Game Reviews D
These reviews are in alphabetical order according to the name of the game reviewed. The index also has a few extra features. First and foremost of these is the instant gratification feature. If you see the SPAG button:
Then you can click on it to retrieve the file from ftp.ifarchive.org, or to go to that file's directory on the archive (in the case of competition games).
The email addresses used are those submitted with the review, so naturally some of them may be out of date. All email addresses are spamblocked -- replace the name of our magazine with the traditional 'at' sign.
Table of Contents
Damnatio Memoriae Dangerous Curves Dark Mage Dastardly Dawn of the Demon A Day for Soft Food Dead Reckoning (by David Whyld) Deadline Deadsville Deena of Kolini Deep Space Drifter Deephome Degeneracy Delightful Wallpaper Delusions Demon's Tomb Depravity Bites Desert Heat Detective Detective: An Interactive MiSTing Die Vollkommene Masse Dinner With Andre Distress Ditch Day Drifter The Djinni Chronicles Dr. Dumont's Wild P.A.R.T.I. Don't Be Late! Doomed Xycanthus Down Downtown Tokyo. Present Day. Dracula: The First Night Dragon Resources Stories Dragonlord Dreadwine The Dreamhold Dungeon Adventure The Dungeon of Dunjin Dutch Dapper IV: The Final Voyage
Damnatio Memoriae
From: José Manuel García-Patos (josemanuelinform SP@G josemanuel-gp.jazztel.es) Review appeared in SPAG #44 -- April 30, 2006 TITLE: Damnatio Memoriae AUTHOR: Emily Short EMAIL: emshort SP@G mindspring.com DATE: March 1, 2006 PARSER: Inform 7 SUPPORTS: Z-code (Inform .Z5) interpreters with blorb support AVAILABILITY: Freeware URL: http://plover.net/~emily/DM VERSION: Release 3 Once upon a time there was this guy in Greece -- ancient Greece, that is -- who set fire to some very important temple (Athena, maybe?). The reason why he did so was simple: He wanted to be famous. What did the other Greeks do? They forbid any mention of the incendiary's name. They condemned him to oblivion. That's what the title of the game, Damnatio Memoriae, means. And that's what the player must avoid in it: To be forgotten. No, that's not true. The game's real goal is not to get caught by your enemies, as in any other game. Posterity is secondary. Let's say it's a plus. I don't think that's a flaw, but I would've liked a *** You have died ***-like message every time you had managed to survive but not to save your memory from destruction. I would've liked to see a game where your life wasn't the most important thing at stake. (Has a game like that ever been written? One where the last message would be *** You have died, but you have won ***?) Also, I would've liked to read some thoughts on the subject of fame and posterity, because the story really had potential for that. Damnatio Memoriae shares a similar design pattern with Galatea. In the latter, the reactions of the NPC depended on several variables, and the ending was the verbal expression of the final values of those variables. Here you have your life and your fame. And the ending depends on the final values of both. This always reminds me of this Japanese show, Takeshi's Castle, where participants were put inside a giant ball and thrown down through what looked like a Tartaglia's triangle pinball. The outcome depended on whether they fell on safe or death spots. With this system, it doesn't really matter if you choose A or B, because the result is the same. Only the value of the variables change. Also, you can end up taking the B path even if you had chosen A earlier. My own storytelling concept is quite different. I think of interactive stories as trees. And trees are nothing but lists with a common root. So, interactive stories are a bunch of different linear stories that, depending on the player's choices can lead to lots of different endings. I find games designed like this easier to write and to plan, and more human, because it lets the story evolve almost without constraints. Doing things the other way seems confusing to me. And now that I'm dealing with theoretical aspects, let me mention a detail that I consider a wrong way of doing things. If you have already played Damnatio Memoriae and the ending ever caught you in the other location, you'll have noticed that you're brought back to the original room and offered again a full description of it. The reason why I think this is wrong is because it breaks the rhythym of the narration. I'm not talking about this particular game or about the author, but about the system that produced it. Why are Inform games organized by location instead of being organized by sequence? Remember the opening sequence of Touch of Evil? Why can't IF games do things like that? Let's suppose you have this PC who's talking with a friend while walking down the street. Are you going to interrupt the conversation every time they turn a corner? Let's suppose you have a PC who's being chased by the police. Are you going to interrupt the chase every time the player types E or S to offer a boring description that nobody would care about at that particular moment? If games were organized by sequence, only each one's opening location's description would be offered and the rest could then be simply asked for. To me this makes a lot more sense, and also leaves freedom to the author to write a narrative text and make the story advance instead of offering a description that's always more or less the same. But, finally, the good news. I liked the game. Really. I did. It was short, so it didn't get boring. Actually, when I reached the ending for the first time I thought: Hey,this is it? I want more. Also, it was easier than most of her other games. By easier, I mean the interaction was easier. For example, in Savoir Faire the non-standard verbs drove me crazy. It was like watching one of those pretentious B/W indie movies. It's not me the one who has to adapt to your style, it's you to mine, stupid filmmaker! But in this case, I liked the story (I love the Romans) and I could take the time to learn how the special commands worked, because the learning gave almost immediate results. Also, I think it is Emily's best written game. [Final note: Oh. In case anyone was thinking: You uneducated freak! It was the temple of...! And the guy's name was...! I know perfectly well who the temple was dedicated to, and who the incendiary was, and even the exact date when that happened, but I'm not doing him a favour even by giving you hints about him.]
Dangerous Curves
From: David Myers <dmyers SP@G ic.sunysb.edu> Review appeared in SPAG #24 -- March 24, 2001 NAME: Dangerous Curves AUTHOR: Irene Callaci EMAIL: icallaci SP@G csupomona.edu DATE: June 2000 PARSER: Inform SUPPORTS: Z-machine interpreters AVAILABILITY: IF Archive URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/curves.z8 VERSION: Release 8 This game's been on my mind a while. I just can't shake it. She's like a five-martini hangover that just won't go away. For just about any subgenre of IF, in general, if you wait long enough you will eventually see a game that "nails" the subgenre. For those of you groaning, I assure you that (1) this review is not entirely ranting if-crit, and (2) not a total slobber-fest proclamation that Dangerous Curves is the best detective IF ever made. But let's face it, sometimes a game comes along which makes it really hard for others to stake a claim in the same subgenre for years afterward. And so, when I started playing D.C., a significant question in my mind was "Has the private detective storyline (as IF) been beaten to death (long) before Dangerous Curves came along?" The short transcript to this question (in a more polite form, perhaps) might be: > Is this the game that "nails shut" mystery IF for at least > the next few years? Not quite. > Well, does this game add anything to that subgenre that > feels really fresh? Here and there, yes. > Does D.C. at least provide a satisfying reward as a > competent, mainstream stab at a subgenre that some > might say is already fairly well populated? Absolutely! I can't say so loudly enough. A perfect example to typify my case is the description for one of the prime female characters and suspects: >x jessica Tall, blonde, and cool as a martini at five o'clock. Legs that begin somewhere down around Cape Horn and don't quit till they reach the Northwest Territories. The type of woman other women despise. The type every man falls for. Once. Ok, look, it's not grand innovation on the detective strain, but can you argue that it fails to ante up on the promise of what Chandler, Sam Spade, and Easy Rawlins might deliver? What I believe makes IF so well suited for mystery is that the most tried and true prologues are of the amnesiac genre (e.g. "You wake up in a small white room, noticing that your skull has sustained a sharp blow. Ears ringing, you hobble to the door to find it locked before noticing the small trace of blood on your hospital gown."). This game plays into that theme nicely, with the private eye appropriately grasping at straws early on, and building up his case slowly and naturally. Which brings us to the question of plot. Does it live up? My answer is, "Almost." As far as it goes, I can't criticize the plotting itself, per se. The game grinds out as a pretty decent clue-finding exercise for a while, followed by figuring out just how to corner the culprit. The trouble isn't that the plot doesn't hold together, nor that there are non-intuitive moments, big gaps, or ridiculous leaps that the player must make. The problem, if there is one, is that the storyline winds up more linear and compact than the player will imagine it should be. Based on the first scene, I would have expected more deceptive twists and turns as I sifted my way through the clues. In literary terms, this basically fleshes out a novella, after the opening moments seem to have promised a full-length novel. Imagine seeing the first hour of the movie "Chinatown", and not the full version. A great half of a movie. Really great. Abbreviated in form, minus much of the intrigue of the real deal. But ask yourself, when it comes to IF, how many other works have successfully addressed this? Besides the plot, there are a pile of little features and touches that make this game more enjoyable, and which should be emulated by others: - Use of keys is handled automatically (no fumbling for the right one outside a locked door.) - There is an in-game notepad. This can be used to avoid mapping the whole world, or for any other data you want to store there. - The GO TOcommand further obviates the need for extensive mapping, and smoothly handles operation of your car. - The in-game hint system is particularly clever, amusing, adaptive to your progress, and seamless with the plot. All at once. Those are just gimmicks, though. You may be wondering what it IS that makes this game take up the maximal 512K storage of an overstuffed z8 game file. The answer is that the author decided to implement a boodle's worth of stuff that other authors would have considered mere distraction. In short, Irene went a-world-buildin', and did a mostly fine job of it, with a medium-to-large number of locations which each have their fair share of fully implemented items. And, for the most part, all of this mess interacts with all the other mess pretty well. Honestly, how many other IF-towns have you been to recently that had functioning offices, police stations, newsrooms, libraries, service stations, hospitals, bars, pawnshops, apartments, cars, restaurants, banks, etc. Of course, it's all under the illusion of man-behind-the-curtain "functioning", but that's the point. There's even good IF-style humor lurking behind many of the stock answers that grease the wheels behind each the scenes of the functioning world-spaces (example here from the pawnshop): >kiss earl Earl works out at the local gym a couple times a week. You don't. >hit earl Earl works out at the local gym a couple times a week. You don't. >break display case Rumor has it Earl once killed a man for less. You get the picture. Naturally, there are exceptions. Like many games with mandatory sleeping and eating, there are annoyances when you haven't really played along correctly. I tend to explore the locations of a large game pretty randomly at first, without solving puzzles (when I can actually get away with it), and that's hard with sleeping/eating games. And, of course, there is the money handling algorithm, which attempts to help you out by avoiding the need for counting your change too precisely. Some players will agree, and some won't. This shakes out as pretty minor, fortunately. In all, Irene should be lauded for her example of solid top-to-bottom game design. Even better, the spit and polish make the player feel like they are inside a game with has a complete, all-around feel to it. Like a good DVD that has plenty of extras and good packaging, Dangerous Curves has all the right finishing touches (short of hard-copy feelies) that give it a near-professional quality. Returning to the point at which this review began, let's just take a second to survey the scope of private eye IF that has come before, to better put in context how this game should now be judged. Previous IF mysteries include Infocom's Witness and Deadline, Gumshoe, and most recently Guilty Bastards. Given its recentness and degree of similarity, I assert that Guilty Bastards is a key reference point. From my view, G.B. is a competent and engaging mystery. It set a mark for all-around quality as the flagship game of the Hugo system, but didn't quite impose a moratorium on detective IF. If you will allow me a little license: We might say that while the movie {game} Usual Suspects {Guilty Bastards} rejuvenated the atrophying subgenre of suspense {mystery} movies {IF}, and raised the bar, there was and is still room for artistic success by others. Take a look at L.A. Confidential or Talented Mr. Ripley {Dangerous Curves}. Given the thirst for larger, longer, non-comp games Irene has to be greatly praised for producing an enjoyable, well-integrated game of this size.
