For your reading enjoyment, my reviews of the entries to the 2002 Interactive Fiction Competition.
This is the first year I've judged, though I have played some of the
previous year games. I'm also a text adventurer from way-back, having
played nearly all of the old Infocom games.
No particular "system" was used while playing these games. I didn't have
some kind of tally sheet that I kept records on. Instead, I kept notes as
I played the games and when each was finished, I rated it. Later, I
adjusted the ratings in comparison to each other, so that each game was
more or less judged in context with all the other games. Sort of a
cerebral bubble sort, if you will. Anyway, here they are. It's a shame
that my favorite didn't win.
Please note that many of these reviews do include spoilers (and these are
labeled). They are listed in order of favorite to least favorite, with
unscored games at the bottom.
(Sort listing by: comp placement | name | score) (View only results summary)
Terrible Lizards
Author: Alan and Ian Mead
Language: TADS2
Genre: Science fiction
Score: 3
If not for "Koan", this would go on my list as the worst game of the
competition. In fact, after playing "Terrible Lizards", I reconsidered
the low low score I gave "Scary House Amulet", deciding that maybe it
wasn't all that bad. Even "Blade Sentinel", though unplayable,
wasn't such a painful experience.
It's hard to point to just one thing wrong with "Terrible Lizards". The
premise and story aren't all that bad, going back in time to collect
dinosaur DNA samples. It's just once the game starts that the problems
begin. The author didn't take proper advantage of TADS to enable
disambiguation in the very first room. So when you try to examine your
bot, you can't unless you leave the room. Several, but not all, of the
many many rooms had lower case room names. There was no consistency.
Nearly all of the rooms served no purpose other than atmosphere, so there
was a measure of frustration as I tromped from room to room, mapping as a
necessity, but not finding anything in the least bit interesting. A
number of different rooms had descriptions listing exits that did not
exist. And though my job was collect DNA samples from specific dinosaurs,
there is no actual way to do this.
In fact, this leads to what is unquestionably the game's biggest flaw.
"Terrible Lizards" really only has a couple of puzzles, and when you
finally win, it's not because you complete your assigned mission. In
fact, attempting to fulfill your contract is precisely how you
won't win. The ending of this game makes no sense in the context
of the story, and I can only figure that the author had to rush to finish
in time for the competition.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Coffee Quest II
Author: Anonymous
Language: TADS2
Genre: Office humor
Score: 6
While the premise of "Coffee Quest" is fun in a light and playful way, I
found the game to be inconsistent as well as plagued by a number of small
bugs and textual missteps. "The basket is a cool metal cylinder design, a
bit like the one in Ditch Day Drifter, but more space age looking."
Having never playing DDD, that description really doesn't mean much to me,
though I knew it wasn't really important considering it was just a
wastebasket. There was an instance where even though examining a flyer
and reading a flyer gave you almost the identical information, reading it
increased your score, while examining it did not.
Most of the rest of the nitpicks I encountered were visual errors, such as
extra spaces or newlines between words and punctuation. Probably the most
amusing was when I examined a sofa and was presented with "The sofa is
fashioned from the best leatherette money can buy. The dormant form of a
security guard occupies most of its length!There's nothing on the sofa."
Still, it wouldn't be fair to present only the minor negatives of the
game. It was still pretty fun, and the author was not afraid to use his
imagination. Attempting to wear all the items in your possession ("WEAR
ALL") presented a litany of humorous responses for each piece of
inventory. ("roll of toilet paper: No, you went to the Christmas do as a
mummy last year. Shame it wasn't fancy dress though.")
The puzzles were generally pretty straightforward, except for the final
one which involved having to open an umbrella, even though the game was
extremely vague about where the sprinkler was going off. Though it was
supposed to be pouring water in the board room, the room desc never said
anything about it when you got in there. I found this game to be overall
a good attempt, though in desperate need of some general play-testing and
lots of editing.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Out of the Study
Author: Anssi Raisanen
Language: Alan
Genre: Single-room puzzles
Score: 7
"Out of the Study" is the first one-room game I've played. The good news
is that I found it well written, with both a good atmosphere and nice
descriptions. The bad news is that the main and final puzzle stumped me,
and there was no walkthrough or hint system that I could find. I couldn't
figure out how I was supposed a guess a five digit code, when the clues I
collected gave my 7 possible number segments to build it from. Maybe the
tips were there in the room and I just couldn't see them. Still, the
frustration factor of fruitlessly trying combination after combination
soured me a little on this game, thus its lower score.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Four Mile Island
Author: Chris Charla (writing as Anonymous)
Language: Basic (PC)
Genre: Unknown
Score: Not Rated
There's only so much retro I can handle. I was not interested in
playing a game written in Basic for DOS. I did not play this game and
so I did not score or review it.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Ramon and Jonathan
Author: Daniele A. Gewurz
Language: z-code
Genre: Science fiction
Score: 4
"Ramon and Jonathan" is an odd piece of work. It is very brief,
confusing, and not at all satisfying. Winning the game comes down to a
round of "guess the question", but still didn't leave me feeling that I
accomplished anything. The game doesn't seem to flow, and the walkthrough
has you performing actions that frankly baffled me. People are trying to
force open the gate, and if I do so too soon, two men dressed in black
enter the hall and "proceed to do you something very unpleasant." And who
are they? Apparently they're police from Earth. However, if I wait a bit
and blow open the gate under the cover of smoke, those men haven't even
entered the cage yet! The author should have given this game a lot more
thought, and laid down some more clear motivation for the characters.
