|
||
| Home | Reviews | Writings | Links | ||
|
|
 |
|
|
| ||
| I've learned a lot in my first
Comp. As an author, yes, and that is discussed in nauseating
detail on another page.
But also as a reviewer and a game-scorer. Mostly I discovered
that my scoring system is flawed. Assigning a score of 1 to 10
to each of ten categories instead of just to each game from 1 to 10
actually increases the chance for arbitrariness. How do you make
the distinction between a 3 and a 4 in game idea? A 7 and an 8
in coding? Besides the arbitrariness, having 10 categories tends
to compress the scores into a smaller range, since most games will do
well in at least some categories. Thus the abundance of 6s and
7s in my scores. Anyway, I'll now call that the Old Scoring
System. It is described in detail on another
page. The Old Scoring System is what was used for the
reviews on this page; in the future I will be using the New Scoring
System, whose tentative design can be read about on another page. Looking back over my
scores for the games on this page, I'm fretting a bit because some
things should be different. This 8 should be a 9, that 9 may be
a 10. But I'm going to stop fretting and stop worrying about it
completely because I am not a judge; I'm an author, and so can't
vote. Even if I was voting, only the
rounded-off-to-the-nearest-integer number would matter, so maybe I
should just never worry about it again.
As a reviewer, I noticed a few things about this year's Comp. First, I didn't see any games so flawed that I couldn't play them. I can remember reading about previous comps, with buggy games and horrible implementations that made it impossible to play every game. There are a lot of good games in this year's crop, and only one or two that were what I would call "poorly coded." Hopefully, the overall increase in game quality means that people are starting to figure out which games belong in the comp and which don't. And now, the scores and reviews. Remember, these were done with the Old Scoring System. For those who are interested, I have re-scored the games with the New Scoring System and listed those scores on a separate page. Also just for fun is a listing of what the games would have scored if I graded on a curve, found on a separate page. To sum up before we begin, a list of the games follows ranked from best to, ah, least-best. Another Earth, Another Sky
8.4
Games are reviewed here in the order that I played them. Random order generation thanks to Comp02.z5, by Lucian P. Smith. Sun and MoonDavid Brain, WebWhat a good one to start off with! Sun and Moon is a web-based game in which you play, well, you. Except for the introduction and epilogue, which are more traditional blocks of text, the action in this game consists, literally, of trying to find information, piece together a story, and even stop the Bad Guys, all completely online. And it worked surprisingly well. There are a lot of things to like about this game and how it was written. First of all, I actually liked the fact that you don’t know the whole story when you finish the game. Let me point out that the ONLY reason I liked that was because the author has explained the whole thing on a separate page, which you can read when you’re done with the game. It didn’t quite feel right to stop the Bad Guys’ Evil Plan without having real proof that Something Bad was going to happen if I didn’t, but I stopped the Plan anyway because I figured that’s what I was Supposed To Do. Sure, that increases the feeling of “it’s just a game” but it works to get you to do what you need to do, also. A second great part of this game was the maze – and what a maze! Now, I know a lot of people are “tired” of mazes, or they don’t like them, or whatever. I am not one of those people. I actually like mazes under a few conditions: the maze can be mapped, it has rules and sticks to them, and is generally consistent as you walk around it. Plus the interface should be cool. A maze in a traditional text-only adventure is rather tedious, I agree. But this maze was on the web, and between the interesting scenery, the colored doors, and my handy map, this maze was an amazing amount of fun. It is easily solved if you spend enough time on it, which was a little bit of a problem with the two hour time limit (I think I spent forty minutes on just the maze). Of course, the time spent on the maze was extended a bit because of the apparent bugs – there are two rooms which misstate their exits by a little, as if they were rotated, but once you know that you can work around it. Still, not quite perfect. Talking about the maze leads me to the other puzzles in the game. Sun and Moon’s puzzles are really your basic paper puzzles, translated to a web format: crossword puzzle, maze, cryptogram, and rebus-type word solving. They are also very difficult and/or time-consuming. Now, I’m a regular and dedicated crossword-solver, but I like the Washington Post. The crossword in Sun and Moon is, according to the author, the UK variety, which in Games Magazine (for those of you who follow) are known as “Cryptic Crosswords.” They are very difficult. I found the puzzle in Sun and Moon nigh impossible, especially with time running out. The major problem with the puzzles was that I didn’t see any reason to solve any of them. After spending so much time on the maze (which was tremendous fun, by the way), and finally solving it, I didn’t get any new information that I needed to solve the overall problem of the game. It turned out that there was an oblique reference to one of the three possible solutions to the game, but I missed it. Because of that, I wasn’t motivated to solve the Name Game (which, it turns out, I wouldn’t have been able to do anyway – too hard), so I missed all the information provided by that puzzle. Solving the crossword gave the second of the three solutions, and it was one I was able to figure out after reading the hints with all the crossword answers AND going to an external website to do some searching. But I did get it! Speaking of external websites, one of the nice touches in Sun and Moon was that the author included links to “real” websites as well as links to other pages in his game. This was only possible because he included a line at the bottom of all of his pages that said “This page is part of Sun and Moon, etc” so that the player would know whether or not he was looking at reality or fiction. And is this game fiction? Unquestionably. Is it interactive? Well, yes it is, mostly. As much as I enjoyed the maze and putting the pieces of the story together, it was not a whole lot more than clicking on the right things in the right order. But what is a text adventure besides putting the right words in the right order? I’m not one of those who believe that just because you can only use the mouse to move along, it’s a “no-brainer.” Sun and Moon definitely wasn’t, and I applaud the use of medium! Without further ado, let’s begin the scoring process of my first review in my first Comp. I’m using my standard 10-point, 10-category scoring system. The average of the ten categories, rounded to the nearest integer, is the composite score for the competition (for more information, see the Scoring System). Story: 7. A little cliché, perhaps, but still effective, maybe as much for the way it was presented in bits and pieces as the actual storyline itself. Writing: 8. Effective, solid, a few typos in the text but not distracting. The author does a good job of writing several styles: company webpage, personal webpage, blogs, not to mention the descriptions of the maze rooms. Puzzles: 5. I love the maze, but every other puzzle was far too difficult for me in the time limit. Actually, I’m not sure I would have been able to solve the others given any amount of time. Coding: 7. Don’t think there’s no coding involved in a web-based game; there is and I know it. The webpages were well done, the Java that was used was just enough and I had no problems with it. However, I’m afraid I just can’t give full points for skipping the hard-coding involved in using, say, Inform or TADS. Parser: 4. My system doesn’t take into account web-based games very well, but we’re working with it. There really was a limitation in not having a prompt for the player to type at, because she can’t try anything that comes to mind. Humor/Enjoyment: 4. This is almost all from the maze. There’s not a whole lot of humor in this game in any form. Participation/Involvement: 3. It was interesting to be playing “me,” but too often I thought of what I was doing as a game. This is probably because of the way the puzzles were/weren’t integrated into the story. Lack of Annoyance: 7. The puzzles were hard, and that was mildly annoying but I’m used to it. Other than that (and the two rooms in the maze being turned wrong) there was next to no annoyance in game play. General Idea: 8. I’d just like to say I enjoyed this format IMMENSELY more than some web-based styles I’ve heard of: drop down menus, choose-your-own-adventure style “clickthroughs,” etc. This is the future of web-based adventure gaming, and it looks good. Wildcard: 9. Did I mention I really liked the maze? Seriously, this is a game worth playing and reading the hints for the puzzles. It was fun while it lasted, what more can you say? Composite Score: 6.2 (Comp Score: 6) Fort AegeaFrancesco Bova, Z-codeA game after my own heart in more ways then one: not only do you get to play a near-D&D type Druid, with magical powers and a love of nature, but you get to roam a nicely designed countryside and save the town (not the world, but the town) from the evil monster. Better still: this is not the old, hackneyed story of gather items and trick/kill the monster, but a new story (at least to me): stay alive and away from the monster for a certain amount of time, and you win. It’s a large game, no doubt about that. If you were to do everything right the first time around, you’d probably finish in two hours. I am not the type of player who does everything right the first time. The Prologue was perfect: I had just enough time to visit each area and examine some things before the “action” started. The arbitration between farmers was a great way of getting me into the part, and there were some subtle hints about what things were for and when to use them throughout. For instance, when you examine the salt in your hut, it lets you know that the salt is for communicating with other druids. Aha, that’s useful. There is an awful lot of useful, but not crucial, information to be found in the extensive reading material. Maybe that’s why I was rushed at the end: I spent too much time reading through the background information. I’m still glad I did, because it was fun and besides, I wasn’t going to be able to solve those puzzles myself anyway. The major problem with the Prologue was trying to get out of Allarah’s place and return to my own hut. I tried “wake,” since it was a hallucination, I tried “exit,” “return,” “head back” (which was specifically mentioned in the text – “It’s time for you to head back.”), and none of them worked, so I ended up dead in the Prologue. Whoops. Anyway, a lot of the “correct path” through this game is intuitive or strongly hinted, which makes it quite a lot of fun to play. I had time to go to each of the four sections of the game and die once before I had to pull out the walkthrough (please, authors, write hints. I know walkthroughs are easier, but some of us just need hints, and want to try more of it on our own!). It turned out I was on the right track in each of the four sections, I just couldn’t figure out quite how to finish it off. This all points to one obvious (and forgivable) flaw: the game is too