Dark Mage
From: Nick Montfort <nickm SP@G media.mit.edu> Review appeared in SPAG #22 -- September 15, 2000 NAME: Dark Mage AUTHOR: Greg Troutman EMAIL: unknown DATE: 1997 PARSER: N/A - written in assembly SUPPORTS: Atari 2600 AVAILABILITY: Software is freeware. Cartridge for sale for $25. URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/atari-8bit/dm.bin Dark Mage is a unique work. Using bank-switching to achieve the needed resolution, it is a complete implementation of an original text adventure within an 8k Atari 2600 program. The creator has gone on to release a graphical Atari 2600 game, This Planet Sucks. When I tried Dark Mage a few years ago using an emulator, the emulated display was the thing that sucked. It was so nauseatingly flickering that even those with a strong stomach for fuzzy, flickering text would have trouble. For those who wish to play Dark Mage, I strongly recommend using an actual Atari 2600. It can be played using the Starpath Supercharger, a device which fits in the cartridge slot and can be loaded with new games via a 1/8" audio jack. (The Supercharger originally was used to load games from cassette tapes.) Sound files in .wav format are available from non-IF-Archive sources online, ready for use with the Supercharger. Also online are the .bin ROM image and (again, at other sites) the source code for an early 4k version of the game. The other way to play Dark Mage on the 2600 itself is to purchase a cartridge for $25, from Hozer Video Games. [http://www.netway.com/~hozervideo --Paul] Any screen of text displayed in Dark Mage, either responding to actions or to describing an area, can have at most nine lines. Each line can be at most twelve characters wide. Before the first room description appears, there is a four-screen introductory sequence: AS JESTER TO KING ROLAND THE INSANE, YOU'VE KNOWN BETTER DAYS - BANISHED! - JUST BECAUSE YOU HAD TOO MUCH TO DRINK - AND LOST THE BLACK ROSE OF THE REALM IN A CARD GAME AGAINST NEONORE,THE DARK MAGE... Then the player is greeted with: YOU ARE ON A HILLTOP There are few possibilities at this point. The rubber-coated black joystick can be manipulated to indicate a direction or (if left in the center) "LOOK" for a longer description. After LOOKing, there are an additional few actions possible: GO (returning to the directional options), TAKE, GIVE, USE, TALK, INVENTORY. TALK is not transitive, and neither is TAKE. GIVE and USE allow the player to choose objects from inventory. Often the actions are not productive or fun, and when they succeed it is often in an unexpected way. This unexpected success of commands can sometimes frustrate, but it works to the advantage of Dark Mage at times. In one memorable case, a very funny Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference unexpectedly appears. The final solution to the game is a good one, appropriate to the jester protagonist. Even with screens smaller than a haiku, Dark Mage shows that it is possible to create puzzles that work with the accompanying story elements and reinforce the overall tone of the work. Having contemplated doing IF works for the GameBoy, a powerful platform by comparison, Dark Mage was of special interest. The game did reveal that (aside from the technological strong-man freak-show value of an endeavor like this) there are at least a few pleasures to be had in an extremely spare form. These stemmed mostly from the unusual replies, with less thrill provided by puzzle-solving. In many places, the quickest path through solution space may be the exhaustive search approach: simply doing everything in every location to try to advance. The occasionally witty subversion of my action into something wacky provided a good moment here and there, but it was not enough to make Dark Mage a really fun experience overall. It remains of interest as a retrocomputing curiosity -- and, to some extent, as a way to learn about the essence of IF by looking to the least ornamented, most simple examples.
Dasterdly
From: Greg Boettcher <greg SP@G gregboettcher.com> Review appeared in SPAG #42 -- October 2, 2005 NAME: Dastardly AUTHOR: Andy Chase EMAIL: dasterdly.20.banjo SP@G spamgourmet.com DATE: December 2004 PARSER: Inform SUPPORTS: Z-machine interpreters AVAILABILITY: IF Archive URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/ mini-comps/hours/dasterdly.z5 VERSION: Release 1 I came to Dastardly with pretty low expectations. I had never before played a game from 24 Hours of Inform, the contest for which this game was written. I was expecting something not much better than a SpeedIF game. What I got instead was a game that has much to admire in its atmosphere and character development, although it does have a particularly serious flaw. The third 24 Hours of Inform contest had two basic rules: write a game in 24 hours, and set the game in a theatre, featuring a petticoat, an advertisement, something which is repainted, and a trapdoor. These requirements led Andy Chase to set his game in a financially troubled theatre in Victorian London. Your are an ambitious playwright, while your financial backer, James, has ruined your hopes by turning your theatre into a burlesque house while he indulges in excesses of drink and flesh. In the "about" menus for this game, Andy Chase says that Dastardly probably contains a lot of historical inaccuracies. Maybe, but I didn't notice any. In fact, I really liked the game's setting and atmosphere. Another thing I liked was the extent to which its characters were developed, far more than I would have expected in a speed-written game. You may not be able to talk to James much during the opening segment, but you can read your journal to gain insight into him, yourself, and others. Before you are done exploring the theatre, you have a fairly good idea of what you must do, and why. Unfortunately, this game has a serious bug that prevented me from being able to finish it. I thought maybe it was just me, so I asked my girlfriend, another IF veteran, to play the game, but she got stuck at the same place that I did. I wrote to the author and found out that we had both essentially done everything we were supposed to do, but were stuck because of a serious bug that often turns the final puzzle into a roadblock. The other major flaw is shallow implementation, whereby a lot of scenery items can't be examined, and lots of other details are overlooked. Of course, this is what you'd expect in a game written in 24 hours. Do I recommend Dastardly? Well, I guess that depends on whether you're willing to write to the author for help, because I'd expect most people to get tripped up by the game's major bug. But if you are so inclined, then yes, play it. It's a short, enjoyable little game, with decent characters and an interesting but flawed puzzle. I'll be able to recommend this game much more strongly when Release 2 comes out, or if hints or a walkthrough are released. Even if there is never a Release 2 (and there usually hasn't been for 24 Hours of Inform games), this game shows promise, and I'd be interested to see whatever Andy Chase does next. P.S. Now that I've written to Andy Chase for help on finishing his game, he told me that his interest in Inform is somewhat rekindled now. He says that a new version of Dastardly may indeed be on the way, though he can't say when. To check for any updates, or to get the most recent version of the game, visit: http://achase.net/files/32/dastardly
Dawn of the Demon
From: David Welbourn <dswxyz SP@G look.ca> Review appeared in SPAG #43 -- January 7, 2006 TITLE: Dawn of the Demon AUTHOR: Paul Drallos EMAIL: pdrallos SP@G tir.com DATE: May 2005 PARSER: Inform SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware; Author's website; IF Archive URL: http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/dotd.zip VERSION: Release 0 Dawn of the Demon is a text adventure set in the world of Infocom's Zork about a thousand years before the founding of the Great Underground Empire and the use of G.U.E. dating. It is also a prequel for a graphical game, Zork: The Hidden Evil, which is being produced by The Zork Library (http://www.thezorklibrary.com). In Dawn of the Demon, you play a nameless adventurer in search of the Demon's treasure which is rumoured to be hidden somewhere in the forest south of the One River. Geographically, the game is fairly large with over 130 locations, including the cities of Pheebor and Borphee, a large forest, a maze, and a sizeable network of grue-infested tunnels. I was a bit disappointed with the cities which were portrayed blandly and with few Zorkian characteristics. Pheebor, for example, does not yet sport the aqueducts or marble spires mentioned in the Encyclopedia Frobozzica, but instead offers an understated royal palace with guards, an "acedemic-looking" library with yet another librarian sporting glasses and a hairbun, and a coffee shop which somehow isn't called Starbloits or Pheebucks. The great Arch is being built in the plaza, however, which does help connect this Pheebor to the ruins seen in Beyond Zork. Minor touches like this aside, I can't help but feel that several game locations were unused for either story or puzzle purposes. The forest, for example, does its best to have enough landmarks to distinguish one part from another, but there's still very little in there for the player to interact with. Likewise, Borphee has to have a harbour and marina because it's famous for it, but it's just filler here and plays no part in your story. For your Zork nostalgia dollar, the game both hits and misses, not unlike Star Trek: Enterprise. The hungus, easily my favourite NPC in the game, scores a bullseye by deftly combining humour, plot exposition, and a puzzle into one neat package. Instead of zorkmids, which won't be minted until about 1600 years later, we have zoons, another borrowing from Beyond Zork. There is some clever business with the grues involving how they perceive the world, but I was less happy with the portrayal of grues as a people with a primitive culture, as if they were Morlocks. A more obvious miss is an accidental mention of the Flathead mountains long before there were any Flatheads; the coffee shop and a CD-like disk are anachronistic. Some of the events in Hades might contradict what we think we know about Yoruk, who won't show up for centuries. It gets tiresome to point out unpolished prose and spelling errors, but darn it, they're in there. The game also inspired me to invent two new terms to describe particular style errors -- the "pointless porch" and the "duh-scription" -- both of which are exhibited in the following example: Outside the Pheebor Public Library You are standing outside the Pheebor Public Library. A "pointless porch" is a unnecessary location between a street and a building. And could there be a better example of a "duh-scription" than the description of the hilt below?: >x sword The broadsword has a shiney blade and a jewel-encrusted hilt. >x hilt The jewel encrusted hilt is encrusted with jewels. Even with these weaknesses, I still liked the game for its attempt to add to the Zork ouevre. I appreciated the in-game help menus which helped me through the game's major bottleneck. If you dislike mapping, there is a pdf file of maps available. Also, the game will detect if you're having trouble talking with an NPC and suggest topics to ask him or her about.Zcode executable (.z5) and map
A Day for Soft Food
From: Duncan Stevens <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu> Review appeared in SPAG #19 -- January 14, 2000 TITLE: A Day for Soft Food AUTHOR: Tod Levi E-MAIL: jessica1 SP@G ix.netcom.com DATE: 1999 PARSER: Inform standard SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive) URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition99/inform/softfood/softfood.z5> VERSION: Release 1 The IF competition, if nothing else, seems to foster amusing experiments in point of view: 1996 and 1997 gave us Ralph and A Bear's Night Out, viewed from the perspective of a dog and a teddy bear, respectively, and 1999's A Day for Soft Food continues the trend by giving the player the persona of a cat, a common housecat. As with the other two, there's lots of fun to be had in inhabiting the role, and the author has done much to exploit the humor of the situation, and while A Day for Soft Food doesn't have as strong a sense of the limitations of the character, it works well nonetheless. As with the other two, the game begins with a task at hand that's typical of the character's goals; the dog PC was intent on finding a bone, the teddy bear PC wanted to assemble the materials for a picnic, and the cat PC, well, just wants to eat, preferably the canned soft food of the title. Unlike the other two, though, your goals change along the way, on a few levels: you start solving problems as they present themselves, whether or not the problems have a clear connection to the ultimate goal--and you continue solving puzzles even after the original goal has been attained. While the shift makes sense on some level--the goal becomes obvious reasonably quickly--it also makes this a rather different PC from that of, say, Ralph. Part of the humor in Ralph arose from the PC's total fixation on finding the lost bone, to the exclusion of everything else; Day for Soft Food picks up on that in some measure (your Provider becomes steadily more annoyed with your antics over the course of the game), but moves away from it toward the end, and the result is a rather anthropomorphic cat. That's not bad, as such, but it does take some adjustment. Part of the reason for this is that the puzzles are a bit of a mixed bag; some of them suggest rather catlike reasoning (particularly in the way you pester your Provider into waking up and feeding you), and some really don't--you're not finding a solution to an immediate problem so much as you're solving task A to get object B to solve puzzle C with. That aside--again, your cat nature only drives the action to a certain extent--the puzzles also have some fairness problems; a few are misleading, or unhelpful at best, in conveying the scale of some relevant objects (i.e., in relation to you), another is guess-the-syntax, and another requires that the player know something that the PC clearly doesn't. The result is that the PC is considerably less catlike than the PCs in Ralph and Bear's Night Out are doglike and bearlike--the character isn't as fully realized, and the player can too easily forget that the PC has limitations that don't afflict human PCs. (The basic problem, however--that your Provider isn't as good a Provider as he was previously because of an illness, forcing you to take matters into your own paws--fits with the cat personality; events are significant only insofar as they affect your supply of food.) Despite these problems, though, there's lots of fun to be had here, and even though the puzzles shortchange the catty aspect of the game somewhat, the incidental details and fun stuff make up for it. There are various creative deaths to die, for one thing, and the variety and number of untimely ends you can suffer (the game occasionally warns you when an action would end the game prematurely, but usually doesn't prevent you from doing anything dumb) suggests the perverse curiosity of a real cat. (Particularly notable in this respect are the deaths when you jump onto the stump where your Provider is chopping wood, and when you set a trap then trigger it yourself.) Other amusing bits include this description of a chair: "The lumpy mountain is home to some of your finest claw and scratch marks, though your Provider has never shared much enthusiasm for the art." At its best moments, the game allows the player to recognize the significance of, say, the Provider's illness, even while the PC remains oblivious; the serene cluelessness of a cat is the main source of humor here. Even the writing is subtly catlike, as in the following description: Snowy Maw To the east, icicles hang like fangs within a giant maw of snow. A large pair of matching tracks lead out of shadows of the snowy mouth and to the west. A path loops north and south. A cat describes with terms that a cat knows, and therefore icicles are "fangs," the opening is a "maw," and a car's path down the driveway is a "pair of matching tracks." Subtle touches like this help the overall feel of the game considerably. A Day for Soft Food, like Ralph and, to a lesser extent, A Bear's Night Out, is worth playing simply to see the fun things that the author does with the premise. The puzzles have problems, but the overall charm of the game more than makes up for those deficiencies, enough that I gave it an 8 in this year's competition.