As it is, it's a confusing tangle that isn't worth trying to play without
the walkthrough.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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A Party to Murder
Author: David Good
Language: Adrift
Genre: Mystery
Score: 6
"A Party To Murder" takes on the tricky task of a murder mystery and falls
a bit short. That's not surprising though, as I feel that mysteries are
one of the more difficult realms of IF to create. The game starts off
with a long cut scene involving numerous pauses and conversation that you
can't control. It's a bit long and frustrating to sit through more than
once.
From there, you move on to the actual party, where you interact with
multiple guests and the furnishings of the house. It starts off well
enough, but then devolves into a morass of confusion as you try to figure
out what in the heck to do next. There's a hidden piece of evidence you
find and according to the walkthrough, if you examine too closely at the
wrong time, you can't win the game. Then there's the bizarre final
puzzle, where the only way to get the information you need from an NPC is
to perform a completely unrelated series of actions. Mind you, there is
no basis at all for believing that doing so will produce ANY kind of
result. This puzzle is a good example of a "guess what the author is
thinking", especially considering that when I examined the items involved,
the game's reply was that they "don't interest me."
Then there were the other technical problems I encountered. An attempt to
examine a woman led to this helpful disambiguation message: "Which woman.
The woman or the woman?" My attempt to "ask billy about the piece of
paper" netted me the response: "You can't talk to that."
At least the guests were interesting. For example, the couple making out
in the laundry room make their way into the girl's bedroom for a little
privacy. Interrupting them may be rude, but damn is it funny.
Too bad scenes like that couldn't carry the rest of the game. A good
mystery is a very formidable beast to create and while I can see that a
lot of effort was put into "A Party To Murder", the author should have
taken a longer look at the game overall before releasing it.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Screen
Author: Edward Floren
Language: z-code
Genre: Surreal
Score: 6
A game of flashbacks, "Screen" recounts the memories recalled during a
visit to the player's childhood home. While the beginning (rather long)
flashbacks evoke a feeling of innocence and sweetness, the rest of the
game rather disappoints in comparison. The first thing you might
encounter is the standard message the game gives you if you can't travel
in a requested direction while outside: "You'd miss out on all the good
stuff if you went that way." This should have been reserved for
legitimate paths that the game wanted to bar, but instead its shown for
every direction when you're outside the house.
The puzzles seem to be hit and miss. Primarily, they're all in
encountered in two sets of "flashbacks" that you gain while fiddling with
the old television set. The first flashback, though, doesn't seem to fit
in with the story at all. It's jarringly out of place, like a puzzle in
search of a game. The second one, the cage, was simply frustrating.
None of the actions I chose gave any kind of decent response, even though
I considered them to be pretty valid solutions. For example, when I found
the scissors:
Little? You mean like... preventing me from being dissolved in acid? I
received the same type of response when I decided to cut up my cape and
use it to lower the key into the acid. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to
do that. I had to examine my companion's cape, see the loose thread, and
cut that. "Screen" was an interesting experiment, I think, but probably
a good learning experience of what not to do in IF.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Koan
Author: Esa Peuha
Language: z-code
Genre: Puzzle
Score: 2
What do you do if you have a single idea for a game and a competition
deadline coming up? You go back to the drawing board and wait for next
year. Unfortunately, that's not what apparently happened here. Instead,
"Koan" is a game with a single "think outside the box" puzzle and nothing
else. No story, no plot. And actually, calling it a game is being rather
generous. There are nine rooms with items or advice in each, but they
don't represent locations; they are nothing more than a skeletal framework
of the game. "This is the southwest location in this game" is an example
of one of the room descriptions. Mmm, sure gets the imagination going.