large. There were lots of good hints; the puzzles are clever but gettable, if only I had had more time. I loved the satisfaction I got when I figured something out on my own, but I really wanted to see the ending before the two hours were up, so I turned to the walkthrough and didn’t get the full enjoyment from the game. This is unfortunate, but there isn’t a lot I can do about it. I barely had time to look at the second ending in the walkthrough, which is in my opinion ten times better than the first ending. It took me twenty full minutes just to use the walkthrough for JUST the first ending! Serious text. Anyway, there are a few picky problems with missing commas, “loan” instead of “lone,” extra commas, “it’s” instead of “its,” extra punctuation, a few missing synonyms, and the worst of all: >REMOVE BREAST PLATE Yipes! And “breastplate” should be allowed as a synonym. There were also some missing secondary nouns; for example, one of the villagers is described as wearing a silver necklace. But when you try to examine the necklace, you can’t see any such thing. I really liked the menu-based conversation system when talking to the dragon – I was worried about that before I found out it was multiple choice. Good choice. I liked the fact that I didn’t need to make a map at any point. I especially liked how the “completed” sections of the game were covered with green gas so that I would know they were finished. Overall, this is a very well-done game that could use a little fleshing out as far as coding is concerned, and a few more evenings over which to play it. Multiple endings, many ways to die, and a good sense of the Player Character. Let’s score it, shall we? Story: 9. I liked it. As has been said, it can be more satisfying to save the village than to prevent the Entire Galaxy from Imminent Destruction. And there were definite touches of realism (i.e., not everyone makes it) in the versions of the story that I saw. Great touch! Writing: 6. In most places the writing was perfectly serviceable; however, there were lots of grammar and punctuation problems. Remember folks, you only use an apostrophe in the possessive case (except “its”) or when something is being contracted, not for plurals (lean-to’s). Puzzles: 4. Obviously well thought-out, but too much for me to solve. And there were no hints. Many of the little ones I solved on my own, but the ultimate puzzle in each section was beyond me. Also, who knew that “prop” was going to be an implemented verb? And if I can “bandage moose with reeds” why can’t I “heal moose with reeds” or “cover moose with reeds?” Coding: 7. Okay, a few quibbles like the breast plate problem above, but on the whole, this thing is pretty well coded. There was a lot here to code. Parser: 9. High-quality Inform parser. Humor/Enjoyment: 4. Not a lot of humor here, as might be expected when your town is under attack from a vicious, poison gas-breathing green dragon. For some reason I had fun swimming in the ocean, though. And talking to animals. Participation/Involvement: 8. I was definitely thinking like a druid here, as much as possible anyway, and more importantly thinking like THE druid that was the PC. This might have been strongly influenced by the fact that I read all the background information (not to mention I have an 18th level druid back home), but it still worked. Lack of Annoyance: 5. Oh, there were annoying parts, sure. Nothing horrible, just a few problems with what I could do or what I could figure out. For instance, once you enter the Charcoal Camp and talk to Ned, you are stuck there until you can solve that puzzle. General Idea: 8. I like games with druids, especially when they act like the druids I’m used to. I like games in the forest, and I like games where your only objective is to stay alive (rather than hunt for treasure). Wildcard: 6. Enjoyable enough, although I could have hoped for a “happier” ending, or at the very least a way to save the baby. Maybe I missed it. Composite Score: 6.6 (Comp Score: 7) Concrete ParadiseTyson Ibele, TADS2Boy, I hate to be picky right off the bat, but in the intro text, the line “What’s for breakfast mom?” should really be “What’s for breakfast, Mom?” See the difference? The entire introduction/prologue continues in the same way (misspelled words: amounst, excerice, development; missing punctuation), although once we get to the jail proper the spelling and grammar are much improved. Of course, many other things are sub-par instead: words like “bars” and “walls” are treated as singular, synonyms are missing, and you can’t sit on the toilet. But let’s leave the writing aside for the moment. The game is, as described, an interactive jailbreak. Of course, before you can break out of prison you have to be sent to it, so the prologue consists of finding some way to get yourself in trouble with the law. You don’t have any choice but to do so, as there seems to be no other way to end the segment, but there are many and varied ways of getting into mischief, which is fun. There are not, however, many and varied ways of breaking out of jail. There seems to be only one way, and it’s annoying, and I’ll tell you why. SPOILERS AHEAD. So, you’re in jail and you’ve got a glass bottle with cork, a pen, and a window that looks out over the ocean. Sounds like the perfect time to write a note, doesn’t it? If only you had paper. So you check out the books that are conveniently located on the bookshelf (which, by the way, cannot be called a “bookshelf”). But “X BOOK” gets you a response like “The book accompanies several others on your shelf.” Not too exciting, is it? So you try “TAKE BOOK” which earns you a response of “You don’t really have any use for it, so you leave it where it is.” That is a dead giveaway that the book is not important, so I can’t get paper from it, right? Wrong. Turns out you have to say “READ BOOK” to get the useful stuff out of it. That is not nice to players. I had to get that from the walkthrough (since there are no hints). Also not nice to players is what you have to do once you have a note in the bottle ready to throw it out the window. I can’t find any way of getting the game to recognize that what I would like to do is put the bottle out the window. I tried every syntax I could possibly think of, and got “I don’t recognize that sentence” every time. So I assumed I was missing the right combination of words and turned to the hints/walkthrough. Aside: authors, I understand not wanting to include hints because “the puzzles are easy enough,” but sometimes some of us just don’t get it! We need help! And there are no such things as “unnecessary” hints! Sure, if I read them before I need them it might detract from my enjoyment of the game, but if I NEED them then it will only HELP me! That makes them necessary, and it’s a heck of a lot better than heading off to a walkthrough for help. Okay, anyway, according to the walkthrough I was supposed to put the bottle in the toilet and flush it. This is the toilet I can’t sit on, by the way. My point is, even if the window is not the solution to the puzzle, you need to recognize my attempt to use the window, to let me know that it isn’t the right way to go. Otherwise it’s far too frustrating. Looking past the incomplete coding and the annoying puzzle solutions, there are some good things about this game. The sense of place is pretty real, even if it’s like no prison I’ve ever heard of, and there are some well described objects, like the apple (even though the “worms” weren’t recognized) and the boiler room. And with the walkthrough in hand it wasn’t too hard to get to the end. This game has a lot of potential, and with a little bit more thought and effort it could be great. Let’s see the numbers. (P.S. I would like to be able to thank the tall stranger!) Story: 5. Not exciting, not terrible. A little contrived. An innocent accused candy thief killing the guard to escape seems a bit extreme. Writing: 4. Countless misspelled words, missing punctuation, but otherwise straightforward and unadorned. Puzzles: 4. Some minor puzzles are simple, but I needed the walkthrough more than once, and there were very few “wrong” answers taken into account. Coding: 6. TADS itself counts for a lot, but there were way too many words that it didn’t know. By the way, I think Inform is a lot nicer when it says “You can’t see any such thing” rather than admitting to the ignorance of TADS with “I don’t know the word ‘noise.’” Parser: 8. TADS has a lot going for it. A few minor quirks. Humor/Enjoyment: 5. So far, the funniest game I’ve played, not that that says a lot. The most enjoyable part was probably the prologue, where I could find at least six different ways of getting in trouble. Participation/Involvement: 5. I wanted to break out of the jail, but it felt so contrived. Lack of Annoyance: 2. And that may be generous. For goodness sakes, why am I not allowed to pick up one of the books off the bookshelf? Why?? General Idea: 6. Escaping from jail in a mostly lighthearted way: what can be wrong with that? Except when you kill a guy even knowing he has a wife and kids, I suppose. Wildcard: 3. Composite Score: 4.8 (Comp Score: 5) ConstraintsMartin Bays, Z-codeNow this is interesting: three games in one, isolated from one another in story and character, but tied loosely by abstract ideas. I thought at first that I’d be annoyed by the lack of continuity, but I was quite surprised by just how much the three games/scenes fit together. A few broad notes about all three before I discuss any in more detail: first, let me thank the author very much for including both hints and a walkthrough for each of the three scenes, even where it seems (and maybe is) completely, 100% superfluous. I appreciate that. That said, please don’t insult me when I find that I do need hints. I hate that. Second, the writing throughout the game is remarkable. Here is an author who knows how to use words to their greatest effect. The first of the three scenes is called “Falling,” and that is indeed what you do. This was almost perfect in capturing the feel and panic of falling through blackness without being able to see or stop yourself. But it isn’t quite perfect, and mainly because of a lack of verbs. When the game tells me “Breathe. You’ve got to breathe,” well, I’m going to try typing “breathe,” and it’s a tad jarring when it says that isn’t a verb it recognizes. “Panic” is another one that the game specifically mentions me doing, but isn’t recognized by the game. Other than that, there isn’t a lot to say about this section. The second is called “Inanimate,” and that was a lot of fun. The scene between the two people was interesting, dramatic, and fun to watch. It was intriguing to see it from the perspective of an inanimate object, as well. There was a flaw in the walkthrough, though: it said to use “d” to get off the shelf, but that led to a response of “You’ll have to get off your shelf first.” What you really needed to type was “fall.” But it was easy enough to see what I needed to do, even though the lack of options was a little limiting (ah, but that was the point – the name of the game is Constraints, after all). The third scenario, “Something,” was both the most involved and the most interesting. What makes it so interesting is that the point is to try to find many different possibilities of accomplishing a specific goal. You don’t actually do any of your possible courses of action, you merely plan them and play through them in your mind, trying to find something that will work. I was able to find many of these on my own, because they really are straightforward, simple things to do, and that’s good. This was the section where I needed a hint for a final