Dead Reckoning (by David Whyld)
From: Michael Bechard <mbechard SP@G ilsmart.com> Review appeared in SPAG #38 -- September 28, 2004 TITLE: Dead Reckoning AUTHOR: David Whyld EMAIL: me SP@G dwhyld.plus.com DATE: Dec. 2003 PARSER: ADRIFT standard SUPPORTS: ADRIFT interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive) URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/adrift/DeadReckoning.taf It's pretty tough to write a horror game effectively. More than any other emotion, it is hard to strike true fear into a person sitting at a computer comfortably playing a game. One has to really put the player IN the game, make them develop an affinity for the characters involved, and get them out of the mindset of a typical gamer (piddling around with every little option, restoring saved games at their leisure, etc.) Dead Reckoning comes close to doing just this, but not close enough. The game is set in the town of Morrow and leaves you, Duffy, to unravel the horrors that have come to roost there. You slowly uncover the reason why all the town's inhabitants are missing or dead while trying to rescue your friend Edwin from some unknown danger. The author describes this game as "more of a story-driven game than a puzzlefest," but I would categorize it somewhere in-between. As far as putting the player in the game, I believe Dead Reckoning succeeds, albeit marginally. A thorough implementation of all the objects mentioned in the game's text contributes heavily to the immersion factor. I found I could listen to and smell various things, even examine things that were mentioned as not being there (described, of course, as absent). Very nice. The evocative descriptions were well done too, for the most part. A nice example is: "Well, well, one of the living," says the corpse, its voice a choking rasp. As it speaks, bits of rotten skin flake off from the side of its face and drift in lazy spirals down to the dusty floor. "We don't get many living ones here anymore, do we, my brethren?" Sometimes, however, I got the feeling that the author was trying a little too hard, as in the following exchange between the player and an NPC: "I was the priest here in Morrow until... the bad things happened." "The bad things?" "Lots of bad things. An ancient evil returned to haunt us, to exact revenge for what we did." He shakes his head sadly. Quite a few things are described as "eerie" or "unsettling," when these kinds of feelings should be evoked from the player, not spelled out for them. I never really felt unsettled or afraid while playing because of my lack of affinity for the characters. I never cared about Duffy or Edwin at all during the game. Why? Because I didn't know them as characters, as "real live" people. Dead Reckoning tries a bit in this regard, unfolding bits and pieces of Duffy and Edwin's past as children in the course of play, but it left me wanting more. If I'm running for my life from some zombies, I want a reason why I should even care. On the other hand, some of the characterizations were done very well; I just wanted a little more meat to them, I suppose. As for getting the player out of the mindset of a gamer, the game succeeds. While the plot is a little linear and progress is sometimes blocked by puzzles, the puzzles aren't too hard (or numerous), and multiple endings/deaths are available. When a potential death is near, the game gives you fair warning about it. While some players may be put off by messages like, "You have a bad feeling about doing that," I appreciated the effort from the author to steer me towards the right path. Once a player dies and has to restart or restore, there's a huge break in mimesis. The previous message, while still breaking mimesis, only does so a little, and not nearly as much as restoring your game. In a horror game where the player's situation is deadly, this is even more important. I suppose one could argue that the player should never be in danger of dying in the first place, but that's another topic of discussion... Some other nitpicks I had with the game were a fair amount of typos and some small incongruencies/bugs, but they weren't that noticeable. The typos were, though. Overall, I would compare Dead Reckoning to one of the old EC horror comics; there are some real detailed, spooky descriptions and a nice zombified plot, but it leaves you painfully aware that you're "just reading a comic." However, this isn't really bad at all; I love EC horror comics, and I love horrific art in general, even if it doesn't scare me. Ergo, I liked this game. If it's not a truly chilling, engrossing piece of IF, it is a very solid, entertaining romp through a wonderfully realized, classic horror setting. Final score - 6 of 10
Deadline
From: Volker Lanz <volker.lanz SP@G gmx.net> Review appeared in SPAG #20 -- March 15, 2000 NAME: Deadline AUTHOR: Marc Blank (Infocom) EMAIL: mblank SP@G eidetic.com DATE: 1983 PARSER: Early Infocom SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports AVAILABILITY: Masterpieces URL: Not available VERSION: Release 27. Deadline was the first Infocom mystery and their third released game (after Zork I and Zork II). Author Marc Blank said that he did not want to do another fantasy game after the Zorks and thought that a mystery was an obvious choice: "I thought it was a great idea because most people, when they read mysteries, are constantly trying to think ahead, what happened. 'Ooh, I would have looked here, I would have done this. I would have been more clever.' So, it seemed to lend itself perfectly." Deadline was also the first Infocom game to come with feelies: In the box were interviews with the suspects, some tablets, a photograph of the murder scene, a letter from the attorney and a coroner's note. The story: Marshall Robner, a wealthy industrialist, is found dead in his locked-up library one morning. He died of an overdose of Ebullion, a medicine he has been taking for his depressions. An apparent suicide... Really? The attorney of the deceased asks you, the detective, to investigate this case to "quash the suspicions" that are inevitable when a wealthy man dies an unnatural death. You have twelve hours to solve this case and you begin your work on a Friday morning at 8 a.m. From the beginning, almost the complete playing field is accessible to the player, so Deadline is a good choice for everyone who likes wide game designs and non-linear plots. On the other hand, Deadline also suffers from the "you-have-to-know-what's-happening-where-and-when" problem that Suspect later showed (though not as much): By your actions, you are likely to trigger reactions of the NPCs that happen somewhere else. If you don't know that, you are likely to miss crucial points of the plot. Speaking of NPCs: This is where the game really shines. The six main NPCs (not counting the attorney, who only plays a minor role) are really fleshed out; they act reasonable and consistent to their character and motives. You can show a lot of things to them and study their reactions, you can ask them about many topics, you can follow them around, you can accuse them and listen to what they have to say. Only few i-f games have such complete NPCs, I would say. A weaker point of the game is the early parser it uses: It understands a lot of things, but sometimes gets confused or reacts in the wrong way to the player's input. Also, the game is quite buggy if you do things that the author apparently didn't think of (the Infocom Bug List on GMD only shows about a third of the bugs I found). One major problem with the game is how hard it is: Not only do you have to get evidence against the guilty party, you also have to prove that a crime was committed at all. This turns out to be a tough job and can cause the player quite a headache for some time. Some actions you have to perform aren't that obvious (what to do with the holes in the garden; or how long exactly you have to wait before you may interrupt certain NPCs when they are doing something -- too early and you can't prove what they did, too late and they've finished), so players may be tempted to revert to a walkthrough or the hints. All in all, Deadline is a good game that is still worth playing after all these years -- in my opinion the best mystery that Infocom did.
Deadsville
From: Mike Harris <M.Harris SP@G spi-bpo.com> Review appeared in SPAG #45 -- July 17, 2006 NAME: Deadsville (Introcomp 2005) AUTHOR: William McDuff EMAIL: wmcduff SP@G mac.com DATE: July 24, 2005 PARSER: Inform 6 SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware; IF Archive URL: http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Deadsville.zip VERSION: Release 3 A short, two-location game, Deadsville is a fun twist on a George Romero premise. Despite a limited palette of one NPC, two locations and a small number of objects it’s rich and well written, proving that an enjoyable game does not need complexity. Defeating the NPC and winning the game is fairly straightforward. It can be done in less than twenty moves and took me about 15 minutes the first time. However, that’s not really the point. After the first play I spent over an hour repeatedly replaying the game to find all iterations. A well-implemented hints menu contains a number of amusing suggestions including a command that allows the player to explore all of the losing options without having to restart each time. Even the “default” responses are entertaining and well thought out and there were several times I laughed out loud when I got a response that I wasn’t expecting. As for technical details, the game is bug free and well implemented, with no “guess the verb” problems. No “guess the noun” problems, either - the game accepts a surprisingly large list of nouns to refer to the NPC and objects. I only found one flaw - after defeating the NPC character, re-examining an object gives the pre-defeat response – and my only objection is that a single sentence within the response refers obliquely to the NPC as though still undefeated and in no way affects the playability. I can only wish that all IF games were this thoroughly debugged. Deadsville is “horror” in much the same way the movie “Shaun of the Dead” is horror – no lurid descriptions of gore to off-put the weak of stomach. You don’t have to be a fan of the genre to appreciate Deadsville, but if you’re the sort of person who laughs when the ditzy teenager gets her gruesome comeuppance you’ll find it especially entertaining. I look forward to the full game. The atmosphere is dead on and the characters are as fleshed out as they can be (every possible pun intended). Some tougher puzzles might be enjoyable. In any case, if the author takes as much time and trouble with the full version as with the intro, Deadsville could well become a classic. On a scale of 1 to 10 I give Deadsville a 3 for difficulty and 8 overall.
