entered the book...
...and then splat. I didn't get part two at all. I understood how to
manipulate the words -- the hint system told me that much -- but I
didn't have the slightest clue what my goal was, and the hints crapped
out at that point. So I put the game away, figuring I'd give it about a
five. Then I read a solution to part two on the newsgroup -- and I
*still* didn't get it. It was like getting stuck on a puzzle where
you're trying to open a safe and finding out that the combination is
43-49-25... and why? Because it just sort of is. "You turn hard"? Say
what?
And then the third segment... goal, please? I think this says it all:
>HINT
There's just some people standing around.
Right. And I was one of them. Maybe there are some people who, presented
with a bunch of playing pieces in a game they don't recognize, would
start messing around with the pieces for hours on end until something
happened; me, I'm more inclined to just leave them alone until I have
some *reason* to play with them, some *objective* I'm using them to try
to accomplish. And "escape" is insufficient. Yes, you do escape, but how
are you supposed to know that X will achieve Y? Doing what the hints
tell you to do with the segments' various playing pieces, and
consequently "escaping," is like the bit in A GOOD BREAKFAST from Comp97
where you're looking for a spoon, happen across a robot, play Lights-Out
with it, and then when you win, the robot randomly hands you a spoon as
a reward. Or, to use an invented example for the sake of clarity:
You're in a cell. You want to get out. The door won't budge, and there's
a guard posted outside. You have a gold coin.
GOOD DESIGN: Get the guard to open the door and let you go free in
exchange for the coin.
BAD DESIGN: Swallow the coin. This randomly causes the door to fall off
its hinges onto the guard, allowing you to make a break for it.
THE END MEANS ESCAPE is full of examples of the latter type of design.
Open up a guy's surgical incision? Why? Just because you can (with
difficulty)? Apparently so -- that's how you advance to the next stage,
though there's no particular reason why that's so. The end justifies the
means? In this game, they rarely seem remotely connected.
Score: a low THREE, and only because I did get some fun out of the first
bit.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
From: Tina Sikorski
Walkthrough? No (in-game hints)
Genre: Surrealism
+------------------------------------------+
|Overall Rating B+|Submitted Vote 8|
|Writing A-|Plot C+|
|Puzzles B |NPCs B |
|Technical B |Tilt A+|
+------------------------+-----------------+
*** Initial Thoughts
A lot of people really disliked everything but the first section of this
game. I, on the other hand, got more into it the more I played it; I
won't say I enjoyed the first section the least, but neither did I find
it the best of the sections. I believe this will be a narrow appeal
game, which in a way is a pity and in a way is just how things work.
I will note that this was the game that got me to dub this "Surreal
Comp"; between it, Shade, and (to a lesser extent) Planet of the
Infinite Minds, not to mention the Rybread parody, this was probably the
most surreal of the comps ever...
*** Writing (A-)
First off: bonus points for the correct use of "its", something a lot of
authors don't seem to understand.
Any game in which there are word puzzles is probably going to garner
either a rather low or a rather high score in writing. In this case, you
will see it's "rather high". But this was not only because of the
(somewhat difficult, but entertaining) word puzzle in the second
section, but the sheer amount of work that must have gone into crafting
the initial section's NPCs, giving them character and consistency.
Many of the descriptions were simple and unadorned, but knowing when to
do this is as important to writing as elaborate, full, and intense
descriptions of one's environment. Others (mostly later in the game) are
detailed and interesting, but oddly those seem to occur when they are
least important. I don't know if this was a deliberate stylistic choice,
but for me it added to the surreal factor -- and I so enjoy the surreal
factor, so this is a good thing.
Possibly the best use of words was not in the writing itself, but one of
the puzzles (see below). Indeed, until that section, I was actually
somewhat out-of-sorts with the style presented; as I put it in my notes
"This is the kind of HIGH-FALUTIN' High Art thing I dislike, isn't it?"
However, it grows on one...
*** Plot (C+)
Now, those of you who played this game will be saying "Plot? Was there a
PLOT?" Well, yes and no. There was certainly no coherent plot I could
identify, but it seems as if each section contained a bit of one, and
they were internally consistent. On this basis -- rather than that of
understanding and being able to articulate the plot -- I rated it just
above average, consistency being one of the building blocks of a good
plot. So if you're looking for a full-blown story, I'm afraid you are
out of luck; this game does not, so far as I could tell, have one.
There are basically four (five?) little tableaus that are, at least as
far as I could tell, separate, yet each has as its basis understanding
or at least discovering the nature of something. This, I think, is what
ties the game together. I may be the only person getting this out of the
game (other comments certainly suggest such) but... for me it works.
*** Puzzles (B)
Oh GOD, the PUZZLES. They are fiendish! They are evil! They required me
to use the hints regularly...
...and yet...
