I am revising my scoring system in a major way this year. In prior years, my system was an attempt to describe what kind of game would be a “10” or a “9” or an “8”... all the way down to “1”. I probably could have omitted the descriptions and just used intuition to rank each entry, to the same effect. I’m going for a more structured and less ambiguous ranking system this year, where each game is scored points in multiple categories. It’s still a little verbose, but with luck, it will make voting easier.

     I hope my reviews benefit the authors, while making for a good read in general. As in prior years, I’ll try to write each one directly after playing (whenever possible), and in the order played. They’ll form a sort of “judge’s journal” as a result. I’ll also run transcripts for games that support it. These will be available to each author for his or her own game, upon request.

     The first game in every IFComp is always the toughest to score and review. My enthusiasm from the prior year has given way to other responsibilities, and (I’m ashamed to admit) I’ve fallen into the bad habit of playing little to no Interactive Fiction in the spanning months. I tend to feel a little out of sorts with the first game, uncertain whether I’m being too critical or not critical enough. This year is even tougher, because I’ve adopted a new rating system that may keep my votes bottom-heavy if I’m too stingy with and protective of the 2’s.

     This is demonstrated perfectly by Doug Egan’s Afflicted. The writing is fine. The story is fine. The puzzles are fine (although they don’t extend much further than basic exploration and observation). It’s a technically sound game. But if no aspect of the game is “great,” it can be no higher than a “5” (or a “6” if given the bonus point) by my new scoring system. So, what really merits a categorical 2? Excellence? Or just anything that feels a step above mediocre?

     It’s obvious that the game’s core theme is intentionally hidden by the author, and I won’t spoil it here. That it becomes increasingly grim and disturbing should be enough to set the tone. At times, though, what’s probably meant to be macabre seems a little silly. It succeeds most of the time, and does offer up some gruesome imagery, but every once in a while it just seems more odd than shocking. (I’ve never, for instance, encountered any game in which the protagonist can experience the aftertaste of urine.)

     Before it goes full-on weird, it does a great job of putting the player in the role of a restaurant health and safety inspector. The premise seemed dull at the outset, but before long I was smirking and happily noting every violation I could come across – and actively seeking them out, no less. This is pretty important, because the story begins to open up as you encounter more violations and as you start to suspect the truth of things.

     The story’s biggest flaw is that it seems to rely on the player to carry on with the same sense of duty as the protagonist. That’s fine at first, but it’s hard to believe that any sane and rational-minded human being would carry on with his little notepad to the extent that this protagonist must. If there’s a legitimate reason beyond just an inflated sense of “being thorough,” it doesn’t come across in the story. I was already ready to bail out, yet the game insisted that I hadn’t yet completed my duty. To hell with duty. I’d have bolted to my car the moment the ice in the sink melted.

     The story’s second biggest flaw is that certain losing endings should probably go a little differently. In particular, it’s possible to get arrested. But, it’s possible to get arrested while carrying things that should raise a few eyebrows (or at least some kind of explanation in the ending). It’s not so much that the core story is on rails (I don’t mind this in most games), but there are a number of implausible circumstances (why isn’t the PC pursued down the hall, for instance) even discounting the supernatural.

     It’s a solid implementation, for the most part. I was pleased (especially early on) that many optional (and non-obvious) actions were anticipated by the author. The game was clearly tested and polished prior to release. I only encountered two sticking points, but they were pretty important sticking points.

     In the first, I couldn’t figure out how to make use of something found in a first aid kit. The pressure mounts, and each turn counts, yet I fumbled with the right verb or action to make it work. It turns out that some simple (and even obvious) phrasings work fine, but what I tried wasn’t outrageous or anything. I imagined the PC fumbling around the way I was, so it kind of worked for the story, but probably not as the author intended. In the second case, I tried to reassemble something the wrong way, to no obvious affect. I was missing, hmm… “joining” pieces, so to speak, but was left with the feeling that this just wasn’t something the game supported and I was on the wrong track. Later, thankfully, I tried again with better results. An opportunity was missed there, though, to clue the player and give a little hope for later.

     The protagonist can accumulate an inventory of generally useless stuff -- things encountered while noting violations, primarily. I hesitate to call them “red herrings” because they may be pieces of alternate puzzle solutions, but in my play-through (and selected re-plays) I never found uses. This leaves them feeling like red herrings, even if that’s not the case.

