Once again, to my infinite glee, another Interactive Fiction Competition has arrived. This is my second year judging the competition, and this year's reviews will follow the same basic format as last year's. As before, the reviews are listed in the random order in which I played the games in order to keep some consistency of narrative.
If you have any questions or comments, I can be contacted, as always, at demiankatz@gmail.com.
Tookie's Song
by Jessica Knoch
Your dog has been abducted by aliens and you're off to find him in an
underground maze. Apart from the slightly strange lead-in to the plot, this
is a very typical "find the items and solve the puzzles" kind of
adventure. I found it rather enjoyable if not especially exceptional. The
puzzles were the right difficulty level and feature multiple solutions in
some cases (I only used hints twice, and both times I was being dense and
missing obvious clues). While there were a few bugs, none were
game-stopping, and I expect that they'll be fixed sooner or later (I'm about
to report them after writing this review). This could have been more clever
and amusing, I suppose, but it's nice as it is -- a good, light first game,
solved in about an hour.
Till Death Makes a Monk-Fish Out of Me!
by Mike Sousa and Jon Ingold
This is a collaboration by two popular authors whose work tends to impress
other people rather more than it does me. As with past adventures, I can see
why people would be impressed by this -- it has some interesting puzzles and
situations, and it's often quite entertaining. It doesn't quite work for me
as a whole, though; the plot didn't entirely make sense (as usual), the
characters were dull cliches (more than usual), and the ending was kind of
abrupt. It's a fun diversion, but it's not solid enough to deserve too high
a ranking in the final results.
BOFH
by Howard A. Sherman
Ahh, Bastard Operator from Hell. That brings back some memories -- I
recall the stories (about a cruel and evil system administrator) being
distributed over FidoNet back in my pre-Internet bulletin-board-running days.
It never lived up to its humor potential for me, but I still have a fondness
for it since it was part of the pop culture of a brief but interesting era
of digital communication. Apparently, despite the fact that it seems like a
relic of a past time to me, it's still going strong, and now it also has an
IF game based on it. The game is fairly true to the original silly stories
as I remember them, and just like its source material, it doesn't live up to
its potential. It's not as funny as it could be, and its gameplay is
seriously flawed. Some objects are implemented rather inadequately, NPCs
are mostly unresponsive (too bad, 'cause tormenting them would be fun), few
actions are well-clued, and it's too easy to advance prematurely, missing
lots of points in the process. When I played, I very quickly solved an
obscure puzzle (to my great pride), which advanced me to the endgame sequence
before I was ready for it. I then trudged along to the final room and got
stuck there because I had missed several actions. Not good game design! I
felt rather indignant when I finally gave up and read the walkthrough and
discovered that there was really no reasonable way (apart from through luck)
that I could have done any better. This could (and should) have been much
better.
Evacuate
by Jeff Rissman
This game has a simple premise: you're on a ship that's been attacked by
aliens, and you need to get out. The implementation and writing are both
more than adequate, but the game really failed to hold my attention. The
plot and details aren't compelling enough, and the gameplay features too many
relics from the bad old days, most notably death by starvation and tedious
mazes. After getting stuck a few too many times, I turned to the
walkthrough. After using the walkthrough for a little while, I got bored and
gave up entirely. Maybe I missed a really thrilling finale, but I doubt it.
Blade Sentinel
by Mihalis Georgostathis
Last year, the Quest system didn't make a very good impression on me. This
thing isn't helping. After a grammatically questionable opening scene, you're
dropped into an apartment and told that you have to take a shower. But I
couldn't figure out how to. "Take shower" didn't work, nor did
"bathe," "clean self," "use shower,"
"undress," or any number of other things. Eventually, I figured
out that the required command was "go to shower," and I was rewarded
with "You enter the shower and poor [sic] some cold water on you to wake
up." Oh dear. Considering that even the best of superhero games have
trouble holding my attention sometimes, I didn't hang around too long trying
to finish this thing, especially since there's no walkthrough.
