EDITED TRANSCRIPT OF PLAY, WITH BUGS FOUND The general format is as follows: if necessary, I will put the room name in parentheses first. My comments will be found after the passage on which they're commenting, and will be surrounded by square brackets. Here follow bits of a transcript, roughly categorized by bug type, vaguely in ascending order of seriousness (that is, stylistic bugs are in some sense less important than Inform implementation bugs, and so on). ***Stylistic Bugs*** [General Note: some stylistic bugs will be pointed out in other sections, when they occur in conjunction with a more grievous fault, e.g. against game design. ] (Introduction) Your aim is to escape from this planet by finding your, now captured and disabled, space ship. [ The commas around "now captured and disabled" are not right; either dashes or parentheses would be better. ] Press any key to start [ Give me a period there. ] Strange House You are in a strange house. The door is to the north. You can see a pair of boots and a floor board here. > x house That's not something you need to refer to in the course of this game. [ "floorboard" is probably one word. And what's so strange about the house? I know that Composition 101 teaches "Show, don't tell," but, you know, *telling* is better than *neither*. ] Mountain Plateau You are on a mountain plateau. To the north there is a steep cliff. Obvious exits are down, east, and west. > x cliff That's not something you need to refer to in the course of this game. [ So, how about implementing some scenery? ] > x rope A length of rope. [ Oh, how I miss the 1980s. NOT. ] (Edge of Pit) > get rock [rock -> lock] You can't see any such thing. > get stone [stone -> stones] Taken. [ Needs more synonyms. ] > get man You take the green man. The gloves protect you from his slime. > x man He's asleep. > drop man Dropped. > x man He's asleep. [ Uh, I'm following the walkthrough for no obvious reason here...but why didn't he wake up when I got the gloves *that* time, or when I picked him up, or when I dropped him? ] Old Shed You are in an old shed. The exit is the east. [ "to the east", right? ] > x gun A common-or-garden laser gun. [ Is "common-or-garden" some Britishism for "garden-variety" ? ] > wear gloves They are a bit grim, but you get them on without too much mess. [ "grim" or "grimy" ? ] > get man Ugh! He's all slimy [ And missing closing punctuation as well! ] > get gloves Taken. The small green manawoke and throttled you! [ I guess he traded that closing punctuation for a space, which he then lost, huh? And why the sudden slip into the past tense? EDIT: it's fine in the TXDed text; guess it's an interpreter (termnitfol) bug. ] (Large Hangar) You unlock the door. The sleeping security manwoke and shot you! *** You have died *** [ Another space between "man" and "woke". EDIT: this is something odd that termnitfol is doing here too; TXDing the game shows it to be fine. ] > x key a small metal key [ Needs caps and period. ] > x computer It is waiting for input ... [ Why space and an ellipsis, rather than a period? ] (Passage) There is a force field to the south : beware of security. [ Is "beware of security a sign that's posted there? A general homily? What? ] Computer Room You are in a room with a computer in. The computer is working and has a keyboard. The exit is to the west. [ "computer in it." ] (Large Hangar) > enter ship You can't cross that! [ What? Same thing happens with the lake aboveground, also. ] > in You can't go that way. > go ship [ Sigh. ] > push 2 You press the button. An alarm sounds! A security guard shot you for trespassing. [ "shoots", if you're going to care about verb tenses. ] (Tall Lift) > x sign Out of order [ Needs a period.] (Lift Control Room) > x switches There are three switches, labelled 1, 2, and 3. > x 1 (the door) It's just a door. > x 2 You can't use multiple objects with that verb. > x 3 You can't use multiple objects with that verb. [ Ah. You need a ParseNames routine. ] > x switch You can't see any such thing. [ Aaargh. Needs proper use of plurals. ] (Small But Powerful Space Ship) > press main The space ship blew up and killed me! *** You have died *** [ "blows". And yay instant-death-for-no-reason. And when did we go from second to first person? ] ***Inform Implementation Bugs*** (Dense Forest) > cut rope with flint I only understood you as far as wanting to cut the hanging rope. [ Grrr. Needs more grammar. ] (Quiet Cavern) > x man He's asleep. > wake him I'm not sure what "him" refers to. > wake man You can only do that to something animate. [ Someone needs to set the animate flag on the man object, already. And the appropriate pronoun.] (Prison Cell) > x window It's a barred window. On close inspection, the bars look loose. > shake bars That's not a verb I recognise. > take bars That's fixed in place. > pull bars It is fixed in place. [ Needs "has plural". ] [ And there's a guess-the-verb. "break" works. Go figure. Not "use," though. ] > put board on ravine Putting things on the ravine would achieve nothing. [ But "use board" is the correct syntax here. "Build bridge". "Bridge ravine with board". Et cetera. ] Edge of Pit You are at the edge of a deep pit. Obvious exits are east. > climb rope I don't think much is to be achieved by that. > climb pit with rope [pit -> it] I only understood you as far as wanting to climb the rope. > tie rope to edge You can't see any such thing. > use rope You climb down, using the rope. [ Again, some syntactical synonyms, like the ones I just tried, would be nice.] > use key You don't know how to use the key. Nothing happens. > unlock door with key You unlock the door. [ A stunning reversal from the rest of the game. Maybe "use" should work here too? ] > shoot man with laser You can't shoot a sleeping security man! > shoot laser at man You killed the sleeping security man with the laser gun. [ That's pretty lousy parsing there, and downright misleading. ] ***Logic bugs***: Dense Forest