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       Reviews: IF Competition 2001

              Andrew Plotkin
People have already started saying that
it's a weak year, and I think I agree. So-
me people are saying it's an awful year,
and I don't agree with that. Fewer games
than usual made me stand up and say "Yes!
I'm really enjoying this!" But that's a
skew, not a total failure of quality. Look
at the ranges: I rated 36% of the games (9
out of 25) in the top half of my personal
rating scale. Last year, that was 48%.
This is a drop, but it's not the end of IF
as we know it. (Two years ago was a weak
year, too.) I didn't give out a 10 this
year. I did give three 9s; none of them
shone quite as brightly as I expect from a
10. This does not, of course, mean they
were failures.

            Other comments...
  I got started late, and only played half
the games. Oops. As usual, I bent the ru-
les slightly by glancing at the first
screen of each game in advance, before de-
ciding what to play. Now, I started out
with a "play one long game and one short
game every day" plan, but I took too many
days off to finish the course. So my list
of completed games is not a random selec-
tion; it's influenced by how well the ope-
ning text pulled me in. I don't think
that's particularly unfair. Even if it is,
it's only one source of influence; I also
(as usual) avoided Windows-only games. I
play what I play.
  My "reviews" continue in the
short-and-random vein. (Potentially embar-
rassing, as I wrote three intensely long
and detailed reviews of Playstation games
during the IFComp period... but hey: I
play what I play.) Conversation menus. Se-
veral games used this. I continue to find
the effect weak. I said this last year,
too, and repeated exposure is not making
me any happier with the device.
  Glulx (and, generally, multimedia IF
systems) seem to have inspired a wide ran-
ge of responses. Some authors are writing
games whose sole point is to demo multime-
dia features; some are integrating grap-
hics and gameplay; some are taking advan-
tage of one or two carefully-selected fea-
tures, such as multiple windows, hyper-
links, or background music. I think this
is healthy. We will continue to see a wi-
der range of experiment in upcoming IF
works.


  Enough of that. Here are the scores,
from highest to lowest. (I've added pluses
and minuses in the interest of further
discrimination, although of course only
the plain integers counted in official vo-
ting.)
  9+: All Roads 
  9 : Prized Possession 
  9-: Fusillade 
  8 : The Gostak 
  8-: Vicious Cycles 
  8-: Elements 
  7+: Journey from an Islet 
  7 : Best of Three 
  6 : Grayscale
  5 : Bane of the Builders 
  5 : Earth And Sky 
  5-: an apple from nowhere 
  4+: Fine Tuned 
  4 : Carma 
  4 : Stick it to the man 
  3+: The Evil Sorcerer 
  3-: Volcano Isle 
  2+: Stiffy Makane: The Undiscovered Country 
  2 : The Cruise 
  2-: Jump 
  1+: You Are Here 
  1+: Silicon Castles 
  1 : A Night Guest 
  1 : Schroedinger's Cat 
  1-: The Newcomer 


  And the comments, in the order that I
played the games. (Foot, er, headnote: I
did not know the true identity of any of
the pseudonymous entrants, except for Adam
Thornton. In case you care. And although
Adam kindly lists me in the credits of
"Stiffy Makane", I really didn't do any
more beta-testing than to start up the ga-
me and see if the opening credits worked
right.)



Schroedinger's Cat
James Willson
Okay, things are there only some of the
time. I do not get the rule that governs
this, but since the "about" text says the-
re is nothing else in the game, I am not
motivated to work it out.