Unraveling God
by Todd Watson
This is undoubtedly the best game I've yet encountered using the Adrift
interpreter. This is probably largely due to the fact that the game is a
highly linear story-oriented adventure of the Photopia variety, and as
such, it doesn't require a terribly sophisticated parser. It's extremely
helpful, though, that the author is a good writer. Although there's some
pointless twiddling around with doors and folders at the beginning of the
story, it is fairly engaging throughout. I hesitate to give the game
wholehearted praise, as the plot and structure sometimes lack originality and
I'm a bit uncomfortable with some aspects of the message that the author
seems to be trying to send, but I can't help but respect this as a solid
effort.
Screen
by Edward Floren
This started out promisingly, looking to be a pleasant bit of childhood
nostalgia, and I suppose that is what it was... but there wasn't enough of it
for it to seem especially meaningful. There are a few flashbacks, a couple
of uninspired puzzles based on old TV shows, and then it's all over, leaving
the reader feeling less than entirely satisfied. A nice try, but not a great
success.
Fort Aegea
by Frecesco Bova
This adventure is apparently the middle part of a trilogy, the first part of
which I've never encountered and the conclusion of which I now look forward
to. Although it's not perfect (there are some under-implemented objects and
slightly unclear puzzles), it's a well-above-average fantasy adventure with
a detailed background, some interesting scenarios and a surprising vein of
darkness. The attractive PDF-format maps that accompany the adventure serve
little purpose but are a nice touch. This isn't likely to be my favorite
game of the year, but I suspect it will stick with me longer than most of the
competition entries.
The Granite Book
by James Mitchelhill
I suspect we have a love it or hate it kind of game here. The writing is
nice, but the game is so abstract and surreal that it raises a lot more
questions than it answers. Some people may find this thoroughly enjoyable,
but being the literal-minded person that I am, I was ultimately a bit
frustrated. At least it was short!
Photograph
by Steve Evans
This is yet another story-oriented game in which the reader learns about the
life of the in-game character by living through various scenes from various
times. While there's a pleasant, sort of nostalgic feeling to games of this
sort, I think the genre is getting a little creaky. I admit that I enjoyed
the game and found the writing to be good, but interaction was minimal and
the story's impact just wasn't as strong as it might have been had I read it
before the many similar games that have come out since Photopia. A
nice effort, but not quite different enough to satisfy me, and definitely not
for players interested solely in puzzle-solving.
Janitor
by Peter Seebach and Kevin Lynn
This game is based around a fairly amusing premise: an adventure game has
just ended, and you're the janitor that has to clean things up.
Unfortunately, I don't think this is an especially appropriate entry for this
competition. The game is large and lengthy and full of puzzles, and with the
two-hour time limit looming over me, I just couldn't get in the right mood to
try and finish it. I think if I had played it under other circumstances I
would have found it quite enjoyable, but just now it seemed too open-ended
and complicated to focus on.
Eric's Gift
by Joao Mendes
Like the earlier Photograph, this is an interactive adaptation of a
short story written years earlier by the author. The game is extremely short,
and though its story has some nice touches, it isn't anything spectacular.
The real problem here is the element of interactivity -- there isn't any. You
just have to guess what you have to do to further advance the story, and this
is rarely anything obvious or meaningful and sometimes is even something that,
when you did it earlier, had no effect. With a bit of beta testing, this
might have been improved, but as it is, it's rather seriously flawed.
Coffee Quest II
by Dog Solitude
Well, this game has a lot in common with BOFH: it's set in an office,
it's full of non-obvious actions to perform, and it's not especially funny.
You might (note that I say might, not will) chuckle once or twice, but the
overall air of mediocrity makes it barely worth the effort of playing. I'm
not sure how this compares or relates to Coffee Quest I (if such a thing
actually exists), and I'm not sure that I especially care.
