Game Reviews M
These reviews are in alphabetical order according to the name of the game reviewed. The index also has a few extra features. First and foremost of these is the instant gratification feature. If you see the SPAG button:
Then you can click on it to retrieve the file from ftp.ifarchive.org, or to go to that file's directory on the archive (in the case of competition games).
The email addresses used are those submitted with the review, so naturally some of them may be out of date. All email addresses are spamblocked -- replace the name of our magazine with the traditional 'at' sign.
Table of Contents
Madame L'Estrange and the Troubled Spirit The Magic Toyshop Magic.zip The Magnetic Scrolls Collection Maiden of the Moonlight Masquerade A Matter of Time Max Blaster and Doris De Lightning Against The Parrot Creatures Of Venus Mercy Metamorphoses The Meteor, The Stone, And A Long Glass Of Sherbet The Mind Electric A Mind Forever Voyaging Mingsheng The Mission: see Jim MacBrayne games A Moment of Hope Moments Out Of Time Moonbase Moonglow The Moonlit Tower Moonmist Mop and Murder Mother Loose Mountain MST3K1: see Detective: An Interactive MiSTing MST3K2: see Mystery Science Theater 3000 Presents "A Fable" The Mulldoon Legacy The Mulldoon Murders Multi-Dimensional Thief Muse: An Autumn Romance My Angel My First Stupid Game Mystery Island Mystery Science Theater 3000 Presents "A Fable" MythTale
Madame L'Estrange and the Troubled Spirit
From: Paul O'Brian <obrian SP@G colorado.edu> Review appeared in SPAG #13 -- February 5, 1998 NAME: Madame L'Estrange and the Troubled Spirit AUTHORS: Ian Ball and Marcus Young E-MAIL: iball SP@G maths.adelaide.edu.au DATE: 1997 PARSER: Inform standard SUPPORTS: Inform interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive) URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition97/inform/lest/lest.z5 VERSION: Release 1 (1997 competition release) Madame L'Estrange and the Troubled Spirit (hereafter called MmeLTS) is a frustrating game, because it builds such a slipshod house upon a very promising foundation. The game is riddled with what I would guess are at least a hundred grammar and spelling errors. It flipflops seemingly at random between past and present tense. It can't seem to decide whether to address the player in the second or third person. It consistently causes a fatal crash in at least one interpreter (WinFrotz). All this would be easy to evaluate as simply the product of incompetent authors if it didn't take place in a game that starts with an interesting premise, executes a number of great interface decisions, and manages to unroll a complicated mystery plot along the way. As it is, MmeLTS is a great mess that could've been a contender if only it had been written with more care. One area in which the game does succeed is that of the innovations introduced by its authors, especially in the area of navigation: MmeLTS combines the direction-based locomotion of traditional IF with the more intuitive "go to location x" type of travel used in games like Joe Mason's "In The End." The title character (a "spiritualist detective" who is also the player character) can travel to various locations around Sydney with the use of the "travel to" or "go to" verb. However, once she has arrived at a particular location she uses direction-based navigation to walk from place to place (or room to room, as the case may be.) Moreover, the authors often write direction responses as a simple set of actions performed by the title character rather than implementing entire rooms which serve no purpose. These methods of navigation combine the best of both worlds, providing a broad brush for cross-city or cross-country travel but not taking away the finer granularity available to the direction-based system. A related innovation concerns Madame L'Estrange's notebook, in which the game automagically tallies the names of important people and places which come up in her investigations. This notebook (similar to the "concept inventory" used in some graphical IF) provides a handy template for travel and inquiry, and would be welcome inside any game, especially those involving a detective. One other point: MmeLTS takes the character all over Sydney, and in doing so provides an element of education and travel narrative along with its detective story. The medium's investigations take her from Centennial Park to the Sydney Harbour Bridge to Taronga Zoo to the University of New South Wales. Locations are often well-described, and after playing the game for two hours I felt more knowledgeable about Sydney than when I started (I hope the game's locations weren't fictional!) As an American whose knowledge of Australia is mostly limited to "Mad Max" movies, I can attest that the travel aspect of the game is a lot of fun. Prose: It's not that the game's prose was terrible of itself. The game is quite verbose, outputting screenfuls of text as a matter of course, and much of this text is effective and worthwhile. As I mentioned, many of the descriptions worked quite well, and the game does manage to clearly elucidate its plot as events happen. It's just that the mechanics of the prose are *so* bad (see Technical/writing). When technical problems are so pervasive, they can't help but have a tremendous negative impact on the quality of the prose. Plot: The game's plot is actually quite interesting. Mme. L'Estrange is presented with two apparently unrelated mysteries: strange wildlife deaths ascribed to a mysterious beast loose in Centennial Park, and the apparent suicide of a marine biology worker. As one might expect, these two situations eventually turn out to be linked. I wasn't able to finish the game in the initial two hours of competition judging time; in fact, I only scored five points out of 65 in that time, which gives an indication of just how much text there is to read. By the time I finished, I was really quite impressed with the machinations of the plot. The game employs several clever ideas and brings the whole together nicely at the end. Puzzles: I didn't really find many puzzles as such -- the game is mainly focused on exploration. Those puzzles which I did find were quite soluble as long as enough exploring had been done. What took up most of my time was visiting locations, talking to characters, and "tuning in" to the spirit world to commune with the spirits of the dead or learn more about a place's spiritual aura. This kept me busy enough that I didn't really miss the lack of puzzles. There are a few rather perfunctory puzzles as the game progresses, but they serve less as brain-teasers than as adjuncts to the plot (as is appropriate in a game as plot-driven as MmeLTS). Technical: writing -- The mechanics of the writing are just horrible. Sentences constantly lack periods or initial capital letters. Words are quite frequently misspelled. Typos are everywhere. The tense shifts back and forth at random between past and present; either one would have been workable and interesting, but the game seems unable to make up its mind. A similar phenomenon occurs with the voice, which vacillates between second and third person address. This avalanche of mechanical problems cripples what could have been an excellent game. coding -- The jury is still out on how well the game is coded. When I was using WinFrotz to play the game, I encountered Fatal errors repeatedly, but I'm not sure whether they were the fault of the designer or of the interpreter. JZIP presented the game with no problem, but again that could be because the interpreter was ignoring an illegal condition. Several aspects of the coding, such as Madame L's notebook, were quite nifty (unless that's what was causing the problem with WinFrotz crashing), and the implementation was solid overall. From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu> Review appeared in SPAG #14 -- May 17, 1998 One of the more puzzling entries in this year's competition, Madame L'Estrange and the Troubled Spirit is an entry that would probably work better as straight fiction than as IF. If, as some as speculated, one of the two authors wrote the story and the other adapted it to an interactive medium, the adapter needs a lot of work--and yet this is far from all bad; there's an interesting story here beneath all the glitches. As the title character, you are sent off to investigate, by means of your psychic powers, two separate mysteries, which before long merge into one, naturally. And investigate you do; your actions are almost entirely wandering around and learning things, rather than solving puzzles. With the help of a well-implemented device for tracking your investigation--a notebook in which you record people or locations that you should visit, and which you can visit by means of TRAVEL TO [place]--you are saved from having to think all that much, even; a few commands and a minimum of thought will carry you through most of the story. Moreover, the story is rather intriguing in its way, if a bit conventional--ruthless scientists overreaching themselves and such--and the surprising or suspenseful moments are, more often than not, exactly that. As noted, though, the strength of the story can only partly counteract the weaknesses of the implementation. For one thing, the prose swings wildly back and forth between present and past tense, and between third person and second person; it seems likely that the writer wrote the story in third person, past tense, and the programmer didn't bother to adapt things much. Moreover, the relationship between what happens in the long text chunks and the actual game is often tenuous, as in the following... during all of this Madame L'Estrange has been taking occasional notes on her pad. Then Mr Jones stood up and thanked Madame L'Estrange in advance before heading back out into the wet Darlinghurst streets. >look Madame L'Estrange's Living Room Mr Jones is sitting in a comfy chair Obviously, grammar problems abound; though the prose isn't awful, it needs to be proofread in the worst way. (Actually, perhaps that already happened.) One of the authors brags that he has "never willingly played a text adventure," which seems an odd claim to fame; it does, however, explain some of the problems with how this game is put together. For example, in one location, you carry on a conversation with someone who, the game repeatedly tells you, is on the phone with someone; a randomized message outputs the "talking on the phone" response fairly often, whether it makes sense or not. There are other problems, including some fatal bugs associated with SAVE. Whoever did the writing here did a LOT of it; there are several situations where many full screens of text go by between inputs. Often, those scenes include fairly complicated dialogue by your character, handy in a way--since this game certainly isn't up to much in the way of parsing input--but also a bit destructive of the interactive element. Most of the characters have a two- or three-screen spiel to tell you, and once you've found that, you're generally safe moving on to the next character; the authors did not conceal the relevant information under a variety of topics. That speeds things along, I guess, though it does make the whole thing feel mechanical. Often, you can "tune in" to the spirit world to communicate with departed souls, a technique that provides an interesting sidelight but also some rough spots in the writing, as in this encounter with a fellow who'd passed on: "I then realised that it was my body down there and I'd just died, but, funny enough, I didn't seem to care. Then I found I could just fly about the place and I tried that for a bit. Then finally the police came and they looked around and then carted my body away. I thought I should see where they were taking it, just in case it was important, so I followed them and here I am. But I don't think I'll stick around much longer- there must be plenty of much better places I can go now I'm dead, though it's funny saying that." If that's all the dead have to say, those of us who don't contact them aren't missing much. The story is also cluttered somewhat by irrelevant details and locations or leads that don't offer anything, certainly welcome in the realism department--but with the amount of text this game has, more of it for no reason is not a real treat. And, naturally, there is very little development of your own character; she has a mind of her own, in that she carries on conversations without your help, but not much of it actually says anything about her. In fact, none of the characters in the game feels particularly real, oddly considering how much space there is for them to develop, and how freely the author gives several screens of text over to the characters to let them say whatever they want. There is so much text, in fact, that it's easy to miss the odd funny moment, such as, after you've been wandering around in a drainpipe: "If only the sodden and bedraggled look was in this year!" This all leads to an exceedingly strange endgame, very time-sensitive and hard to picture in what it does and doesn't allow you to do. However, it does add another puzzle, and it does manage to be somewhat suspenseful. It should be said, though, that the scenes that are well done are very good indeed, particularly one toward the end when you discover the fate of a certain villain; from about the three-quarter mark on, the game sets a pace of sorts and engages the reader very effectively. That pace is slowed a bit by the puzzles in the endgame, unfortunately, but as pure thriller, the end of Madame L'Estrange is quite good; the player can simply follow along rather than having to do much interacting. An earlier sequence involving the mysterious beast also brings some excitement, and on the whole the story is more than convincing enough, as pure story, to outweigh the minimal interactive possibilities. To that end, the streamlining device of the notebook works well; it allows the plot to move along without the player having to worry about irritating things like transportation. With similar attention to the mechanics of the game, this might work quite well. Madame L'Estrange is not a particularly successful effort, but its enjoyability depends on the standards of the player; for those who regard a story as an excuse to string puzzles together, this will be a waste of time, but those who appreciate a reasonably well-crafted story and don't mind minimal interactivity might find it reasonably diverting. If anything, this illustrates the difficulties inherent in detective-story IF- -of which Infocom's are still the best examples--and in collaborative efforts; I gave it a 6 on the competition scale.