I'm fascinated by word puzzles. I was particularly fascinated by the one
in part two of this game, where your inventory contains a certain number
of words, the room contains a certain number of words, and you have to
manipulate them in various ways to make certain phrases. In the interest
of leaving -some- surprises to the reader, I shall not reproduce the
entire puzzle, but I will say that:
a) There is more than one (somewhat) sensical "solution", but only one
actually -works-
b) Yes, it did mean something to ME (though not, I gather, to others).
Then there was the puzzle with the basically inanimate people. That one,
I did not like. No. But it wasn't because I felt it was unfair or even
that it was difficult to figure out (aside from being very limited in
solvability). It was just that it was... icky. I suspect it was meant to
be metaphorical, but some metaphors I'd rather not, er, explore.
Still... frustrating at times, but the hints do work well, and... if you
like symbolism and wordplay, you should enjoy this aspect of the game.
*** NPCs (B)
Well, some of the NPCs were a bit wooden and stiff... (that's a joke
only those who have played the game will get).
Many of the Others you interact with in this game are not, strictly
speaking, people. They have personalities, they speak, they react,
but... they're objects. Animate objects. It's quite bizarre. Surreal,
even.
And I loved the way it was done. Each object had a personality that fit
with what it was. Each object had something to say about its
surroundings and fellow objects. Sure, it was simple, a closed
environment, but that's something you can't say about some games: the
NPCs knew about each other and would comment on each other. In fact...
it was vital to the game.
*** Technical (B)
A few little neat tricks gave me reason to up the technical score a bit,
despite a couple really nasty disambiguation problems in one section.
Specifically, I liked the fact that changing state (due to actions
taken) resulted in changing responses (descriptions and reactions),
something that takes some time and care and effort to do, and I enjoyed
the word-inventory puzzle as a purely interesting technical feat as well
as just as a puzzle. It's nice to see a little extra like this.
*** Tilt (A+) and Final Thoughts
Many people started this game, liked it, and then slowly grew to dislike
it. I started out not enjoying the philosophical High Art but grew to
appreciate it once I began to see the full shape of things, and aside
from an "ick" factor at one point, enjoyed the entire experience. This
may say more about me than the game.
If you can deal with fiendish (if well-hinted) puzzles, surreal
situations, and the sense that you are in an alien landscape -- or if
those things outright appeal to you -- this game is worth checking out.
Even if that is not your usual bag, the first section is possibly worth
taking a look at.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
From: Tina Sikorski
TITLE: Guess The Verb!
AUTHOR: Leonard Richardson
E-MAIL: leonardr SP@G segfault.org
DATE: 2000
PARSER: Inform standard
SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/guess.z5
VERSION: Release 1
Walkthrough? Yes (in-game)
Genre: SpecFic (but see below)
+------------------------------------------+
|Overall Rating B |Submitted Vote 7|
|Writing B+|Plot B |
|Puzzles C |NPCs C |
|Technical C-|Tilt B |
+------------------------+-----------------+
*** Initial Thoughts
When I saw the name of the game, I said, "Oh, no. NOT a joke game!"
No. It's not. Well, at times it is (it certainly doesn't take itself too
seriously), but it's not the -obvious- joke game.
I put this under the category 'Speculative Fiction' (otherwise known as
"sf/fantasy") because it contained elements that were (including the
initial premise), but I think perhaps it might also fall into the
category of "comedy".
*** Writing (B+)
Any game in which I can read the description of a corn dog and be
entertained really has something going for it:
>l at corn dog
The corn dog is a curious creature. Its life cycle begins when the
larval corn dog is cooked and put on a stick. The corn dog is dipped
in batter to form a cocoon and fried. Inside the batter cocoon, the
baby corn dog metamorphoses into an adult phase which is then
purchased, slathered with mustard, and eaten. The rumbling of your
stomach tells you that the end is near for this particular corn dog.
We will miss you, corn dog.
Much of the game's description, even when more serious than this,
contains elements of this style. It's clever, it's cute (in the good
way), and it is, above all, interesting.
I did not bestow an A rating on the writing simply because while it is
true that the writing meets my criteria for "good", it never thoroughly
immersed me in the experience. This may be a result of the game's style,
not a reflection on the author's ability; I don't think we were really
-meant- to be immersed.
*** Plot (B)
Really, this should be "plots", plural; these are several stories tied
together solely by method of entry. Perhaps if you complete all the
scenarios there is a larger plot revealed, but if so, I did not find it.
Certain sections were better than others, but all contained a sort of
"Now rejoining your regularly scheduled program in progress" sort of
feel at insertion point, which is another interesting way to tie things
together. Whether or not this was deliberate is something only the
author could answer.
Some sections might be more interesting to people than others, as there
is quite a range covered by this.
*** Puzzles (C)
Puzzles were definitely a weak point, not because they were bad but
merely because they were tough and at times very difficult to understand
the context of. Whether this was a function of the fragmented nature of
the plot or the function of poor puzzle design is not something I feel I
can judge. I could not solve several of the puzzles, however, and as a
result never saw the -complete- version of several of the scenarios,
despite the availability of a walkthrough. I think an adaptive hint
system would have been a BIG help in this game; I didn't really want to
ruin other sections by walkthrough-consulting that forced me to read all
of it.