     There is one thing in particular the protagonist must do to advance the story, yet it’s something I suspect most players will try to avoid on subsequent play-throughs (or even UNDO to before it), yet I couldn’t find an alternative. I think there probably is an alternative, but I didn’t find it. Something obvious (using one of the items in inventory) didn’t work for me. And the game didn’t really give a good reason why it wouldn’t.

     All in all, I came away with the impression of a good, competently constructed game. I’m scoring it an optimistic “2” on writing -- its strongest quality -- although I expect even better from some of those I’ve yet to play. All other categories get a solid “1” (including the bonus point, just in case I’m being too tough on this year’s first entry), for a composite score of “7.”

     Update: After playing far too many poorly-tested, broken games after this one, I have bumped the implementation score up to “2” for a composite score of “8.”

     But it’s cute. And it’s not a bad game by any means. It’s just short, not very ambitious, and potentially hard to crack at the end. It rates a “6” using my self-imposed judging rules, and that puts it right about “average.”

     Renee entered the IFComp in 2005 with History Repeating, another short and sort-of nondescript average kind of game. I’d like to see something longer and more ambitious from this author in the future; something more substantial story-wise.

     Ananachronist is probably trying to be a game like All Things Devours or Mobius (or even Orevore Courier with its multiple vantage points that require some trial-and-error), but it never comes together. I’m tempted to say that it never quite comes together, but in many ways it’s not even close. The story bit at the very beginning is interesting, but it serves the unfortunate duty of hiding the player’s goal behind some confusing purple prose. The introduction isn’t bad, but it causes a paradox of its own. It’s only possible to make sense of it after you’ve figured out what your goal is, but you can’t figure out your goal unless you know what the introduction is all about.

     For quite a while, I made modest progress exploring the game’s three different “overlapping” zones. “Exploring” is about all I managed to do, though. I had skipped the tips in the included “readme.txt” for fear of spoilers, but in looking back, I doubt I would ever have tried some of the things it suggested I try. The game gave me no reason to suspect that the three zones could be influenced by each other in those ways. If it did, I completely missed it. It’s probably something the player is supposed to “figure out,” but there has to be some kind of basis for discovering the rules of the game world.

     This is a big enough problem, but Ananachronist has more. When the game does tell you what to do (searching for something in the computer, for instance), it doesn’t actually accept the phrasing it suggests (you must “look up” things in the computer instead). An item that is supposed to work in “line of sight” with a panel actually works only if you “wave” it (and that’s not even something the text suggested). Keep in mind that all the while, the player really has no idea what he’s supposed to be doing. There are miscellaneous things to interact with, but it’s nearly impossible to deduce why you’re interacting with them, what it’s supposed to achieve, or how it all fits together.

     Worse, there is a bit of a problem with consistency that makes even trial-and-error difficult. Take, for instance, the following exchange:

     >touch canvas
     You feel nothing unexpected.

     >open canvas
     You push the flaps aside but they fall back in place. Nothing stops you from just walking through them however.

     >pull canvas
     The canvas simply disintegrates at your touch.

     This would be a minor complaint, except that getting the canvas to disintegrate turns out to be important. But, who’d have thought to even try it, given that it behaved in completely ordinary ways in response to ordinary actions? The game’s entire design proves again and again that the author has everything worked out in a perfectly reasonable way, but he just wasn’t able to translate it into a fair and fun experience for other people.

     One action that the player must perform many times -- putting things on the pedestal -- could benefit from more simplicity. It might have been re-worked as a much shorter action, for instance. It could also be implied that the player intends to remove the current item before placing the next, without requiring that the player do so explicitly.

     Despite the numerous problems -- unclued and misclued puzzles, a lack of discernable goals, unimplemented scenery objects, counter-intuitive actions, and even a few run-time parser errors involving attempts to open and unlock things -- I had high expectations that it was all going to pay off at the end. I finished the game on autopilot (i.e., a restart, and then a cut-and-paste of the game’s walkthrough commands), but it ends with nothing; no explanation, no big congratulations, no clever tying-together of everything that came before. If the journey is the reward, it never even took the scenic route.