solution, though, and I didn’t appreciate the “these puzzles are so easy, you shouldn’t need hints” remark. If they WERE that easy, I wouldn’t be looking at the hints! Since I am, they are not, Q.E.D. Because this scene is the most involved, there is the most room for problems. You should be able to call a glove compartment a “glove box,” and here in the U.S. we call the “head” of a truck the “cab.” Also, when it says “the tail extends to the west,” I should be able to “examine tail” and get a response, but I get “You can’t see any such thing.” The changing messages as you go through different plans and discard them, one by one, are quite good. And the end, when you reach it, is the most thought-provoking part of the whole game, and it too is quite good. There is one other part of the game worth mentioning, because it’s just too much fun: the Endgame. I don’t want to spoil too much, but suffice it to say that if you agreed with my review of “Sun and Moon,” you might just enjoy the Endgame of Constraints. (Although, I’m not sure you ever actually reach the end. I haven’t, at least at the time of this writing.) Time for the numbers! Story: 6. Although two of the scenes individually have interesting stories, there is nothing cohesive. The weak (but humorous) attempt of the Endgame to tie them all together only serves to mess up any sense of story we’ve gotten up to that point. Writing: 10. No grammatical or spelling errors that I found, plus some really effective phrases and paragraphs! Over all, very nice stuff. Puzzles: 5. I know, some of it was “puzzleless.” That doesn’t get a 10, and neither does being mean when I ask for help. Coding: 6. Some synonyms left out in “Something,” plus some verbs that would have been nice in “Falling.” Parser: 8. Your basic Inform parser with some additions and expansions. ’Sgood stuff. Humor/Enjoyment: 4. Not a lot here, since I'm not counting the enjoyment of the good writing. There are some points for Endgame, but ultimately not very many. Participation/Involvement: 6. Yeah, I felt a little bit like an inanimate object, but there was really more reading-along than acting, and that causes detachment. Lack of Annoyance: 9. Hardly any annoyance at all: this is the benefit of near-puzzleless IF. General Idea: 6. It was interesting to have three different scenes and try to tie them together myself, and I think it sort of worked. Wildcard: 7. I like games that make me think, and the fact that I could mull over the “meaningful” parts while plowing through the Endgame was interesting and quite a bit of fun. Composite score: 6.7 (Comp Score: 7) MoonbaseQA Dude, TADS2Ah, my second TADS2 game of the comp. With a little spell-checking, a few code clean-ups, and some clearer descriptions, “Moonbase” will be a terrific game for beginners and poor puzzle-solvers like myself. I found objects at the right moment, and I knew what I needed to do in order to continue. There were helpful objects, like an equipment manual, to give in-game clues about what to do to get things fixed up. I love that about this game. Now, about those spelling and coding problems: The intro gives us our first problem: “its” instead of “it’s.” Folks, when you are using a contraction for the two words “it is,” you use the apostrophe. When you are saying something belongs to “it,” as in “the cat swished its tail,” then you don’t use an apostrophe. It’s very simple. We also get some inconsistency on capitalization, for things like the Moon and Moonbase Alpha. There’s also a quirk with the game’s special commands, like “watch” and “shoot.” If you try to do it to something the game isn’t expecting, for instance “watch gate,” you get “I don’t know how to the transporter gate.” Some other oddities include trying to sit down in the theater and stand up again: >sit >stand There’s also a rather odd feel to some of the room descriptions that make me wonder about the player character. For instance, in the first room with the transporter gate, we get this: “The console takes up most of the wall, which is surprising, because it only has two buttons.” And later, “The foyer has a very high ceiling for some reason.” This sounds like one of two things: (1) the PC has never been to these locations before, or (2) the author is trying to add flavor to the descriptions and doesn’t have a good reason for giving the foyer a high ceiling, so makes it sound surprising instead. Nothing major: these sorts of things just make me quirk my head in momentary puzzlement. Looking over my notes from the game and my review so far, I see that I’m really picking on the problems. That’s not entirely fair; the puzzles in this game are just my type, and I really do think this game could be quite entertaining and fun for beginners and oldies alike, except for the quirks. And the quirks are problematic, but I’ll stop listing them en masse and just explain one more problem, representative of the coding in the game. There’s an exoskeleton, which it is very clear you will have to wear. When you first come across it, perhaps you try the command “WEAR EXOSKELETON.” This gives the response, “(First taking the exoskeleton) Taken. Okay, now you’re wearing the exoskeleton.” But what you didn’t know when you first arrived is that the battery needs to be replaced, which you can’t do while you’re wearing it. In fact, you need a particular item to do it, and you can’t possibly obtain that item while wearing the exoskeleton. So, you remove the exoskeleton. This is all fine and good, until the moment comes later in the game when you try once again to wear the exoskeleton. Then, no matter what you have in your hands, you get the response, “(First taking the exoskeleton) Your load is too heavy.” This renders it impossible (as far as I can tell) to put the exoskeleton on more than once in any game, necessitating a restart if you were foolish enough to try to wear the thing the first time you came across it. Other than that, there are only a few problems with the game doing things and not quite coming out and telling you what it did; for instance, if you are unsuccessful trying to replace a part, the game will pick the part up and put it in your inventory without letting you know. That surprised me. Also the walkthrough included is mistaken about the location of a certain piece of paper. But I liked the environment, I liked that I found everything in the best possible order (or so it seemed), and I liked that I knew how to manipulate the game objects when I encountered them. All in all, this game deserves a post-comp release and said release will deserve a look from the IF community. Score time! Story: 5. You’re sent to explore a base and find out what happened to the missing people. Okay, fine, but I’ve done this before. Writing: 6. Nothing spectacular; the typos and inconsistencies detract from what would be perfectly adequate prose. The ending could have been more dramatic, were this an ideal universe. Puzzles: 8. My kind of stuff. I actually feel clever when I solve puzzles without hints, and I finished the entire game without hints! But the walkthrough was still helpful as it told how to get all the points. I love it! Coding: 6. Too many things that don’t work, and some that sure look like bugs. Parser: 8. Good stuff we expect from TADS, but a few problems with syntax. Humor/Enjoyment: 5. A few things that were enjoyable, but it didn’t seem like the game was really trying for humor. If it were, I’d’ve been able to do a lot more with the dead body. Participation/Involvement: 5. Nothing to really draw me into the part, although I did want to find out what happened at the base. Lack of Annoyance: 5. Some minor annoyances, one or two major. General Idea: 7. Strange alien creatures, a mission in peril, generally good stuff. Wildcard: 5. Being able to get the puzzles doesn’t really make up for the problems with the implementation. How can you have a screwdriver in your game and not include the verb “tighten”? Composite score: 6.0 (Comp score: 6) A Party to MurderDavid Good, ADRIFTWhat a great title. It works on so many levels. I’d never played an ADRIFT game before this one, but I’d seen the flame wars on R*IF so I was a little unsure about what to expect. And I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, the author’s choice of game language is influential in how good his game is, and yes, how well the parser works is part of the final score. So, Inform and TADS games get “an advantage” only over games whose parsers suck. “A Party To Murder” had a parser that did not suck; and as a bonus, the game completed some of my typing for me (more on that later) and had nifty pop-up windows that I liked, and I didn’t have any more problems with syntax, etc, than any other game I’ve played so far. ADRIFT, we salute you! Now that the language discussion is out of the way, let’s talk about the game. It was quite a bit of fun, all in all. This is a good, old-fashioned murder mystery “plus.” By that I mean that this is more than just a murder mystery: the player character’s driving force is not to solve the murder but to find out if the lien on his house can be removed. Between that and the framing (you start off talking to a detective after the fact, and what you do in the game is what you tell him about the night), I already know at the beginning of the “real” game what my character wants and how he might act. This is wonderful. I had a little trouble figuring out some other plot-related things that may have made a difference in how I acted: for instance, I wasn’t sure if I was invited to the party, or just crashing it. Also, I didn’t know who the people were. I met Bunny, who is “helping with the food” and “making sure everyone is having a good time,” so I assumed she was the hostess and therefore Tony’s wife. You can imagine my consternation later when I showed her evidence of Tony’s affair, only to be told she wasn’t interested. In retrospect, she had no real reason to be, since Tony’s wife is a woman named Susan. To help with these issues, the game had answers to certain questions, like “Who is Susan?” But the answer was “Susan is the woman,” which didn’t really tell me a whole lot. Even less enlightening was the answer to “Who is Tony?”: “Tony is the Tony Ravine.” But the game’s “Where is” was much more practical: when I wanted to talk to someone, I could find out which room they had wandered to just by asking. Great touch. The walkthrough suggests that if you collect evidence without having seen the body, the other guests will get suspicious. I didn’t see anything different, no matter how much evidence I collected. Even giving the murderer the evidence that would specifically point to him/her elicits no response. I do like, however, that if you have no reason to be snooping (i.e., haven’t found the body), then the game will prompt you with a “Don’t you feel funny, pawing through someone else’s belongings?” yet will allow the action if you insist. This is the perfect way to handle “IF behavior” in a more modern setting. Of course, once you know murder has happened, you are authorized by the game to do any snooping you wish. This game has lots of extras: you can play on the computer (and enjoy it!), you can pee, you can flirt with the guests (and more!), you can walk in on a teenage couple gettin’ it on, you can view cheeses like Asiago and Grueyere (although sampling them is more difficult -- and isn't it "Gruyere"?). And I actually like the framing device better here than in Spider and Web (as much as I enjoyed it there). In Spider and Web, you act out what you are “telling” the other person, but you might get it wrong and have to redo it. Here, whatever you act out IS what happened, whether you