Terrible Lizards
by Alan and Ian Mead
This game feels awfully unfinished to me. There's a huge map, a bunch of
dinosaurs wandering around, and a contract requiring you to get all kinds of
prehistoric DNA, but the actual game consists of performing about five
actions and then it's all over. There's also an unfinished air to the text,
with words and even entire descriptions missing here and there. Maybe if
this had actually been completed it would have been a fun game (though I
suspect it would have required too much mapping even then); as it is, it's
a pointless waste of time.
Hell: A Comedy of Errors
by John Evans
This is a great change of pace, and the most original entry I've encountered
so far in this year's competition (though admittedly it does sort of resemble
Adam Cadre's recent Lock & Key). You're a demon, and you get to
build your own customized underworld in which to torture the souls of the
damned! What more do you want? It has a high replay value, lots of things
to customize, and best of all, KILLER PENGUINS! Hooray! Admittedly, there
are some bugs, and I couldn't quite figure out the optimal strategy for
soul-torturing, but this is a great creation which shows much improvement
over the author's previous entry, Elements.
The PK Girl
by Robert Goodwin
Wow, the second interesting Adrift game in a row. Note that I say
"interesting," not "good." I hesitate to praise this too
much, as it has some serious flaws, but it is at least interesting. The game
is obviously anime/manga-inspired, as evidenced by its artwork and its rather
obnoxious portrayal of women. What makes it interesting is that it
supplements its fairly linear (and often buggy and awkwardly written)
narrative with a sort of dating game (something fairly common in the world of
anime/manga-inspired software). Depending on your actions, you score
different numbers of points with the game's different female characters, and
this apparently can cause special endings to occur. I find something
inherently creepy in this whole scoring system, but at the same time I
appreciate the way it makes the game a little more textured than it would
otherwise have been. Of course, I don't know firsthand about these multiple
endings; I didn't manage to finish the game once, let alone multiple times.
Still, while this is by no means a great work, some of the ideas used in it
could lead to great things if they were applied a bit differently to a less
shallow story.
Four Mile Island
by Thomas Russo
Well, this is an interesting one -- allegedly an old Apple II BASIC program
written for a never-published magazine in the early eighties and just now
brought to light through the competition. Obviously, it doesn't feature a
very sophisticated parser, and the text is rather terse. It's a fairly
enjoyable game, though, especially if you're nostalgic about the days when
computer magazines were fun.
A Party to Murder
by David D. Good
Another decent Adrift game; I'm shocked. I still don't like the interpreter
very much, but it's good to see that people are putting it to decent use.
This is a mystery game of sorts using a flashback mechanism reminiscent of
(but simpler than) the one found in the Zarf classic Spider & Web.
The game has its flaws, and it would have really benefit from a hint system
instead of a full walkthrough, but I think that mystery fans could have some
fun with this.
Constraints
by Martin Bays
Ahh, excellent. A collection of three short stories, each (as the title
suggests) featuring different constraints. This is definitely the best and
most original piece I've played so far, but it should be noted that I'm a
sucker for experimentation, and there's a fair amount of that here. This is
not perfect (there's a major bug with a minor part of one of the stories, and
some of the stories are better than others), but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Augustine
by Terrence V. Koch
This is a century-spanning adventure/drama in the vein of Highlander.
The story is fairly well-constructed and potentially powerful, but alas it
just doesn't work. The writing is too dry, the characters are too flat, and,
worst of all, the implementation is awful. The game is almost totally
linear, ending badly if you fail to follow the track correctly and featuring
many long sequences where there's nothing to do but wait and watch things
unfold. There are some pointless mazes, lots of unimplemented objects, and
a general feeling of straitjacketedness. This could have been quite good,
but it didn't make it.
MythTale
by Temari Seikaiha
I have mixed feelings about this one. It's pretty well-written, but the
subject matter (a mix of wandering around a cat-filled house and some Greek
mythology) is tired. The implementation is pretty thorough, but the puzzles
are unintuitive and contrived. It is somewhat nonlinear and has multiple
endings, but it's not really plot-oriented. As puzzlefests go, I've seen
better and I've seen worse, but regardless this didn't interest me too much.