     This is a tough one to score. Categories are a toss-up between 0 and 1 (but never 1 and 2). With testing, revision, better clues and a real ending, it could become a pretty playable game. It needs more, though. Even if, as the author says, everything else has been sacrificed for the sake of this one puzzle (and that’s not even accurate; it’s a series of puzzles just like any adventure game), it’s not interesting enough as-is.

     It has what could be a good core concept, but it’s marred by too many problems in the implementation. Rated on what it is, with the benefit of the doubt given for what it could be, I’m rating it a “1” in every category (without the bonus). That’s a composite score of “5.” My gut says “4,” but I’m sticking with my rating system.

     (A long rant criticizing my own scoring system snipped from here.)

     Opening Night is told in three acts, although they aren’t identified as such. The story moves seamlessly from what I think of as a traditional “adventure game,” into a middle where it becomes evident the author is up to something more than he seemed to be at the beginning, and finally to an on-rails bit with revelations and explanations. This type of story is probably going to feel clichéd to other judges, which is a shame because even though it’s been done in IF, it hasn’t been done to death. In fact, of several possibilities that occurred to me in the middle and toward the end, this particular twist didn’t cross my mind -- and I’ve done this twist (sort of). So, for me, it worked.

     Information the author provided states that it’s not supposed to be heavy on puzzles, but I still found the first act (and to a lesser extent, the second act) entertaining as a puzzle game. I got stuck in the second act trying to cross a large gap in the floor, and had to be more observant and revisit a prior location (as the hints suggested) to find the solution. That took so long to solve that the pacing -- especially since this was at a point where players will want to make quicker progress to find out what’s really going on -- came to a halt. This may not be a sticking point for other players, though. It might even be the first thing that comes to mind.

     (Another long rant, this time on pacing in IF, snipped from here.)

     Tonally, Opening Night isn’t consistent. It starts out as sort of a would-be romance. Then it’s kind of creepy in spots. One particular scene with the trappings of a slapstick comedy seems ill-placed in a game that later turns serious, introspective, and a little depressing. Should we pity the protagonist? Should we find the situation amusing? It’s hard to do both.

     If left at that, it would probably feel accidental and shoddy. Opening Night tells a story, though, that continues to bounce around in my head well after the last turn was taken. It’s comedy and tragedy -- the masks of theatre -- both fighting for dominance but separated by two distinct plot layers. The comedic layer is optimistic, light-hearted, and pleasant. The tragic layer is grim and mildly disturbing.

     On a technical level, it’s a moderately solid game. I noted a few minor problems in my transcript, but nothing game-halting. The puzzle with the trash can could have been smoother, allowing either for the two-step action that seemed logical or for a slightly different solution. A bit of painted-on text tells me I “might” be able to reach a window even after I’ve gone through and come back. Things that would seem movable are described as “fixed in place.” You can’t always refer to things in the game in the same way the game does (i.e., “x hole” works, but “x jagged hole” does not). Very near the end, it’s possible to go north into what’s probably an accidental, undescribed room. At one point, you can no longer go south even though nothing in the game explains why.

     A few plot points are definite head-scratchers. If the door leading out of the storage room is blocked by so much theatre clutter (props, costumes, etc), then how could anybody have left except by the same way I entered? It could be explained away given the ending, but it’s more likely the door was blocked simply because the player couldn’t be allowed to get into the theatre some other way. For that matter, I thought I might find passable clothes among the costumes, but the game never discounted the possibility directly. It just kind of ignored my attempts to find a better suit among the clothes on the racks.

     Be warned: The next paragraph can be considered a plot spoiler.

     Another head-scratcher presents itself after the ending, in regards to the protagonist being a young adult in 1917. If you pay attention to the ambient goings-on outside the theater near the end of the game, you’ll probably see what I mean. I guess it’s possible, but it begs the question of just how active the PC really was (and even could have been) during the game’s events. Given that you can’t actually reach the fire escape later in the game, maybe the answer is “not very” (except for some crawling).

     On individual merits, Opening Night succeeds as a story worth playing. I liked the relatively simple puzzles too, even though one left me stuck for quite a while. It’s solid enough to avoid major technical problems, and obviously had adequate beta-testing. That just leaves the writing.