get the bad guys or not! It lets the player truly decide what happened in the evening, and that makes it a lot of fun. Oh, sure, there’s the occasional typo (“flegling” should be “fledgling”), missing punctuation mark (examining the easy chair), and unimplemented verb (like “knock” when confronted with a closed and locked bathroom door). And sure, some of the syntax is a little tricky, you can’t “show” someone something, the NPCs are a little unresponsive, and you can’t “turn flashlight off,” only “turn off flashlight.” But I don’t mind. The puzzles requiring a little authorial omniscience I do mind, but not too much. I’m used to using walkthroughs, being the poor puzzler that I am, so it doesn’t bother me a lot to find out what you have to do in order to get the keys from Susan. Two more quick notes before we wrap up this review and get on to the scores. First of all, the sentence completion thing has its ups and downs. The ups (if unintended) are that I am aware of many things in the room that I may not have been before. Just try out some letters and see if anything new pops up in the command line; you may learn something. The downs are, well, maybe that wasn’t intended. Also it doesn’t always complete the same combination of letters, which is puzzling. Second note: there’s one object in the game I object to. The post-it note in the hall bath should really, in my opinion, just be taken out of the game completely. On it, the author intrudes on my gaming experience by leaving a post-it note, a “Memo from the Author,” in the medicine cabinet to do nothing more than tell me why there’s nothing exciting in the medicine cabinet. Now I know that medicine cabinets are a pain in the rear, because they’re in almost every bathroom and they usually contain all sorts of little, fiddly objects. But please, I’d rather see a bare cabinet than a note from the author in an otherwise-serious game telling me why he didn’t stock the cabinet. It isn’t funny, but it does destroy the (otherwise quite interesting) mood you’ve created up to this point. All right, the score: Story: 7. Two parts cliché, one part original, mix well and refrigerate until set. Writing: 6. Generally fine, with some typos and missing (or extra) punctuation. Puzzles: 6. Passable, some omniscience required to figure out what to do (but not how to do it). Coding: 7. Good, some fun actions specially implemented, a few quirks (and not enough NPC responses). Parser: 8. I didn’t really miss the verb “show” since so often it’s synonymous with “give” anyways. This is a high quality parser, for all practical purposes. Humor/Enjoyment: 6. Some of the NPCs are quite funny and/or enjoyable at times, if you know what I mean. But overall, the game isn’t very humorous at all. Participation: 6. Not bad, but disturbed by the post-it and by having to serve as a shelving librarian for ten minutes. Lack of Annoyance: 7. I assume ADRIFT doesn’t list what items are on supporters, generally speaking. This is somewhat annoying (not to mention misleading). General Idea: 6. Wildcard: 5. In the end, the game really isn’t that memorable. It’s worth a play, but probably not disk space. Composite score: 6.4 (Comp score: 6) JanitorSeebs, Z-code [Peter Seebach and Kevin Lynn]This is the funniest game so far, no question about it. It starts out in a cute, different way. You’re the janitor at a text adventure game creation company, and so your job is to clean up after the designers have all gone home. But there are so many hilarious touches in the first five or ten minutes that you almost completely forget your setting. The “rules” are a kick! The first few scenes, in the Break Room, the Closet, and the Receptionist’s Office, are truly representative of the feel of the rest of the game. The mood and tone of the game are set, the humor is sharpest, and the good coding (along with the associated bugs) are all there. For instance, you try to open something (a container, most definitely openable) and you get the response “We’ll just assume you open it when you need it.” Well, that’s a nice touch, and I always prefer a game automatically open things for me when it would be required for my command (i.e. >N (opening the door first) sort of thing). However, that isn’t all the authors here have done. They have specifically disallowed me opening the container whenever I feel like it. I wanted to see what was in it and mess around with the gunk. I was not allowed to. I’m still not sure why. There are also a few missing synonyms, and an odd “bucket of dirty water (which is empty).” But there is also a mop that turns on and off (which is way cool!), but also there is a disambiguation problem (“Which do you mean, the tin can of pink jelly or the tin cans?”), but at the same time there is a stack of dirty magazines that you can clean (well, you are a janitor) and you end up with clean magazines! That’s not only too much like fun, it’s just plain funny! Then you get into the “real” part of the game, and the same sorts of things are repeated throughout. Funny bits, right next to coding quirks, with a few missing synonyms/verbs, and what seem to be either “before” or “after routines” returning false instead of true. You can tell the last one when you get something like (not an exact quotation): >X BOTTOM SHELF Hm. Right. The other supremely annoying bit in the whole game is the mop/bucket problem. For some reason, the mop was the last item in my inventory, so whenever I tried to pick up more than I could carry (while I had the dirty bucket “rucksack” object), it would try to move the mop to the bucket first, giving me room in my hands to carry whatever it was. But the mop doesn’t fit in the bucket. So I got things like: >TAKE ALL Which really got silly, considering all I wanted was to put something ELSE in the bucket instead of the mop. And I couldn't drop the mop and pick it back up to make it first in my inventory, because you can't drop the mop while you're in the game world. Having a "rucksack" item would have been a nice touch, but because of the one object that wouldn’t fit it was really a pain. Let’s leave all the unimplemented nouns and weird coding quirks aside now, and focus on the point of the game. What a terrific, fabulous idea. It even makes me (me, the bad puzzler) realize what it is I’m supposed to be doing. The first few tasks I got around to are well clued enough, and I really know what I’m supposed to do. I went for a long time without looking at the hints, just exploring the connections between the “game world” and the access hallways, figuring out the quickest way to get places, and putting objects in specific places to make my score go down. It was great! Really, really, great! Unfortunately, and without knowing it, I spent too much time in this stage, trying to do it on my own. The moment came where I didn’t know what to do next, and I had seen everything there was to see without any hint of a “deeper plot” going on. I was down to 52 points, but time was running out. I check the hints (provided cleverly as an html file with selectable text, so that you only see the text you want). The hints say to ask the mop, and be sure to talk with the receptionist. I hadn’t been aware that the mop could talk. So I ask the mop, and I talk with the receptionist, and get diddly squat. Precious time is leaking away. Unfortunately (again), the hints were totally inadequate to the task of actually providing me with useful, practical information. They were more “how to get past this puzzle” hints, not “what the heck am I supposed to do NOW” hints. The hints suggest that the crucial dead body was in a completely different place than where I found it; they mention a large snake (I have no idea what they’re talking about), and then it was too late. I was seriously low on time, in need of a walkthrough, trying to plow through the hint file to get hints about what to do now from what the questions were (what I call “meta-hints”), when suddenly I got physically stuck in a series of several connected rooms without being able to get out. I finally read through ALL the hints in desperation, discovering that there is some sort of Secret Plot and the treasures were fake (Hm, I did notice that the description of one treasure had turned to “cheap”). But even putting that aside, the hints mentioned puzzles in the part I had thoroughly explored that I hadn’t seen. There was the possibility of being locked in a vault? There was a keypad? Who knows if I would have been able to figure out the access code, since I never even saw it? Even here, there was humor and enjoyment. It really was fun just trying to figure out the most move-efficient way of moving around, but every second I spent on that was a second less of gameplay, and that’s dangerous when you design a game this big. So, as my two hours ran out, I couldn’t get out of where I was stuck in. The hints had hinted at a plot, but I never really saw it myself because all of the access doors disappeared (I still don’t know why: something I did? Just that time? Someone trying to kill me?). Needless to say, the last half hour of playtime was not the most enjoyable. The setting and the humor were still there, but after so much trying to wrap my head around the puzzles in time, I ended more frustrated than anything. A final word: Authors, please consider NOT insulting the player who looks for hints. You want people to play your game, right? You want people to see all your cool stuff, your neat ending, your funny bits, right? My advice: don’t discourage players by insulting them, and DO include plenty of thorough hints so that players who are completely, totally lost can still find their way through your game. Even comments like “all of our beta-testers were able to beat the game” are insulting, although not as much as “these puzzles are so easy, you shouldn’t need hints.” Did your beta-testers try to do it for the first time in only two hours? Consider the poor puzzler! There are more of us out here than you may realize! Story: 6. Undoubtedly this would have been higher if I had finished the game and seen that there was more to the story than it seemed at first. Casualty of the time limit. Writing: 8. Solid, descriptive, occasionally leaving something out but generally good. Puzzles: 7. Fun, easy to start and progressively harder, clever, obviously part of the story and well motivated for the PC. However, some were too hard for me and/or required some omniscience. Also, the hints cause a small reduction. Coding: 7. Rather than just mediocre all the way around, Janitor has a heavy mix of great touches and coding quirks, missing synonyms and really cool coding tricks. Parser: 9. Good stuff, some extras. Humor/Enjoyment: 9. This had me laughing out loud. I still chuckle when I remember some of the stuff, although I seem to recall that the best stuff is at the beginning. Participation/Involvement: 6. Some, occasional involvement in the character, but generally I (as the player) was left to my own devices. Lack of Annoyance: 4. This, too, would probably be higher if the hints were better and/or I was able to finish the game and see the ending. General Idea: 9. What a clever, original way to play! To be the janitor, putting everyone’s toys away. (I know, similar has been done but this felt so new and so much better!) I loved it. Wildcard: 6. Probably higher if I had finished, but how can you not like a game with fifteen kinds of butter substitute? And the lovable bird? Composite score: 7.1 (Comp score: 7) The Moonlit TowerYoon Ha Lee, Z-codeI don’t remember the last time I reviewed a game that was as, well, as GOOD as the Moonlit Tower. This is a fantastic game, even without any real humor like the