The Magic Toyshop
From: Palmer Davis <palmer SP@G ansoft.com> Review appeared in SPAG #7 -- October 14, 1995 NAME: The Magic Toyshop PARSER: Inform v1502 AUTHOR: Gareth Rees SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports EMAIL: gdr11 SP@G cl.cam.ac.uk AVAILABILITY: IF Archive ATMOSPHERE: Nonexistent (be sure to wear a pressure suit!) WRITING: Minimalist to the point of information underload CHARACTERS: Unresponsive PLOT: What plot? (Sequential pairs of puzzles.) PUZZLES: "Guess the verb", "What am I thinking?", and the like DIFFICULTY: Frustrating I really wanted to like this game. I really did. In a competition that intends to reward meaningful brevity, a one room adventure is a really neat idea. And a very spare, minimal writing style can work well if done right, as in _Enchanter_ (and _Christminster_'s opening). Unfortunately, this entry takes both concepts too far. There is a brief blurb in the teaser about wandering into a Victorian toy shop with a rocking horse in the window, in search of a birthday present for your niece, but rocking horse, window, and the charm of a Victorian toy shop are all entirely absent from the game itself. The player is dumped into an apparently empty room with a chest and a young woman, both of which frustrate most attempts at interaction. This can be unintentionally funny in spots: > CATHARINE, OPEN THE CHEST Catharine has better things to do. Catharine opens the chest and roots around inside it. "I wonder if your niece would like something like this?" she says.... [Your score just went up by 1 point.] In the example above, Catharine *still* would have opened the chest, even had the player said nothing, or waited, or looked around, or done *anything*; all interaction with her (except for her function as a primitive hint system) is initiated by her, and you are awarded points for doing absolutely nothing! In fact, both Catharine and verbs pertaining to her are incompletely implemented: > SAY "GO WEST" TO THE ROBOT MOUSE (to Catharine) Catharine has better things to do. Top quality interactive fiction requires both good writing and good programming. _Detective_ MST3K had wonderful writing, but the technical content wasn't there. _Toyshop_ presumably (I ran out of time playing "guess the verb" and therefore didn't encounter most of it) contains some clever programming, but the writing isn't there. Literally. The game's sole location doesn't even have a description, just a rhetorical question asking what might be contained therein. Object descriptions omit useful details like shapes and features, and the parser doesn't know about most of what detail there is. The limited vocabulary set combined with the sketchy descriptions of what is going on reduce _Toyshop_ to one of the most frustrating games of "guess the verb" that I've had the misfortune to encounter in years. This may sound nitpicky, but is there is an important distinction between > EMPTY THE BOX The box is empty already. and > EMPTY THE BOX You can't see anything inside the box! The second is a clue that some sense other than vision must be used to determine if there's anything in the box; the first is an unequivocal statement that there isn't anything in there. Since the game uses the first wording rather than the second, I wasted my entire two hour review period searching in vain for an alternative solution to the robot mouse assembly puzzle that wasn't there. (The sole hint that the game provided wasn't any help either, and no walkthrough was included.) I played an endless series of stalemates at tic-tac-toe in the hope that Catharine would give me a tube of glue after losing, I mistook the "carpet" for a glue strip to be peeled off, and I tried to break into the chest or search elsewhere all with no success (there being no elsewhere!). There may also be a cultural issue at work here -- in the United States, tubes of glue are not normally provided inside model kits. Airfix may in fact do this in the UK, but it was only through process of elimination that I finally tried searching, examining, looking into, reaching inside, throwing, dumping, tearing, destroying, opening the other end (to peer through), and jumping up and down on top of the box (all in vain) before finally guessing that "shake" was the magic word. By that time, the review period had expired, so I am basing my review on what I encountered up to that point. _Toyshop_ gave me of the most unpleasant experiences that I have ever had from a work of IF. You are dumped into a bare room and told to fiddle with a group of vague objects that are handed to you, for no clear reason, and must contend with a rather limited set of ways to manipulate them and eventually guess which of several possible solutions has been implemented. From what I've read on r.g.i-f since completing my evalutation, I'm not alone in getting stuck; this is probably *not* a two hour game. Especially given how nice Gareth's other work has been, _Toyshop_ is a most unpleasant surprise. BOTTOM LINE: This game is evil, and must be destroyed. Gareth Rees is also evil, but must *not* be destroyed -- at least not until he has a chance to finish the next _Christminster_....
Magic.zip
From: Molley the Mage <mollems SP@G pulsar.cs.wku.edu> Review appeared in SPAG #3 -- October 26, 1994 NAME: MAGIC.ZIP (Three games) PARSER: Mostly 2-Word AUTHOR: John Olsen PLOT: Simple EMAIL: ??? ATMOSPHERE: Okay AVAILABILITY: IF Archive WRITING: Terse PUZZLES: Easy SUPPORTS: IBM CHARACTERS: Few DIFFICULTY: Quite Easy MAGIC.ZIP contains three IBM text adventures written by John Olsen. The games are all very simple, but they are enjoyable and should provide you with a few hours of fun. The games unzip as MS-DOS executable files, using Mr. Olsen's own interpreter. The parser used in the games is simplistic, but the puzzles are generally so easy that you won't have any problem telling the game what it is you're trying to do. The three games in the package are: Merlin's Magic Forest: In this game, you are transported to a magical forest where Merlin the magician (of Arthurian legend) has been placed under an evil spell. You must collect the five components needed to mix up a counterspell that will free the great wizard from his torpor. Along the way, you'll get to play with Excalibur and face some evil monsters (including some really mean trees who really got on my nerves). Merlin's Golden Trove As a reward for your services to him in the first game, Merlin transports you to his castle, where you seek to discover all his hidden gold. There are hidden tricks and traps for the unwary, and treasures hidden in some surprising places. The weakest of the three games, but still an enjoyable distraction. Son of Ali Baba To win the Caliph's daughter, you must venture to the island of the evil wizard Roxor and bring back a piece of the shell of a Roc's egg. You'll face a dragon, among other things, but luckily you have several magical talismans to assist you in your quest. The best of the three games, I think, except for a few rather arbitrary puzzles. All three of the games are quick plays -- an afternoon apiece at most. They use text very sparingly, but the writing is not bad. These games reminded me very much of the Scott Adams adventures, in fact, although they are much easier than some of Adams' puzzlers. Merlin's Magic Forest is arguably the most difficult of the three games, with some non-intuitive puzzles to be solved. Merlin's Golden Trove is strictly an exercise in searching for treasures. Son of Ali Baba is my favorite of the three, providing a little bit of the flavor of the Arabian Nights tales. The author is asking $20 for the three games, which comes out to less than $7 apiece. That's a good deal for a text adventure, but in truth these games are so short and simple that they're probably not worth registering. However, Mr. Olsen also has three other collections of similar text adventures, and all of them can be found on the if-archive. It would not be unreasonable to expect someone to play two of the three-game sets and then register one of them. But you didn't hear that from me. If you're looking for a game or three to kill an afternoon with, or if you wax nostalgic about the Scott Adams-type adventure games, give MAGIC.ZIP a try; and check out Mr. Olsen's other games, which include more fantasy, and even some horror, among other things.
The Magnetic Scrolls Collection
From: The Magnificent Linnard <mithee SP@G internetland.net> Review appeared in SPAG #14 -- May 17, 1998 NAME: The Magnetic Scrolls Collection AUTHOR: Magnetic Scrolls/Virgin EMAIL: ??? DATE: Rerelease 1991 PARSER: Magnetic Scrolls standard AVALIABILITY: Rare URL: None available I managed to stumble across this boxed set in a clearance bin about 2 years ago, and for $10, I've never been disapointed. This is a collection of the three 'best sellers' (I assume) from the now defunct Magnetic Scrolls--Fish!, The Guild Of Thieves, and Corruption, all for the PC (which contradicts what I've read before about there being only Amiga and C64 versions). All three make Infocom look pretty blase by comparision. The interface is rather like a Macintosh, with mouse support, backgrounds, resizeable and moveable windows, automapping, an inventory listing using some alright icons, and a built-in compass. Each also features some degree of graphics for some scenes. Although most are low quality, and the animation isn't impressive in the least, it does add atmosphere when it's on. Variable fonts also help the text, allowing you to bold certain types (such as descriptions or game responses), italicize, or just use different font sizes. Very well put together. The help menus are about the same as late Infocom, using levels of hints for various events in each game. At times, the details are a little -too- much, giving away whole solutions step by step. Unfortunetly, this seems to be necessary. Certain sequences, such as Corruption's escape from the hospital, make absolutely no sense unless you have the help file--there's nothing to tell you what you need to do or what you did wrong, but if you -did- do something wrong, you're loading up that last save game. The save/load is well done at least, using a listed window like most Windows applications do. The games themselves vary quite widely, and they're all every bit as good as Infocom's best in MOST departments. Fish! sits you in the role of a secret agent, transplanted into the body of a fish in order to stop The Seven Deadly Fins from whatever evil deed they have in mind. Three different mini-missions place you in other bodies (of humans, at least) in order to get the parts so that you can head into the Fish City. Before I give away too much of the plot, I'll just say that I was subtely annoyed to finally make it to the end, just to find a TIME LIMIT on the last sections. I managed to make it to the very end sequence, just to find that I didn't have enough time (each move costs you a few minutes) to do what was required of me. Painful. Corruption comes from a different angle. You've just been named partner in a law firm, but someone's out to eliminate your presence in some not-so-moral ways. The idea is to, before the day is over, pin the blame where it goes without getting snagged yourself. It's harder than it sounds. The game is timed right to the clock, and if you aren't in EXACT right places at EXACT right times, events go right past you. If that happens, you're starting over--you won't have enough evidence. The casette in the box helps some too, but it's not totally necessary. This game features possibly the most devious puzzle in the game, and the cheesiest one I've ever had to deal with--The Hospital. I have yet to see how you're supposed to figure this out without the help window wide open. Basically, you're in a hospital, and if you don't get out unnoticed, you'll be given a lethal injection (boy, those guys are just -everywhere-!). It's rough, since a wrong turn will put a nurse right next to you. Guild Of Thieves is my personal favorite. The story works like this: you're an apprentice thief, trying to get into the guild. You're told that to get in, you have to rob this country blind. That night, a master thief drops you off on a dock and lets you do your thing. This is actually loads of fun, trying to cop the many treasures of whereever you find them. It's a gas, really, until the end. Just too many timing-based puzzles for anyone's good. All in all, a tres fun set to play around with, if you're lucky enough to actually -find- the box.
Maiden of the Moonlight
From: C.E. Forman <ceforman SP@G worldnet.att.net> Review appeared in SPAG #10 -- February 4, 1997 NAME: Maiden of the Moonlight AUTHOR: Brian P. Dean EMAIL: 73704.176 SP@G CompuServe.COM DATE: October 1996 PARSER: TADS standard SUPPORTS: TADS Ports AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition96/maiden VERSION: Version 1.0 A haunted mansion story whose plot is revealed through object descriptions as well as room text - sort of "Theatre" meets "Uncle Zebulon's Will" with a dash of "Curses." Some genuine atmosphere and a good deal of backstory despite the fact that some room descriptions are simply lists of exits. It's a pity I didn't get to this one until after Halloween. Simple but clever puzzles, with the only annoyance being the very, VERY forced method of getting the perfume bottle over the fence. (Was this necessary?) I liked having to piece together solutions from the writings, books, and room descriptions, though there's the occasional guesswork. Unfortunately, there seems to be some sort of problem with saved games. Two or three times, the game would hang when I tried to restore, and the save file became corrupt. As the two-hour limit approached, I used the walkthrough to see the game in its entirety.