     Nothing is “wrong” with the writing, per se. It’s good, solid adventure game text, unmarred by the kinds of jump-out-at-you mistakes often seen in IFComp games. Still, certain bits just felt a little off, as though the author was struggling for synonyms and came up blank. These are phrases like “filling it equally full” and “corridor ends in a dead end” and “brilliantly bright.” Simple re-wording -- for instance, “corridor dead-ends” -- might have done the trick. That’s an amateur’s opinion, but when even an amateur picks up on those things, it might be worth checking.

     My gut, as scoring goes, says “8.” The game isn’t perfect, but it won me over. The problem is, only the story scores a 2 out of 2 and even with the bonus point, that’s a “7.” This might be one I vote higher than the review score. Unless too many of its upcoming competitors raise the bar, Opening Night deserves a spot in the top ten.

     The story really wants to be detailed and epic, but the rest of the game holds it back. It has an intriguing opening, well-placed pieces of backstory, and some hints of a more thought-out game world. It never approaches its potential, though. The story is just good enough to earn the game’s only “1” in a 2-point category, but it could be much more than it is. A tapestry seemed to hint at the solution for an upcoming confrontation, but it was a promise unfulfilled. The game doesn’t culminate in any sort of conflict, climax, or endgame. It has a nice little revelation near the end, but it comes as just another step in a story that doesn’t ever rise or fall in other ways. Even the protagonist, who should be a pretty interesting character, never quite is.

     Outside the context of the competition, it isn’t a game I can recommend unless it sees a lot more work in all areas. But, as an IFComp entry, I did enjoy the time I spent with it. I appreciate what the author was trying to do, but even given the bonus point, it only scores a “3.” I’d like to see more from this author in the future, though -- especially after she gets a better handle on programming with Inform and can spend more time with proofreading and beta-testing.

     According to one not-so-great Wil Wheaton movie, fish don’t blink, but that’s beside the point. Traditional second-person IF works best when you describe things to the player in a way that gets him to feel or think what you want him to feel or think. The more you tell a player what he’s feeling or thinking, the more he’s likely to fight it. First-person IF, as this game demonstrates, works best when the author does exactly the opposite. First-person IF that thinks it’s second-person IF is the problem. Everybody Dies forces a greater disconnect between the player and the protagonists -- that’s true. But here, it works to the game’s advantage.

     The writing is flawless, or very near so. The different personalities of the three protagonists come across well in the writing. It’s descriptive enough to paint a mental picture (which is often more a curse than a blessing), but it’s more about the situation than the setting. I came away very impressed with how smoothly the author told an entertaining short story.

     Because much of the game is dialogue and internal monologue, fewer “things” present themselves for interaction. It’s implemented quite well, but in retrospect feels almost like a magic trick. The author says plenty that’s important to the story (including flashes of memories), but without introducing many immediate nouns. This reduces puzzles to their simplest form (and I’ll get to that in a moment), but what’s there is given adequate attention to detail. If you see a toilet, for instance, the game does anticipate that you might want to flush it.

     This interaction, though, doesn’t push any boundaries. The game has a clever bit where the current PC can interact with one or both previous ones, but it’s only required a couple of times. Even when it’s not required to advance the story, the game still does a great job of supporting optional uses. The puzzles are as tightly integrated into the story as you’re likely to see in a work of IF -- exactly as they should be -- but with the side effect of making them really easy. Even when progression isn’t just a matter of moving from room to room or WAIT-ing, the puzzles are one-command processes that are usually obvious because it’s exactly what the protagonist would do (or is prompted to do) in that situation. This makes the only two-point category in which I can’t give the top mark. That’s not to say the puzzles should be more complicated or difficult. That clearly wasn’t the author’s goal. Only -- hmm. I would have liked more chances in the later segments to make use of the prior PCs, and it all could be a little longer without risking a strain to its novel design.

     My only real complaint about the implementation is that with so much of it requiring very short commands, it becomes a mild annoyance when far longer ones are required. I’ve never been a big fan of the “person, do this” directive command style. The game tells you when it becomes necessary the first time (thank you, game), but I had problems typing “graham” consistently. Maybe short names like “Ed” and “Jo” would have done the trick. The endgame also requires lengthier commands, which can be a bit of a pain if you’re figuring it out through trial-and-error.