You are in a dense forest. There is a rope hanging from one tree. Obvious exits are south and west. > x rope You shouldn't see this. Please report to author. [ Hi, author: I shouldn't see that. ] > cut rope The rope drops to the floor. [ floor? ] [ Note the general lack of plain-old-logic bugs; for the most part, the game is implemented in a straightforward manner. ] > xyzzy The world spins around. Oh, nothing happened. [ Is this the original response or new-for-Inform? ] ***Game Design Bugs*** [ General note: I really hate it when compass directions change when I'm not even in a maze, and nothing in the room description indicates that the paths in and out differ. For instance: *** Beside Lake You are standing beside a lake. There is a ravine to the west. Exits are east and north. > e Strange House You are in a strange house. The door is to the north. *** There is *NO REASON AT ALL* that I should have to go north when east just got me there. This is probably a bug in the original. ] Damp Cave You are in a damp limestone cave, with stalactites hanging down. A simple drawing has been scratched on the wall. There is a passage to the north, and the exit is to the west. > n Maze You are in a maze. There are passages everywhere. > s Maze You are in a maze. There are passages everywhere. [ Hey, as an actual player, I would have stopped AT THIS VERY INSTANT. A totally unclued maze is annoying enough. A T.U.M. in which I cannot leave FROM THE VERY FIRST ROOM BY RETREATING THE WAY I CAME IN is unforgiveable. I don't care if it is fidelity to the original that is behind this game design decision, it still blows goats. ] Ice Cavern You are in an ice cavern. There is an exit to the east. You can see a block of ice here. > x ice It is a roughly cubic block of ice. > use ice (first taking the block of ice) You slide down the slope on the block of ice. Wheee! [ Wow! How completely uncued! There's a slope there? How was I supposed to have ever guessed that? ] (Passage) > s You can't go that way. > dance south You dance through the forcefield. [ Not *nearly* clued enough. Trying to just walk south should tell me that I'm not in sync with the weakend force field's pulses or something. Indeed, "The laser burst has weakened the force field" should probably give some indication of how it has weakened it so that I could time dancing through it. ] (Tall Lift) > push 1 You press the button. The lift has become electrified! It is a good job you were wearing rubber-soled boots. The lift has taken you up to a plateau. Congratulations, you have managed to complete this adventure without getting killed. *** You have won *** Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game or QUIT? > [ Uh, look: if I'm *HOVERING* in the lift, how does the electricity get to my ship to electrocute me? Also, "Takes" rather than "has taken" if you want to preserve your present tense. That's a comma splice after "congratulations." ] (Small But Powerful Space Ship) > out When the spaceship took off, the door was locked for your safety. [ Make up your mind whether it's a "spaceship" or a "space ship." ] > go window You can't see any such thing. [ So, let me get this straight: a spaceship that locks me in, with an open window through which I can push buttons? Er, O.......K. I guess they don't have vehicular safety inspections in the future. ] [ Having TXDed the game, I see that I *can* replace a blown fuse with the prison bar, which would be a nice solution if there were any clue that might help you figure this out. The gold coin to bribe the guard is a nice alternate puzzle solution too. The game isn't quite as dire as I thought, but oh Lord, it still ain't good. ] OVERALL IMPRESSIONS: This game, unfortunately, can be summed up in a single sentence: "You can't polish a turd." Neil Bowers has clearly put a lot of effort into a game which is just as clearly unworthy of his attentions. For those of us not viewing the game through the rosy, vaseline-smeared soft-focus lens of nostalgia, I regret to say that this game is not much good at all. I hope he now feels confident in his Inform abilities and is going to tackle some original works, because, more than anything else, this game shows us just how far we've come since the early 1980s. This game does not have, thankfully, a hunger daemon, but it's got a maze you can wander into and not get out of *long* before you have enough objects to map it, plenty of instant-death rooms and actions, guess-the-verb puzzles, and a couple of just-plain-WTF puzzles. The descriptions are typical of the time, in that they add nothing to the short object descriptions when you first see them. If the purpose of the game is nostalgia, it succeeds, I suppose, admirably, I suppose. By that I mean only that it adequately captures the feeling of brain-damaged parsers and the paucity of description and motivation that characterized second-rate adventure publishing houses in the early 1980s. In 1982 I might well have enjoyed this game, although I would have recognized even then that it was not fit to toss Zork's salad. In 2004, however, "Planet of Death" was only only marginally more fun than plunging heated skewers into my eardrums. The vast majority of the bugs I found were very likely bugs in the original game, followed at some distance by interaction infelicities caused by a too-timid port to Inform. Lack of deep intimacy with Inform is also evident in the lack of major surgery done on default messages, the lack of a parser routine to handle the numerically-named switches, and the often-frustrating grammatical limitations of the parser. On the other hand, the lack of fun in the game is almost certainly entirely the fault of the original source material. The programming appears quite competent; I dare say that if Mr. Bowers were to start with better ideas (and spend some time flexing his developing Inform muscles), he could write quite a good game. This, however, is not it. Adam Thornton 23 August 2004