Deena of Kolini
From: Graeme Cree <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> Review appeared in SPAG #11 -- September 16, 1997 NAME: Deena of Kolini AUTHOR: E. L. (Ev) Cheney EMAIL: ? DATE: c. 1986 PARSER: GAGS standard SUPPORTS: All GAGS and AGT Ports AVAILABILITY: Freeware URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source/gags/deen-src.zip People who don't like the AGT parser should be made to play a few GAGS games some time. AGT looks like Virtual Reality by comparision. GAGS was the predecessor to AGT, and AGT is backwardly compatible enough to be able to use most GAGS source code. The big difference between the two is that GAGS does not allow any of the meta-commands that AGT does. As a result the parser is almost completely limited to Open/Close, Push/Pull, Turn, Touch, and a couple of others. All puzzles must be solved with these, and are pretty much restricted to killing monsters and opening locks. Deena of Kolini, by E.L. (Ev) Cheney looks like it wants to be more detailed, but it is held in bondage to the limitations of the GAGS system (considering the content of the game, this may be poetic justice). In the game, you play Deena, a warrior-maiden POW captured when your people were attacked by the lecherous Gendi. Tossed in a dark, damp, dank dungeon, your mission is to escape both your cell, and what was called "a fate worse than death" in Plundered Hearts. Along the way you must find and rescue a handsome but wounded Prince, not for romantic reasons, but because you need him to illuminate rooms that your torch cannot (don't ask me about this, I haven't got a clue either). Actually, according to the source code, the Prince is not only luminous but edible (!), which made me very thankful that GAGS doesn't permit any customized descriptions for this. It appears as though the author tried hard to flesh out the game as much as possible within the system. In the early days of GAGS and AGT, many authors did not bother to write item descriptions for many things, resulting in repetitious "You see nothing special about the <item>" messages whenever you tried to examine something (Even Zork 1 was guilty in this area). In this game, Ms. Cheney not only provided item descriptions for everything, but also accompanying graphics. The whip, the manacles, the red-hot poker, (no, I am NOT making this up) are all rendered in fairly good quality ASCII line drawings. My favourite one was the scrap of parchment, which should show you how boring I am. The author did not just throw this game together, she obviously worked hard. However, the technology of the day just wasn't enough to give more than a rudimentary result. One avoidable problem is in the game's spelling and grammar. The spelling errors can be very distracting at times, and there are several places where sentences have single words gouged out of the middle (i.e.: "The rawhide whip looks as if it could the skin off a dragon" [sic]). My biggest design complaint about the game is the decision to conclude the game with an escape through a maze. Actually there are two mazes side by side. One goes nowhere, but the author was kind enough to include an item that will at least point you towards the right one. I've always regarded mazes as being the I-F equivalent of rock-climbing. If that phrase sounds familiar, you've probably played Chris Forman's excellent Mystery Science Theater game where he makes the same comment about Detective's seemingly endless hallways. The reference is to the 1951 movie "Lost Continent", starring Cesar Romero and Hugh "Ward Cleaver" Beaumont. This was an early MST3K episode which featured a 12 minute sequence in the middle that showed nothing but the main characters rapelling up a rockface (not even on location). Basically, "rock-climbing" means "padding" (although in this game "padding" may also be poetic justice). [SIDE NOTE: For those who were wondering about the "Deep Hurting!!" reference immediately after the rock-climbing one in Chris's game, this is a reference to another MST3K movie (Hercules Against the Moon Men) that was supposed to top "rock-climbing" with a 15 minute Sandstorm scene, that was gloatingly guaranteed to cause "Deep Hurting!".] The maze was a legitimate puzzle (even a clever one) when it first appeared in Colossal Cave because no one had ever seen it before. Since then it has been primarily used like "rock-climbing"; to artificially pad the length of a game that would otherwise be a little short. There is no longer any puzzle; since everybody knows HOW to get through them. All that is left is the tedium of actually doing it. There are a few games which really add something new to the idea (For example, Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur's Badger Maze presents us with a genuinely new puzzle; how do you map a maze when you can't drop objects behind you?), but these are the exception rather than the rule. Nothing against the maze in general. I loved the Babel Fish puzzle in Hitchhiker's Guide, but I wouldn't want half the games in circulation to have the same identical puzzle in them. (It could be worse though. Suppose everybody tried to imitate the Baseball Diamond maze in Zork 2!? Yuck!) Not to single Ms. Cheney out for criticism, but it's so annoying to pick up an ostensibly new game only to find the same old boring time-consuming puzzle poke its head up time after time after time. You know the old much-lampooned bumper sticker that said "I Brake for Animals"? I'm going to get one that says "I Scream for Mazes." Well [climbing off the soapbox], back to the game at hand. It also features some of the more common (but avoidable) quirks of the GAGS/AGT system, such as having to use one specific weapon to kill each creature, but not others. For example, the dagger will kill one (non-magical) person, but the sword will not. Where's the sense in that? One non-avoidable problem is that in GAGS/AGT, creatures must be classified as either friendly or hostile, and all hostile ones will block your path and try to kill you. As a result, the lecherous old man who fondles you in the stairwell but does not attack you, must be classified as friendly, and therefore if you attack him, you get the standard message that asks why you would want to attack such a harmless and inoffensive creature, and that it looks hurt and betrayed. There are a few rooms of Instant-Fate-Worse-Than-Death, but there are sufficient clues for them to be avoided. Ms. Cheney obviously put a lot of effort into her game, but the technology of 10 years ago just wasn't up to the task, even with the recent desire for games with female lead characters. She could have improved the final result with a little more proofreading and playtesting, but even so GAGS just doesn't have the proper...verbs for her little excursion into S&M to fly.
Deep Space Drifter
From: Lars Jodal <joedal SP@G inet.uni-c.dk> Review appeared in SPAG #3 -- October 26, 1994 NAME: Deep Space Drifter PARSER: TADS standard AUTHOR: Michael J. Roberts PLOT: Mostly linear, rather slow EMAIL: mjrobert SP@G us.oracle.com ATMOSPHERE: First good, then shaky AVAILABILITY: IF Archive, shareware ($15) WRITING: Fair PUZZLES: Some good, some tedious SUPPORTS: TADS ports CHARACTERS: Only in the text DIFFICULTY: Easy (to medium) You are a space explorer who is almost out of fuel. With the last reserves you manage to reach a space station. However, the station seems to be under attack and nobody is around. What is going on only gradually becomes clear. To get really rescued you must go down to the planet below and find an escape vessel. The part of the game on the space station is good, with quite a bit of atmospheric details and generally good puzzles. But down at the planet things are less convincing. Everything is deserted, but no real reason for this is given. Several of the puzzles here are also very time-consuming and tedious. Among these puzzles are the game's two infamous mazes. The mazes are novel (no "twisty passages, all alike"), but too large and take a _long_ time to solve. The story contains two characters apart from the player, but they are not actually part of the _game_. This is to mean that they are mentioned in the text, but the player never gets a chance to interact with them. Thus the characters are not really NPCs but part of the story. The game is shareware. Upon registration one gets a very good hint book with many hints for each puzzle. The hint book is arranged so that you won't read hints by mistake.
Deephome
From: Duncan Stevens <dnrb SP@G starpower.net> Review appeared in SPAG #21 -- June 15, 2000 TITLE: Deephome AUTHOR: Joshua Wise DATE: 1999 E-MAIL: yesuslave SP@G yahoo.com PARSER: Inform standard SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive) URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/deephome.z5 VERSION: Release 1 Joshua Wise's Deephome is a rather uneven effort: it's a well-built world with plenty of attention to detail, and the setting is nicely done. As a game, however, it doesn't work so well--there are far too many mimesis-breaking moments and unfair puzzles--and the result, sadly, is rather unsatisfying. The objective, as conveniently laid out in a handy letter, is relatively simple--reopen and bring back to life the lost city of Deephome, which involves practical things like restoring the power and water as well as getting rid of some spirits that seem to be hanging around. Herein lies the first problem, however: you're told that these spirits are terribly dangerous, but they stand where they are for the entirety of the game and don't act threatening in any way--or, even, impede you from doing anything. They seem about as dangerous as paperweights, and it's hard to get all worked up about getting rid of them. There's an obvious purpose to restoring the power and water--accomplishing those tasks serves your purpose in the game, in fact, apart from giving you points--but not the spirit-banishing stuff. Moreover, in that you get a vital part of the formula for getting rid of them from the spirits themselves, these don't seem like particularly savvy spirits. The puzzles range from humdrum to rather irritating. Notable is the adversary you're told is allergic to "certain plants." The one plant that's prominent in the game isn't effective, however (and the syntax problems make it far from immediately clear that you need a different plant rather than different syntax), and the right one is buried in scenery. It has a lot of company in that respect, in fact--plenty of vital objects are buried in room descriptions with no hint that they're takeable. Other problematic puzzles include a bizarre combat sequence in which the first several attacks elicit both a "cries out in pain" message and a "your enemy notices you" message. There's also a puzzle that turns on a property of your body that you don't know about, and has almost no motivation other than the fact that certain suggestive objects are in close proximity. Another is made more difficult than it needs to be by confusion between "on" and "in," and another requires that you go through a series of steps with no way of fathoming the final result (i.e., the motivation). The best puzzles are the most straightforward, the ones that rely entirely on common-sense judgments--the ones that try to be cleverer than that end up being painfully nonintuitive. (One strange touch is that you get a point for visiting every location, so you can finish with less than the optimal number of points merely because you don't get around to visiting all the nonessential rooms.) As suggested, part of the reason the puzzles don't work particularly well is that there are plenty of technical problems, enough that it usually isn't clear whether a given attempt at solving a puzzle is wrong or simply not worded properly. Among the problems are objects mentioned in both the room description and in a separate line, objects so inadequately described that some of their salient features need to be inferred, and objects that can be examined but not taken before a search of another object turns them up. The writing likewise doesn't do the game many favors: there are lots of misspellings and misused words, and while certain moments are described well, others are rather underdone. The following exemplifies the unevenness of the writing: The main hall is quite large, and is lit by magical torches that line the walls all around, in a pattern that spirals up the grandiose room. Elevators hang in mid air, no longer powered. To the northeast is a small opening that is usually covered over by a tapestry that has long since been removed, to the northwest is a staircase leading up to one of the villages where your people lived; to the west you see the railway station. A main street runs to the south. "Grandiose" room? How does this character know that the opening was usually covered by a tapestry that has long since removed, or that his people lived in one of the villages? On the other hand, though, there are well-done bits in this description--"elevators hang in mid-air, no longer powered" is vivid and concisely described, and the "pattern" of torches that "spirals up" the room is nicely conveyed. The writing is mostly good enough to set the scene, in other words, but shot through with enough mistakes to make the reading less than fully pleasurable. The above problems are particularly frustrating because the story is actually pretty good. For one thing, the plot is refreshingly small-scale for fantasy--you're not saving the world or acquiring vast stores of wealth, you're simply exploring one city and performing certain tasks. That, in itself, suggests restraint, and it helps the story feel more immediate and less implausible than it might be. Moreover, much more detail than was strictly necessary went into the game--there's an encyclopedia lying around that has information on all sorts of topics, for instance, and there are certain elements of the game that get developed seemingly just to round out the story, in particular your religion. There are even some red herrings that point toward a sequel, and while that's not usually a great design choice (insofar as it encourages the player to spend time on apparent puzzles that can't be solved) it does convey the sense that there's more to the setting than the bare bones required for the puzzles. Likewise, there are quite a few locations that are there only to make the city feel more complete--and while some of them feel a little gratuitous, most are well chosen. The main fly in the ointment is a maze that isn't especially creative or well-rendered--the game would be better if the maze had been left out--but on the whole the setting is competently done and serves the purposes of the story. Deephome, in short, is a mixed bag. Enough thought clearly went into its crafting that the setting feels real, and the story is well thought out. The game aspect, unfortunately, has serious problems, significant enough that getting through the puzzles can be a major hassle. If some of the writing and technical problems get resolved, a sequel or a revised release of Deephome would be worth checking out.