The "goal" of the game itself is so vague that it left me flabbergasted
and annoyed the first time I read it. But, it turns out, that it had to
be vague, or risk giving away the "clever" solution to the puzzle. All in
all, a very disappointing game. Even solving the riddle doesn't satisfy
so much as irritate.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Fort Aegea
Author: Francesco Bova
Language: z-code
Genre: Fantasy
Score: 7
"Fort Aegea" pits you against a big nasty dragon in a setting that
obviously encompasses more than just this game. Even without the prequel
in the ABOUT message (The Jewel of Knowledge), it is obvious just from the
level of detail given to the history of the druids, the world, and the
maps provided. The manner in which the author divides up the game into
four separate quadrants gives a pleasant illusion of choice in what is
otherwise a game of bottleneck after bottleneck as you scramble to escape
the flying reptile. There are two distinct endings, and unfortunately the
obvious one is the least satisfactory of the two. It also involves an
oddly preachy ending that was mystifying in the context of only this
single game. Perhaps if I'd played "The Jewel of Knowledge", I might have
been able to appreciate its message as appropriate, but as it was, I found
it a little bizarre. It was still an enjoyable game overall and I hope to
try the other two games of this trilogy.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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BOFH
Author: Howard Sherman
Language: Inform
Genre: Office
Score: Not Rated
Since I was a beta-tester for this game, I did not score or review it.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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When Help Collides
Author: J. D. Berry
Language: z-code
Genre: Surreal
Score: Not Rated
After trying to play this several times, I finally gave up and decided
that I wasn't willing to invest the time or effort to really try and get
into what was going on. The first section of the game is a meaningless
jumble of nonsensical events and commands. Freudian images in a
hodge-podge of gibberish. When I finally got through that, I was
presented with the irritating Geisha sequence that thought it was some
kind of strategy game, not IF. After trying to win that piece several
times, I finally gave up and decided I'd leave the rating of this game to
someone more willing to put up with its surreal nature.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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The Granite Book
Author: James Mitchelhill
Language: TADS2
Genre: Surreal
Score: 8
"The Granite Book" is quite a surreal experience. Though I'm sure its
writing style won't appeal to everyone, I greatly enjoyed its wonderful
imagery and bizarre narration. So much is left unexplained, and so many
questions are left unanswered. Instead, the imagination takes over.
Where am I? Who am I? Why does the game refer to me as "we"? Ahh, must
be royalty.
Except for how short the game is, the real shame of it is the number of
minor bugs that pop up from time to time. For instance, when I tried to
lie on the ground, I received "[Much as we wanted to rest, %youm& had no
choice but to go on.]" Oops. The other issue gave me difficulty in
solving one of the puzzles. There is a stone table that produces a scene
of sacrifice when you lie on it. Sitting on it has the same effect, and
this is what I originally did. So I told the girl accompanying me to sit
on it, and she would not: "[The girl either did not understand our
commands, or she would not obey them.]" It turns out that I needed to
tell her to lie on it. Sit worked for me, but not for her. Oops.
So what does it all mean? I haven't the faintest idea, and I don't have
enough of an imagination to hazard a guess in this case. Does the vellum,
with its "semi-circle, open side facing right; two dots; a diagonal line"
represent an ambiguous emoticon, sort of a nod and wink from the author?
Does it all really matter? In the words of Number Six, "It means... what
it is." And that's good enough for me.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Evacuate
Author: Jeff Rissman
Language: TADS2
Genre: Escape/Puzzles
Score: 8
Except for a few minor bugs, "Evacuate" was a fairly solid game that I
found to be reminiscent of the Infocom games of yore, especially
"Planetfall". I found the writing and puzzles both to be of very high
quality, and the game itself to be very enjoyable. The only issues I
found were missing responses to fooling around with a rug, and a scope
problem with one item, though neither of these bugs negatively affected
the gameplay in any way. The one mark against it is the maze which,
though an interesting job in dynamically random exits, was somewhat
frustrating to navigate because of the very way the exits change randomly
each time you enter a room.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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TOOKiE'S SONG
Author: Jessica Knoch
Language: z-code
Genre: Science fiction
Score: 6
"TOOKiE's SONG" felt like a first attempt at IF from an author who has
talent and potential, they just need to be refined some. The game
started off on the very wrong foot with me when the first puzzle I
encountered was the water weird. This little obstacle was lifted almost
directly from an old Dungeons & Dragons choose your own adventure book,
"Dungeon of Dread". Borrowing ideas is one thing, but this was almost a
direct copy. As a result, I think it colored the rest of the game for
me. (The author confirmed that this was an unintentional
There were also a number of "huh?" situations... you know, a room or
item or occurrence that just makes you stop and go "Huh?" In the
starting room, the ceiling was so low that I banged my head into it if I
jumped. However, I couldn't grab the keys attached to the ceiling
without a ladder. The desc of the "dropping door" reads: 'You can't put
your finger on it, but something about the large door in the wall makes
you think of it as a "dropping" door. There is a row of colored leaves
hanging from the top of the door.' Is there really something that makes
me think of it that way, apart from the text saying there is? (The idea
was that by "dropping", this was a reference to "fall/autumn".) And
when I examine those leaves, the response I get is: 'See the row of
icicles text.' No no no, that is very bad. Was it really that hard to
make up a description for the leaves? I hadn't even encountered the
icicle door yet, which made it all the worse. I'm guessing this was
simply an oversight, that the reference to "icicles" text was a "to do"
note the author had written to herself.