Masquerade
From: Suzanne Britton <tril SP@G igs.net> Review appeared in SPAG #23 -- December 29, 2000 TITLE: Masquerade AUTHOR: Kathleen M. Fischer E-MAIL: mfischer5 SP@G aol.com DATE: 2000 PARSER: Inform standard SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive) URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2000/inform/mask/mask.z5 VERSION: Release 3 "Masquerade" is an excellent work of story-based IF in a little-used genre (romance, specifically, Civil-War era romance). It is perhaps the most immersive game I've played yet this year. When I started playing, my mind was still spinning with outside thoughts and residual stress. Soon, I became utterly engrossed in the well-sketched gameworld and all else faded to black. The setting is impeccable: no anachronisms or oversights. I truly felt like I was in the 1800's. The protagonist (a feminist before her time) also came across quite strongly, and I enjoyed stepping into the shoes of someone so like and yet unlike me. Though the plot of "Masquerade" is fairly linear, for most of the way, there are several forks in the later parts of the game which lead to different endings based on your decisions. This was a big part of my enjoyment: of the 12 endings, I've found about a third, and am eager to go back and find more after the comp. I was especially pleased that choosing to strike out on your own (sans deed, sans husband) was a valid option, and though the author didn't quite sanction it as a "winning" ending (an odd word to use with story-based IF anyway), the outcome was positive and rewarding (it's my favorite ending of those I found). In that respect, Masquerade is hardly a "genre" romance. In spite of this praise, "Masquerade" didn't quite make my 9-10 bracket. There are several reasons for this. The first is something the author couldn't have done much about: the genre is not my usual cup of tea. I prefer stories with fantastical or SF elements (the story-in-a-story in "Photopia" counts) to straight fiction. The second is implementation: there were enough guess-the-verb and guess-the-action problems to be annoying. This is an especial show-stopper in such a linear game, which often halts your progress entirely, locking you in your current location, until you deal with the matter at hand. Example: "dance with Jonathan". It sounds embarrassingly obvious now, but at the time, I assumed that we would go into the ballroom together, then dance. But "west" returned the stock failure message about Mrs. Stanford being at the door, and this stymied me for a while. Sometimes the problem is syntax, other times it's more a problem of being expected to read the author's mind. I'm not referring to puzzles (of which there are a few), rather cases where what I want to do is obvious, but how to tell the game that is not-so-obvious. Another example: the only way I've found to get Ethan's attention in the train is to "get tickets". Until I've done that, I can't talk to him, touch him, sit with him, or otherwise interact with him. The reason given is fairly lame ("You wouldn't want to be that forward") and doesn't do much to point me in the right direction. Worse, if I flounder around like that for more than a few turns, I'm ejected from the train and it takes off! When the game mechanics worked--and make no mistake, they often did--they worked splendidly. I wended my way through the story in mimetic bliss, barely conscious of the fact that I was typing rather than living out my actions. The tight boundaries of the gameworld remained invisible. But when the mechanics failed, they failed with a loud crunching halt. (One extra positive note on implementation: I was impressed by and appreciative of the many stock message replacements [in fact, I've been impressed that way by several games this year]. E.g., when you type an invalid command: "You mutter something incomprehensible". Or for disambiguation, "You pause to think,or ?") Third: the game sometimes went overboard in limiting my actions. Some of this is acceptable--there are things a 19th-century woman simply does not do--but some of it came across as programming laziness. Whatever the reason, I was disappointed at not being allowed to give Jonathan a good slap! Rating: 8 From: Tina Sikorski <tina SP@G eniac.stanford.edu> Review appeared in SPAG #23 -- December 29, 2000 Walkthrough? No (in-game hints) Genre: Historical Romance +------------------------------------------+ |Overall Rating B |Submitted Vote 8| |Writing A |Plot B | |Puzzles C |NPCs B | |Technical B |Tilt A+| +------------------------+-----------------+ *** Initial Thoughts It's interesting. I'm not a big romance story fan, but I am a fan of historical romance... perhaps because I'm a big fan of historical -anything-. And this story is set in a period that I find fascinating. So right from the start, I was interested. But it wouldn't have held if the game wasn't so extremely well constructed.... *** Writing (A) Simply put, the writing in this story is first-rate. It was descriptive, it was evocative, it was thorough without being wordy, it was fun to read, and best of all, it fit the period the game was set in. If there -were- any errors, they escaped my notice. The example I have in my notes -- which I feel is representative -- is from the interior of a coach: "The coach is richly appointed, with two leather cushioned benches facing each other and a nice clean smell that marks it as either privately owned or an expensive rental. Heavy black drapes have been drawn across the windows, casting the interior in a gloom that precludes close scrutiny of the conveyance or its passenger." As someone who is a big fan of (mostly horror) stories written in the late 1800s, I can say that this actually is the type of writing one encounters in that period, which, not coincidentally, is when this story is set. *** Plot (B) Although I was disappointed with the particular ending I got and once or twice felt that things were a bit forced, the overall story in this is good. It's not simply a boy-meets-girl style romance by any means; the actual initial thrust of the plot (and, in fact, potentially the majority of it) has nothing to do with romance. I think perhaps the complaint some people have of heavily story-driven IF -- notably, if you've been not reading reviews regularly, that maybe they would do better as static IF -- would probably apply here, but as usual, I am not one of those people. There is flexibility here you could not incorporate into a static work, and while the plot advances are an unstoppable force, you can change things a bit by your reactions. *** Puzzles (C) There were a few. They weren't bad. If that seems a bit short, let me a note that I was so captivated by the story I didn't really notice them. I certainly didn't get hung up on them, so that's all that really mattered to me in the end. *** NPCs (B) The NPCs were, for the most part, quite well developed, although at times the interactions with them were a bit too predestined for my taste, hence the "mere" B rating. *** Technical (B) I have to say that this rating is predicated on two particular biases of mine: rich, full, detailed story worlds, and alternate conversational styles (the ask/tell routine is not exactly my favorite, and IMO doesn't work very well in stories like this). The fact that I could >smell stranger ...and get a valid response was worth a lot. Too, the fact that standard library messages were altered to fit the mood and setting was nice. None of this is necessarily -difficult-, but it does take the type of forethought and planning that many people do -not- bring to their games. *** Tilt (A+) and Final Thoughts I found this game so enticing and so thoroughly enjoyable that I intend on playing it again to see what alternate endings I get, and expect that even the parts that repeat will still seem wonderful and fresh. If not for the fact that I like surreal better than I like romance, this would have easily been my favorite of the games I played.
A Matter of Time
From: Francis Irving <francis SP@G pobox.co.uk> Review appeared in SPAG #14 -- May 17, 1998 NAME: A Matter of Time AUTHOR: Michael Zerbo EMAIL: Unknown DATE: Jun 4, 1997 (according to www.download.com) PARSER: ALAN version 2.5 SUPPORTS: DOS, Amiga, and possibly Alan ports (but without sound/graphics) AVAILABILITY: Shareware ($10) URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/pc/time1.zip (the version reviewed) ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/amiga/time[123].lha (the original Amiga version) VERSION: 1.0 (according to www.download.com) Time to try out the most heavily downloaded game in the IF archive... "A Matter of Time" is another story about saving your Professor from a land of dinosaurs, where his experimental time machine has gone slightly awry. The plot twist? The Professor is also accused of murdering a colleague over a funding war. It's apparently written using ALAN, with calls to external programs to add graphics and sound. Unfortunately this means that you have to wait for each picture to appear and disappear, and for each sound to finish, before you can get on with the game. And it happens every time you do "look". So, anyone making a multimedia piece of IF, make sure the sound and graphics are concurrent with the text. And that you can turn them off. (You can in time1 - by deleting or renaming viewer.exe and sbplay.exe...) Similarly annoying was that every time you die and restart you have to sit through the whole of the intro (including pictures) before you can even restore again... Whatever happened to "Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE or QUIT?". The writing is readable in its simplicity, but needs more imagination. The puzzles are straightforward item manipulation games which I couldn't work out; the games unresponsiveness and shaky parser didn't encourage me to do so. More synonyms are required; you can do "climb tree" but not "climb vines". Graphics are varied and made with fractal and ray-tracing programs. This gives them a certain lack of liveliness and inconsistency of style. The sounds didn't add anything much to the game, although they served well to identify where I was. Good sound in the background could make each area of a landscape feel more distinct. I didn't finish Time, but I did read through the text from the data file. I didn't miss much. It really is only a short work. I don't know what you get if you register, but from this demo I don't feel that it would be worth doing so. With over 17,000 downloads of Time from the IF-archive via www.download.com, Michael Zerbo is clearly an excellent publicist, or there is more interest in IF than we imagine. Perhaps people like the idea that it has sound/graphics in it, and are put off downloading plain text adventures. When the first quality piece of graphical IF, with an Inform/TADS standard parser, comes out, it will be interesting to see if it fares better in the download world.