last one. In fact, if I had been able to finish Janitor, it would be a very close call at this point as to which one was at the top of my list for games so far. As it is, there is no question. I will be the first to admit, the game starts off pretty thick in the prose. The introduction is fine, but the description of the first room is this: “Moonlight diffuses through the walls, tracing out unreadable sigils in calligraphies of light and dark. Stairs adorned with bas-relief motifs spiral downward.” Whoa, I thought to myself, lay off the verbage a little! But now I see that I only felt that way because I wasn’t yet caught up in the prose (and this passage is probably the oddest-sounding). I’d tone it down a bit in that first room, but the rest of it is beautiful. After a few minutes, I was in the world and had forgotten about the odd verbage that started it off. The description of the garden worked perfectly for me. I actually touched my own face at more than one point, if that tells you who’ve played it anything. I did some wonderful (and successful) exploring on my own, revealing choice bits of the story at the right moments. The story is fantastic, if you like this sort of thing, and I do, immensely. Hm, how to describe it better without giving anything away? Maybe the question should be, did you like Photopia? Add interaction and puzzles. Not that the story is anything like Photopia, but perhaps some of the feeling is the same. All right, I’ll stop waxing mushy about the story and talk more about the nuts and bolts. It’s a wonderful story, btw. Anyway, there are some way-cool puzzles very well clued (or at least intuitive), and one very non-intuitive puzzle that was also hinted at in the game. I just missed the hints. The hints included in the game are somewhat sparse, and I ended up figuring out what to do next only by looking at what the hint questions were (what I refer to as meta-hinting). We also have some missing synonyms (though not many), “folding screens” should be a pluralname object, and there is an object which is mentioned in a long passage after I do something, but I can’t find the object anywhere after I’m done. I have a feeling (thanks to the hints) I know what that item was, but I would still like to see it. And bonus points for proper use of the word “jessed!” I ended up going to the hints rather quickly in this game because I so wanted to keep the story moving along and find out “what happens next.” Little bits of information could be revealed at any time, and I wanted all of them. Wild speculation was rampant. Hm, I’m back to talking about the story again. What else? There were two items with tassels, and one of the tassel could be referred to independently and one could not, which led to some difficulty. There was a little bit of “oh, I was supposed to do THAT?” right near the end, and saying “0 out of 0” points is a little bit of a faux pas in a game otherwise so sophisticated. See Andrew Plotkin’s help on that particular quirk. The best parts of The Moonlit Tower were the story and the writing. Oh, and the fact that I didn’t realize some things were puzzles because I did the right thing automatically and intuitively. I also didn’t get a chance to play through for any other endings, but the one that I got was fantastic. While not perfect, this game had so many strengths and small touches (not to mention the story – have I mentioned the story?) that I could see it winning the tournament. Of course, I’m well aware that I say this after only playing eight games. Story: 10. I loved it. Writing: 9. Really great stuff, although a bit thick at first. Puzzles: 7. These were really excellent to begin with, although much less intuitive as the game went on. The hints were not as clear as they may have been. Coding: 7. A great job, although some missing synonyms and the occasional extra line. Also the verb “fan” should have been a “must” in my opinion. Parser: 9. High quality, Inform Plus. Humor/Enjoyment: 6. Although not too much on the laugh-out-loud side, The Moonlit Tower was enjoyable enough in other ways to get good points. Participation/Involvement: 9. Wow. I was really immersed in the character. Did I mention I actually put my hand to my face in reaction to one of the game’s responses? Lack of Annoyance: 8. Mostly free of annoyance, although there was an occasional “erg” moment. General Idea: 8. The act of discovery by exploration is implemented so effectively here that I couldn’t help but be completely taken by it. Wildcard: 8. Great stuff. Composite score: 8.1 (Comp score: 8) AugustineTerrence V. Koch, TADS2An interesting and imaginative story horribly crippled by poor implementation. I wanted to like this game. I really did. I've been to St. Augustine, and although there were some other things going on that day, it shines in my memory as a busy, bright, and fascinating location. The introduction to the game (as read in the author's notes, a separate file) sparks the imagination, and also avows that while the story might share some aspects with a certain movie (Highlander), it was an idea he had before the movie was released, which is neat. But the actual programming of the game is barely enough to allow you to finish the game with a walkthrough, much less trying to explore and learn about the rich culture of St. Augustine. In the first section, you are a young boy in Wales, 1400 A.D. After being introduced to your mother and sister, you are asked to take the lunch to your father. Well, the setting wasn't so captivating that I didn't want to break the illusion of immersion, so I tried eating the lunch. But the lunch didn't appear appetizing (poor Pop, you think). So I set out to explore the area. The most interesting site is a clump of bushes. "Examine bushes" yields "The bushes are thick with leaves." Okay, "examine leaves." That gives the response, "I don't know the word leaves." Folks, by the time I got through with the game I was convinced that my six-year-old niece knows twice as many words as this game does. May I say at this point that I have always preferred Inform's "You can't see any such thing" to "I don't know the word <item>" that TADS gives? Much better to be a little bit vague rather than coming right out and saying that the parser doesn't even know the word. It's quite discouraging. Also, in Inform you can ask an NPC about any topic, which is any word or set of words. In TADS, the parser has to know the word before you can ask anyone about it. Let me give you the ultimate example from the game, in the first "present-day" scene, after which I resigned myself to never being able to examine anything interesting at all, even the items which were specifically mentioned and pointed out by the text. You are being led on a walking tour of the city by a young female tour guide. So you look at her: >x tour guid >o guide >x woman >x clothes >x hair >x hat >x flower >x flowered hat Gr! The woman is absolutely vital to the story, and the hat is made a very big deal of just a few scenes later, when she fiddles with it and fiddles with it and finally takes it off, remarking on the trouble she's had with it. And I can't even look at the thing! This is only one example of the crippling implementation I'm talking about. Two minutes later, I had the same trouble with "A lady stands under the umbrella next to the table." But you can't "x lady," or "x woman," or "x table," or "x umbrella"! The tourists are carrying tour books, cameras, and shopping bags filled with souvenirs, and you can't look at any of it. This kind of depth is critical in creating a world for your player to explore and get to know. Another major problem was with Kasil, the arch-enemy of the player character. This is the most important NPC in the game, and his coding is seriously flawed. I can't even count how many times I got the response, "You can't see any kasil here," even when the text of the game SAID he was there (and talking to me, no less). This is also the cause of the worst diambiguation problem I've seen in a long time. You're in the middle of a heated battle with your foe, and you get things like this: >thrust at Kasil What? There are two of them? It seems that the author of the game has implemented the enemy with more than one object and they are both present at the same time. This (perhaps obviously) is a problem. I could go on and on (and on) about some of these things, but really the only other point worth mentioning in this forum is that at one point near the end of the game, actions that aren't what you are supposed to do give absolutely no response. This makes it completely impossible to win without the walkthrough (and quite difficult even with it). Some other quick points: the verb "draw" as in drawing a sword would have been nice, extra spaces and punctuation at times, "fellow adventure's" should be "adventurers", "Kasil isn't important" should not be told to the player (especially when trying to attack him), some sentence fragments, "your are" should be "you are", and putting actions into room descriptions is generally a bad idea, even if you think that once a player gets in, there's no possible way for them to exit and re-enter. The problem is that when you "undo" in TADS, the room description is printed, which means I saw certain actions more than once that I shouldn't have. Even with all of that, once you resign yourself to just going through the motions and reading the text, the story is actually pretty good. You don't have a lot of say in the way the story goes, since you can only either win, or fail to fulfill your history, but the story isn't bad. Especially if you like pirates, or swordfighting, or fantastical happenings, and I do. So there are two ways to make this game a ton better: implement all of the missing nouns, verbs, and actions; or make it a static short story. Either option would vastly improve what we have now. Here's the scoring breakdown: Story: 7. Original, interesting if not compelling. Writing: 7. Mostly, the writing was actually pretty good, but there were plenty of distracting typos and noun-verb disagreements. Puzzles: 4. There were some interesting things to do, but not many, and the "puzzles" sometimes consisted of figuring out which of the three attack verbs to use to avoid dying. Coding: 2. Serious problems, very poor implementation, from the verbs to the nouns to the NPCs. After slaying eight of the rebels, I can ask the rebels about Kasil and get their default "I don't know much about that." Gr. Parser: 7. TADS has a lot going for it, but nothing was added. Humor/Enjoyment: 3. Really not much to recommend this one in the enjoyment category. Participation/Involvement: 2. There was next to nothing to connect the player to the player character. Lack of Annoyance: 1. This game is as annoying as they come. There could not be a more annoying game. General Idea: 8. Playing through present-day scenes and flashbacks would have been pretty cool, and the fact that the final showdown was on a ship would have been neat. Wildcard: 5. After all, there was a lot of work put into it, and I can see that and be thankful. At the same time, there were enough problems to make me overall ambivalent to the game. Composite score: 4.6 (Comp score: 5) The TempleJohan Berntsson, Z-codeA great one. I loved this game. I didn't like the fact that I couldn't transcript, but other than that there was an awful lot that worked. The writing sets up a terrific setting and mood, the main NPC, Charles, is quiet enough to not be distracting while saying the appropriate things when you ask, and the story is spooky at just the right moments, downright scary at some, and gripping enough to compel you to play through to the