Eddie's riddle, which I solved on my own, can only be answered a
particular way. You'd be surprised how many different ways you can write
10 o'clock AM. I tried "10 am", "10 a.m." and "10:00 a.m." before
checking the walkthrough and seeing that the only syntax accepted was "ten
a.m.". The egg riddle is so old and overexposed I sighed at finding it in
an IF game.
While the game did have its problems, it was still an amusing diversion.
I especially enjoyed the alliteration in the full score list. It's too
bad that cleverness wasn't consistently evident throughout the whole game.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Eric's Gift
Author: Joao Mendes
Language: TADS3
Genre: Conversation
Score: 7
"Eric's Gift". It's hard to figure out what exactly I want to say about
this game. It's a pretty linear IF short story where the only "puzzle" is
to examine every minute detail and ask people about them. When I finally
finished it, I had to go back and re-read the beginning to fully
understand what had transpired. Well, that's not entirely accurate, since
I don't fully understand everything. This game leaves you wondering,
which may have been the author's intent. Why is it that I had to tell
Eric the background if it was his gift? What started the fire? Was that
Cappella in the painting leaving the burning building... with grief but no
panic? This game made me think more than any other of the competition,
and yet it also left me vaguely unsettled and a little unsatisfied. It
truly was an imaginative piece of work, and I felt very torn about how to
score it.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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The Temple
Author: Johan Berntsson
Language: z-code
Genre: Surreal
Score: 9
As a fan of H. P. Lovecraft, the Lovecraftian-style IF really appeals to
me, as this game did. It's nowhere near on the scale of Anchorhead or
even Theatre. Still, as an IF comp game its size and length are a good
fit, and I didn't feel that "The Temple" overall suffered because of it.
The author really does a fine job of capturing Lovecraft's literary style
and use of grim imagery. Mind you, Lovecraft is not simply about
horror, and most of this game doesn't really fit into that
category. He has a wealth of stories about dreams and alien landscapes,
and this game feels like a mix of the two styles. However, this means
that if you don't like Lovecraft, you may not care for this game. The NPC
you encounter eventually is a reasonable implementation. Its artificial
intelligence is not stellar, but certainly not bad. And the puzzles you
encounter don't feel all that out of place, considering Lovecraft's
penchant for the bizarre. The game as a whole, I found, was a great
experience that I thoroughly enjoyed.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Rent-A-Spy
Author: John Eriksson
Language: z-code
Genre: Spy thriller
Score: 6
I found myself wishing that "Rent-A-Spy" had only been a little better.
It had potential, it's just that I felt it lacked any real spark that
could have turned an okay game into a really good one. The game plot was
a little hard to swallow... I'm on a mission vital to the protection of
humanity, and I'm dropped off in the woods with no equipment whatsoever,
not even a nail file? Err, okay. The descriptions were a lot more basic
and sparse than I care for, leaving one with a sterile and clinical
impression throughout the game. One puzzle in particular left my guessing
for verb and syntax ("throw wire over detector"), but otherwise the
puzzles were pretty well done. The safe cracking, in particular, was an
imaginative piece of work, and I did have to rely on the walkthrough for
that one. Conclusion: a decent game that could be better.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Hell: A Comedy of Errors
Author: John Evans
Language: z-code
Genre: Simulation
Score: 7
What happens when you mix the sim game "Afterlife" with IF? You get
"Hell: A Comedy of Errors". It certainly has an unusual premise. In fact
while playing it, I felt more like I was back in one of my old MUSHes
("multi-user shared hallucination", an online text-based role playing game
more or less like a MUD) then a text adventure, because I was digging out
rooms and creating objects to place in them. Only in this case, I was in
Hell and doing all this to punish the naughty naughty souls I was to
receive.
Despite being a unique piece of IF, I found that the actual gameplay
failed to live up to its potential. My first attempt started out slow,
picked up, and then fizzled out. My choice of gems (for building rooms)
disappeared, and there were several gems I couldn't buy due to apparent
parser problems. Buying the gems was a blind man's game. There wasn't
any information about them that I could find. You only found out what
kind of rooms they created afterwards.
Once you start buying rooms and placing tortures and dropping souls, the
game kind of lacks direction. The instructions say that you may need to
customize tortures to particular souls, but doesn't explain how to do that
other than random guessing, i.e. trial and error. After trying out
various combinations at random, I finally squeezed out every bit of
penance from the souls and won the game. In fact, I didn't even need to
buy any of the tortures it listed, I simply used rooms and helpers.