Earth and Sky
"Lee Kirby" (Paul O'Brian)
Cute, but only a first chapter. 
The author provides three different con-
versational systems (pre-scripted conver-
sation, ask/tell about, and menu). This
makes it very clear that menus are my le-
ast favorite. Yes, really, it breaks my
sense of immersion more when the game
prints out six different possibilities for
my line, than when the game prints six al-
ternating lines of a dialogue (without gi-
ving me any choices at all). I wound up
always choosing "say nothing" followed by
"talk to character", to get that dialogue
-- but I wish there was an option to make
the menus not appear at all.
  Somehow the introduction left me expec-
ting a more hard-science game. When the
superpowers showed up, I had a bit of men-
tal whiplash, and the insta-beast didn't
help.
  The initial sequence, when you're expe-
rimenting with your powers and trying
things, with Austin prompting you -- a lot
of work went into that. It reacts nicely
to anything you try, and what you try af-
fects the rest of the sequence. Nitpick:
gigawatt is a measure of energy flow rate,
and is pretty much meaningless for a ligh-
tning bolt.



The Gostak
Carl Muckenhoupt
  Also cute. And the idea sort of works --
except that I'm pretty sure you can't fi-
nish the game without looking at the
hints. (I couldn't actually finish the ga-
me at all. Can't figure out how to skobe
the shamtag.)
  Now, this doesn't invalidate the idea.
Instead of playing a game that you don't
understand (and learning about it in the
process), you're performing the activity
of playing a game and looking at hints,
none of which you understand. (But you're
learning about it in that process.) It's a
slightly different joke. But a slightly
less cool one.
  Still pretty cool, though. I did, in
fact, understand a lot of it. (I got the
in-joke references to Nethack directions,
Smullyan yes/no words, and of course the
title. Any others will have to be explai-
ned to me.)



Vicious Cycles
Simon Mark
  I dunno. The story is well-imagined, but
it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The
whole thing seems slightly thin. I wound
up looking at the walkthrough twice -I
felt like I had literally tried everything
possible with the very small range of ac-
tion available. (In fact, of course, I
hadn't, but that's the feeling I had.)
  Severe guess-the-noun problem with "ask
Ethan about *". Lot more synonyms needed
there.
  "You know what to do" is rather a pain-
ful cliche at this point.



The Newcomer
Jason Love
  Not finished. Gosh, I guess that expla-
ins why the game file is so short.



Grayscale
Daniel T. Freas
  I didn't feel like I was given much of a
goal, nor any plot along the way. if this
is a walk through the ocean of the aut-
hor's soul, about all I've learned is that
I can't read his poetry. (I can't read
most poetry.) Good eye for scenery.
  Most of the puzzles... weren't solvable.
By which I don't mean they were impossib-
le, or even hard. I mean that, if I lacked
the solution, I wasn't given anything that
would lead me in the right direction. And
if I had a solution without a puzzle, I
wasn't given anything that led me in that
direction either. A general lack of direc-
tion, is what I'm trying to get across he-
re... Spelling and grammar are somewhat
weak. (It's easy to misspell "fluorine",
but to blow that and "iodine" both in the
same sentence is a winner. :) Some doors
open automatically when you move through
them; some don't. And it's not always loc-
ked doors that stay closed and unlocked
doors that open. I typed "unlock french
door" while holding the key, and it said
"You can't reach the lock from this side
of the glass." Later I broke the glass and
then typed "unlock french door with key",
and it said "The key doesn't seem to fit
the lock." So I gave up. Turned out that
just "unlock french door" would have wor-
ked at that point. This was extremely mis-
leading.
  The game says it's impossible to get in-
to an unwinnable state, but that's not
much comfort when you put on a mask, can't
take it off, and die a few turns later.
There may be a way to get rid of it, but
if the player doesn't know how, it is an
unwinnable state for that player, with all
the attendant negative consequences.
(I.e., if the player hasn't saved, he's
screwed.) For some reason, I really like
the fact that if you wander into the pine
forest, you come out somewhere randomly.
Maybe it's just the Zorkness of it all.
"get bars" hangs the game.



Silicon Castles
"Jack Maet" (David Given)
Impressive as a Z-machine abuse. Not IF.
  One IF-relevant note: the opening screen
has a timed delay. You can't interrupt the
delay. This annoyed me. (Yes, I was lite-
rally pounding the space bar trying to get
the game to respond.)