Degeneracy
From: Duncan Stevens <dnrb SP@G starpower.net> Review appeared in SPAG #25 -- June 20, 2001 TITLE: Degeneracy AUTHOR: Leonard Richardson E-MAIL: leonardr SP@G segfault.org DATE: 2001 PARSER: Inform standard (modified slightly) SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive) URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/degen.z5 VERSION: Release 0.50 One of the nice things about fantasy IF--particularly the sort of fantasy IF that Graham Nelson has called "lazy medieval," which covers anything prior to the invention of gunpowder--is that the ground is so heavily trodden that it's easy'n'fun to stand the player's expectations on their head. Leonard Richardson's Degeneracy does just that, and while the trick itself isn't an unqualified success, it works well enough. It seems you've been enlisted to kill a certain Baron--not only have you been enlisted, in fact, you've gone and done it just before the game starts, and your mission is now to get out of the Baron's castle. Problem is, the Baron has cursed you, and the curse prevents you from escaping, so you need to delve into some alchemy books to undo the curse. There's also a time limit of sorts, it turns out, though it's generous enough that you don't need to be extremely efficient. The game itself isn't particularly long--it can easily be solved in under 100 moves, and the time limit kicks in at about 200 moves or so. The puzzles aren't especially exciting--there are only a few of them, and reading the manuals you find is essentially all you need to do--but there's lots of fun to be had in the writing. Much of it is mock-Elizabethan or thereabouts--lots of Surprising Capitalizations, for one thing, often put to amusing purposes. (There's one object containing water that you can pour over your head; suitably instructed, the game tells you that "you fit your Head under the deluge from the [object], and moisten your Hair." Better still are the antics of a pig you encounter, such as: The Pig wanders over to the heavy Portcullis & pokes its snout through on of the gaps in the iron Gate. A wistful look comes across the Pig's face, as it ponders a more carefree time in its life, a time redolent with Rolls in cool Mud & games of <> with its thirty-seven Grand-Children. The hints, liberally sprinkled with fake hints in the style of Infocom's Invisiclues, add to the humor. (E.g., in response to a question about how to get out of a certain room: "You might follow the carpet." "It leads off 'toward the sunrise'." "From which direction does the sun rise?" "Go east." "This is not technically a puzzle.") It's true that the game doesn't take every opportunity for humor that comes along--at least, so it seemed to me--but there are some surprisingly funny bits. (All the funnier because the game appears to take the dour persona of the PC so seriously.) The author wrote Guess the Verb!, from the 2000 competition, which was similarly full of sly humor. As mentioned, there's a trick of sorts in the game, on which I won't elaborate here. It's not a total success; some players, I know, thought it was a bug, which it most certainly isn't. There are indications that something's afoot well before the trick happens, though they depend to some extent, I think, on whether the player's moving around--fewer, if any, of the clues would be apparent to a player who's staying in one room working on a puzzle. (Technically, none of the puzzles are so hard that such concentration should be warranted, but you never know.) The nature of the trick is such that, unless duly warned, the player's likely to attribute the effect to a bug--that the author isn't extremely well known works against him in this case. (If it were Zarf trying to do the same thing, in other words, the player might tend to have more faith.) The moral is that an author planning a surprise of this kind should err on the side of overcluing (and taking excessive precautions to ensure that the player will see the clues). That aside--and I did get the clues, so it did work for me--it's a pretty clever idea, and again, the medieval setting helps: the player expects breaches of the fourth wall less, perhaps, than he or she might otherwise. It's also worth noting that, for a short game that may well exist for purposes of the above trick, Degeneracy's world is quite thoroughly created. There's a religion that, if not exhaustively described, comes across enough to be understood. There's a political system (well, hints about one). There' s a reasonably complex system of alchemy. And aside from all this, there are a couple of magic systems that have a variety of effects and are reasonably consistently applied. The production values are good enough, then, that this isn't simply lazy medieval fantasy. Degeneracy isn't a masterpiece, but it's not strictly a one-trick pony either--there's plenty to appreciate aside from the central gimmick.
Delightful Wallpaper
From: DJ Hastings <dj.hastings SP@G wavecable.com> Review appeared in SPAG #47 -- January 16, 2007 TITLE: Delightful Wallpaper AUTHOR: Andrew Plotkin EMAIL: erkyrath SP@G eblong.com DATE: October 1, 2006 PARSER: Inform 7 SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters with blorb support AVAILABILITY: Freeware; IF Archive URL: http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Wallpaper.zblorb VERSION: Release 4 Delightful Wallpaper divides neatly into two main puzzles. Since these are very different from each other and almost unrelated, I'm going to discuss them separately. THE LOGIC MAZE The first puzzle is a kind of maze, although more like Robert Abbott's "logic mazes" than the twisty little variety that everyone seems to hate. You start exploring a small mansion, but you lack the ability to do anything but walk around. As you move around, though, the mansion reacts in predictable ways. For example, walking through one doorway may open a door elsewhere, entering a room might change the direction of a one way door- that sort of thing. To put it briefly, I loved this puzzle. The mansion opens up a little bit at a time as you play. Manipulating the mansion properly will allow you to reach a new area, which you can use to manipulate another bit of the mansion, which will allow you to reach another new area... and it keeps going on like that until you've explored the entire place. You always have either a new room to visit or a new thing to play with. This pacing kept me interested and engaged through the entire puzzle. There are a few places where I might have become bored trying to figure out exactly what had happened after I'd triggered some change in the mansion. But this problem was avoided by my notebook, where "I" kept notes of all the things that affected the mansion and, once I happened upon them, what the effects were. And even if *I* didn't notice a change, the *PC* would notice and jot it down, so when I checked the notebook I'd see what was going on. This kept me from ever getting stuck for long, and so I never did get bored or frustrated with the game during this puzzle. In case I haven't made myself clear: this was my favorite puzzle of the entire competition. THE "INTENTIONS" PUZZLE Partway through the maze part of the game, I made the note: "If this keeps up, I'll love the game." Sadly, "this" didn't keep up. The second puzzle is a good idea, but it just didn't work like the first one did. For this part of the game, the mansion has been populated with characters for a murder mystery. As you move about, you see notes like "Mr. P__ will pass through the room, carrying a tray of drinks." You will also collect "intentions" and use them in various places, modifying what the characters will do. The idea is that adding intentions in various ways will change the things that will go on in the other rooms, allowing you to further manipulate the characters. I like the idea. It could be really interesting trying to arrange intentions in the proper order to make things come out "right," like the puzzle in "Lock and Key". There are two problems, though. First, there is a single right use for each intent, and you can tell from your notes whether you've got it right or not. Thus, there's no need to think carefully about how the intents will affect each other, because you can deal with them one at a time. The second problem is that it's not at all clear how exactly the intents will work until you get it right. So my procedure for solving the puzzle was to find an intent, make a guess as to where it might be used, go there and try using it randomly until something fit, and repeat. This did not make for a satisfying puzzle. [EDIT: It turns out that I was mistaken about there being a single right use for each intent. The author informs me that there are multiple uses for many of the intents that can lead to a winning solution. I just didn't run into them, or else didn't realize that they weren't dead ends. So if you take the time to experiment instead of playing from the notes, this is probably a much more interesting puzzle. -DJ] MISCELANEOUS AND CONCLUSION A few other miscellaneous things: There are quite a few unimplemented things that should be, such as the walls. Given the game's title, I really should be able to look at them. The setup and story never really get explained; I still don't know what's going on. And the second part of the game contained some innuendo, which detracted from the game for me and could have been done without, and a lot of murders, which I didn't mind but you may want to be aware of, particularly if kids might be playing the game. (I treated the innuendo like I do bad language, and docked a point from my comp rating for the game.) Finally, it would have made things easier for me if I could have just typed "notes" to look at my notepad. My recommendation: Get this game, and just play the first half. (That's until you use the first intention.) That half of the game is well designed and well worth your time.