Max Blaster and Doris De Lightning Against The Parrot Creatures Of Venus
From: David Jones <drj SP@G pobox.com> Review appeared in SPAG #38 -- September 28, 2004 TITLE: Max Blaster and Doris de Lightning Against the Parrot Creatures of Venus AUTHOR: Dan Shiovitz, Emily Short EMAIL: Dan Shiovitz <dbs SP@G cs.wisc.edu>, Emily Short <emshort SP@G mindspring.com> DATE: 2003 PARSER: TADS3, I guess SUPPORTS: TADS3 AVAILABILITY: IF Archive URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/mini-comps/SpringThing2003/parrots/parrots.t3 VERSION: version 1.0 (SpringComp release) Max Blaster and Doris de Lightning Against the Parrot Creatures of Venus is a great title. This is space opera, in sexy pants. But first I should get a few boring things out of the way. This is a TADS3 game, the first one I've played, so I just had to compile a new interpreter, using a build system that was complicated enough to require configure but didn't use it (and I doubt it really needs to be that complicated). This does not put me in a good mood. But never mind, it does compile, and it does play the file. As ever, I'm playing without graphics. Oh yeah, another interpreter issue: on the interpreter I was using every time a conversation menu popped up it was like going into hyperspace. This is no doubt because tads3 is doing a graceless job of the curses screen management (it looks like it's doing a screen clear and full redraw. Fairly slowly). I discover BANNER OFF which pleases me greatly. That's the icky interpreter issues out of the way; I feel a bit dirty mentioning them in a review. As soon as I start playing my poor mood is dispelled. The humour is already winning me over and I've only typed 3 commands. And two of those were "i" and "footnote 1". In many ways I was reminded of Zucker, Zucker, and Abrahams. And the thing about them is that they never let up -- their humour is fired from a machine-gun. Shiovitz and Short try a similar trick, and they almost get away with it. The corny wisecracks, the cheesy lines, as long as it keeps flowing it works and it's funny. And it does flow. This description of your apparel is typical: "Rocket pants are, without a doubt, the best article of clothing ever invented. It's good to live in the future." Generally the game manages a witty banter whether you're chatting to your partner, solving puzzles, or just being mystified and examining stuff. The writing is spot on (bar a couple of minor exceptions). Speaking of your partner, you can play the game either as Doris or Max, and when they are together you can switch between them (with SWITCH TO MAX). Max is your typical space hero. He's sharp with a blaster, and has unflusterable hair. Doris is a sassy upstart agent trying to out-do Max (and trying not to fall for Max in a cheesy Cubby Broccoli sort of way). The characterisation is funny and comes across well. They're on a mission, something to do with Venusian birds taking over earth, blah blah blah. There are quite a few nice small touches. It has footnotes that are automatically numbered, so you can't tell when you missed one. It tells me about "oops" the first time I misspell something (maybe this is a standard TADS3 feature?). Max and Doris take different tracks through the adventure. Their paths are like a figure 8. They're together and the start, then they separate, they rejoin in the middle, only to separate again, and then rejoin for the finale. So, there is branching. But it's quite a shallow sort of branching. There are two points where being Max or being Doris is significant. For the first one the player has no idea that it will happen. You just get to follow the branch of whichever character you happened to be. At least for the second one you know the branch is going to happen, you just don't know what it might entail. The most annoying thing for me was that I couldn't switch after the branch point. It's not like a game where you have to solve puzzle A or puzzle B, because usually in those situations you can fiddle with puzzle A _and_ fiddle with puzzle B before you solve either one of them. Probably you don't really decide to pick one of them and solve it, it's just a matter of which one you solve first. In Max Blaster and Doris de Lightning Against the Parrot Creatures of Venus you have to pick a path before you know what lies on it. (Damn, that long name really puts me off my urge to write the title out rather than say "this game"). The reality is very linear. Initially as I raced through the introduction on rails I didn't mind, it's okay for introductions to be linear. But the rest of the game is linear too: most of the time there is exactly one puzzle to solve and nothing else to do but solve the puzzle. The linearity is enhanced by the occasional "you can't go that way because it will break the design and the narrative. Really, stick to the path that I've laid down for you" kind of message. This linearity didn't really worry me until I was stuck. Now, being stuck is ordinary, it's the normal mode for adventure games, and in a good game I don't mind being stuck. But in a good game even though I'm "stuck" I will usually have a laundry list of (increasingly improbable) things to try. And there is usually the variety of being stuck at more than puzzle simultaneously which means I can try and solve a different puzzle. Coincidentally the first time I got stuck was also around the time that I started losing faith with the game. There was a potentially dramatic situation broken by a crack in the fourth wall. I found a nasty "[Runtime error: invalid datatypes for addition operator]". I put the game into an unwinnable state but I couldn't tell if it was a straight bug or mis-design. But it was also at this point that I noticed something cute: Max and Doris notice different things and, when they are together, have to co-operate to solve puzzles. As Max: >x yellow Well, it's a small electronic thingy. With colored stripes. Not to get all technical or anything. As Doris: >x yellow There's a large yellow stripe on the left, and then smaller red, black, and gold stripes next to it. That suggests it's probably a standard-issue networking module; this is probably in there to let the computer make transmissions out into the main network. It wouldn't be hard to pop open and disable, if one were so inclined. The puzzles range from the trivial to multi-hour marathons with a mondo sandwich machine controlled by levers and switches. In fact, some of the puzzles "solve themselves" by virtue of your partner solving them for you. In an easy game this would be no bad thing, but this is not an easy game. The hard puzzles are very hard (and made a little bit harder by buggy clueing) and they don't solve themselves. So having the easier puzzles solve themselves doesn't really help anyone, because if you can't solve those you aren't going to solve the hard ones. There are hints online but in at least one case they fell crucially short of the whole answer. Ordinarily I wouldn't have read the hints, but I had already won the game and was playing through on the alternate track to write this review (see how thorough I am?) and had whacked myself out with the world's most insane lever problem that rated at least two cups of tea. As it happened I needed to do just a little bit more to sneak past the guard but I wasn't up to it and looked at the hints, which didn't help at all. Fortunately that last bit of the puzzle wasn't too hard. The hints, by the way, are as witty as the game and well worth reading and I would say that if you want to avoid banging your head against a problem for 3 hours then you should read them early! Some of the puzzles are good, some are funny, some are lame. It's a pretty mixed bag. The final section includes a timed puzzle, but at least it's totally obvious that it's timed (so you can save) and it's kind of optional and not too hard. At a couple of points I was impressed by a Nethack-like tendency in the game. There is an inexhaustible supply of pills, you can take as many as you like (one at a time; cut-and-paste is the obsessive pill-picker's friend). You can leave piles of pills around in various locations. There doesn't seem to be an inventory limit (not that I would want a limit), so you can carry mind-boggling amounts of stuff. You can find all sorts of problems with the parser. It's amusing (if you're me) and pointless. And it slows the game down, but really that's my own fault for having 40 odd pills and 30 odd novelty beak polishers. Another thing that struck me as being borrowed from Nethack (to be honest I would be surprised if the authors have had any experience of Nethack, but I have had lots so I often think "Oh yeah, it's just like how it works in Nethack") is the epistemic object descriptions. A pill is a "pill" when first discovered, but, when you discover that you can eat it, it becomes a "food pill". Similarly, a different object changes its initial name to become a "screen disruptor". (It's also reminiscent of the mongoose in Pirate Adventure.) All this nonsense with objects changing their descriptions is quite nice, but it is also the source of some unfortunate bugs. At one point I discovered that I could "show max the disruptor," but I couldn't show him the object that changes into the disruptor (it gives a runtime error, oops!) For the first few hours the humour was winning me over, the linearity wasn't bothering me, and I hadn't found that many bugs. I suspect the earlier parts of the game are more polished than the later parts, and as I played more I found more and more bugs. These were things like unimportant objects not being examinable, or it not being possible to disambiguate some object (this is a TADS thing isn't it?), or inconsistent choices of disambiguation. Some of them were more serious, like a TADS runtime error, or a crucial component in a puzzle being incorrectly described, or a plausible phrasing for an action in a long and crucial sequence not working and giving a misleading response. In the end the bugs wore me down and I come away from the game somewhat dissatisfied, despite some great writing which I found quite witty, a pair of appealing characters, and some interesting puzzles. I suspect that the game's length (7 hours of play for me on my first time through as Doris) meant that the quality suffered. The bug-finding and bug-fixing will have been spread more thinly. If I had taken a less thorough look then I suspect that I would have come away happier. So that's what I recommend to you. Play it, have a laugh, read the walkthrough early, and don't poke around too much. You'll have fun.
Mercy
From: Steve Bernard <x96bernard1 SP@G wmich.edu> Review appeared in SPAG #12 -- December 13, 1997 NAME: Mercy AUTHOR: Chris Klimas EMAIL: christopher.klimas SP@G washcoll.edu DATE: August 1997 PARSER: Inform SUPPORTS: Z-Machine AVAILABILITY: IF Archive URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/infocom/Mercy.z5 Your name is Dr. Peter Basham. Your job is Mercy, if you can call it that. There's nothing you or your colleagues can do about the recent outbreak of smallpox but help people to die as easily as possible. Once you were a pediatrician; now all you do all day is "euthanize" (the medical profession's nice term for "kill"). Chris Klimas' "Mercy" is probably my favorite of all the games to be released this year, including the competition. It can hardly be called a game, though. As the author says, it's more of a short story. It's heavily plot oriented, but flexible enough that the player can still make many choices along the way and take different branches. The character is predetermined with feelings and background supplied by the game, but it avoids the pitfall of simply telling the player that they feel a certain way. Rather, the character interjections fit so well with the plot and the atmosphere they never seem forced. The make-it-or-break-it aspect of "Mercy" is its lack of puzzles. That's right folks, "puzzle-less I-F"... That isn't to say that your actions don't affect how the story turns out, but it does mean no locked doors to open, no odd futuristic machines to operate, and no "find the smallpox cure in some obscure location" situations. But to be honest, I hardly noticed the absence of puzzles until after I was done. Seriously, the story and atmosphere are engaging enough that the inclusion of puzzles would probably take away from the game as a whole. Flaws? Well yes, there are a few. A couple spelling mistakes or extra typos occur here or there. There's a verb or two that could be recognized and a couple objects in room descriptions that the player might want to refer to but can't. Honestly, I assume the author has noticed or been notified of these things already. I just hope he'll put out a Release 2. It's weird, if I just described the game quickly (i.e. No puzzles, predefined character, clear plot from beginning to end...), it wouldn't sound very enticing. In fact, it sounds like it would be a bad game if you boil it down to just that. "Mercy" proves that these descriptions are not bad in and of themselves. By no means do the standard I-F conventions need to be adhered to in order to produce quality work. Chris Klimas says that he hopes "Mercy" is something new in the interactive fiction universe. I don't know if that's true or not, but it certainly was a breath of fresh air for me to play and it clearly is different. I love the feelings it stirs in me, the disturbing moodiness that hangs over the whole thing, the "love story", as it were... I kinda wish he'd kept it until the competition. It would have grabbed *my* highest rating. My Rating: I give it an 8.5. I felt guilty at first for giving it a rating comparable to such long, great games as Trinity or Jigsaw. Thing is, I really did like it that much. The comparison really isn't fair, though: you don't judge short stories against novels. I liked "Mercy" for different reasons.