end of the game. There were only a few minor problems and I'll mention them first before talking about the good stuff. It's a little bit annoying as an IF player to have to do something twice before "noticing" something, since there isn't any hint that I would need to do it twice. A few phrases in the introduction are awkward, like the "nightly nightmare," or later the "irregular-sized blocks of irregular size," but it's nothing major. There was the very occasional missing noun, and I had a bit of trouble with the wording for one of the later puzzles in the game. Now, on to the good stuff! (You'll notice an important distinction between my discussion of this game and that of, say, Augustine: there, I focused mainly on the problems because they so overwhelmed the story, and here, the game is good enough that I don't have too much to say about the problems.) First, the puzzles were really great. My very first try at doing something that was rather tricky worked perfectly; I can only assume that the author went to a great deal of trouble to make many possible phrasings for what amounts to basically the same action. For that, I salute you. I have in my notes: ha-HA! It worked! And the hints were wonderful. They were even adaptive, which is impressive. And they were helpful! That's the best part. Also, I knew what I needed to do at almost all points. When I needed to explore, I knew that. After exploring, I knew what piece of information I needed to find. It was after I explored the underground that I was a little unsure about what was supposed to happen next, but the hints gave it to me perfectly: if you haven't dealt with the vials yet, do that. Yes! Perfect! As to the mood... I've never read anything of Lovecraft so I won't do any comparisons. I'll just talk about what I know, and what I know is that The Temple is rather spooky. Not, what's-going-to-jump-out-from-behind-these-curtains-spooky, but how-is-this-connected-spooky, with the occasional meaninful "Ohhh..." and the singular, but shocking, "AAAAAHHHH!!!" Yes, I actually wrote in my notes: "AAAAAHHHH!!!" because the timing worked just perfectly. It was almost like it was scripted in a movie, I fell into it so well. I mean, wow. Okay, I'll tell you since it all sounds so vague. If you're a stickler for spoilers, skip to the next paragraph. You meet Charles early on in the game, and he is described as wearing clothes "at least eighty years out of fashion." Okay, noted. You continue the game. After squeezing through a crack in the wall of a sealed building, you come upon a library which is mostly empty. But Charles (who's been following you along) stumbles upon a skeleton in a remote corner. (Cool, by the way, to have the NPC doing the discovering. Makes it feel like he's really a partner in this.) Anyway, you "x skeleton" as a matter of course, and get a response saying something like, the remains lie face down, still covered by torn clothing. Hm. "X torn clothing." You get: "The skeleton is dressed in the torn remains of a tweed jacket and cotton trousers." Uh, that doesn't sound too good. You don't suppose... "X Charles' clothing," and you are told "Charles is dressed in a tweed jacket, and cotton trousers." AAAAAHHHH!!! is really the only response to that. That or bolting from the room in a panic. Anyhow, there are also great in-game hints to clue you in to what you're supposed to do next, which is fantastic. The only problem I had with the puzzles was when I needed to paint a symbol on myself, and I tried "paint me." That gave the slightly misleading response of, "You prefer to keep neat and clean." Okay, but at that moment I didn't want to stay neat and clean, I really needed to paint on myself. But other than that everything was fantastic. There is a great response to "chant" when you're in the temple itself, which would have been easy to overlook, and that really represents the way the whole game went. An awful lot was put in here that would have been easy for the author to forget about or leave out. It either says a lot for the author, or tells us that a lot of beta-testing went on. Then again, an author who puts his game through a lot of beta-testing says a lot for the author as well. Any way you slice it, this is a game worth playing. Let's see the numbers. Story: 9. Excellent. I liked it. Writing: 8. Effective, with the rare typo or awkward phrase. Puzzles: 10. This is what I like. Well clued puzzles with simple, yet clever, solutions, and a terrific hint system that gives you what you need to know. Coding: 9. Lots of extras, very few missing synonyms. Good NPC. Parser: 9. Inform Plus. Humor/Enjoyment: 4. I know it's hard to mix some humor in with the scary stuff. It's also hard to get a perfect 10 points in my scale, but it works. Participation/Involvement: 9. I was pretty well sucked into this one, and that's a good thing. The beginning dreamlike stuff had a good bit to do with that; it was more involving than if the player character had been given, well, more character. Lack of Annoyance: 8. Having to do certain things twice, and a little confusion with the vials (due to a save/restore) detracted slightly from an annoyance-free gaming experience. General Idea: 8. Good stuff: exploring the mysterious city and helping out with the problem that was obviously bigger than any of us. Wildcard: 8. This was more than just a great story told effectively through exploring a rich setting. This was a great game with a good story told well through the actions of me and my character. Well done! Composite score: 8.3 (Comp score: 8) Eric's GiftJoao Mendes, TADS3For a game whose main method of story-telling is conversation, Eric's Gift has some really odd quirks in the way conversation is handled. Most of the oddity comes from summarizing the conversation for the player, rather than explicitly spelling out every single word. This ranges from exchanges like >tell Cappella about synthcaf to things like >tell woman about jb You are unable to refuse. Living Room As she takes your coat and hat, she starts to tell you about how she and...<snip> Finally, you manage to interrupt her, as she sits on the sofa. > Whoa! What am I supposed to do with that blank prompt? It's like everyone in the story knows their lines except me. By merely asking about JB, I am ushered into her apartment, I "chat idly" with her, and she gives me half her life story before I "manage to interrupt her." Well, if the game is so kind as to tell me that I'm interrupting, perhaps it would be so kind as to tell me what to say. I don't mean to sound harsh. There's a very interesting story behind the action in this game, and I have always liked games that interpret my "ask NPC about object" as real words, and then tell me what those real words are. Er, at least, I thought I did until I played this one. I still like it when "ask NPC about object" gives "So, NPC, what can you tell me about the object?" before the NPC's response, but I don't like when the conversation goes in a direction I didn't mean for it to go. For instance, I type "tell Mrs. Chandler about me." I get: "'So you do remember me, Mrs. Chandler. I was wondering if you would,' you say." But I suppose that's what fits into the story. On the same line, I would have thought a nice way to get around NPCs repeating themselves when asked about the same topic was to summarize for the player what they learned last time they asked. That's what Eric's Gift does, and it sounds okay, it just sort of makes me feel silly for asking again. Like a pat on the head and a reminder to drink my milk before I go outside to play. That sort of thing is the cause of the first example above, by the way, about the synthcaf. I'd already asked her about the synthcaf, but I was totally stuck and was repeating things. I managed to get stuck a number of times, even though it's a relatively puzzle-light, story-heavy game. Part of that was because only certain actions triggered flashbacks or other events, and if you didn't do that action, you were left sitting in the scene, not being able to go anywhere or do anything (seemingly). Another part of it was because I sometimes skip things in room descriptions that I shouldn't. But in general, the hints were helpful, and using them when I was stuck got me moving again. The hints weren't enough when I was stuck in the Chandlers' living room, though, with no way out and nothing else to do. It didn't help that the status bar said "Exits: none" and "x door" gave me "You see no door here." Alternate universe? Maybe. I certainly came in a door. (As an aside, I thought it pretty amusing when Cappella said she sold clothes, I asked her about clothes, and got the response, "You see no clothes here." Apparently we were all naked ;-). ) I liked that when I mistyped something, the game said "The word 'foobar' is not necessary in this story." (Much much better than "I don't know the word 'foobar.'") But I really liked that the first time I did it, I got an explanatory paragraph: "(If this was an accidental misspelling, etc." telling me how to use the command OOPS. Very helpful. I also noticed that I can now use "examine" with multiple objects. Kind of weird, but only because I'm so used to the response "You can't use multiple objects with that verb." These might common to all TADS3 games, but even so, they work well in this one. A quick word on the story, and then the numbers. The author says that some of it is based on dreams that he had, and indeed, some of the scenes have a very dream-like, surreal quality. But one of the problems with basing fiction on dreams is the tendency to leave things unresolved, and not quite fully fleshed out. However, the parts that work work very well. I really like the idea that Eric has this gift, and how it works, etc. But the rest of the story, notably the interaction between the PC and Mrs. Chandler, is odd and unnatural, and a little distracting. Then I was quite startled by the epilogue. I thought it a bit depressing: here are two people who have a sort of common tragedy between them, and they meet a second night after years apart, and then they get married? The PC says "we were never really in love with each other." What's wrong with these people? Why is this woman marrying the PC if she doesn't love him? Insecure? And why can't our PC find someone of his own to love? And whatever happened to the elusive Jack Brown? The world may never know. Story: 7. I liked it, mostly. Some great ideas, but also some odd spots. Writing: 7. Mostly good, if a bit stiff, and only a few typos. Puzzles: 4. The "puzzles" weren't much like normal puzzles, but I was still stuck in several places and had to turn to the walkthrough to find out what action would allow me to continue the story. (I.e., what specific part of a specific item I had to examine in order to trigger someone else's unrelated action.) Coding: 7. Seems fine, although a number of objects specifically referenced in the text aren't implemented. Parser: 9. What is this category for again? I need to rethink my scoring system. Anyway, TADS3 seems just like TADS2, although some of the error messages that showed up the first time only were cool. Humor/Enjoyment: 4. Not a lot here. Participation/Involvement: 4. This may be the category with the greatest potential for improvement, although I don't know how it would be done. The story does seem to lend itself toward player immersion, though. Lack of Annoyance: 7. Mostly unannoying, but being stuck just because I hadn't examined second-level nouns was a pain. General Idea: 9. Kewl. Wildcard: 6. I like a game that contains both hints and a walkthrough, and there was cool stuff going on in this game, although I'm left a little unmoved by