While this game could have been a lot better, it seemed a bit rushed and
unfinished.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Jane
Author: Joseph Grzesiak
Language: z-code
Genre: Conversation
Score: 6
Interactive short stories are meant to drawn in the reader, as they make
the player an integral part of the drama. "Jane", though, did not quite
have that effect on me. If you took "Lifetime: Television for Women" and
ran it through some sort of Z-code filter, I think that this game would be
the result. In "Jane", you bounce around various bodies, participating in
the drama of a physically abusive marriage. You play the husband, the
wife, and a friend, all at different times and different locations. The
gist of the game is presented through dialog menus, though the choices
you make have no real impact on the game's path. This is a truly
puzzleless piece of IF. But with the constant shifting of identities and
the inability to relate to any of the characters, I found myself
unable to get into the drama of it all. The author admits that the
purpose of the game was "to sensitize people to the unfortunately
all-too-common issue of abuse." However, I didn't find myself any more
sensitized to it than before I played.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Constraints
Author: Martin Bays
Language: z-code
Genre: Experimental
Score: 7
"Constraints" certainly is well-written. It's also the least interactive
piece of interactive fiction I've ever played. Games like "Photopia" are
very linear and present few choices, but this game goes well beyond that.
For most of it, you can't make any choices because it is more a literary
exercise than anything else. The first two portions of it, in fact, have
you playing an inanimate object, so you can imagine just how much freedom
you have. The third part only pretends to give you choices, since no
matter what you do, the game informs you it was wrong. The only choice,
perversely, is to do nothing. That's not to say I had a bad time playing.
It was captivating for its brief length, with an absorbing narrative and
stimulating responses to attempted actions. Its tone of hopelessness and
futility were a little disconcerting though, and it's only good for a
brief distraction. An enjoyable experience, but not the best game of the
competition by a long shot.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Blade Sentinel
Author: Mihalis Georgostathis
Language: Quest
Genre: Superhero
Score: 3
What could have been a decent superhero game was plagued by a shallow
plot, bad spelling, terse descriptions, a terribly limited vocabulary, and
inconsistencies throughout the game. This was the first Quest game I
played, and even though I downloaded the most recent version of the Quest
player, "Blade Sentinel" still told me that it was out of date and some
things might not work properly. Was this why the entire experience was
basically fighting the game itself? The game seemed to recognize a dozen
verbs at most, and bringing up the help didn't give any clues as to what
they might be. My final decision to quit the game came as I faced off
against a cyborg and couldn't for the life of me figure out what I could
do next. Everything I tried met with the same confusion from Quest. And
without a walkthrough, that's the point where I called it quits.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Moonbase
Author: Mike Eckardt
Language: TADS2
Genre: Science fiction
Score: 4
My first attempts at IF have never been released. Considering how few
people use Atari 8-bits nowadays, I don't see it ever happening either.
This is good, because first attempts at something are rarely any good.
If I ever tried to make a vase on a pottery wheel, you can bet that my
first attempt would not go on display in my living room.
This is because as humans, we learn as we go. While our first tries may
not be any good, our second or third or fourth might be. "Moonbase"
played like a first try at IF. If so, the author shouldn't give up making
games, just give it a bit more practice. This game is short, completely
uninspired, and contains oodles of mindlessly easy puzzles. So, maybe it's
good that it's short. It also contains frequent misspellings, numerous
lowercase room names, and inconsistent blank lines and tabs. The author
didn't properly identify adjectives for some items, making disambiguation
frustrating in some cases. He also felt that a cheeky help message would
be more entertaining than actual help:
"General help may be asked for using the HELP command."
>help
I said that help may be asked for... not that it would be forthcoming.
Not that help was really necessary, with the level of difficulty of the
game overall. As long as you didn't encounter any game-killing bugs,
winning is trivial. This means, don't try to wear the exo suit before
replacing its battery, because if you do, it somehow becomes too heavy to
ever wear again, and the game is now unwinnable. Even when I did win, I
didn't have a full score, and was left wondering about the apparent red
herrings of the rock and the toy gun. So, what's the verdict? The author
should use this game, and maybe his next one, as learning experiences
before releasing another game.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Till Death Makes a Monk-Fish Out of Me!
Author: Mike Sousa & Jon Ingold
Language: TADS2
Genre: Science fiction
Score: 9
I have to admit, the title of this one sure threw me. It seemed so corny
that I wasn't expecting this game to be as good as it was. But from the
very beginning, the game grabs your attention and doesn't let go. The
writing was done amazingly well, being rich and informative while also
witty and comedic at times. Some of my favorite responses to absurd
commands:
>get wires
Oh, why don't you just walk off with a corpse instead? Besides, it's a
bunch of heavy orange metal plates, which aren't exactly portable.
>x catch
Nothing fancy, just a large button that you'd need to jab. You just can't
reach it, that's all.
>jump
No, not even if you jump.