     I haven’t mentioned the game’s artwork yet, but it deserves a paragraph. (In a text-only glulx interpreter, would the “void” scenes show up as an unexplained series of nothing, though? I wonder.) The style is cartoon-like, reminding me of the artwork in Flash-based animation. All three protagonists are represented, as well as a multi-part cartoon about three oddly clever fish. It’s very well done. It fits the game perfectly, and it earns Everybody Dies a kudatory (sorry if that’s a made-up word) bonus point.

     But what is it with those fish? Does it symbolize more than just a working-together theme? Is there some unspoken subplot with the fish? It stands to reason that the fish somehow represent the protagonists, but it’s a connection I can’t quite make. I think I’ll go check a few other reviews after this, where somebody has probably already explained it all.

     Jim Monroe’s only previous work of IF (according to the IF Wiki) was Punk Points from IFComp 2000, which placed 22nd but was a finalist for the “Best NPCs” XYZZY Award. It’s one I haven’t played. I have no doubt, though, that Everybody Dies will see a much higher finish this year, perhaps even in the top five. It gets a “9” from me.

     Nerd Quest is written in “MechaniQue,” a programming language invented by the game’s author, which is itself written in Java. I could get it to run on my work laptop, but I didn’t want to play on my work laptop today, so I installed the Java 6 runtime environment from Sun. That worked. I set my DOS-mode window to 9999 lines of scrollback (intending a makeshift cut-and-paste transcript at the end), and plunged forward into the wacky world of Nerd Quest.

     First impression: It needs line breaks. I should get a blank line before each command prompt, if nothing else. It’s really hard to read as is.

     Second impression: Man oh man oh man this is bad. B-aaaaaaaa-d. The author is evidently a capable Java programmer, but he’s clueless about today’s interactive fiction. I have a hunch that the author remembers text adventures from the 80’s, but mostly played hobby efforts (that was the case for me as well, when I got back into IF authorship a decade ago). So, going strictly on rose-colored memories as to how they worked, the author set forth in writing his own Java-based IF engine, and a game to showcase it. The end result: I feel as though I’ve been operated-on by a surgeon whose only qualifications are the purchase of a scalpel and some VHS recordings of ER and Grey’s Anatomy.

     The previous home-brewed game I played in this year’s IFComp suffered from the same failure in ambition. The author has written a custom game engine, but has showcased it with the least interesting game possible. Worse, the game highlights the system’s numerous weaknesses, without proving it has any strengths. In truth, I have no idea what to make of the MechaniQue game engine. Is it capable of SAVE and UNDO, but the author just didn’t use the abilities in this particular game? Does it support a transcript feature? Does it have any kind of world modeling, so that it can understand in-game objects that relate to each other (containers, platforms, etc.)?

     My guess is “no” on all accounts, because the parsing in Nerd Quest is entirely context-sensitive. The game tells me I need a key to unlock one door (incidentally, there appears to be no such key in the game), yet it doesn’t even understand the same command issued for a door in a different room. It gives no hint that its parser is doing anything more than keyword matching (and this is easy to recognize -- every one of my own home-brewed text adventures worked the same way), meaning that anything the game doesn’t expect gets the same “not possible” response.

     It even lacks the simple niceties of other IF systems. The author wasn’t aware that “x” is a shortcut for “examine,” or even that “examine” should be an alternate for “look at.” Each command prompt is prefaced with the open-ended question “what are you going to do?” as though it’s actually capable of understanding the variety of things I might want to do. As far as I can tell, output is dumped directly to the screen (instead of to an output management routine), making it necessary for the author to format appropriate line breaks as part of the output. Even this he fails to do in sensible ways, since words are sometimes broken between lines, and some lines end far shorter than is required in an 80-column display.

     If the author had written Nerd Quest in another IF language -- Hugo, for instance -- it might have the shortcuts and conventions of today’s IF. It wouldn’t, however, be much better as a game. It’s the epitome of 80’s amateur IF, where the author has thought up a simple setting and a couple simple puzzles to go with it, but nothing more. It has a story, but it shows all the forethought of a daydream. Nothing suggests to me that the author didn’t just think up the whole thing while booting up his computer to write it.