what could have been very moving. These people just weren't important to me. Plus, the epilogue kind of soured it for me. Composite score: 6.4 (Comp score: 6) Till Death Makes a Monk-Fish Out of Me!Mike Sousa & Jon Ingold, TADS2Heh. Great title. One of the neatest things about this game is the way the TADS is made to look like Inform, the way it used to look on my old interpreter no less. This is indeed very kewl. But on to the game! You play a scientist at some unspecified point in the future with a nifty device that allows people to transfer their consciousness to other people's bodies, apparently for a short time. You are going to use the device to vacation on the surface for a while (oh, you and your fellow scientists are at an underwater base, did I mention?) when something goes horribly wrong. The scene where something goes horribly wrong is actually sort of funny, and well-coded, and in general fun. For instance, there's an emergency switch to open the door and get out. If you try to pull it first, the game says "It's a push switch," and if you try to push it first, it says "It's a pull switch," just to make you take that extra turn. This is great. Normally, this sort of artificial time-wasting is not great, it's just annoying, but it works here because the game doesn't start until after you don't make it out of the first scene. Clear? Ah, there are some great moments in this game. The first two puzzles, involving getting out of where you wake up, are terrific and clever (and I solved them without hints). By the way, the hints come in three different levels of helpfulness, and are location-dependent, so that when you are in a certain room you get the hint for the puzzle it thinks you're working on. Not always the right one, but it does take into account what you have in your inventory, or at least it sure seems to. It's very cool, although (as I said) problematic. Come to think of it, I solved the next puzzle or two on my own also. Very well done. What's also fun about the game is that you, as the player, actually know more about your situation in some ways than the PC does. Then again, the PC knows what the machine was supposed to do and you, the player, do not. So it's kind of a trade-off. Still, the quirkiness and, well, I almost want to say naiveté of the PC are really very humorous. I lose the humor a bit when I suspect that the PC knows things about how the computer works that he isn't sharing, but with a few hints you can get by. The password and key puzzle from the latter section of the game is very very tricky, but quite novel and very good. By the way, when I was halfway through the puzzle I thought, "All right! What's 'dog' in French?" and typed "chien" without thinking much about it. When that didn't work, I spent five minutes trying to remember how on Earth you say "dog" in French (since I had it wrong). But as I said, the actual solution was terrific. Where does the game miss out? Well, there was the frustration of not being able to do something and not finding any hints, because I was going about the solution in the wrong way. I assumed I needed to re-enter a room to get something, when actually I needed to be in a different location to get what was in the room (thus the problem with location-based hints). And there are some spelling mistakes and punctuation quirks. At one point, the status line lists you as being "on on the trolley." And an item is "far to heavy" to pick up. There are also a few missing synonyms, like using "Rosalind" after she's in pieces. And it's tough, I know it's tough, to implement being in a location within a room by implementing it as a separate location (which is what seems to have happened with the metal drawers). It's tricky because there are basic things in the larger room that you want to be able to refer to from the smaller section of room. Let me clear things up: You are on a large drawer, pulled out from a wall of drawers, and the room description mentions both metal drawers and a ceiling. But from where you are you "don't see any ceiling here," nor the metal drawers. It's a bit misleading, but very forgivable. Also, when the bomb won't blow up it says "Personal within blast radius." Is that supposed to be "personnel?" That would make a bit more sense, but I'm not entirely sure. Anyway! For most of the game, the writing is either effective but not attention-getting, or startlingly funny. For instance, a metal plate sticks up from the ground "like a wafer in an ice cream," and later a particular item is sticking up "like a cocktail stick from a sausage." Those are attention-getting phrases, and while not smooth or sweet, they do bring a chuckle. I did feel pretty involved in the story, even if I didn't realize it until I was racing down the corridor on a metal gurney, being pursued by God knows what, and it occurred to me that I was pretty caught up in it. The best part was, I wasn't anxious or worried about being caught by the thing because of the overall light and amusing tone. Very impressive. There was one programming trick which, while I liked it at the time, caused me some puzzle-solving problems. If there was one particular object that the game wanted to draw your attention to, it would prevent you from examining other things by saying "Your eyes slide back to the <item>." That's pretty slick, and also effective because the player looks at whatever the thing is. The problem is, a line like that at the bottom of a room description makes me skim the room description faster, which means I missed critical objects that were listed and had no idea (for instance) that there was a hand scanner in the control room. My only other complaint would be that the ending is somewhat anticlimactic. I always like a good long ending that really wraps up all the loose ends, or just hits you over the head with them, and I wasn't really sure that the ending I got with Monk-Fish was the best one. I don't see what I could have done differently, but I still wonder. Overall, a very strong work with excellent writing and clever puzzles. Great job all around! Story: 7. Great pieces of science fiction, but there did seem to be a few logical (or maybe I should say "sequential") problems with the plot. Writing: 8. Solid. A few especially nice bits, but some punctuation or spelling errors. Puzzles: 6. Some clever bits, but unfortunately too clever for me. Plus the hints were iffy. Coding: 8. Pretty good stuff, and there was hardly anything I couldn't examine. Parser: 8. I don't have any notes about a verb that I would have liked but that wasn't implemented. That's good. Humor/Enjoyment: 7. The funniest game so far except for Janitor. Great job! I love humor! Participation/Involvement: 7. The moments being chased down the hall clinched it for me, but it was there all along anyways. Lack of Annoyance: 8. Surprisingly unannoying. Quite a welcome change! General Idea: 7. Underwater, futuristic, science, and other fun schtuff. Wildcard: 8. There was a squid, after all. Composite score: 7.4 (Comp score: 7) Hell: A Comedy of ErrorsJohn Evans, Z-codeNow this is a wonderful idea, and it's done very well. Be forewarned that this game will not appeal to all types of players, and is not in fact your typical IF game in any way. You play a demon, assigned to a certain portion of Hell to torture various souls as they come to you. The key that makes the whole thing a gem is this: you get to do it any way you want. You get to design and decorate your own hell! It's fantastic! I'll admit, before I had quite figured out what the point of the game was going to be, I was a little disappointed with the lack of nouns and the unclearness of the directions at the beginning (oh, I have to look in the pool more than once?). For instance, I go down the stairs (the only place to go) and the only thing in the room is light. But you can't "examine light." I thought at that point it was going to be another frustratingly implemented game, but just a few minutes after that I didn't care at all. There's a bit of reading to be done when you first get going (after customizing your devil self!!) but it's quite useful and interesting. The methods of torturing the souls and building new rooms in your hell are simplified and made easy to use, so that when you buy a torture device (such as a flock of carnivorous penguins, or a documentary crew) you "put <the soul> into <the torture>" to make it work. That's perfect syntax, as long as the author tells us how to do it ahead of time (and he does!). It wasn't until my second play-through that I realized that different gems build different kinds of rooms. That was cool. My notes on this game pretty much stop after my first trip back to the Sphere Room, where I got my first soul to torture. I wrote down "MWAHAHA!!" and then just some names for a while. The next thing I wrote down was that there were a few extra spaces (in the text), but who cares? And I didn't care. It was so much fun to build rooms and toss the souls into them, not to mention interacting with my fellow devils, and buying cool torture devices and getting crazy tattoos in weird spots. But, for completeness' sake: "conscioussness" is incorrect, you can't call the access gateway a "gateway," there are some extra quotation marks with the peddler and the tattoo artist, and for some reason I can factor 9999 but not 9997. What's with the factoring anyway? If it's just for its own sake, I can understand that and in fact I think it's pretty cool. If there's something else to it that I'm not getting, well, then I don't get it. In the meantime, though, I think it's cool. I thought at first there wasn't an ending, that you just built your rooms and tortured your souls until you got tired of it. But then I really applied myself, and it turned out there was an ending! It was a pretty good one, too. The only thing I could have asked to be improved in the whole game was some better indication of how much Penance you were getting out of a particular soul. When I get a message like "Now THIS is old-school!" I assume that the soul is being tortured to the max. That wasn't always the case, and it made for the occasional tedious "pick up, move over one room, drop" routine to try and get the max out of a soul. But that's part of the game, and I see that. Overall, I really had a good time with this game. Some people might not, but if you like it, I think you'll like it a lot. Story: 3. There really isn't much of a story, much less characterization, but what's there is interesting. Writing: 7. Some good stuff, with a few extra lines and spelling errors. Come to think of it, the descriptions of some of the hellish rooms could have been more ominous. Puzzles: 7. Figuring out how to torture souls, how to buy stuff, and how to dig out the rooms has a good learning curve, and can be done with some work. The overall puzzle of torturing the souls is great, too. Coding: 8. There's a lot of stuff that is original and unlike any other game I've seen. It works well. Parser: 8. High-quality Inform parser. Humor/Enjoyment: 7. There wasn't a lot of laugh-out-loud funniness, but the enjoyment factor was high. Participation/Involvement: 7. I wanted to torture those souls! I wanted to find the worst possible hell for Pete Boise, and it was irritating when I had to accommodate some especially tough soul. And when I didn't know what to do next, I wandered from room to room, admiring my handiwork and the handiwork of my devil subordinates. It was great. Lack of Annoyance: 7. A few bits of annoyance from time to time, but mostly irritation-free. General Idea: 9. Very appealing game idea. Wildcard: 9. It was just so much fun! I liked being able to choose what kind of devil