Metamorphoses
From: Duncan Stevens <dnrb SP@G starpower.net> Review appeared in SPAG #23 -- December 29, 2000 TITLE: Metamorphoses AUTHOR: Emily Short E-MAIL: emshort SP@G mindspring.com DATE: 2000 PARSER: Inform standard (mostly) SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive) URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/metamorp.z5 VERSION: Release 2 As has often been noted, there are many difficulties inherent in telling a story through the IF medium, and one of the most-remarked-upon is the difficulty of keeping the player/reader involved (by giving him/her something to do) while still telling the story that the author wants to tell. The solutions usually boil down to relinquishing control of the pace of the story (typically through giving the player puzzles to solve), or avoiding/minimizing the puzzle aspect of IF and sending the player through the story with little opportunity to affect it. Emily Short's Metamorphoses doesn't, exactly, transcend this usual duality in IF design, but it does do some interesting things that help bring the poles together, and it's a wonderfully immersive playing experience. What's going on is hard to pin down, but the heart of it is that you're a slave/servant girl sent on a quest/errand of sorts by your master, with whom you have an uneasy and complicated relationship. The literal content of the quest (to the extent that there is any) disappears as the setting changes: the game is set in a fantasy world of sorts, though it's not quite accurate to call it fantasy. The action, so to speak, lies mostly in the realm of the figurative: you're encouraged (well, I felt encouraged) to view your quest as important more in what it suggests than in what it literally depicts. By the same token, when you encounter puzzles, they have symbolic significance that goes beyond the "acquire the object" goal. (All the more so since it's not immediately obvious why you're acquiring the objects.) Since the plot goes on beneath the surface of the literal action, the game can safely permit the player to do whatever he or she wants with the pace and order of the story, since there isn't really a narrative thread as such that can be broken. For example: one puzzle requires that you give up something familiar to you to advance the story, an act which clearly has its own resonances, and another requires that you transform another familiar object and put it to a novel use. The game comments directly on some of these points but not all--very little is spelled out. The world where all this takes place is only indirectly related to the ordinary physical world, and the relationship parallels other elements in the plot. Idealized forms play an important part: two statues of a man and a woman are described in ways that suggest Greek sculpture, and perfect solids are central to the story. Essences are important as well: virtually every object is made of a single elemental substance (wood, glass, metal, etc.), and you have the power to alter those substances in certain ways. Symmetry is everywhere (in the game's map, and elsewhere as well), and the multiplicity of mirrors suggests the reflection and introspection that are central to the plot. (Likewise, the idealized forms suggest the absolutes that make up the plot.) At the same time, the game's world is sterile, arid: there's nothing particularly warm or welcoming about it, and there's no suggestion that you find it pleasant or comfortable. (Left ambiguous is whether the dryness reflects the protagonist's life as it has been, or represents some hostile reality external to her that she's trying to overcome.) The setting itself tells a story, in other words, in a way not often found in IF. Not only does the setting play a part in the plot, however, but it's also beautifully described, with plenty of arresting imagery--some descriptive, others suggestive. For instance: Dome of Broken Light A straight white light comes through the hole in the ceiling, but it is soon after twisted and bent: mirrors cast it from angle to angle; crystal divides it; glass stains it. The picture is indeterminate: the reader is encouraged to imagine a riot of reflections and refractions. The only perfection here is that of perfect confusion. Here, by contrast: Glass Grove An orchard of glass trees: trunks slender and orderly as the columns of the Alhambra, foliage iridescent and frail. No wind stirs, and yet, from time to time, a leaf casts free of its branch and drifts to the ground. The whole floor of the cavern is deep with them. The image is more concrete: "iridescent and frail" conveys both the beauty and the sterility of the game's world. The writing also underscores the contrasts between the two locations: the (relative) activity of the first is reflected by the active verbs ("mirrors cast," "crystal divides," "glass stains"), whereas the aridity of the second is suggested by the intransitive verbs ("casts free," "drifts", "is deep"--and the first sentence has no verbs at all). Most of the writing is spare, like the game itself--you eventually learn some things about yourself, your past, and how you came to be in your present position, but the snippets are small indeed. What's there, however, is well worth reading. Metamorphoses does an impressively nuanced job of worldbuilding, in short, but what's noteworthy is that the gameplay is nearly as good. The puzzles feel reasonably novel, due mostly to the transmutation/magnification machines you're given and which figure in all the puzzles. The technical aspect is impressive--the objects by and large do what they're supposed to do when transmuted or enlarged or shrunk, and they interact with each other in plausible ways, nothing to sneeze at considering the complexity involved. Moreover, there are plenty of multiple solutions that draw on the various qualities of the objects whose size and essence you can alter, which makes the puzzles flow by fairly quickly. (This is not, in other words, a "guess what the author's thinking" sort of game, at least not when it comes to puzzle solutions.) Not every object in every state and size gets a customized description, of course, but everything behaves sensibly enough. Metamorphoses is not a flawless effort--some of its design choices risk leaving the player cold in certain respects. In particular, the game leaves so much about the protagonist ambiguous for so long that it's difficult to connect to her emotionally. Some of the most emotional experiences for the protagonist come early enough in the story that the player is unlikely to be as strongly affected as he or she might be with some more setup and explanation. As always, the tradeoff between story and puzzle raises the possibility that the player will forget about the story amid all the mechanical fiddling (particularly here, where there's so much fiddling to do)--the puzzles are reasonably well integrated into the story, for the most part, but most of the plot is sufficiently abstract that it's easy to lose sight of what's supposed to be going on. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there are a lot of endings to Metamorphoses, and many of them don't provide much resolution in any obvious way; finding an end to the story that adequately brings the various threads together may take a while for some players. In a way, that works here; it reflects the general bleakness of the game's world that the end of the story doesn't tie up all the loose ends or furnish an especially satisfying conclusion. The game aspect, however, demands some sort of conclusion, whether optimal or not, and only a few of the endings offer real conclusions as such. These drawbacks are to some extent inherent in what Metamorphoses appears to be trying to do, though; tastes on what constitutes a satisfying game experience differ--and the latitude for experimentation provided by the machines helps make up for any other problems. For my part, the setting itself was enough to make this the only 10 of this year's competition (and the only one I've given since 1997)--as worldbuilding, this is a triumph.
The Meteor, The Stone,and a Long Glass of Sherbet
From: John Wood <john SP@G elvw.demon.co.uk> Review appeared in SPAG #10 -- February 4, 1997 NAME: The Meteor, the Stone and a Long Glass of Sherbet - The Interactive Memoirs of a Diplomat. AUTHOR: Graham Nelson (writing as Angela M. Horns) EMAIL: graham SP@G gnelson.demon.co.uk DATE: September 28, 1996 PARSER: Inform Standard SUPPORTS: Infocom ports AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition96/sherbet This game starts, interestingly enough, on the back of an elephant. Reading the background notes it quickly became obvious that it is intended as a tribute to the Zork games, and this it does rather well, capturing the essential feel of the early Infocom games. The time spent on the elephant is actually a prologue, very different to the main body of the game. This transition feels rather clumsy; the change in style is sudden, but not remarked upon, as you go from bored diplomat to dungeon delver. I did not finish this game in the two hours, despite heavy use of the hints toward the end of that period. It seems to be quite large; if it stops soon after the point I reached, which I doubt, there will be a lot of loose ends. This is basically a puzzle game, in the Zork style. I had quite a bit of difficulty getting into the right mindset for the puzzles - when referring to the hints, it occasionally seemed unclear to me how I was supposed to think of things. Nevertheless, an entertaining work. From: "C.E. Forman" <ceforman SP@G worldnet.att.net> Review appeared in SPAG #10 -- February 4, 1997 This one's sort of "Zork," "Enchanter," and "Christminster," but sort of not. I can't really decide for sure what to call it. Even the author doesn't seem to be certain about what type of game this is supposed to be. It's identified in the byline as "The Interactive Memoirs of a Diplomat," but aside from the opening procession and the very end, there's little to connect the game to this description. In between, the game is a jumble of unmotivated treasure-hunting, applied spellcasting, and spelunking. Not that this is necessarily bad. All things considered, it's a pretty solid historical-based fantasy, though the author's visions (as seen in the hints) will undoubtedly be lost on many players. "Zork" and "Enchanter" are mixed nicely into the plot, but "Sherbet" still suffers from the problems inherent in Infocom's spell-casting games. I know I've said this before, but having to memorize spells before casting them is a pain. It was great in the 1980s, but like mazes, it's worn out its welcome. If anyone else is planning on a game of this type, please consider a system of casting magic straight from the book or scroll. The spells themselves are sometimes derived from the "Enchanter" trilogy - "gloth" and "azzev" ("vezza" backwards) show up - but "frotz" is replaced by "chiaro," which took a bit of getting used to. There is also one very annoying parsing problem: Typing "X SPELL BOOK" instead prints out an ambiguity-resolution query, asking which spell you mean, while "READ SPELL BOOK" lists your entire repertoire of magic. Trivial, admittedly, but it turned up a lot. The writing, however, is well-polished and flowing, with no grammatical errors and few typos. In fact, the prose is SO good that I forgot about most of the above imperfections until the game was finished, when I found myself feeling a bit empty. I guess after seeing the opening I expected too much political intrigue, but instead received a dungeon crawl. It IS a very entertaining one, but strangely devoid of Zorkish elements, aside from the white house and adventurer. (Where are the grues? The elvish sword? The Flatheads? "Hello Sailor"?) Speaking of finishing the game, that took the full two hours, because this is a hard one with a lot of experimental guesswork required. I doubt it would be possible in two hours without the hints. I'm still a point short of the full score, with no idea how to get it. Anyone? From: "Magnus Olsson" <zebulon SP@G pobox.com> Review appeared in SPAG #10 -- February 4, 1997 It seems as if any new game by Graham Nelson is destined to be an instant classic. This one is no exception; I had barely played past the title screen when I realized that this was something quite out of the ordinary. The title, to begin with: impossibly long for a computer game, with its slightly bizarre combination of subjects; and the slow-paced introduction, with its Victorian atmosphere and hints of diplomatic intrigue made it impossible to stop playing. Unfortunately, the game doesn't quite live up to these promises of originality: once one has found the crucial action to upset the orderly progression of events and enter the game proper, the pace of the narrative slackens, and the plot turns into a traditional treasure-hunt. For traditional it is, following the oldest tradition there is in IF: like "Balances" by the same author, "Sherbet" is an Infocom pastiche, set in a copy of the "Zork" universe (though all names have been changed, probably for copyright reasons). Unlike the minimalist, sketchy "Balances," this game is very rich in detail, with some detailed background history and other commentary provided in the hints. But any complaints about the lack of originality are compensated by the sheer joy of playing the game, and of exploring its rich world (which is not at all a copy of "Zork," if my previous comments have made that impression, but rather some sort of parallel universe where things are hauntingly familiar). The writing is excellent and the atmosphere exceptionally vivid - the cedar cave, in particular, has etched itself into my memory as if I'd really been there. Above all, when playing Sherbet I felt the same sense of wonder as I remember from my first contact with "Zork"; a sense of wonder that's often missing from newer games, however sophisticated they may be. The puzzles are good; nothing extraordinary, perhaps, but not trivial either. Unfortunately, there are some "guess the verb" situations, and one or two cases where the room descriptions are a bit confusing. But these flaws are all very minor and do not detract from the general impression. A very worthy winner, and a game that surely will bear to be re-played over the years. From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu> Review appeared in SPAG #12 -- December 13, 1997 It is virtually a film cliche nowadays: early on, one character tells another everything the audience might need to know, sometimes in circumstances justifying such a tale but sometimes not. It's a clumsy device, but it keeps the audience from having to work too hard, always a vital element. Graham Nelson's Meteor... preempts that approach by setting out the plot in menu format, distinct from gameplay, a wholly laudable move in this particular game -- for the backstory that Nelson elects to give us is exhaustive enough that it would clutter gameplay considerably were it thrown in Hollywood-style. But it also catches the player somewhat off balance to find that the complicated setup is only minimally relevant to the game -- at least, to puzzle-solving; no puzzles require knowledge found in the backstory. Rather, Meteor... reduces the "solve puzzles because they're there to solve" feel by embedding the motivations for the player's action in the story, so that the plot makes sense of your actions while not requiring you to consult the setup constantly as a guideline. The game gives you an initial plot and set of motivations -- you are an ambassador from a small province sent to investigate strange doings while keeping relations amicable -- that provides credible reasons for your required actions. This is not to say that there are no holes or improbabilities, but there are remarkably few, considering how complicated the story become. It may not seem like the most notable feature of the game, but it's an element rarely seen in IF nowadays: a reasonably involved storyline that, suitably understood, makes sense of the game, even though the game is quite playable by itself. Well, mostly. Considering its authorship (*bow* *genuflect*), Meteor... is encumbered with a surprising number of gameplay problems, as in Stuff An Author Really Shouldn't Do. Among the less flagrant is a puzzle that involves waiting around, by my count, 23 turns before a solution is possible. Granted, there's nothing to do for those 23 turns anyway, and yes, a few things of some (but only some) interest happen while you're waiting around -- but given that the relevant event is not a one-turn happening when it does come along (you notice something that is henceforth there for the examining until you figure out what to do with it), it seems like the author could have hurried things along a tad. Now, yes, the point of the scene in question is to establish boredom, and it's certainly effective in that respect -- but mightn't effective writing have the same effect? In short, it's a questionable decision that risks annoying the player out of the game. More egregious are guess-the-verb moments -- a few relatively mild, one absolutely horrendous. (When you get there -- you'll know -- the relevant verb is "give." You're welcome.) It isn't at all clear what happened, besides, perhaps, that the author was rushed in putting the game together. There are other puzzling glitches -- some unlisted exits (one that made a puzzle's solution a complete surprise to me) and a description that I found wholly inadequate to convey the scene. (It relies on a better understanding of the term "scree" -- a Britishism? perhaps -- than I had, anyway.) One puzzle in particular toward the end of the game, involving the correct combination for a dial, is not blessed with huge whopping amounts of sense, and several other actions involve painfully exact wording that slows down the game. At one point, you lose some of your possessions unless you take steps to safeguard them -- but while it doesn't seem so unreasonable to have them appear again beside you if you've taken the right steps, the game requires a long circuitous