Delusions
From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu> Review appeared in SPAG #14 -- May 17, 1998 NAME: Delusions AUTHOR: C.E. Forman E-MAIL: ceforman SP@G worldnet.att.net DATE: 1996 PARSER: Inform standard SUPPORTS: Inform interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive) URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/infocom/delusns.z5 VERSION: Release 3 PLOT: Complicated but well done (1.6) ATMOSPHERE: Effective (1.5) WRITING: Very strong (1.5) GAMEPLAY: Solid (1.5) CHARACTERS: A tad hackneyed (1.3) PUZZLES: Clever (1.6) MISC: A bit too much story, but thought-provoking (1.6) OVERALL: 7.7 One thing about C.E. Forman's Delusions that can't possibly be denied is that it's got plot. Boy, has it got plot--several stories' worth, at least. If your head isn't spinning by the end of it (for that matter, by the time the first few twists come long), you missed a lot and you should go back and replay it. Moreover, the plot takes on a variety of guises along the way--part science experiment, part techno-thriller, part mystery (well, sort of), part, um, metaphysical-technological thesis, etc. If there's one thing Delusions isn't, it's predictable. It's arguable, of course, whether cramming a game full of story enhances its enjoyability; at bottom, it's a matter of taste, and depends in large part on whether the player is interested in the story at hand. It also depends, of course, on how well integrated into the game the story is, and in this respect in particular, Delusions shines: the puzzles serve the purposes of the plot, and the challenges are hurdles that reflect crucial discoveries or roadblocks in the story. They are, to be sure, far from easy; I doubt I ever would have guessed a few of them without the aid of the hint menu--but they are distinctly not puzzles thrown into an unrelated story. The charm of this is that puzzle-solving and figuring out the plot are usually one and the same task, so there isn't a sense of "gee, I've got to figure out how to do this to move the story along"--usually, at least. To say much about the story beyond the initial premise would spoil it, so...you are part of a research team doing VR simulations, and as the game begins, you are busy trying to debug one of them, a scenario in which you play a fish dodging hungry predators. The opening few puzzles within the simulation are an appealing introduction and help draw the player into the game, though I was hoping that the fish scene would play more of a role in the game than it does. At any rate, the plot thickens appropriately once you've done what you need to do as a fish, in a variety of unexpected ways. In one key respect, Delusions has an odd split personality: there are sections of the game where the plot is more or less told to you via several screens of text, and there are other sections where the game gives you virtually no guidance and you're left to piece things together from some fairly obscure clues. Both parts, to be sure, make some sense within the plot of the game, but the gameplay is a bit disorienting as a result (not, of course, inconsistently with the tone of the story). Early discoveries, furthermore, encourage the player to view what he's told with skepticism, and yet the plot elements you're told later are essentially true. In some respects, this can't be avoided--there's too much story here for the player to discover it all by himself, without resort to diary entries or some other such tired device, and certain points simply have to come out via screens of text. But given that one of the most intriguing plot elements comes out through discovery, there's still a bit of tension there. That element bears mention because Babel, a 1997 competition entry, did something similar, though the author has since said that he hadn't played Delusions and came up with the idea by himself. Though both use it effectively, Delusions tries something more ambitious that ends up slowing things down: the required set of actions has a sequence in mind (with some, but only some, variation allowed), meaning that, once the player gets the idea, the process boils down to walking around and manipulating objects rather than discovering as the plot presumably intended. It would work better if there were more obvious logic to the sequence, but there wasn't any that I could guess, and the eventual conclusion was apparent long before the chain was over. (Whereas--perhaps I'm just dense--I didn't guess the corresponding revelation in Babel.) The post hoc explanations for why you don't tumble to this discovery before seem just a little thin, moreover. This is nitpicking, though, because the plot does work very well indeed. Particularly effective, even though frustrating, is the middle section of the game, which repeats ad infinitum until you find a way to break out of the loop. The puzzles associated with this are difficult but fair: everything is put together logically, and the tension, when it seems like your plan might get foiled, is real. The nightmarish aspect of this section of the game derives mostly from the presence of a certain NPC, and it's to the author's credit that the NPC, though he provides virtually no interaction--he talks to you, you can't say much back--is an intimidating presence. His dialogue is well-written and doesn't feel too heavily borrowed from standard science fiction, though then again I wouldn't know. Also very good--and thoroughly coded; I didn't find much that broke the spell--is a certain change in your environment that you cause in order to get through the scene. Arguably, the NPC might have figured out what you're up to, but it's still a memorable moment. The only real flaw in the middlegame is a repeated message that you really want to get out of this--it loses its effectiveness after the first time or so, I found. The endgame, unfortunately, doesn't quite live up to what comes before--the dramatic confrontation could come from any thriller, and the final resolution just didn't feel climactic to me. There are some clever puzzles--though one depends on finding a hidden object at a time when you weren't aware that you needed it--and the ending does tie up most of the plot questions, but, as far as the story goes, the middle part works best. Technically, Delusions is impressive. I found very few bugs, most actions have synonyms, and there are several code tricks involving subtle changes in the game environment, or in the game's responses, that work well. The writing is error-free and effective throughout, in a way that moves the plot along without drawing attention to itself. A computer is thoroughly done, though it's a bit tedious to use--then again, seeing as it's running a "Windows 2000" system, perhaps that's design on the author's part. There are very few obvious illogicalities, even accepting the game's various plot twists; the game is well-designed, well-crafted. At bottom, though, Delusions seems to aspire to be more than simply a well-crafted collection of puzzles, and that's where the difficulty comes in. There are Bigger Issues at stake in the puzzles you solve, and while the game does offer some food for thought, my problem with it is that those issues don't really affect what you do. Delusions is in many respects a better game than Tapestry, another 1996 competition entry that dealt with questions metaphysical, but Tapestry did force the player to weigh the problems and make decisions; here, except for one moment at the end of the game, you solve puzzles, largely. To be sure, this is a different sort of game than Tapestry, and it succeeds on an entirely different level--but in that there certainly are intriguing questions being raised throughout, and periodically mentioned in passing by this NPC or that, I wanted them to have more to do with your actions and decisions. Put another way, the player can more or less opt out of the thought-provoking bits of Delusions by breezing through the text and moving on to the next puzzle. Theoretical objections aside, Delusions is an outstanding game in several respects, and if you missed the 1996 competition, this is without a doubt one of the entries you should check out now. Even if it gets a few things wrong, it does a whole lot of interesting stuff right. From: Matthew Garrett <cavan SP@G enterprise.net> Review appeared in SPAG #14 -- May 17, 1998 "Right. Check. Quote from Neuromancer?" "Check." "Main character trapped inside computer simulation and must discover their true identity?" "Check." "Sinisterly titled 'Project'?" "Check." "Cast of generic cyperpunky NPCs, one of whom will rebel against said 'Project'?" "Check." "OK boys. Looks like she's finished. Let's roll her out!" Yes, folks, Delusions is that oft-maligned example of the IF community - a, for want of a better word (Though, no doubt, I'll be inundated with mails giving me one), cyberpunk game. And yes, the initial section of the game doesn't seem awfully original. And yes, the rest of the game seems to follow much the same pattern. And yes, I am building up to a completely expected shock-bluff role reversal. Because, despite this, Delusions is a Good Game. But first, so that we can build up to an exciting climax, we'll start with the bad points. Good game though it is, Delusions seems flawed in many ways. Take the opening. Yes, it may well just be me, but I can't help laughing every time I read "Reality is so... unreal.". And it goes on. I'll happily admit to not being a fan of (What I'd tend to see as) "waffly" writing, but even so Delusions goes further than most. This seems surprising, considering that the rest of the writing seems to be of such a high standard. It's obvious that effort has been put into making the world of Delusions believable. Everything you'd expect to find in a cramped laboratory/living quarters is there. But still. Back to that later. The worst thing about the writing is that, at times, there is so much of it. Several times when you confront your (apparent) arch-nemesis, you're left sitting for several turns unable to do anything except hit z and wait while the conversation progresses. Pages of it, sometimes. Somehow, it seems wrong to apparently give you a choice of things to do (It's split up, so you get a prompt. Except that, whatever you do, you've got little choice except to carry on reading.), and then watch as your character says things that you don't expect him to. Again. And again. Perhaps this is the main problem. The player character ends up in a situation which would be impossible to end up in in real life, and as a result it's next to impossible to empathise. Of course, I felt sorry for him and angry at the way he'd been treated. But in the third person, rather than the first. (Does that make any sort of sense at all?) But even so. Sometimes, you are given a choice to influence the future direction of the game, or so it seems. Because, whenever you get to this sort of situation, it's obvious that the author wants you to make one particular choice rather than another. Which leads to my major problem with the game. Yes, the big hammer o' morality has been dragged out again in order to demonstrate that, in the end, we should forgive and forget. When your character agonizes over whether or not to kill his tormentors, you've got a choice. A) Kill them, die instantly and lose all your points. B) Don't kill them, carry on with the game and gain a point. Now, which one seems like the "Proper" path? Choices which influence a game's outcome generally make the game more interesting, since the player feels that they're having more of an effect. But the ones in Delusions feel more like "instant-death" puzzles than anything else. The outcome is based on what the author thinks, rather than what the player does. If anything, it makes the game feel more restrictive than if you hadn't been offered the choice in the first place. So, then. Why did I say that Delusions was good? To some extent, it's the attention to detail. The TV in one of the rooms shows Jeopardy. There's a huge mass of documentation to go along with the VR system. Everything you'd expect to find, you find. The characters all seem to have clearly defined personalities, backed up by their personal effects. And the plot. To begin with, it didn't sound promising. None of the initial ideas are terribly ground breaking. Come to that, neither are any of the later ones. But, somehow, there's a fairly engaging plot. Even if you're not empathising with the main character, you're interested in finding out what's going on. What motivates the main NPC becomes clear as the game progresses, and it all holds together nicely. So. Overall then. If you're willing to overlook the basic lack of originality, the tedious (to my mind) morality bits and the fact that the bad guy talks far too much, it's a well written and competently programmed game. The "Big revelation" doesn't come as too much of a surprise if you've been paying attention to what's going on, but that's a good thing rather than a bad one. Out of ten? Seven. Not ground breaking, makes you want to hit people in places, but still enjoyable.
Demon's Tomb
From: Bozzie <edharel SP@G remus.rutgers.edu> Review appeared in SPAG #9 -- June 11, 1996 NAME: Demon's Tomb PARSER: OK. Nothing fancy. AUTHOR: Mastertonic PLOT: Stop ancient demon. EMAIL: ??? ATMOSHPHERE: Nice. AVAILABILITY: Commercial(Bargain bins) WRITING: Very good. PUZZLES: Average, but logical SUPPORTS: PC CHARACTERS: Very, very good (See below) DIFFICULTY: Medium This is an old game, but nonetheless it is a very good one. It deals with such important issues as fighting an ancient evil, sacrificing yourself in order to save the world (don't worry, not a spoiler), and how to keep a duck from quacking. The game starts off with you as Professor Edward Lynton, famed archaeologist, in an important site in England. Recently, some strange things have occurred. Your partner has gone missing. You have discovered things in the site which are both more amazing than your wildest dreams, and more horrifying than your worst nightmares. You awake in the middle of the night and smell smoke... With no escape outside this recently discovered tomb, you must send a message to the outside world, before the tomb becomes your own (and it will, no matter what you do. That's made very clear throughout the skimpy manual). You have only a short amount of time to do what you must do before you are overcome by smoke. Despite your actions, after a certain number of moves, the prologue ends and the game starts. You are Richard, the professor's son, in a car lot near the archeological site. You are here to talk to your father, but unfortunately, he is in no condition to talk. As you learn more about his death, depending on your earlier efforts, you will find a tale of a centuries old rivalry, of evil about to be unleashed and that you are the only one to stop it. The story itself is nice, and immediately reminded me of a Doctor Who story, Pyramids of Mars (also a text adventure game at /pc/mars.zip. Somewhat rough about the edges, but is a fairly good AGT game) . The story generally comes in spurts at a time in some wonderful prose. Notes, letters, documents all give some great insights at several interesting people who lived in the area. While most of these aren't necessary for the game, it is well worth your time to read everything. There are few, if any, "real" characters in Demon's Tomb that you can interact with, and most of those that there are puzzles more than anything. However, the descriptions, as I have said above, more than make up for the lack of interacting agents. In fact, in some ways, it makes it better. As recent debates on r.a.i-f have shown, there is no easy way to make a good NPC in a text game, and indeed, even if you manage to, there will still be problems with him/her. This way, the author manages to show us some wonderful characterizations without having to code a lot of time-eating code. This is not to say that the game is simple. Indeed, the game tries to be flashy by offering a menu system and some graphics, space which could have been used more efficiently. Indeed, I would have liked there to have been a good developed character. For example, how about a motorist I could flag down and warn, and then find him dead later... The Parser is sub-Infocom, but quite adequate for its purpose. The puzzles themselves are fairly simple, but not overly simple, and they are dynamic, so as not to bore experienced gamers. But that doesn't deter from the game, it adds to it. There are no completely obscure puzzles, and there are a few interesting ones. There are certainly no unfair puzzles, and enough of an area to explore, so that should you get frustrated at one problem, you'll be able to explore another area. And if you really need some help, C. E. Forman has graciously made a hint file of the game on ftp.ifarchive.org. It is because the story doesn't try to serve complex problems, the author is able to work on the story, and still throw in a new and interesting puzzle or two. It also manages to allow freedom to explore, although tends to be mostly linear in terms of solving problems. While I could hope for better, in terms of problem solving and a few other areas, over all, I enjoy this game, and it's certainly up there on my list of favorite games.