There were only one or two technical glitches I found, none of which
affected gameplay in anyway. I found the puzzles, as a whole, to be
challenging without being too difficult to solve. The only one that
forced me to resort to the good in-game hint system was the very tricky
computer password. With that one hint, I still managed to beat the game
in an hour and a half. So that's probably my biggest gripe with this
game: how short it was.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Another Earth, Another Sky
Author: Paul O'Brain
Language: Glulx
Genre: Superhero
Score: 8
A very successful piece of interactive fiction. "Another Earth, Another
Sky" picks up where "Earth and Sky" left off, except that now you play the
brother, where before you played the sis. Using glulx, it now includes
graphics and sound effects where appropriate. Mainly, these are used for
comic book-style "KAPOW!" captions in all of their big, block letter
glory. After all, you do play a super hero.
It's hard to find anything to nitpick with this game. Writing was well
done, and the dialog, while sparse, actually let you make a few
game-altering choices. Well, to some degree, anyway. (In the original
"Earth and Sky", it didn't really matter what dialog choice you picked, as
the outcome was the same.) Probably the best thing about the puzzles was
that they didn't feel contrived at all. They felt like they actually fit
in with the story and setting. Most were of reasonable difficulty, and I
did have to consult hints for one of them. So they weren't too easy and
they weren't too hard. The result is a pretty solid piece of IF.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Janitor
Author: Peter Seebach and Kevin Lynn
Language: z-code
Genre: Old-school puzzle
Score: 10
I'm lucky. I'm lucky because I am the intended audience of "Janitor".
The game is rife with in-jokes about nearly all the Infocom games of old,
the ones I know and love. At heart, it is a parody of the classic
treasure hunts Zork and Zork 2, though it doesn't stop there.
The game starts with the familiar "*** You have won. ***" that any text
adventure player will easily recognize. At that, the work is only
starting for you, the janitor. Your job, you soon come to realize, is to
pick up after all those rigorous game testers who have already gone
through the adventure, solved all the puzzles and collected all the
treasures. Figuring this out, what your goal actually is and the point of
the mop, are probably the game's only stumbles, as they're not abundantly
clear. But in no time I was mopping footprints, resetting puzzles,
relocating treasures, and generally returning the game to its original
pristine condition.
Or... was I? In an interesting twist, the authors also threw in a murder
mystery for us to solve, so now they've tied in the classic Infocom
mysteries of Deadline, Witness, and Suspect. "Janitor" isn't exactly
easy. Sometimes reverting puzzles back can be nearly as tricky as solving
them. The mystery portion is a bit more challenging than the rest of the
game, and I did have to resort to the hints on several occasions. But I
never felt that any puzzle was unreasonably difficult or any clue was
senselessly cryptic. As a result, I scored this as my favorite game of
the competition.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Scary House Amulet!
Author: Ricardo Dgaue
Language: z-code
Genre: Horror
Score: 4
I wish I could figure out this game. Is "Scary House Amulet!" a parody,
comically tragic, or is it really as bad as it seems? Unfortunately, I
couldn't determine, and so I raised its score a little bit (especially
after playing some of the other offerings of this year). I mean, the name
itself is the first clue to its cheesiness, but then I thought the same of
"Till Death Makes a Monk-Fish Out of Me!" The intro is equally... odd.
Had I played this game in Linux, I would have missed the bold text which
Linux Frotz doesn't seem to render. However, WinFrotz showed it in all
its strangeness. Again... was this intentionally ludicrous? Either way,
the game lost points big time for its annoying maze with 6 or 7 word long
descriptions. Overall... I just don't know what to make of this game.
It's just too weird. It seems like a parody of sorts, with lines like:
The spider is between you and the bible! The creature says, "Hey that's
my bible!" and adds, "Spiders can be religious too, you know!"
But if it is, it just isn't quite clever enough, and ends up being annoying.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Identity Thief
Author: Rob Shaw-Fuller
Language: z-code
Genre: Science fiction
Score: 7
Nearly all science fiction IF games take place in the distant future with
vasts leaps in technological advancement. "Identity Thief" on the other
hand, takes place in a Neuromancer/Deus Ex-like cyberpunk setting. As the
main character, you come equipped with several cybernetic enhancements.
But then, so do others.
Though the intro is long (you can skip it if you want), the game starts
out strong. Your little endeavor hasn't turned out quite as expected, and
you need to make some important decisions quickly. From there the game
offers a very well written and absorbing story. For the most part, the
puzzles were decent. However, the advancement of the main plot requires
performing some truly bizarre actions and asking just the right questions
of an NPC, and so I had to rely on a walkthrough to get all the juicy
details. Unfortunately, once you get them, the game is over. I wish that
there had been more, since it was just starting to get really
interesting at the end. Maybe I'll get lucky and a sequel is in the
works.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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The PK Girl
Author: Robert Goodwin
Language: Adrift
Genre: Romance / Sci-fi / anime
Score: 7
Is it a science-fiction suspense thriller or a dating simulator?
Somewhere in between, I'm afraid. The game opens outside of a mall.
When I saw this and read that your relationships with various girls would
have an impact on the game's ending, I started to really question whether
I wanted to play the "The PK Girl". (And I have to admit, the cryptic
title had me thinking "Player Killer" from my time on Ultima Online.)