route to retrieve the stuff. None of this makes the game unplayable or less than enjoyable, but it's a bit disconcerting in an otherwise strong entry. The puzzles are excellent; many involve a certain large-scale thinking, an awareness of how the game environment fits together as a whole, that feels genuinely fresh. A few, true, involve semi-suicidal actions, but they're so strongly hinted at by the game that they're more or less reasonable to try. (And what player really rejects actions on grounds that they're semi-suicidal anyway?) A few are a bit obscure, true, but not unguessable; the only one that seemed unfair was the result of a poor setup, as mentioned above, not the puzzle itself. The game is a tad inconsistent about what it rewards with points -- I was initially convinced I was wasting a needed resource on the wrong puzzle because I wasn't given a point for solving it -- but that's a minor blip on a set of very good puzzles. The reliance on physics and common sense recalls the appeal of the Zork series: the puzzles required understanding and using conventional objects to achieve your ends, even in fantastic settings, rather than mastering complicated systems or foreign concepts. In that way, the Zork games were always accessible -- lack of a scientific bent was never a bar -- and here, similarly, the puzzles reward logic and logical experimentation. (Particularly good is the problem requiring use of the stick, and the way you use the hornet is certainly intriguing.) The game manages to recapture the magic element of the Enchanter trilogy without making your puzzle-solving largely magic-based; a few of the puzzles involve magic, but few enough that trying all your spells in a given situation is not generally reliable. In short, the puzzles in Meteor... are generally good, and even memorable in a few cases. As for the format of magic itself, the "learn spell" routine -- well, it never troubled me much, but apparently it makes many weep and gnash their teeth. It fits the feel here, wherein magic is only being rediscovered, but it isn't, strictly, necessary. A game that purports to return to the Zork universe -- given, that is not Meteor's express claim, and its plot is far more involved than that, but that is part of its premise -- must understand and recapture its feel, and in that Meteor... succeeds admirably. The central location -- an inverted cedar -- is vivid and strikingly written: This is a slate-littered shelf high up at the northwest eaves of a dark, vaulted cave, from which a meadow-fresh breeze blows. The ledge broadens down a slab "staircase" to the east but wastes away into a tight squeeze southwest. Natural passages extend like tendrils into the rock all around this cavern, but only one is accessible from here, back north under the lintel. Hanging down toward the dim, distant cave floor is a flourishing, inverted cedar, its roots grappling the roof, its nearest outflung branch a good 10 feet across the abyss from here. Moreover, it is fantastic in a way that suits the genre well, intriguingly unusual but not so bizarre that the player can't imagine it easily. As with the Carousel Room in Zork II (or, even, the living room and its various entries in Zork I), mastering the layout means getting the hang of traveling through that location, and the geography here makes sense once the player accepts the premise. Just as successful is the bridge between fantasy and reality, especially since that relationship is central to the game -- the real-life element is thoroughly (if tediously) established before you, the ordinary fellow, are cast into the fantasy side, and the conclusion ties things back together nicely. As a result, the player need only suspend disbelief in a few elemental ways -- the existence of magic, for instance -- because the original "ordinary" persona is believable. It may not seem like much, but it's an element that the original Zork games certainly never tried to capture. And there is even a sense of perspective on Zork and its progeny, captured in an encounter with an adventurer's ghost that concludes thus: The Adventurer, having now acquired the whole nearby wealth of treasure, spreads his arms around the pile of loot. As he does so, he and they vanish like the dawn into the past where, perhaps, they belong. It might be said, therefore, that Meteor... returns you to the Zork universe but does not send you there as an adventurer, as such, merely a chance visitor, and even with the variety of Infocom references -- including the living room from Zork I and several of the original treasures -- the plot given, not "exploring the Zork universe," drives the story and keeps things moving along. As noted, the writing is strong, particularly in the way it conveys the hanging cedar and the surrounding scene; Nelson, as with the best game authors, paints each scene vividly in just a few sentences. Particlarly effective is the way the locations that are intermediate between ho-hum everyday life and the fantasy Underground Empire hint at the latter -- they point to something unusual but avoid telegraphing it in overly obvious terms. To wit: Bubbling Pool This is a red-brown earthy bole, a cavity in hardened soil with but a single crawl leading out to the southeast. The ground is covered with autumn leaves, russet and variegated. In the centre is a bubbling pool of spring water, glinting with shades and flickers of green phosphoresence. Intriguing enough on its face -- and why are there autumn leaves underground? Why is the pool "bubbling"? Nelson draws the player in through a series of increasingly intriguing discoveries, rather than throwing the entire Zork universe into one momentous discovery. There are a few somewhat overwritten moments... ...And suddenly, there is the Power! It crackles through your whole body, sparking at your fingernails and toenails, sending shivers along your limbs. You feel suddenly afraid to imagine, afraid that you can no longer tell imagination from reality. ...but only a few, and they don't distract much from the game. Moreover, the humor integral to Infocom's fantasy efforts is here in spades, with a wryness that avoids an "I'm being funny now" feel. For example: >examine elephant The magnificent grey beast is wrinkled and has a wise look (but then, after an entire day of Amilia's conversation, your average potato would have a wise look). His two great ears flap a little up at the front sides of the basket, his trunk curls and pokes at the air. Equally amusing are the dummy spells you can encounter late in the game, including "gloth," referred to in Spellbreaker (fold dough 83 times), and others to "paint picket fence orange" and "reduce herbs in over-spiced stew." As Infocom liked to do in its day, these bits help make magic amusing rather than fearful and awe-inspiring. And there are the usual Nelson touches -- an Eliot reference here, references to obscure science fiction authors there -- and there is a spell to "view the past" that allows perspective on every location in the game, giving the game a sense of completeness (though the spell is not necessary to win the game, nor is it even useful). As is in the case in the best games, there is much more going on here than the bare plot and puzzles; the wealth of extraneous details give Meteor considerable explorability and replayability, and allow the player to keep discovering more about the game on subsequent attempts. There are no alternate paths -- in fact, no puzzles have alternate solutions -- but there are many things to ponder along the way that the initial gameplay might not necessarily reveal. Just as importantly, though, even when the puzzles are simply there to solve rather than part of the story, the writing preserves the feel -- ordinary fellow discovers extraordinary things -- and reminds you now and again of who you are. (For example, upon reading a document: "Scratchy handwriting adorns this text, and the writing's in a dialect almost unrecognisable today. But, like any diplomat worth his salt, you've a way with language..." Touches like this diminish the sense of puzzles grafted into the game, and help merge plot and gameplay -- not entirely successfully, but skillfully enough. In sum, Meteor is a worthy return to, and comment on, the Zork world, and an entertaining game in its own right. While not as polished as many of Nelson's works, it certainly stands among the better games out there (though it was rather long for a competition entry, with more than 300 turns required). Glitches aside, there is enough Graham Nelson here to make it well worth any player's while.
The Mind Electric
From: Magnus Olsson <mol SP@G df.lth.se> Review appeared in SPAG #7 -- October 14, 1995 Name: The Mind Electric Parser: Inform Author: Jason Dyer Plot: Linear Email: jdyer SP@G kitts.u.arizona.edu Atmosphere: Quite good Availability: F, IF Archive Writing: Quite good Puzzles: Logical but difficult Supports: Infocom ports Characters: Simple Difficulty: Quite difficult This game takes place in cyberspace. Not the cyberspace of "Neuromancer" - the infinite, open matrix where you move at will between network nodes - but rather the opposite: your enemies have captured your consciousness inside a virtual prison of just a few rooms. Not surprisingly, your task is to escape before your virtual body dissolves. Like dream scenes, a story set in virtual reality demands a lot of the author. Somewhat paradoxically, the very fact that anything is possible in your world makes it very important that you make it believable to the reader. Bearing this in mind, I think that the author has done quite well; he's managed to create a small world with its own laws and a pervasive atmosphere. Where he fails is perhaps in making it quite credible; I couldn't quite suspend my disbelief at some points. This shouldn't be taken as a very serious criticism, though; my doubts never quite broke the spell; true to the game's sub-title "An Interactive Vision," the author does have visions and he does manage to get them through. The writing is quite good, with one exception: the final denouement just doesn't feel right. I can appreciate the point the author is making, and why he's making it; still, I felt that the last page of text detracts from the quality of the game. Perhaps this is because he, having a lot to explain (including hitherto unprovided background) in just a page of text, falls into the classic trap of letting a character hold a short speech that neatly explains everything; whatever the reasons, the present ending is not very effective and dramatically unsatisfying. Perhaps some of the information the speech provides could be moved back into the story proper; this would also add some foreshadowing of the ending. What I found disappointing about this game was the puzzles. It's not that they are bad - they certainly aren't, and a few of them are quite clever, but rather that I constantly felt that I had too little information to solve them. The solutions are certainly logical, but there weren't enough clues to find them, and I found the game's world too strange for previous experience to guide me. Fortunately, the game has a comprehensive hint system - a bit too comprehensive, perhaps, since it's not context sensitive and it's easy to read too far - without which I'm afraid I wouldn't have made much progress at all. Of course, what's cryptic to one player may be obvious to another (and I freely admit to not being very good at solving adventure puzzles), but I have the feeling that the author should have provided more clues to allow the player to deduce the internal logic of the puzzles. Alternatively, the puzzles could have been made a bit more intuitive; as it is, the they were simply too difficult for me to enjoy them. Finally, a very minor thing: the game uses Inform's "box" command to present a number of rather obscure quotes; this is a nice feature of Inform, but a feature that shouldn't be overused. I feel that "The Mind Electric" does overuse it a bit, considering the very small size of the game. "The Mind Electric" is a very interesting game, and in many ways a very good one. With some rewriting (especially of the ending), and perhaps with more intuitive puzzles, it would be even better; as it is, it is still one of the best games of the competition. From: Palmer Davis <palmer SP@G ansoft.com> Review appeared in SPAG #7 -- October 14, 1995 NAME: The Mind Electric PARSER: Inform v1502 AUTHOR: Jason Dyer SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports EMAIL: jdyer SP@G kitts.u.arizona.edu AVAILABILITY: IF Archive ATMOSPHERE: Incomprehensible WRITING: Surreal CHARACTERS: Limited PLOT: Linear, branching in two in several spots. PUZZLES: Quite a bit of "What am I thinking?" DIFFICULTY: Easy enough once you figure out what is going on This is the only game in the division with a clear plot not firmly tied to the everyday. You are captured by the other side in some sort of virtual reality war, and your "mind essence" is somehow imprisoned (exactly how is never satisfactorily explained); the object of the game is to escape. The environment is highly stylized and rather surreal, like many cyberpunk depictions of the "Net"/"Matrix"/"Cyberspace"/VR/whatever. Too stylized and surreal, in fact -- the game doesn't always provide enough context to figure out what is going on without resorting to the help system, making much of the game an exercise in trying to guess what the author is thinking. I *still* don't understand why the answer to one puzzle that I stumbled across by brute force worked! You don't even get a large part of the background to the situation until you reach the very end. The endgame was perhaps this entry's strongest feature; a nice (and finally understandable!) little puzzle led to a denouement with a neat philosophical twist that left a much nicer impression than the previous two hours of head-scratching otherwise would have. Sadly, the issues raised in the teaser and ending have no impact on the rest of the game and aren't otherwise expanded upon. A nice plus, particularly for a reviewer anxious to explore as widely as possible within the two hour time limit, was the rather extensive help system, like that in _Zork_Zero_. It isn't context-dependent, and the player can completely spoil the game by referring to it, but it's quite complete, and, for that matter, the best in the competition. Unfortunately, it is needed to explain what's going on in places where the game is indecipherable. BOTTOM LINE: Huh? From: Gareth Rees <gdr11 SP@G cl.cam.ac.uk> Review appeared in SPAG #8 -- February 5, 1996 NAME: The Mind Electric PARSER: Inform's usual AUTHOR: Jason Dyer PLOT: None EMAIL: jdyer SP@G kitts.u.arizona.edu ATMOSPHERE: Good AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive WRITING: Good PUZZLES: Impossible, bizarre SUPPORTS: Inform ports CHARACTERS: None DIFFICULTY: Impossible w/o hints I enjoy playing a game in which I am plunged into a new universe with unfamiliar but logical laws which I can discover by experimentation and careful thinking. "The Mind Electric" seemed to promise that, but it didn't deliver. The world it presented made no sense as a real world, and still made no sense when interpreted as some kind of "Neuromancer"- style virtual reality (i.e., the objects and landscapes are visual representations of programs and data in the memory of a network of computers). I didn't feel as though I was in a world with logical laws that I could deduce; I felt instead that I was in a world where an ad-hoc rationalisation could be produced for any event, however meaningless. I think the majority of those who commented on "The Mind Electric" on rec.arts.int-fiction (and it was the game which seemed to receive the most debate) would agree with me. For example, at some point in the game I need to pick out one of ten thousand boxes, or else I will die. There is an intelligent cube which cannot talk, but wants to tell me the number of the correct box. There are several easy and straightforward ways it might do this. One way would be binary chop: the cube blinks if the number I guess is too high, and nods if I guess too low. Another way would be for the cube to communicate the number directly: "The cube blinks four times, then pauses, then blinks three times, then pauses...". But instead it insists on playing "Mastermind" with me, which might have been appropriate in "The Magic Toyshop," but not in a life and death situation! One possibility for improvement would have been to give a set of rules at the start. Infocom's games "A Mind Forever Voyaging" and "Suspended" are similar in some ways to "The Mind Electric," and those games come with manuals explaining the nature of the world into which the player is plunged, and details on the kind of commands that might be expected to work in that world. The shareware game "Enhanced" doesn't come with a manual, but it does have a gentle introductory section in which the player is prodded into experimenting with the game's capabilities. Either of these approaches, followed by a consistent way of interacting with the virtual world, would have helped "The Mind Electric" become playable. Even ignoring the debate about the nature of the world and the difficulty of the puzzles, it was just a dull game! The backstory (who are the Kaden and the Souden? what was I spying on and why? how did I got into this mess in the first place? who is the mysterious character who is trying to get me out?) sounded much more interesting than what actually happened in the game. Jason Dyer's responses in rec.arts.int-fiction suggest that he had a much more clearly worked-out rationalisation for the events in "The Mind Electric" than actually appears in the game: As for the paper puzzle, well, the paper was a gift from the tall man. He had access to the passwords, but, was unable to send messages that were too long without being detected [...] logically speaking, knowledge of how a duplicator operates is one thing not erased in loyalty transfers since both Kaden and Souden use it. Perhaps there should have been more of this background (and maybe a character or two?).