Journey from an Islet
Mario Becroft
  More of an exercise than a game... well,
more of an exercise than a story.
  Definitely a game.
  Heavy on the description, which works
reasonably well. Sense of wonder, but so-
mewhat on the artificial side. Light on
the plot, and I seem to be into plot this
year, so I wasn't all that excited. "Plea-
sant diversion", is what comes to mind.
  (Do the pipes have eight notes or se-
ven?)



The Cruise
Norman Perlmutter
  Ack! Huge infodump!
  (Huge infodump with "Okay, you're now
sitting on the barstool" tacked onto the
end! Suppress that, please.)
  This is all awkwardly phrased and hard
to take seriously. I feel like the author
has a good sense of what's going on, and
what he wants to communicate, but it just
doesn't come across well.
  Oh, I notice that if you ask the man to
repeat his infodump, he also repeats the
actions of giving you a detector and
spraying stuff in your eyes. Editing nee-
ded. The "powerful magnets occupy[ing] the
bow and stern" were worth a chuckle. Po-
ints for a creative solution to the
ship-orientation problem... And "It deri-
ves its power from the force of orange-
ness" got a laugh, also. For the hundredth
time, if you must ask a yes/no question
that doesn't go through the standard com-
mand parser, use a different input prompt.
Okay, now I've got an "x" appearing every
turn. That can't be a good sign. The hints
say "You do have enough money for the time
being", but I don't. I give up. (It's only
a last point anyway.)



Prized Possession
Kathleen M. Fischer
  Oh, good. Short and highly scripted -- a
sequence of very short scenes -- but enga-
ging. Characters, background, description
all solid. The plot seemed somewhat vague.
I don't think I ever caught all of what
was going on, even after seeing multiple
paths and endings; the scenes were indivi-
dually strong, but I was dragged from one
to the next without enough sense of con-
nection.
  I often felt like I had just one or two
options available. Sometimes this was in
general action and sometimes the conversa-
tion menus, but it actually felt about the
same either way. This game did not throw
me out of the narrative with its conversa-
tion menus; I much prefer this sort of
brief, abstract topic list to the more
common list of complete sentences.
  Nonetheless, the whole game did feel a
bit like a CYOA game. This is just my sen-
se of humor talking, but I would have pre-
ferred if, even if you end up marrying who
you want to marry, you still wind up pum-
ping out babies like a Krispy Kreme dough-
nut machine.
  Typo in the second sentence ("check").
Sigh.



Volcano Isle
Paul DeWitt
  When I started playing I immediately sa-
id, "Oh my, it's a Scott Adams adventure!"
  A few turns later, rather less amused, I
said "Oh, it's Zork."
  It's definitely old-fashioned, and not
particularly well-written. The design of
the game is functional, but it's got not-
hing in particular to attract the attenti-
on.
  "get in boat" really should be a synonym
for "enter boat".



You Are Here
Roy Fisher
  This seeks to emulate a bad fantasy MUD,
full of stereotypical mudders. I would say
it succeeds.
  Some of this is pretty clever, but not
enough, and it doesn't do anything with
what it's got. Apparently I'm supposed to
care about this because of a play someone
is performing in Canada somewhere, but
this is the IF competition, so I don't.
When I got stuck, I stopped playing.



All Roads
Jon Ingold
  I am well and fully pleased. This throws
a handful of confusion into the air, lets
you pluck a few grains out, and watches
the rest bounce into the cracks between
the cobblestones -- but you have just eno-
ugh to come out the other side.

  Venice in that era is still terribly,
terribly cool.
  (How can a three-legged stool rock?)



The Evil Sorcerer
Gren Remoz
  A bit of nostalgia for Classic Adventure
Gaming -- brightly-colored locations, exp-
licit plot-token hunting, random mixtures
of modern and generic-fantasy elements. I
enjoy that stuff more than you might think
from reading these comments. However, the
writing is clunky and the game doesn't co-
me off. Game-logic sometimes becomes ab-
surd. When Julia says you need a particu-
lar item, and she doesn't seem to notice
it is there in the room with you, the sen-
se of disbelief becomes strained.
  Inventory limit -- annoying and point-
less.
  Getting the rusty key is a terrible gu-
ess-the-verb problem. Should have about a
dozen more synonyms. I'd say even "get
key" should work, if you're holding the
appropriate item.