     You are an IT geek, tasked with server maintenance. You have a new girlfriend, but you can’t make the date unless you can escape the locked server room. Fixing the server and letting your date know you’re running behind (you have a cell phone, after all) isn’t an option. Nevermind that spiking the boss’s coffee and skipping out on work is going to get you fired (or, at the very least, seriously reprimanded) tomorrow. Then again, being locked in an overheated room you’re not supposed to leave gives you a decent case for criminal charges against your manager.

     The author has done just the bare minimum (and every time I say that, I think of Mike Judge talking about “pieces of flair” in Office Space) to allow a player to get from the server room, through the offices, to freedom. Almost nothing is described. Everything simply “exists” in the game’s world. For instance, I found a “beamer” in the conference room. “Does he mean to say that a BMW -- the automobile -- is here in the conference room?” I asked myself. “Well, let’s find out,” I replied to myself.

     >look
     Conference room, ground floor.
     Here are a large table, a PC and a beamer.
     To the south is a door.
     ==WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?==
     >look at beamer
     An expensive beamer.

     The game has a handful of very simple puzzles, dealing primarily with finding stuff. The only real stretch -- spiking the manager’s coffee -- was solvable without the walkthrough. That particular puzzle completely ignores the obvious solution (involving no additional props), and makes me an expert in something I (as this protagonist) have probably never even done before, but okay.

     Even for a home-brewed system, implementation is pretty poor. In addition to the lack of a consistent world model (making command recognition a veritable crap shoot), it isn’t well constructed. If you try to “talk to manager” in the same room as the manager, you’ll actually call him on the phone. Synonyms are lacking, like “door” for “trapdoor.” The “pantry” sure sounds like a kitchen to me. Problems in the text -- like missing punctuation, missing articles, “achive” instead of “achieve”) -- were aplenty. In the conference room, certain commands directed at objects other than the computer keep assuming I mean the computer.

     It’s a better game than the first home-brewed effort (a CYOA) that I played for this competition, but I’m scoring it lower. It loses the point for writing (Nerd Quest is as minimal as you can get without resorting to descriptions like “you are a in a room. An item is here.”) It even loses the bonus point for thwarting my efforts to get a transcript. My hope of grabbing the entire scrollback was dashed when the game window exited on its own after my final move. Really, it doesn’t even have a proper ending. I leave the building. That’s all. Presumably, this “Debby” was worth the effort.

     So, with the one free point and a point for puzzles that at least give the player something to do, Nerd Quest gets a mere “2” from me. My advice to the author -- if he’s open to advice -- is to play the top games from the past few competitions for eye-opening insight into what’s possible (and expected of IF) these days. Also, read this page at the IFComp website, which gives a simple overview of typical IF interactions.

     Also, re-think your parsing system so that its world model is more object-oriented (you’re using Java; presumably you’re familiar with this). As an example, you should never need to code command recognition for every door the player encounters. Give all “door” objects an “openable” attribute, let your parser figure out which object in the game world the player means when he types “door” (i.e., your “door” object will need noun and adjective properties), and then check to see if the object is “openable” or not. If not, say “that isn’t something you can open.” If so, check if it’s currently “opened.” Allow the author to override the default messages and even “handle” requests to “open” (where “this particular door” is the object), and you’re set. That’s the direction I suggest for your MechaniQue game engine.

     An alternative is to download the free compiler for any of the existing IF languages. If you want to write interactive fiction -- no matter how much you enjoy the construction and tinkering allowed by writing your own system -- you’ll be much better off. I know this from firsthand experience.

     It looks pretty professional on the surface. It’s like a flashier version of Quest, with multiple themes, colorful icons, and a default user interface that’s probably a big attraction to the uninitiated. Keywords are highlighted and clickable. Items and scenery are listed to the side as additional point-and-click spots. It has an always-on clickable compass rose, and a map that’s reminiscent of Adrift. Once the initial pizzazz wears off, though, even the “hardcode” mode (which removes the icons, the compass, and the item lists) isn’t enough to make it a comfortable experience. It still shows dialogue and certain events in pop-up windows, and despite bumping up the game text size to my liking, I found no way to increase the size of the input prompt. I found no way to turn off the clickable keyword highlighting, either.