*** NPCs (C)
We never really seem to see enough of any given NPC for it to feel
particularly deep, and there is definitely a problem with
non-responsiveness even in the required interactions.
*** Technical (C-)
There were at least two points in which directions were not
bi-directional (which is to say, going east does not result in west
returning you to your original point). If this was deliberate, so be it,
but if not, I would suggest correcting this. (One occurs getting to and
from the area behind the booth, one occurs in the college scenario.)
Aside from that, I found no particular bugs and no particular tricks.
*** Tilt (B) and Final Thoughts
Despite the problems I had with the puzzles and the walkthrough, I did
find this an interesting diversion. I think it might be interesting to
see some expansion on this game, some more involved scenarios, in a
post-comp release that didn't have to fit a 2-hour limit, but even as is
the game is worth a look; if nothing else, if you don't get a scenario
you like, restoring to right before you choose is easy enough.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
From: Suzanne Britton
[originally posted to Usenet on rec.games.int-fiction]
TITLE: Kaged
AUTHOR: Ian Finley
E-MAIL: domokov SP@G aol.com
DATE: 2000
PARSER: TADS standard
SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/competition2000/tads/kaged/kaged.gam
VERSION: 1
I hope Ian leads a happier life than his protagonists. His games get
grimmer every year.
"Kaged" is a dystopian tale strongly reminiscent of 1984 (but not
derivative). Like just about everything its author has produced, it is
strikingly original, evocative, well-written, and suicidally depressing
:-) I quite liked it, though it is, in my opinion, not as successful as
"Exhibition" or "Babel". It is more ambitious than either of those
works, which leads me to be somewhat forgiving of its failures.
As a mood piece, "Kaged" is excellent. Every bleak, oppressive nuance of
the world you live in comes to life in the vivid writing, enhanced by
graphics and sound (the opening picture is especially evocative), and
your own character is well-drawn. As a story, it is ambitious, but less
excellent. I felt that what began as tightly woven threads unraveled
near the end--and not just because of the protagonist's dissolving
sanity. I came out of the experience with no real understanding of what
had happened and why. Many hints, many seeming contradictions, no
certainties. Normally, I like it when a game leaves the player with a
mystery, but this was just unsatisfying. It's hard to pinpoint
why...perhaps partly because I felt I was expected to understand much
more than I did. Certainly, my protagonist seemed to be way ahead of me,
and as a result, I felt less connection with him.
(Postscript: I've since spoken with Ian, and to some extent "it's
intentional". Apparently, his playtesters kept pushing him for more
ambiguity. Ah, well.)
The programming was also not quite as polished as I've come to expect of
this author. Again, it was trying to accomplish more than in earlier
works, I think. The world was very fleshed-out, but flawed. I
encountered a number of guess-the-verb problems. Perhaps the most
egregious was the matchbook. It was lazily (and unintuitively)
implemented as a single object, leading me to fumble for awhile before I
simply typed "strike match":
>get match
You already have the book of matches!
>get match from matchbook
The book of matches isn't in the book of matches.
>look in matchbook
There's nothing in the book of matches.
Rating: 8
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
From: Suzanne Britton
[originally posted to Usenet on rec.games.int-fiction]
TITLE: Masquerade
AUTHOR: Kathleen M. Fischer
E-MAIL: mfischer5 SP@G aol.com
DATE: 2000
PARSER: Inform standard
SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/competition2000/inform/mask/mask.z5
VERSION: Release 3
"Masquerade" is an excellent work of story-based IF in a little-used
genre (romance, specifically, Civil-War era romance). It is perhaps the
most immersive game I've played yet this year. When I started playing,
my mind was still spinning with outside thoughts and residual stress.
Soon, I became utterly engrossed in the well-sketched gameworld and all
else faded to black.
The setting is impeccable: no anachronisms or oversights. I truly felt
like I was in the 1800's. The protagonist (a feminist before her time)
also came across quite strongly, and I enjoyed stepping into the shoes
of someone so like and yet unlike me.
Though the plot of "Masquerade" is fairly linear, for most of the way,
there are several forks in the later parts of the game which lead to
different endings based on your decisions. This was a big part of my
enjoyment: of the 12 endings, I've found about a third, and am eager to
go back and find more after the comp. I was especially pleased that
choosing to strike out on your own (sans deed, sans husband) was a valid
option, and though the author didn't quite sanction it as a "winning"
ending (an odd word to use with story-based IF anyway), the outcome was
positive and rewarding (it's my favorite ending of those I found). In
that respect, Masquerade is hardly a "genre" romance.
In spite of this praise, "Masquerade" didn't quite make my 9-10 bracket.
There are several reasons for this. The first is something the author
couldn'