Depravity Bites
From: Stas Starkov <stas_ SP@G mail.rb.ru> Review appeared in SPAG #28 --March 20, 2002 NAME: Depravity Bites AUTHOR: samjones EMAIL: samanthamisunderstood SP@G hotmail.com DATE: 2002 PARSER: TADS standard SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/depravityBITES.zip VERSION: 1.4 My poor knowledge of English has played an evil joke on me. While searching the IF-archive TADS games directory, I found a file, which was quite large (so, I expected that it wasn't one of those tiny two-room games), and released very recently. Thus, I had the bad luck to download "Depravity Bites". Later, I checked what the word "depravity" meant. Ahem... I wish I hadn't seen the game. In short: this game is about perversity. One of the most decent paragraphs in the game reads: Reaching up gingerly you rub circles around both your nipples, tweaking them slightly to prepare them for the pegs. Then you take a finger full of flesh just over the left nipple and apply the strong peg. At first you don't feel anything but then the sting kicks in. A sudden flash of discomfort strikes and your first reaction is to remove the clip, but that would defeat the object. As the second peg snaps its teeth into the plumped flesh of your right nipple you feel the full sting of both pegs take effect. Not a dull pain, but a constant, high-pitched tingle, making you think to yourself again and again, that you should take these off because they hurt. But you don't. The game explores the darkest corners of homosexuality, sadism, and masochism. If you think that such a mix is just for you, you can try it. *Shudder* Technically, the game is also less than impressive: "guess the verb" problems, bugs, juvenile and very stupid humor, dull room descriptions. And did I mention tons of dirt pouring from the game's lines? How did I find out so much about the game, though I hadn't the nerve to finish it? Well, I had a look at the source file, which was enclosed with the game package. It's amazing how low human beings can demean themselves. I fear that tonight I'll experience horrible sexual nightmares. Damn you, "samjones". I don't want to spend any more of your and my time on this crashing deviancy. Thus, my final word is: if you're not a sadomasochist, don't even try to download the game. "Depravity Bites" shows very clearly why such games like "Stiffy Makane: The Undiscovered Country" -- an evil parody on AIF (Adult IF) games -- are still being written. Compared to "Depravity Bites", "SM: TUC" is a Christmas story. Now I'm going to take a shower, and hope that my review won't be taken as an advertisement for pornography. From: Jim Cooper <waiting SP@G thebusstop.demon.co.uk> Review appeared in SPAG #29 -- June 20, 2002 I read Stas Starkov's review of this game in SPAG 28 and wondered how much of his obvious dislike for it stemmed from the game's subject matter. Being quite broad-minded myself, I thought I'd download the game and see what it was all about. I really shouldn't have bothered. The game starts off with you waking up a prisoner in a cellar. Your naked girlfriend is chained up, and your first task is to try to free her. The game then proceeds through a series of tasks masterminded by the owner of the house you're in before culminating in a sex scene in the back of a van. Unfortunately, the game falls down not only on the content, which goes out of its way to be offensive rather than erotic, but is filled with numerous technical flaws, some of which make the some of the puzzles unnecessarily difficult -- you play "guess the verb" a few times, for example. Certain other flaws also make the big sex scene at the end laughable rather than arousing. To give a more specific example, at one point you are given an object to perform a task with. Later on, the game assumes you still have the object, whether you have dropped it since or not. These obvious flaws disrupt the flow of the game, destroying any sense of atmosphere that might otherwise build up. The puzzles themselves aren't actually too bad, although they were fairly easy -- I managed to complete it in about 4 hours without reference to the provided hint sheet. The game also comes with the source code, if the hint sheet isn't enough for you. One or two puzzles are quite difficult, the initial one for instance, which the game itself gives you hints about. All in all, this game isn't worth playing even if you are into this kind of thing. It deliberately sets out to shock rather than excite or interest and, for me, it failed to even do that. Sorry, samjones, but you can see far worse than this with just ten minutes on a decent internet search engine. If you are easily shocked, avoid this game. If you're not, this game will bore you. Even a dedicated sado-masochist will find nothing of interest here, unless putting up with all the errors counts as masochism. ATMOSPHERE: Technical errors interfere too much (0.3) GAMEPLAY: Bad parser, plagued by errors (0.5) WRITING: Tries quite hard but, well, fails (0.6) PLOT: Well, there is one, and it's reasonable (1.2) WILDCARD: This really isn't a good game, so I'm not going to give it any Wildcard points. (0.0) TOTAL: Just don't bother. (2.6)
Desert Heat
From: Tina Sikorski <tina SP@G eniac.stanford.edu> Review appeared in SPAG #23 -- December 29, 2000 TITLE: Desert Heat AUTHOR: Papillon E-MAIL: amethystphoenix SP@G yahoo.com DATE: 2000 PARSER: None (CYOA) SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive) URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2000/tads/desert/desert.gam 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.
Detective
From: Stefan Jokisch <jokisc00 SP@G marvin.informatik.uni-dortmund.de> Review appeared in SPAG #4 -- March 2, 1995 NAME: Detective PARSER: AGT AUTHOR: Matt Barringer PLOT: Strictly Linear EMAIL: ??? ATMOSPHERE: None AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive WRITING: Poor PUZZLES: None SUPPORTS: AGT Ports CHARACTERS: None DIFFICULTY: Very Easy In this game you play a heroic detective who has to find and arrest the murderer of the mayor. Surprisingly, the only commands needed to solve 'Detective' are north, east, south, and west. It is possible to pick up a few items along the way in order to increase the score, but none of these items has any effect on the story. To cut a long story short, the author made every mistake one can think of; it is not necessary to go into detail. After all, we should not forget that Matt wrote this game with good intentions and he offered it for free, so who are we to mock at his efforts? Every computer store sells a lot of expensive CD-ROMs which are no better than "Detective". From: Graeme Cree <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> Review appeared in SPAG #5 -- April 19, 1995 NAME: Detective GAMEPLAY: Limited AGT AUTHOR: Matt Barringer PLOT: None EMAIL: ??? ATMOSPHERE: None AVAILABILITY: IF Archive WRITING: Baaaad! PUZZLES: None SUPPORTS: AGT PORTS CHARACTERS: Cardboard DIFFICULTY: Zero Detective was previously reviewed in SPAG 4, but I'd like to do it again, as I have a slightly different take. This review stems from an e-mail conversation with Magnus Olsson, in regards to his review of Space Aliens Laughed at My Cardigan (also in SPAG 4), which had stated that despite its flaws the game had some cult value, calling it "Infocom on acid". I agreed with him, stating that Mystery Science Theater 3000 had demonstrated that there were "good" bad movies (which provide loads of unintentional laughs), and "bad" bad movies (which were merely painful), and that Space Aliens was definitely a "good" bad game. He responded by comparing it to Detective, a "bad" bad game, that has no puzzles, and requires only compass directions to win. Now that I've played Detective, I'm not sure I agree. I think that it too is a "good" bad game. Oh, it doesn't have the whacked-out psychedelic Eraserhead surrealism of Space Aliens, but it has more than its share of entertainment (not to mention equally bad spelling). I feel that I may owe a slight apology to Electrabot, which I criticize for lack of plot. Detective is like a stripped-down version of Electrabot. Like Electrabot, it has a fairly linear path that you must run, with several rooms of instant death, but at least Electrabot had a Rogues Gallery of hostile characters who could be killed by incongruous objects. Detective only has one hostile character, who can be easily bypassed. The game begins with your being told that the mayor has been murdered and that you must solve the crime to avoid bad publicity (!!). You can then go into the next room and get your gun. The description of the gun tells you that you only have 10 shots and should use them wisely. Fair enough, but no matter how many times you fire you will still have 10 shots. Another interesting feature is what I call the closets of teleportation. At one point you are in a hallway, with closets to the east and west. If you go east you will enter the west closet, and must go east again to reenter the hallway (and vice versa). The few items generally have bizarre adjectives. Along the way you may acquire the "food hamburger," and the "wooden wood," though you don't need any of them to win. Like Electrabot, Detective has several rooms that kill you without warning when you enter, but Detective's are more interesting. There is one that I call "The Room of Mysterious Death". The description says that you have reached a dead end and can go back west. But you can't because the game then proceeds to kill you without giving any explanation. In another instance, you are standing in a hallway and see a door to the east marked "Pool." If you enter you are told that you were in the pool when the killer shot you. WHY the heck did I get INTO the pool? I just wanted to check out the room!! The game has a terrible (and amusing) problem with blending room, object, and character descriptions with each other. When you meet the game's only character, the room description tells you all about what he's doing. Which of course means that it keeps telling you even after he's dead. The description of the hamburger tells you that you should just eat it and go north. This is, of course only valid if you are still in the room where you got it. In another case, you see a knife on the floor, but if you try to take it you are told "What knife? There is no knife here." It would have been easy enough to make the knife takeable, or at least give a message saying that you don't need it, or mustn't touch it because it hasn't been fingerprinted yet, or something. But this is much more amusing. The game can't seem to decide what time period it takes place in. In one room a passerby tells you to boycott FDR. In the next, a convict tells you he was busted for possession of crack. At another point, you enter an area and are told that the killer's rumoured hotel is in one direction, his favourite hangout in another, and his workplace in a third. You never learned any of this previously. Real police work should be so easy. All of this is but a prelude to the big ending. When you enter the room where the killer is, you are told that after a fierce battle you overcame him. In other words, "Yes, there was a big fight, but we couldn't afford to show you any of it". I'm not going into all this detail just to pile on the criticism. Mr. Barringer obviously enjoys playing and writing text games, and I'd be the last to tell him not to do it. I'm only writing this because unlike Stefan Jokisch (in his review), I think that you SHOULD get this game and you SHOULD play it. It's very quick (as little as 26 moves), loaded with such unintentional laughs, and unlike Space Aliens, you can play it to a conclusion, with no headaches or technical glitches. The parser is terrible, but when you only need "north," "south," "east," and "west," what the heck? Mr. Barringer's goal in writing the game was to entertain his audience, and as far as I'm concerned he suceeded in ways that the rating system can't show. If you like Mystery Science Theater 3000, you will enjoy playing this game. I'm going to e-mail a copy to Dr. Clayton Forrester myself, for use in a future experiment. Heads up, Mike, Tom, and Crow! From: okblacke <okblacke SP@G usa.net> Review appeared in SPAG #18 -- September 15, 1999 NAME: Detective AUTHOR: Matt Barringer EMAIL: Unknown (He probably doesn't want any mail about this anymore anyway.) DATE: 1993 PARSER: Inform AVAILABILITY: IF Archive URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/detectiv.z5 VERSION: Stuart Moore's Inform Port of an AGT classic! Have you ever had the experience of seeing a movie or reading a book only after a hundred people told you how good or how bad it was? The actual work almost never lives up to your expectations. So it is with "Detective" which is probably the "Plan 9 From Outer Space" of IF. (It's not the worst piece of IF ever written by a long-shot but it may be the most infamous.) I'm not entirely sure of the history of the game, beyond the author uploading it to a BBS and things getting out of hand from there, but if I'm not mistaken there are two ports of the original AGT game and two MST versions. That may be some kind of record for a game held in such loving low esteem. I hadn't ever played it, so when I saw that Stuart Moore had created an Inform version, I thought I'd take the time to play this and the so-called MSTied version. Truth is, it's not that bad. It's not any kind of good, either, because it's basically a puzzle-less IF piece without solid, compelling writing to sustain it. Enough has been said about the program's various faults (the lack of a proofreading, instant death, one way doors, incidents built into room descriptions, near complete non-interactivity, no story development beyond the original idea, incoherency and so on) that the game could serve as a model on how not to write IF. I won't embellish on the game's faults here except to say that, having known what to expect, I can't really share in the frustration that players of the original AGT version must have experienced if they were looking for a game. It's short, arbitrary and pointless, but it *is* short! It may even be historical. (Can you count yourself a true IF aficionado if you don't know of this game?) It's also sincere in its way. If you look at other bad IF, you often find a cynicism, rampant insults to the player, and sleazy bad humor. It's clear that the author's intentions are good. Rating is somewhat problematic because (as outlined by Whizzard) the ratings system deals with "attempts" and "effort" and I believe the attempts and effort were there, just not successful. Nonetheless, I can't really give a high score for "trying" except to bump up the "overall" category somewhat. Plot: 0.1 Atmosphere: 0.0 Writing: 0.1 Gameplay: 0.0 Characters: 0.1 Puzzles: 0.0 Overall: 0.5