A Mind Forever Voyaging
From: Graeme Cree <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> Review appeared in SPAG #5 -- April 19, 1995 NAME: A Mind Forever Voyaging GAMEPLAY: Infocom Standard AUTHOR: Steve Eric Meretzky PLOT: Quite Good EMAIL: ? ATMOSPHERE: Perfect AVAILABILITY: LTOI 2 WRITING: Quite Good PUZZLES: Not puzzle-oriented SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports CHARACTERS: Well developed DIFFICULTY: Advanced A Mind Forever Voyaging is often billed as Infocom's first serious science fiction (much to the chagrin of Starcross and Suspended fans). You are Perry Sim, who believed himself a normal human being until one day (in adult life) you awake to find that you are in fact the world's first sentient computer, and that the illusion of your earlier life had been a necessary part of your programming process. Your first mission is to test the value of the controversial Plan for Renewed National Purpose, a long-term economic stimulus program. To do this you must travel into a virtual reality computer simulation of the nation ten years in the future and make recordings of several everyday activities you will find there. After doing so, you discover that simulations of times even farther in the future have been made available for you to investigate. In the final section of the game you must deal with the information you have discovered. Right away I had two serious problems with the game's premise. First, computer simulations of the future have always been extremely unreliable, and here we're asked to believe that we will develop one so accurate that it can actually determine the location of (as yet unplanned) parks and small businesses in Rockvil, South Dakota, where the game takes place. It is simply impossible to have enough information about people's private thoughts, especially ones that they haven't even had yet, to be able to factor this into a simulation. Secondly, even if such simulations were available, why couldn't the data simply be retrieved from the computer, rather than have to send someone into the simulation to view it directly? If you can suspend disbelief enough to accept the situation, then the game is quite good. Unlike other Infocom offerings, it is meant to be experienced, rather than played. The first two parts of the game have almost no puzzles, focusing instead on exploration and discovery as you walk the streets of Rockvil, watching daily life, seeing what activities can be attributed to the effects of the Plan, and watching the changes that take place over time. If you've ever enjoyed returning to places you once lived to see the changes, then you will probably enjoy this game. Vacant lots become drugstores, buildings get torn down and replaced with different ones, and people's attitudes towards you may change from time to time. On the other hand, if what you enjoy most about text games is the puzzle solving, you will probably get quite bored. It isn't clear why Infocom rated this game as Advanced. Most of the puzzles are in the third section of the game. As should surprise no one, the Plan turns out to be not such a good idea, and you must defend yourself and your friends from its supporters who are not entirely pleased with the data you have uncovered. Meretzky was so pleased with the puzzle at the end of this section that he used virtually the identical one at the end of Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2. Years ago in an online Compuserve conference, Dave Lebling remarked that most of Infocom's games were done tongue-in-cheek because those titles invariably sold better than the others (this may explain why some of their non-tongue-in-cheek games, like Spellbreaker and Cutthroats, had funny documentation). A Mind Forever Voyaging is no exception, as it never sold particularly well. Nevertheless, I consider it one of Infocom's top three serious games (Spellbreaker and Arthur being the other two), and worth a playthrough by anyone except the most die-hard puzzle fanatics. From: Gerhard Peterz <peterz SP@G mags.net> Review appeared in SPAG #15 -- October 11, 1998 You are PRISM, a super computer able to "live" in simulations in the future. Right now, the world were you were created is slowly being pushed into chaos. Schools are becoming violent. Suicides are up. Overpopulation and food shortage threaten the world. A Senator Richard Ryder has proposed a plan that everyone is willing to follow. But there is one thing that stands between the plan's finishing stage. You. It is your mission to simulate the future of the plan and hurl yourself far into the future. A land of wonders and peace, or one of cruelty and death? Only you can decide if the plan shall fall through. Overall, AMFV is a great game. The plot is really intriguing and Rockville, the city that the simulations take place, is a vast area of exploration throughout the time periods. The writing is good quality and excellent. It draws you into the game. The best points of this game are: 1) The writing is just superb. 2) The ability to visit and compare the same city in 10 year intervals. 3) The amount to explore and see. A few weak points: 1) The library feature doesn't really need to be used. 2) You have to wait a bit, but sleep mode takes care of most of the time.
Mingsheng
From: Cirk Bejnar <eluchil404 SP@G yahoo.com> Review appeared in SPAG #39 -- January 7, 2005 TITLE: Mingsheng AUTHOR: Deane Saunders EMAIL: deane SP@G rexx.co.uk DATE: October 2004 PARSER: Inform SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters AVAILABILITY: IF Archive URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2004/zcode/mingsheng/mingsheng.z5 VERSION: Release 1 Mingsheng is an interactive retelling of the mythical origins of Tai Chi. The puzzles are not to difficult and are for the most part intuitive and well clued. Only the last one left me scratching my head. The writing is fairly strong and creates a good sense of place, through the occasional asides about Taoist philosophy were a bit much for me. The game inhabits a very different metaphysical space from my own and I found its more didactic moments off-putting. But there was never more than a temporary annoyance. The coding was competent and I found no bugs. The design was likewise strong with no wasted locations and clear connections between them. Items were only used once, but locations sometimes had more than one purpose. Special kudos for the design of the knowledge puzzle. I've seen several IF games attempt to test learning rather than merely item gathering but this is the best example that I've seen to date. To sum up, Mingsheng is a strong if not particularly outstanding entry. It is fairly short, even by comp standards and there are one or two places where additional polish would be nice. Nevertheless, it fully succeeds in what it set out to do, and does so with style and grace. From: Jacqueline Lott <jacqueline.a.lott SP@G gmail.com> Review appeared in SPAG #39 -- January 7, 2005 I appreciate this piece on a couple of different levels. As a fellow author, I appreciate writing a piece of interactive fiction to explore a concept, to create a world in which themes can be envisioned and realized, to develop an atmosphere that nurtures the quiet that you embrace through your observance of the Tao. This isn't a game about achieving a goal so much as it's a piece about exploring the path. My guess is that Saunders wrote this as much for himself as he did for others (or perhaps more). As a player, I appreciate the concepts that shone through in the piece, even if they weren't fully realized: beauty, nature, complement, strength through peace; though this was not a good medium for what he was trying to achieve. I'm at a loss as to what method might be better suited for the task, though... short of experiencing the story in the real world. As someone who has spent a bit of time comparing the Tao and Buddhism (though not nearly enough), and as someone who practices daily meditation, and as someone who is fascinated and inspired by the traditional (not necessarily contemporary) Chinese love of nature, as someone who spends a disproportionate amount of time thinking about and interacting with nature, I enjoyed the experience as much as I could. It's difficult to appreciate the quiet of the piece while you're running about through the woods solving puzzles. The drive behind the plot will have meaning for some, I think, but not most. Again, however, I respect the author's reasons for writing this (though of course I'm only speculating as to his desires). This was an excellent attempt, but for some reason it just didn't grasp me in quite the way that I believe was intended. The appreciation of the subject definitely shines through, but somehow it's jumbled and confused and tarnished by the medium. It should have affected me more, and I suspect that I'm probably one of the competition players most open to the idea of a game like this.