I was, and what I looked like, and I had a great time designing my own floorplan for Hell. Composite score: 7.2 (Comp score: 7) ScreenEdward Floren, Z-codeWhen I read the introduction to Screen, I almost got chills. It just sounded so cool. Especially the final line, which hinted at important discoveries to be made, and fantastical happenings to learn about: "Mr. Field died that October. Until recently, I never knew." Wow, never knew what? There was something secret going on in the basement? Mr. Field had magical powers that were sustained by sucking the life out of small children? Er, no, as it turns out, it apparently only means that "until recently, I was not aware that Mr. Field died." If the emotion present in the introduction had been sustained throughout, it would have been pretty cool, but it just wasn't there once I started typing in commands. I guess it doesn't help that the introduction was written in first-person past tense, while the rest of the game was in traditional second-person present tense. After the great prose in the intro, and the focus on this one tree on Mr. Field's property, I was expecting quite a bit from the tree's description, but all I got was a single line: "It is magnificent, clad in crimson to match the autumn air." Hm. Well, at least you could examine the branches, the trunk, and the leaves individually. While I was looking at those, something flitted into some nearby shrubbery before I could see what it was, but I couldn't see any such thing as shrubbery, or the driveway. The flashbacks were back in the past tense, although in third person this time, and it wasn't too hard to figure out that I was supposed to be Jordon. But it didn't help me to identify with the character at all. And any sense of involvement was pretty well shaken when the girl that Jordon brought to the treehouse was described as being "so sweat." Yuck. I did like the fact that there was at least one such flashback scene that was optional, but added something to the story. Anyhow, stumbling through the "present day" scenes was easy enough, and the interactive flashbacks were mildly interesting even if the Boy Wonder puzzle was really difficult to guess. And there aren't any hints, just a walkthrough, but at least there was that. It was quite disconcerting to find myself described as "Little Buddy" walking through a wooded scene. But discovering where I was and who I was was actually a lot of fun. And I think I've seen that episode before, so it was pretty cool. But you can't do a lot with any of the NPCs (such as they are) no matter what you try. This game wasn't a standout in any real way. I don't like the "0 out of a possible 0" score bit; see Andrew Plotkin's help page on that. The game quit on me without telling me that I won, and I don't like that either. I did like this: "The Boy Wonder must have taken a few shots." What, like kamikaze shots, or just tequila? :-) Just for completeness' sake, I'll go ahead and say that there were several missing nouns, inconsistent double spacing (which should be eliminated completely), missing space before a parenthesis, and of course the unfortunate "sweat" where I believe "sweet" was meant. Other than that I didn't see any misspelled words, though. All right, let's end this pathetic review of an okay game and get the numbers: Story: 5. Nothing exciting or original sounding here. Writing: 8. Actually good in spots, with a few formatting problems (and "sweat"). Puzzles: 5. Come on, "dip putty in acid?" And no hints at all. Coding: 7. Good but nothing outstanding, and some nouns missing. Parser: 8. Fine. Inform regular. Humor/Enjoyment: 4. There was a moment as "Little Buddy" that was almost fun, but otherwise not a lot here. Participation/Involvement: 2. Pretty darn low. Lack of Annoyance: 8. Not really annoying, so that's a plus. General Idea: 6. I thought it might have been going somewhere after the intro, but it turned out to be a rather uninteresting and meaningless stroll through this tree and the house. I suppose there was some sort of moral about the influence of television on children, but it was not very clear. Wildcard: 1. Nothing at all to like, and on top of that, it ended without telling me I won. Blechh. And no extras at all, like credits, about the author, anything. Composite score: 5.4 (Comp score: 5) coffee quest IIAnonymous, TADS2Hm. So many mixed feelings about this game. I like the idea of searching for coffee; it's something I can identify with, being addicted to caffeine myself. Although I don't like coffee. But anyway, the major problem was that I had no idea that coffee could be found to the north past my supervisor's office. There were lots of in-game hints about how to do certain things, even if none of it made much sense. For example, I knew I would have to deal with Tracey somehow in order to get into the office supply cabinet. I knew that I would need ear plugs to go east past my supervisor's office, and something to mail to go north past it. But why I would want to do any of these things was rather vague. Also, there was no reason to think that certain NPCs would give me certain items for helping them out. For instance, when you do a favor for Maureen, she gives you something that will get you past another problem spot. Why? Who knows. There are quite a number of what appear to be coding problems. For instance, when talking to the techy, I almost always got more than one sentence from him. For instance: >ask techy about techy >ask techy about paperclip See what I mean? It looks like I'm falling through a switch statement of some sort. In C++ you have to return or break out of a switch statement to avoid falling through; it may be the same in TADS2. I know in Inform there are automatic breaks, so maybe our anonymous author is someone more familiar with Inform. Anyway, it looks pretty bad (although quite humorous). There is also a rash of incorrect punctuation and missing words, along the lines of "The techy seems unable to grasp the concept of ." Ignoring these coding problems and the missing synonyms, and the misuse of "it's purpose" where it was supposed to be "its," and calling a person "The Tracey," and adding gratuitous apostrophes to verbs conjugated in the present tense (house's)... as I said, ignoring all of these, the puzzles were both fabulous and tricky. Fabulous puzzles are puzzles I can solve that aren't so ridiculously easy that they solve themselves. Tricky puzzles are puzzles that I have to look at the hints or walkthrough. Since there weren't any hints, I was forced to use the walkthrough in some spots, but I actually solved some of the problems on my own. Yay! And here is the best part: there were GOOD RESPONSES for "wrong" attempts to solve puzzles. Let me illustrate: You are crawling through a ventilation shaft and come to a grille, through which you would like to pass. Hm, says I, "take grille." Nope, you can't have the grille. Okay, says I, I have a screwdriver. "Unscrew grille." Unlikely! the game says. The screws are on the other side. Ahh, says I, then I need to muscle through. "Push grille." One firm kick and the grille drops out of view. Ha-HA! Take that! And my score increased! But that second response, rather than a plain "I don't know how to unscrew the grille," was immensely helpful and very much appreciated. More of the same would have been appreciated: especially with trying to wrap up different items to make them into a mailable package. After fiddling with a bunch of syntax, getting "I don't know how to wrap the <item>" doesn't give much help in figuring out what I SHOULD be wrapping. And so many times I knew exactly what to do with an item when I found it! I knew, just knew, when I spotted the scissors that I had to have them and why. I had tried asking other people about scissors earlier, not realizing that if I just jumped through the right hoops they would be given to me in such a nonsensical place. But then, the nonsense was a critical part of this game: at one point you enter a wardrobe and come out in a snowy forest, complete with lamp-post. Heh. There are a few things that aren't always clear from the description; for example, the door leading west from the coffee lounge is mentioned in the room description as just "a door to the West" (which needn't be capitalized, by the way). It is only when you "x door" that you find out it's the executive bathroom door, and it has a keypad on it. That would have been nice to notice earlier. Also, something rather critical seems to be completely left out of the text printed late in the game. When you enter a certain room at a certain time, a sort of secret passage is opened up in the wall. You need to wedge something in the door to keep it from closing immediately. Only problem is, there is no mention of the opening in the room description or upon a "look" action. Plus, after the wall has already closed, you can "wedge wall" and still get points (although you can't go through the opening, since it has already closed). A bit of a problem. Anyhow, the scoring was great. I love being told that my score increased, especially for actions that I did without needing to look in the walkthrough to figure out (waking the guard, knocking on the stall door, etc). I got stuck pretty quickly in Coffee Quest II, mainly because I didn't look in every person's desk (plus, "open desk" and "open drawer" were two different actions, although both doable). That and I had no idea I could pick locks. Perhaps that could have been mentioned in the intro somewhere. Two final bits: what's the deal with the tiredness code? If you don't finish the game in a certain amount of time you get very tired and have to sleep somewhere uncomfortable. I guess it has to do with not getting the caffeine you need. And finally, why on earth would I have poured the coffee on the plant? The only reason would have been if I had known what was going to happen to the plant as a result. This is the very definition of a puzzle requiring authorial mindreading. But in general the puzzles were great. Let's see the numbers: Story: 4. Really not much of one. The PC needs coffee, and works in an office. Writing: 6. Fair writing, usually, with a sizeable number of typos and missing/incorrect punctuation. Also, I don't think "qualititous" is a word. Puzzles: 8. I like these puzzles. Even with the seeming randomness of "do this to get that, and never you mind the reason," the puzzles are fun and rewarding when you do get them. Could use a hint system, though. Coding: 7. Some problems, mentioned above, but a lot of stuff taken into account. Parser: 8. Your normal competent TADS2 parser. Humor/Enjoyment: 6. This could have been higher, but there weren't very many actually funny bits. And I'm not sure, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there are in-jokes that I'm not getting. I hate that. Participation/Involvement: 3. Pretty low. I felt more like I was wandering around someone else's office, rather than my own. Lack of Annoyance: 7. There was a bit, at times, but for the most part (and with a walkthrough in hand) the game was annoyance-lite. General Idea: 6. I don't have many problems with searching for caffeine, and exploring the office was sorta fun. But still, nothing very outstanding. Wildcard: 4. Sure, there were some good parts, but overall I'm left with almost a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe it's all the talk about coffee. I need a soda. Composite score: 5.9 (Comp score: 6) Out Of The StudyAnssi Raisanen, ALANThe comp's requisite one-room game is, this year, a terrific one. You play a burglar hired to filch some papers from a scientist's office, and that's easy enough to do. But then you | ||