Fine-Tuned
"Dionysius Porcupine" (Dennis Jerz)
  This game has a terrific sense of at-
mosphere and prose, a medium-good sense of
plot, a weak sense of pacing, and a lousy
sense of actually being finished. I really
enjoyed the absurdly floofy first chapter.
The second chapter didn't seem to have
much to do with the first, and I didn't
gain much confidence that it would hang
together at all. The storyline does come
together more after that, but it goes in a
number of different absurd directions, and
I wasn't quite convinced.
  Unfortunately the last bits were full of
unpatched seams -- the game may work right
if you stay on the intended rails, but as
soon as you try to do anything else, you
get inappropriate daemon messages, skipped
segments of narration, and crashes.
  Even the walkthrough is buggy, for hea-
vens' sake. I managed to get nearly to the
end, but the last move is either unobvious
or broken, so I didn't see the ending.
  Nonetheless, the game has good writing
and a solid sense of what it's supposed to
be, which is worth a lot.
  The conversational responses don't track
game events very well. You can ask a cha-
racter about something before he tells you
about it, and the resulting text doesn't
make sense. (Try "ask aloysius about
stranger" too soon, for example.)
  (Debug mode left on in competition rele-
ase.)



Elements
John Evans
  You start this game with a bathing suit,
one sock, a keyring, and (optionally) a
tattoo. I have nothing to say about that
aspect of the game, but it does remind me
of a conversation I had several years ago:
Housemate: "And they came out on stage we-
aring nothing but fedoras and socks." Me:
"Hm. Well, that could actually cover quite
a bit, depending on where you wear the fe-
dora."
  Housemate: "...or the sock."
  Sorry. Back to the game. I started it
up, looked at the initial layout, read the
about text -- a classic case of "Inform
learning experience expanded into comp
entry". Oh no. Then I started wandering
around a bit, and realized I was enjoying
the damn thing.
  I bounced around and messed with toys
for nearly the full two hours. I wound up
looking at the hints frequently; too many
of the puzzles were unmotivated or underc-
lued. (Plus, a few bugs.) But it was still
fun.
  Needs more synonyms and responses. "to-
uch fire" : "You feel nothing unexpected."
The author says to examine the scenery,
but far too many scenery objects are
unimplemented -- this is such a spare en-
vironment (and intended for exploration)
that everything should be examinable, even
if it just gets a "not important".
  (Generally needs much more beta-tes-
ting.)
  Nope, I still don't like conversation
menus.



Fusillade
Mike Duncan
  Well-named. Each bit is well-written,
but I wish they all hung together better.
The few scraps of continuity, reprises of
one scene's background in another, work so
much better than the one-shots. I wish the
game had had a lot more of that.
  As it stood, I was reacting to each sce-
ne on its own. Some I liked, some I
didn't. But I didn't feel like much was
building up over the full course of the
game. So I had no reason to care about the
scenes that didn't grab me. The response
to "inventory" is "Sorry for all you pack
rats out there, but there is no inventory
command in this game - and neither is one
needed." Okay, but "examine me" gave me an
inventory listing; it's ingenuous to pre-
tend you can't do it. Since the game-help
specifically recommends "x me" as a way to
get oriented, perhaps "i" should map to
the same command.
  (Having finished the game, I still think
this is a good idea. It would fit in just
about every scene. "Look" and "inventory"
are reflexive commands; when they don't
work, I feel paralyzed, which is distrac-
ting.)
  The status line always has "/n/t" appen-
ded. I don't know if this is a bug in the
game or the TADS 2.5.4 engine -- it could
be the MaxTADS shell, but I don't think
so.
  Sheesh, if the text refers to "the long
cold thing", I should be able to type
"examine long cold thing".
 Generally doesn't give enough credence to
standard IF commands, even when they're
appropriate. In one scene the game sug-
gests resting, but "wait" is not a synonym
for "rest". More attention to synonyms,
when variant terms are used in the text --
"mines" for "mine", for example.