However, without too much pause the action starts and from there the game
moves along pretty well.
The good news is that you can focus on rescuing the girl and defeating the
bad guys without giving a second thought to the "dating simulator" aspect
of the game. Although it was an interesting addition, and is sure to
promote replayability for some people, it simply didn't appeal to me. I
tried going back and wooing Monika, but found that the ending didn't
change any. Was it because I couldn't find her stupid hair dryer? I
don't know. I also tried getting into Aileen's pan... err, affections,
but couldn't quite manage to succeed. I didn't even want to think about
the chore of courting all the other girls in the game.
The quality of the work had its good points and bad. I thought that the
anime artwork was top notch, so good, in fact, I started to wonder if it
was actually original or if it was borrowed from elsewhere. The dialog
also seemed very anime, which I don't really mean as a compliment. More
precisely, a lot of anime tends toward unrealistically melodramatic
conversation and relationships that eventually start to give me a
headache. Even as a guy I found some of the conversation to be a bit
stereotypical. When I asked why the girls even needed me, the answer I
received was, "You don't know much about girls, do you?" The truth is
that your presence throughout the entire game is basically pointless.
The girls, with their psychokinetic powers, can tackle all the serious
trouble without your aid. All you're good for is pushing them on when
they start crying.
Still, "The PK Girl" was one of the better games in the competition.
With some characters that weren't one-dimensional cardboard cut outs, and
a plot that the character can feel they have a bit more control over, I
feel this could have scored even higher.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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The Case of Samuel Gregor
Author: Stephen Hilderbrand
Language: z-code
Genre: Surreal mystery
Score: 5
"The Case of Samuel Gregor" starts with a very long cut-scene intro,
meanders into typical IF fare, and then spirals downwards into a confusing
jumble. There are a number of separate threads that all contribute to
this sense of bewilderment. The mix of German and English wasn't
completely disabling; it was just a bit frustrating and certainly didn't
lend itself to clarity. Numerous technical problems drove away any
semblance of immersion. The black hole pockets of the trench coat never
let you retrieve anything you put in them. This would have been okay if
the coat hadn't been the only solution to the game's inventory limit. In
one room, I tried to "examine all" and, after the two Inform errors
appeared, I was greeted with, "You see nothing special about the nothing."
The description of the small key read: "It is nondescript, except that it
it nondescript." Uhm, right. Trying to go in an invalid direction got
me, "Dear colleague, going that direction would take you out of this
story!" Actually, no, it would have taken me into a wall.
But even without these technical glitches, the basic premise of the plot
was baffling. I got the sense that there was much more to the story than
the game let on and there didn't seem to be any way to figure out what
that was. My actions were continually restricted without any explanation
as to why. And halfway through the game, I switch identities... without
even knowing it! This game doesn't just break mimesis, it grinds it into
a fine powder and scatters the particles to the four winds.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Photograph
Author: Steve Evans
Language: z-code
Genre: Slice of life
Score: 8
"Photograph" is one of this year's interactive short stories, not so much
a game as it is a linear narrative with little to do with puzzles or
problem solving. Not that "Photograph" lacks any puzzles, as it does have
at least one point where you can get stuck if you don't figure out the
right thing to do (i.e. at the store).
I see IF of this type (heavy on "fiction", light on "interactive") as a
method of drawing the reader/player more into the story than you can with
traditional "static" fiction. In this regard, I thought "Photograph"
succeeded very well. We are presented with a sad tale of regret through
flashback episodes that are triggered by various stimuli encountered
throughout the game. I found it particularly touching and poignant, and
even now I experience a touch of melancholy when I think back on its tale
of lost love and "What if?" (No pun intended.) The ending is rather
bittersweet, and definitely leaves you thinking. Though this type of IF
is not really my cup of tea, "Photograph" did manage to touch me, which I
imagine was the author's intent all along. If so, a job well done.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Color and Number
Author: Steven Kollmansberger
Language: TADS2
Genre: Puzzles
Score: 5
"Color and Number" is what happens when an engineer makes games. The
puzzles, while generally logical and requiring deep thought, felt
jarringly contrived and out of place. Each one is basically a logic
puzzle of sorts, from the base 5 number system of made up nomenclature, to
the urns and beads and the final puzzle of beads and dials.
The overall impression is that the author started out with a number of
"clever" puzzles and threw together a game to include them. Most of the
puzzles I thought lacked enough of a decent foundation of information
needed to solving them. Even after using the hint system and walkthrough,
I asked myself "How was anyone supposed to deduce THAT?" on several of the
puzzles.