A Moment of Hope
From: Joe Mason <jcmason SP@G uwaterloo.ca> Review appeared in SPAG #19 -- January 14, 2000 TITLE: A Moment of Hope AUTHOR: Simmon Keith E-MAIL: traevoli SP@G usa.net DATE: November 1999 PARSER: TADS standard SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive) URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition99/tads/amoment/amoment.gam VERSION: 0.258 My definition of successful atmosphere in a piece of IF is one that makes me feel I can type things far outside the scope of the default library. A Moment of Hope has exactly this type of atmosphere. Even though the game hadn't shown any particular flexibility of parser, at one point I felt certain that it would understand "grin at girl" and take appropriate action. Of course, the action wasn't understood, but it's a testament to the quality of the writing that I felt it might be: it seemed like the thing to do in that situation, and I really felt like I was there. Unfortunately, this illusion of freedom doesn't translate into real freedom. A Moment of Hope doesn't really have much interaction: its mostly limited to reading messages and moving around. In fact, there's one scene where you are writing a message, and going through several drafts. There's not even an option to send the "wrong" draft: both "write message" and "send message" will erase the current version and give the next, until your character hits on the right phrasing. The effect is more like a static story dribbled out between prompts than a true interactive story. However, the story is good enough that I didn't really mind that much. One of the best things about the story is its sense of timing. It's told in a series of short scenes, and although it could easily have unfolded in one location, each scene is set in a different place. The locations are very well described and serve to give a different mood to each scene, which otherwise would leave the story hitting the same tone over and over. A lot of the action is internal. There are usually two parallel streams of description - one describing what is happening, and one describing the protagonists thoughts, which are often elsewhere. This occasionally seems a little mechanical, but mostly is effective at portraying someone who is distracted by their own emotions. Some may find that they are told how they feel too much, though. Some may also find the main character a little bit over acted as well. In my case, he reminded me too much of myself in high school to be able to level this criticism fairly. Quickly cutting from scene to scene also allows the story to avoid having two dimensional NPC's: the game will fade out just before a conversation, and the next scene will summarize through the player's musing on the outcome. Other interaction occurs by email. The technique works very well, but I'm not sure how well it could be sustained in a longer game. On the whole, A Moment of Hope succeeds much more than it fails, thanks to good writing and a plot that is about relationships rather than quests and monsters. It's a nice change from the bulk of IF. Base: 8 (Really good game, but a few flaws) -1 (Not very interactive) +1 (Tells a good story) Final: 8 (Really good game, but a few flaws)
Moments Out Of Time
From: Duncan Stevens <dnrb SP@G starpower.net> Review appeared in SPAG #27 -- January 4, 2002 TITLE: Moments Out of Time AUTHOR: L. Ross Raszewski E-MAIL: rraszews SP@G hotmail.com DATE: 2001 PARSER: Inform standard (with modifications) SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters (some better than others) AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD) URL: ftp://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2001/inform/moments/moments.z6 VERSION: Release 1 L. Ross Raszewski's Moments Out of Time works almost despite itself; it appears to promise one thing and delivers another, does a whole bunch of things wrong on the game design front, and is almost certain to have an anticlimactic ending. And yet, for all that, it won my heart with the depth of its implementation and the imaginativeness of its worldbuilding, and I simply couldn't bring myself to dislike it. What's going on? That's a long, complicated question, and primary among the aforementioned game design sins is that it takes a long time to figure it out. It turns out that you're a researcher for some sort of futuristic lab that's developed a time-travel device, and you're going back into the past to poke around and learn what you can learn. This, however, is how your mission is described: Clearance granted for immediate StreamDive. Target is local grid reference 0x1549. Temporal Reference 785278.7 UDC. We will be in phase for StreamDive at 865741.3 UDC. Dive duration not to exceed .5 units UDC (12 hours local time). Stream Capacitance field will be set for auto-recall at this time. Research unit indicates high levels of stream distortion in this zone, indicating that premature extraction may not be possible. Mission Summary: The purpose of your StreamDive is historical research. We have isolated an evacuated area to minimize potential corruption. You are to record all findings, but avoid direct contact with any inhabitants. Records from this zone are fragmentary, so any documents of historical interest should be added to your DataStore. This is called "leaving the player with more questions than answers" -- what's a StreamDive? what's stream distortion? how am I supposed to record all findings? what's my DataStore? and who am I and what am I doing and why? -- and while the questions do get answered, the immediate effect is along the lines of "start taking notes NOW," not the best hook. The description above certainly gets points for having the feel of real scientific gobbledygook, but I'd have traded that for a little more accessibility. Worse, however, is what follows--it seems that in your delve into the past, you can take only a limited number of tools that will help you delve into what you find (one tool that scans for anomalies, another that makes a map, another that allows interfacing with electronic devices, etc.), and you have to choose which you want to take based on, er, not much besides your own intuitions. As in, you don't know much about what's coming, and you don't know how the interactions work, and you don't even know what the game considers important (more on this later), and frankly it's a peculiar game design choice (especially because it's easy to make choices that will severely limit your interaction potential). It's all the more perplexing because there's no inherent reason that I can see why the game had to limit your tool-carrying capacity -- it certainly enhances the replay potential, since it's impossible (or nearly so) to experience everything in the game with only one set of tools, but the tradeoff is likely to be frustration when the player realizes that his options are severely curtailed at move 300 because of a choice he made on move 5. Once the exploration starts, more problems arise. One of the game's most important locations is made inaccessible fairly early on by an unforeseeable event (one that's so reminiscent of a similar device in Zork III that I took it as an homage), necessitating that the player either do what's needed in that area beforehand or prevent the blocking off by being on the spot at the right time with, suffice it to say, a rather incongruous action (necessitating a certain tool, of course). There are umpteen locked doors, each with its own key hidden in a strange and unexpected place, and while there's a tool that helps get around that problem, without that tool progress is slowed considerably. And while you eventually get a feel for the interesting things that are there to be found, and accordingly figure out which rooms are likely to hold things of note, those leads are not at all initially apparent, leading to a lot of frustrating wandering hither and yon poking at stuff. The larger problem is that the game isn't entirely honest about what's going on -- the player is essentially told at the outset that this is an exploration game, so go poke around and see what turns up, and then gets sat down at the end for a debriefing that makes it fairly clear that your character had some goals in mind. (The debriefing is made even worse by a bug that makes it hard to progress at a key point without guessing a certain response; if there was a prompt for that response, I never saw it.) To some extent, the goals dovetail with an ordinary player's curiosity, but not entirely -- you're asked about details of the setting you find, even though there's no obvious reason why the details are important or why you should have noted them. The character may -- indeed, should -- have known about these goals all along, but he didn't share that knowledge with the player. The character remarks on some of the details as significant, to be sure, but not all of them -- and trying to remember small details (or poring over a transcript) so that you can answer trivial questions makes for a deeply dissatisfying ending to the game. It's possible that that was deliberate -- the game may set up a contrast between the wonder of discovery and the tedium and finickiness of the research apparatus -- but I'm not sure that that was a point worth making, if so. Ah, but the wonder of discovery -- for all its failings, the game gets that part down, and the most gripping points aren't so much Big Secrets as surprises and turning points in the life of a certain family. True, the total concentration of drama or intrigue in the stuff you find is a little high -- not all that much of it is as humdrum as you might expect -- but I didn't mind that aspect much, if at all, and the time frame (on the verge of war) tends to bring out drama anyway. What struck me was that I believed in the characters, even though I didn't like most of them all that much; two of them in particular both had enough warts and enough intriguing layers to make me interested in learning more about them. It's a pity, in a way, that the larger background (that of the period in general) is largely told to you up front, as the main thing I enjoyed about digging into the game was piecing together what had happened to the family, and piecing together what had happened to the world in general might have been even more fascinating (though, of course, a lot more work). The writing is good throughout the game, but the best-written parts are in the first person and take the voices of the characters; call me easily persuaded, but I was convinced. I found no false notes in the voices of the characters when they set their own thoughts down on paper -- some unappealing aspects, maybe, but very much true to life. That it’s difficult to give a story/exploration-based game any sort of pace or direction is not news, of course, and I don’t blame Moments for resorting to puzzles to achieve some sort of structure, keep the game from becoming a big lump of facts. In other words, the game as presently structured does make it likely (though not necessarily guaranteed) that the player will encounter general background introductory stuff first and only later find out the grittier details, and that’s not a bad thing. At the risk of Monday-morning-quarterbacking, however, I’m not sure it was necessary to introduce quite so many obstacles -- the portion of the game that closes off unexpectedly (and hence is unlikely to be found by the player until he or she knows to look for it at a certain time) might, in theory, have opened up after a certain time, or after the player learns certain facts (perhaps with something like "You take a closer look at the east wall. Sure enough, just as you read in the diary, there’s a hidden passage"). Likewise, the replay potential assured by the limited tool capacity might have been achieved by diverging paths of sorts, where alternative story branches offer different information, which would be a little less frustrating than you-see-the-opportunity-for-wondrous-insight-but-damn-you-brought-the- wrong-tool. The content of Moments is terrific, and it deserves friendlier game design. Patience and perseverance reveal Moments to be a worthy game -- well-written and well-imagined -- and it’s to the author’s credit, in a way, that I wished that less patience and perseverance had been necessary. As it was, I enjoyed it enough to give it an 8.
Moonbase
From: Tony Baechler <baechler SP@G myrealbox.com> Review appeared in SPAG #31 -- January 3, 2003 TITLE: Moonbase AUTHOR: Mike Eckardt (writing as QA Dude) EMAIL: mike SP@G tiredparents.com DATE: September 2002 PARSER: TADS 2 SUPPORTS: TADS 2 interpreters AVAILABILITY: IF Archive URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/tads2/moonbase/moonbase.gam VERSION: IF Comp release This game was all right, but apparently had a bug which prevented it from being completed. Also, there were spelling errors which should have been noticed. I am going to spoil a puzzle because I know that many players will not appreciate it. There is an instant death room to the north of the storage room, but because of the bug there seems to be no way to get around it. When I tried to get or wear the item needed, I was told that my load was too heavy, even though I dropped everything. Upon checking the walkthrough, I found out that I was in fact doing the right thing and no other solution was offered so I gave up. I have a slight objection to having to go to the author's site for the walkthrough. I also object to the assumption that everyone uses HTML TADS, so they must be using Windows or similar and can access Java. I am referring to the plaque in the foyer. It so happens that I do use Windows but my preference is the plain DOS TADS interpreter. It also happens that I am blind and have almost no access to Java sites, even if I use Internet Explorer. Authors, please quit assuming that everyone uses your OS and has the same resources available as you. This has applied to Adrift in the past and applies to this year's Glulx game. (No, I had no problem with reading the walkthrough, just the Java site. It did not look terribly interesting anyway, so I guess I did not miss much.) Sorry I was on my soap box, but I am done complaining for now. For a first time effort, the game is not too bad. It is fairly short and the puzzles are simple. There are no hints but they are not really needed. For amusement, read the curtains in the transporter rooms. That was probably the best part of the game. I quit with 13 points. Except the instant death room, I have no serious complaints. There is another slight bug, but not serious. If you climb the ladder, it never shows up on the status line and in fact it seems you cannot get off the ladder. Movement is unrestricted though, so I think a flag is set and nothing else. Also, the "x all" feature works and most objects have descriptions. There seems to be many unnecessary objects but I think I never got to the puzzle which required them. It also seems that you only need to use one puzzle per object. You must be carrying a certain tool to wear the item in the storage room. That is fine, but if you try to "tighten" something it will not work. My comp rating: 3
Moonglow
From: Mike Tulloch <tarage SP@G bellsouth.net> Review appeared in SPAG #41 -- July 15, 2005 TITLE: Moonglow AUTHOR: Dave Bernazzani EMAIL: daveber SP@G gis.net DATE: October 4, 2004 PARSER: Simple (Microform parser) SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware -- Author's site URL: http://www.gis.net/~daveber/miniventure/ VERSION: 3 Moonglow exudes a 50's Sci-Fi feel, that some may find to be cliched, but it does provide a familiar backdrop in an economy of words. You see a UFO crash in your field; you can guess what unfolds next. Moonglow, like Catseye, is a 10k adventure, but it feels more polished due to its more robust parser. Like the aforementioned game, it is lean on description, terse with its replies, and consists of only a few verbs and objects. I also discovered an instant death routine that seemed a bit capricious. As with Catseye, you can't save the game, should the need or desire arise. The puzzles here are a medium level of difficulty, but I found them rewarding. First, they are separate puzzles (not simply part of one big puzzle as in Catseye); second, they are creative, in that they made sense, weren't immediately obvious, and yet weren't insanely difficult. The plot proceeds linearly but does involve a lot of "guess the verb" towards the end, however, due to the lack of helpful responses. In comparison to Catseye, Moonglow is more descriptive, more interesting, and more realistic. (Yes, it's a realistic SF.) Moonglow is diver