Jump
Chris Mudd
  The story tries to be about extremes of
emotion, but it doesn't involve me. Neit-
her the writing nor the interaction pulls
me in; I don't know enough, I'm just shown
these people.



A Night Guest
"Dr. Inkalot" (Valentine Kopteltsev)
  Er, well, I guess. The poetry is no good
and the game is a sequence of gu-
ess-the-next-line puzzles. (If you had to
rhyme, that would be clever, but no.)
  Extremely short, and not interesting.



Stiffy Makane: The Undiscovered Country
"One of The Bruces" (Adam Thornton)
  So this game is deliberately crude, stu-
pid, and offensive to very nearly everybo-
dy.
  It is funny in places, however. It is
not particularly erotic. For which I thank
all the gods.



an apple from nowhere
"steven carbone" (Brendan Barnwell)
  (For no particular reason, I'm writing
these comments as I play, instead of when
I'm done.)
  First-person, sigh -- although I guess
the author is trying to write in a style
that sticks out; not just first-person,
but all lower-case.
  (I don't know what the heck's going on
here.)
  Okay, the author is definitely playing
with prose styles here. However, now it's
over and I still don't know what the
heck's going on. We've definitely got ent-
husiasm, and the car chase is a great
set-piece, but I'd like it to be in aid of
something.



Bane of the Builders
Bogdan Baliuc
  I always like an exploring-alien-planet
theme, but this is pretty minor. The pro-
tagonist doesn't seem to react to his en-
vironment at all -- not even to, as he be-
lieves, live aliens -- and it's hard to
get excited. Nice idea for changing envi-
ronment.
  By the middle of the game, I'm playing
"guess the author's intent" and "guess the
verb", which is doubly disappointing. Al-
so, a boring maze. Very weak on implemen-
tation of commands. "Set blaster" not only
fails, it doesn't give you any clue that
"set blaster to stun" will work.



Best of Three
Emily Short
"Grant Stern"?!
  This is signed, so I guess I can compare
it to Galatea... The conversational web is
still an impressive device, but I am (as
usual) less interested in anything that
doesn't have a sci-fi/fantasy edge. I mes-
sed around with the dialogue for about
fifteen minutes, and then had a sudden
spasm of You're-All-Just-A-Pack-Of-Cards
and typed "topic sex" just to see what wo-
uld happen.
  I identified enough with the character
that I was (mostly) steering the conversa-
tion by my own impulses. I was uncomfor-
table saying anything that I wouldn't say
in real life; and the engine was willing
to accommodate me, which means that it's
probably very flexible in letting the
player shape the conversation.
  On the other hand, I identified enough
with the character that I resented being
drawn into this conversation which, in
fact, doesn't resemble anything that actu-
ally happens to me.
  Conclusion: well-written, but not in aid
of anything that really interests me. (Fo-
otnote: I spent half an hour trying to
dredge up the name of, you know, that
 statue game that Emily Short wrote,
starts with a "G"... Totally blanked. The
only answer that was materializing was Gi-
aconda -- and that was clearly leaking in
from an alternate universe. I hate when
that happens.)
  (Giaconda is probably worth playing,
though.)



Carma
"The Wanna-be Writer" (Marnie Parker)
  An interactive grammar test. Somewhat
amusing; I like the art; the test at the
end is nicely implemented, in a 3 in Three
sort of way. However, only barely a game.



Stick it to the man
"H. Joshua Field" (Brendan Barnwell)
  Good evocation of experience, and a lot
of character and dialogue description, but
after I wandered around for a while I rea-
lized I didn't have anything in particular
to do. Maybe something would have come up,
but I typed "x oscar" and the game hung.