Out of the Study
by Anssi Raisanen
This is apparently a big one-room puzzle. Unfortunately, it doesn't have
hints or a walkthrough, so I quickly lost hope and interest. If it's like
the author's entry last year, it's probably reasonably solvable but not
interesting enough to labor through without a little helpful push now and
then.
Buried
This game was withdrawn from the competition, so I never played it.
The Case of Samuel Gregor
by Stephen Hilderbrand
I really failed to enjoy this one. It may have been some sort of complex
psychological espionage historical thingie, or it may have been a quick gag
game; I couldn't quite tell. It was sparsely implemented, had totally
illogical puzzles, and its walkthrough was ultimately inadequate to even get
me to the end, so I never quite figured out what was going on. Maybe there
was something clever happening here, but the work didn't seem complete enough
for me to appreciate it.
Color and Number
by Steven Kollmansberger
This is a pure puzzle-fest with a minimalist plot; unfortunately, I don't
have the patience for this sort of thing, especially when I have zillions of
games to get through and very little time. Puzzle lovers will probably enjoy
it, though -- it looks like there's a lot to experiment with and discover.
Too bad there wasn't a compelling enough story to motivate me to bother with
it all.
The Temple
by Johan Berntsson
This is an enjoyable Lovecraft-inspired story. It's well-written and true
to its source material, and it features good NPC design, logical puzzles, and
a generally good implementation. I did encounter one major bug -- by
performing some actions in a sequence the author obviously didn't anticipate,
I caused a continuity problem -- but this didn't really detract from my
enjoyment of the adventure. A good quick horror tale, best appreciated if
you're familiar with at least a few Lovecraft stories.
CastleMaze
by Steven Darnold
This entry was disqualified from the competition before I had a chance to
play it, so I skipped it in the interest of saving precious time.
Identity Thief
by Rob Shaw-Fuller
This is a well-written and interesting cyberpunk tale, but also a flawed one.
It starts engagingly, but as it unfolds, it is slowed down by too many
instances where you have to read the author's mind in order to advance, and
it ultimately leads to a rushed and disappointing conclusion (several,
actually, as the game has multiple endings). I had high hopes for a while,
but it ultimately felt more like an introduction or demo than it felt like a
real game. Perhaps there will be more someday....
Jane
by Joseph Grzesiak
This is a story-oriented entry dealing with domestic violence. I'm not sure
what I think about it, exactly; the author is clearly sincere about wanting
to deal with the issue in a sensitive manner, and the game flows quite
smoothly. At the same time, it doesn't have as much emotional impact as it
could have, and the player's options, both in action and in conversation, are
rather limited. It's a decent debut entry, but there's still plenty of room
for improvement.
Rent-A-Spy
by John Eriksson
I found this to be a pretty entertaining puzzle-oriented game. As usual for
this sort of thing, the story isn't too compelling, but the puzzles were
reasonably designed and the implementation pretty solid. This isn't anything
you'll hold fond memories of for years, but it's a good distraction for an
hour or two.
Concrete Paradise
by Tyson Ibele
This game is worth playing if only for its wonderfully silly opening
sequence. Although it loses comic momentum as it goes on, it has enough
laughs toward the beginning to make it worth playing at least halfway
through. The game is also rather cleverly implemented so that when you play
it the first time, it feels more detailed and flexible than it actually is.
Good sleight of hand on the author's part. This could have been better, but
I found it to be one of the more entertaining entries so far.
Moonbase
by Mike Eckardt
How annoying. A game simple enough for me to win without the help of a
walkthrough, and yet a fatal error prevents me from completing it. There
seems to be a bug of some sort in the inventory system here, because once I
reached a critical juncture, I was unable to proceed because I was told the
item I needed to wear was too heavy to pick up, even when I was empty-handed.