The game itself had a very loose and informal writing style in places,
something I've never enjoyed in interactive fiction. So that's a personal
bias, I admit. I played it only on Linux, where all dialog lacked
quotation marks of any kind, greatly reducing readability. In the end, I
had a lot of trouble reconciling the idea of a religious cult with the
hoard of engineering riddles with no point other than to serve as
bottlenecks.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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MythTale
Author: Temari Seikaiha
Language: z-code
Genre: Mythological
Score: 7
This isn't the first game about game authoring (is that a "meta-game"?),
and I'm sure it won't be the last. I found this one interesting in that
it was not only about the thought process before a game is created, but
also included the puzzle frameworks intended for that game. Of course,
you could always say that it's a cheap cop out from actually making the
game conceptualized... I just didn't get that impression when I played.
It made nice use of Greek myths, which I used to study intently years
back. It also included cats, an animal I have daily exposure to. I found
the puzzles to be only a little more than basic, though they were
generally satisfactory. The biggest complaints I've heard about the game
involved one particularly bizarre piece of electronics that I was
fortunately able to solve fairly quickly through some lucky fiddling.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Augustine
Author: Terrence V. Koch
Language: TADS2
Genre: Fantasy/Swashbuckling
Score: 8
"Augustine" is a fairly linear, puzzleless work of IF, but does a
reasonable job of hiding it. This is mainly by letting the player wander
about the city, which is, on its surface, an interesting place to explore.
I just wish that the game had included scenery objects to provide some
depth to the setting.
The good: the story picked me up and carried me along. The similarities
to "Highlander" didn't bother me, and I took the author's explanation at
face value. For a linear game, "Augustine" is unusually long, but this is
only because the author included so much of a fleshed-out story, not
because you find yourself stuck at any point.
The bad: A few typos here and there. There was a single unnamed room on
the ship. The flashbacks suffered from occasional flip-flops in verb
tense. In my view, its single biggest flaw was the vast amounts of text
in the prologue and other various cut scenes. I can understand not
wanting to turn all of these into interactive segments, though, since
there felt like there was already so much to the story as it is.
The result: Even though puzzleless IF isn't really my thing, I enjoyed
"Augustine". I would recommend it, with only the caveat that it is heavy
on reading and light on interaction.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Unraveling God
Author: Todd Watson
Language: Adrift
Genre: Science fiction / mythological
Score: 5
"Unraveling God" has a provocative plot involving a mix of science and
religion, as well as the self-destructive pursuit of fame above all else.
Unfortunately, there were two reasons that the game didn't draw me in.
First, the story was incredibly brief, even for a competition entry.
This is especially true since it is effectively a very linear puzzleless
game. Second, you play the bad guy. You play the fiend who sits back and
watches a young man die just so you can take credit for his discovery.
The game effectively boils down to the choice at the end, but at that
point in the game I just didn't feel pulled into the story enough to
really care which one I picked. The fact that it was a no-win situation
didn't help matters. Technically, I didn't see any glaring problems with
the game, and I think that if the author had maybe fleshed out the story a
bit, this game could have earned a higher score.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Not Much Time
Author: Tyson Ibele
Language: TADS2
Genre: Modern magic
Score: 6
As a whole, "Not Much Time" was a decently written game with okay puzzles,
but just seemed to lack any real "oomph" to me. The puzzle solving felt
very mechanical, as did the search for the variety of ingredients needed
to win the game. My only serious issue with the game was in the the
bedroom. Searching the pillow turned up nothing, looking in the pillow
was fruitless, but searching the pillow case revealed a hidden journal.
Other than that, I found the game technically well done.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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Concrete Paradise
Author: Tyson Ibele
Language: TADS2
Genre: Escape/Puzzles
Score: 5
In this game, you play a youth sentenced to life without parole for buying
a lollipop with a fake dollar bill. Your goal as a convicted candy
counterfeiter is to escape from prison, your "Concrete Paradise". It's
not hard to see that this game doesn't exactly take itself seriously.
But it doesn't succeed in silliness either, especially when you have to
kill a guard to escape and the game notes afterward, "You almost feel
sorry for him, because you know he has a wife and kids." I think the
author should have been more consistent in the direction he wanted to take
this game, and the lack of a uniform tone was probably one of the reasons
I found this game so disappointing. The game suffers only a few technical
gaffes, one of them being a magic word randomly not working for me, and
"get in raft" working where "enter raft" failed (though this can be
attributed to TADS rather than the author).
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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The Moonlit Tower
Author: Yoon Ha Lee
Language: z-code
Genre: Fantasy
Score: 8
"The Moonlit Tower" really impressed me with its wonderfully flowery
language, amazing imagery, and non-visual descriptions as well. The
puzzles are fairly intriguing as well; a scent of age-old Asian tradition
and legend. However, one of the big bottlenecks felt like a guess the
verb riddle to me (setting the bones), so I wasn't able to get it without
consulting the walkthrough. Except for that, I didn't really have any
complaints... apart from how very short the game felt. I think that was
probably its biggest flaw (so to speak). Other than that, it was a great
surreal IF experience.
(View this game on Baf's Guide to IF or The IF Ratings Site)
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