Detective: An Interactive MiSTing
From: Graeme Cree <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> Review appeared in SPAG #7 -- October 14, 1995 NAME: DETECTIVE: An Interactive MiSTing GAMEPLAY: Inform Parser AUTHOR: C. E. Forman PLOT: Trivial EMAIL: ceforman SP@G worldnet.att.net ATMOSPHERE: Demented AVAILABILITY: IF Archive incoming WRITING: Pathetic PUZZLES: None SUPPORTS: All Inform Ports CHARACTERS: Cardboard DIFFICULTY: None at all Normally, looking at the above category descriptions (such as "Trivial," "Demented," and "Pathetic") one would expect a pretty bad game. Yet, such is not the case here. In the zany world of Mystery Science Theater 3000, (MST3K for short) where schlock is fun, and all involved want "More cheese, please," such descriptions denote an excellent game. Detective, the game least likely to be ported, now exists (with enhancements) for Inform. A little background is in order to understand this game. SPAG #4 featured a review of an AGT game called Detective, which stated that the author had made every possible mistake, and that the game should be avoided. In SPAG #5 I wrote a second review in which I stated that the game, though awful, was in fact loaded with unintentional laughs and bizarre incongruities that were sure to entertain the player, and that the game would make an excellent episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. For those who don't know, MST3K is a cable television show (soon to be a major motion picture) on Comedy Central, that involves a man shot into space by two mad scientists and forced to watch bad movies so that his reactions can be monitored. Throughout the movie we can see the silhouettes of Mike and his robot companions (whose outer casings are made out of things like a gumball machine, a bowling pin, and a lacrosse helmet) at the lower right-hand corner of the screen, and hear them deliver a barrage of sarcastic remarks, pop-culture references, and suggested dialogue. For example in Godzilla vs. Megalon, a close-up of Godzilla waving his arms and bellowing drew the response "I am Kirok!!", a reference to a classic bit of Shatner overacting in Star Trek's The Paradise Syndrome episode. In Marooned, when three astronauts, stranded in space are arguing over who will leave the ship (there was only enough oxygen to sustain two until the rescue ship arrived) one of the robots observed "they could toss a coin, but it would never come down." The show is in its 7th season, and each episode is two hours long. Their bread-and-butter is schlocky sci-fi movies, but they have hit almost every genre, including the occasional biker movie. Before and after the show, as well as during intermissions, they do short amusing skits, often based on scenes from the movie. Chris Forman has taken this format and adapted it into a text game, almost seamlessly. The original Detective game has been transferred verbatim to Inform, even retaining the AGT default responses, and snappy responses from Mike and the robots have been inserted everywhere; into room descriptions, item descriptions, response descriptions, et cetera. Repetition is avoided, enhancing believability. The first time you enter a room you get one set of responses. The second time you will get either a different set, or none at all. The jokes are generally top quality, turning an already (unintentionally) amusing game into a laugh riot. The level of imitation is flawless; if you have seen the show, you can almost hear the dialogue coming out of the actors' mouths. A typical MST3K episode features a short skit and an invention exchange with the mad scientists before the movie actually begins. Mr. Forman has represented this by including a special introductory text file that highlights the robots attempting to write their own text games, and Dr. Forrester's "fictionary," a device that inputs the vocabulary of a text game directly into the player's mind, with hilarious results. The only thing that could put anyone off about this game might be found in Stefan Jokisch's original SPAG review: "we should not forget that Matt [the original author of Detective] wrote this game with good intentions and he offered it for free, so who are we to mock at his efforts?" Matt Barringer's game is "mocked" here, but previous MST3K episodes have had movies featuring the likes of Gregory Peck, Gene Hackman, Linda Evans, Peter Graves, James Earl Jones, and Bela Lugosi, putting Mr. Barringer in very august company indeed. This may not be my all-time favourite text adventure, but it is one of the few that I would recommend to absolutely everyone. From: Palmer Davis <palmer SP@G ansoft.com> Review appeared in SPAG #7 -- October 14, 1995 NAME: _Detective_ MST3Kization PARSER: Inform (imitating AGT) AUTHOR: C. E. Forman (and Matt Barringer) SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports EMAIL: ceforman SP@G worldnet.att.net AVAILABILITY: IF Archive ATMOSPHERE: Precisely on target WRITING: ROTFL! CHARACTERS: Non-interactive PLOT: Laughable, but that's the point PUZZLES: Nonexistent, except for occasional sudden death DIFFICULTY: Also nonexistent Obviously inspired by Graeme Cree's review from SPAG #5, this is a port of Matt Barringer's (infamous) AGT game _Detective_, onto which the cast of _Mystery_Science_Theater_3000_ has been grafted, providing a Greek chorus that pokes hilarious fun at _Detective_'s shortcomings. This was the first game that I returned to finish after my initial ten minute look at each entry, and it succeeds brilliantly at the same sort of appeal as the real MST3K. Trying to evaluate this entry relative to the others in the division was difficult. However creative the writing may be, the fact remains that this is not an original work of IF, which was the whole point of the contest. On the other hand, this entry also essentially defines an entirely new genre: the interactive work of criticism. Is it a work of IF that happens to be critical or a work of criticism that happens to be interactive? And how much credit is due the author for pioneering something as yet untried, especially given the much lower level of technical difficulty in producing it? In any case, comparing this to the other entries is like comparing apples and oranges. In the end, I wound up deciding to place this at the enjoyability threshold, and score it behind any more technically difficult works that succeeded at being entertaining, but ahead of any that didn't. Had I been scoring for awards other than first, this would have wound up taking second in its division, and certainly deserves an honorable mention for its writing, but future works of this kind will have to be crafted with great care to avoid becoming stale. BOTTOM LINE: This is the entry most likely to continue to be downloaded and played after the end of the contest; it's likely to become a (cult) classic simply by being the preferred way to experience the wonderful awfulness of _Detective_. I can't wait to see the crew take on _Space_Aliens_Laughed_at_my_Cardigan_! From: Magnus Olsson <mol SP@G df.lth.se> Review appeared in SPAG #7 -- October 14, 1995 Name: Detective - an Interactive MiSTing / MST3K1 Author: C.E. Forman Email: ceforman SP@G worldnet.att.net Parser: Hacked Inform Plot: See review Atmosphere: Demented Availability: F, IF Archive Writing: Excellent Puzzles: What puzzles? Supports: Infocom Ports Characters: See review Difficulty: Self-solving This piece of IF is not really a game, but a commentary on a game - or, as the author calls it, an Interactive MiSTing. The strange acronym MST3K1 refers to "Mystery Science Theater 3000," a TV show that hasn't reached the European networks, but this fact shouldn't scare away any non-American readers, since the concept is made sufficiently clear anyway (I had it explained to me by Whizzard after I played the game, but I didn't really miss anything). Similar to the TV show, this game consists of the characters of "Mystery Science Theater" playing - and commenting on - an existing game: "Detective" by Matt Barringer. "Detective," reviewed in SPAG 4, is an amazingly bad game; basically, Barringer has committed every possible mistake in writing it, even forgetting to put in any puzzles. The core of "MST3K1" is a faithful re-implementation in Inform of "Detective," complete down to the last bug. As the player walks through the game (and, believe me, walking through "Detective" is all there is to winning it), he or she is treated to the commentary of the MST characters. And this commentary is simply hilarious; together with the unconscious comedy of the original "Detective," the result must be the funniest IF ever written. I'm exaggerating only slightly when writing that "MST3K1" had me rolling on the floor with laughter. Rating "MST3K1" according to the usual SPAG rules is of course impossible, since the only game aspects are those of "Detective," which is a very very bad game. Suffice it to say that the "MST" part of the writing is excellent, though the satire is perhaps a bit heavy-handed in places - I sincerely hope that Matt Barringer has a sense of humour! Finally, let me just step onto the soapbox for a minute to express some concern. The immediate reaction to this program on Usenet was something along the lines of "Great idea! There are lots of bad games out there; let's MiST them as well!" I sincerely hope that these people think not only once, but twice and thrice before starting to write their own MiSTings. If nothing else, there's the simple rule of all comedy: a good joke is extremely funny the first time it's told. The second time, it's already old. The third time, it's routine. The tenth time, people hate it. Let's not beat this excellent idea to death by repeating it ad nauseam. Also, and far more seriously, the line between poking gentle fun at something and cruelly mocking it is a fine one indeed. The present author has managed to stay on the right side, but it takes considerable skill to do so. We've all written things we're less than proud of; even the good Homer nods. Indiscriminate derision of these games - perhaps youthful first tries - could have disastrous consequences for the small, fragile IF community. Of course, these words of warning should not reflect at all on the present MiSTing; in fact, I think it's brilliant. Let's just not pervert such a good idea. From: Gareth Rees <gdr11 SP@G cl.cam.ac.uk> Review appeared in SPAG #8 -- February 5, 1996 NAME: Detective PARSER: Inform usual AUTHOR: Christopher Forman PLOT: None EMAIL: ceforman SP@G worldnet.att.net ATMOSPHERE: Unusual AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive WRITING: New material is good PUZZLES: None SUPPORTS: Inform ports CHARACTERS: Unoriginal, but good DIFFICULTY: Trivial I'm only aware of "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" through the genre of MST3k parodies on Usenet, so I have no idea how faithfully Christopher Forman reproduced the flavour of the television program. I thought that this game was interesting as an experiment, and I did find bits of it funny, but a lot of it was completely meaningless to me, especially the introduction and the endgame, and I probably wouldn't play another similar game. I'm not sure at all that text adventure games are suitable for this kind of parody by ridicule, and especially free or shareware games produced by amateurs. B