The walkthrough confirms that I should have been able to do this. If the
game had worked right, I would have described it as a cute little sci-fi
puzzle game with some satisfying sound and visual effects. As it is, it's
something of a disappointment, though with any luck, the author will fix it
eventually.
Another Earth, Another Sky
by Lee Kirby
This is a sequel to last year's Earth and Sky, and a most welcome one.
I'm glad to see that my fears that the story would be left hanging forever
were unwarranted. This is actually a significant improvement over the last
episode, and that's quite a compliment considering that the previous
adventure was good to begin with. Here we've got well-integrated graphics
thanks to the use of Glulx instead of straight Z-Code, plus good character
interaction, lots of player options, some genuinely humorous moments (try
kissing the squid!), and a large but satisfying puzzle to solve before the
next cliffhanger eventually arrives. The next part of this series is reason
enough to anticipate next year's competition, and this entry definitely
deserves a high ranking in the final results!
The Moonlit Tower
by Yoon Ha Lee
This adventure, a debut interactive effort by a published fantasy author, is
a somewhat abstract tale that reminded me a bit of an Asian-toned version of
Emily Short's Metamorphoses (though this doesn't contain nearly so
much complex programming as that work). The game manages to create its own
atmosphere and frequently makes interesting use of language, but I didn't
understand the story fully enough to really enjoy it. I'm not sure who needs
to make more effort, myself or the author, but under the time and energy
constraints inherent in trying to get through all the comp entries in a
limited time, it didn't quite come together for me even though I successfully
finished it.
Not Much Time
by Tyson Ibele
This is a respectable debut that falls into the "quick and simple puzzle
fest" category. Like most of its kin, it's not especially original or
exciting, but passes the time pleasantly enough.
Koan
This is a completely abstract, very short puzzle. I solved it in two and a
half minutes, making it the shortest experience so far in the competition.
I am unthrilled, yet strangely satisfied.
When Help Collides
by J. D. Berry
This is a pretty impressive entry -- several games in one, some funny, some
dramatic, some simulationist. It's not perfect, being a little obscure at
times and with some sections being better than others, but it's got fun and
laughs and variety, and it easily makes my top ten for the comp, maybe even
my top five.
Scary House Amulet!
by Shrimpenstein
This game is exceedingly silly and full of gratuitous bold text.
While it is really pretty much pointless, it has some silly puzzles
and made me giggle from time to time.
Sun and Moon
by David Brain
This is definitely an interesting change of pace -- the game lives on the
web, with different puzzles on different sites and clues leading from one to
another. I confess that I didn't get too far because the story failed to
intrigue me enough to motivate extended maze-traversal or crossword-solving,
but I still think this is a great idea, and I would have investigated further
if not for the time restrictions of the competition. Of course, the big
problem with a game spread all over the net is its ephemeral nature; over
time, domain name registrations will expire, free services will disappear,
and the whole thing will fade away unless the author aggressively keeps it
alive. Play it while you can!
Ramón and Jonathan
by Daniele A. Gewurz
This short game ended my judging of the comp entries on a fairly
disappointing note. I was hopelessly lost when left to my own devices, and
although the walkthrough got me to the end, it didn't enlighten me as to what
was supposed to be going on. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but it all
seemed pretty vague to me.
It's rather strange. I think that this year was well above average in terms of quality, yet I found it thoroughly disappointing. Most games were pretty solidly written and designed, yet very few pushed into new territory, and none induced the raw emotional reactions that have attracted me to interactive fiction ever since I discovered Photopia. Maybe I'm being unfair, since my schedule was so busy this year that I was kind of in a rush to finish each game. Still, very few games made me wish I had more time to explore them further. Already most have faded from my memory. I'm seriously considering ignoring the comp next year; all the time I spent doing this could have been better employed elsewhere. Oh well. For what it's worth, my nomination for deserving comp winner is Another Earth, Another Sky, the only entry which I felt deserved a rating of 10. We'll see what happens when the final results are in.