     It’s a shame the game is so broken and difficult to use (I’ll get to some specifics in a moment, primarily for the author’s benefit). The author was obviously going for something poignant; something with a moral; something with heart. It’s supposed to be Zen and tranquil. It’s supposed to be enlightening.

     Exits unknown to the author allow the player to jump from the beginning into later segments (even the end -- see my walkthrough earlier in the review). The “ultimate weapon” is sometimes called the “ultimate one” (even in the title graphic), almost as though the author renamed it partway through and forgot to update everything. I liked each of the three or four custom color schemes representing the times of day (especially the burgundy-on-sky-blue “day”), but the game speeds through the days so quickly that it’s almost seizure-inducing. Plus, certain system actions (like looking at the “welcome” dialogue) unintentionally force it back to a white-on-blue default. Descriptions are painted on (for instance, the rope is always under the table, even if it’s in your inventory). The dialogue pop-up is actually counter-intuitive to the game’s first puzzle, since when out of dialogue options the first time, one is likely to think the conversation can’t be continued. It asks questions without accepting the answer (>kill prince; “With what?”; >knife; “You don’t know how to knife.”). The text doesn’t pause when it dumps more lines than will fit in the window, requiring some scrollback-hunting to find the beginning of what was missed. The text wasn’t adequately proofread.

     It has its positives, but not enough to make up for all that’s broken. The map image (not the SUDS built-in map, but one provided by the author later in the game), and the image of the metal box are nice touches. The author tried to use puzzles with a purpose, and a story that means something. It could be a much better game than it is -- with work -- because it has the foundation of something much more worthwhile.

     I’m scoring Search for the Ultimate Weapon a “4.” That’s with one point for writing, one for puzzles, one for the story, and the “free” point. It gets no point for technical implementation, nor did anything earn it a bonus.

     It looks like this is Sharilynn’s first game, and whether or not that’s really the case, I hope this and other potentially unfavorable reviews don’t discourage her from trying again. It can’t be said often or loudly enough that beta-testing is vital. I think those directional exploits would have been caught right away. I won’t try to encourage you to switch from your IF system of choice, but I will say that a flashy presentation is no substitute for solid parsing.

     I said in the review for a prior game that the PC was able to expertly perform a task that he probably had no prior experience in (incidentally, this was the act of using a bamboo stick as a blow-gun to shoot a pill into a coffee cup, presumably from across the room). Well, Cry Wolf does the opposite. It makes the PC seem like a complete imbecile at a task that should be relatively straightforward for a veterinarian, by making the player micromanage the entire procedure without any guidance. Fortunately, I’ve played a little of Trauma Center and I’ve actually been in the room where this procedure was performed (twice), and that was good enough to let my intuition guide the way. The bigger challenge for me in this puzzle was that the gloves and mask were hidden away! I figured it out after restoring a prior save and watching what my associate did, but prior to that I would have sworn the game was broken because I was fumbling around like Jerry Lewis in a black-and-white comedy, yet nobody in the room seemed to care. A friendly “hey dummy, check the cabinet that’s easily overlooked with everything else that’s here” after a few turns might have helped. Better yet, my assistant could have had everything ready for me. I checked the built-in hints while stuck there, but its unhelpful advice on the subject was simply that I needed gloves and a mask -- something I already knew from trying to pick up the scalpel without them.

     That was by no means my only problem with a puzzle, but it stands out most because I spent so long fumbling around in a scene that was supposed to be urgent. Scissors (with one rounded point, but presumably a sharp one too) couldn’t cut the plastic wrap on a package of meat. I had to find a newsletter to look up details about the medicine, when a presumably working computer (with access to Google, perhaps) was also available. I had trouble doing what I needed to do with the steaks, because it wasn’t clear that I needed to do a couple of other things first in preparation. A puzzle involving making and serving coffee seemed kind of glitchy, but again, I think this can be chalked up to inadequate game grammar (even approaching “guess the verb” territory). In many cases, the game just didn’t give enough feedback to explain why something that should have worked didn’t work.

     Long text dumps (and there were a few) didn’t bother me. In the end, the story really won me over, despite problems in the implementation.

     I was honor-bound to set (and not change) my vote before playing beyond two hours, but that’s difficult to justify with my scoring guidelines. I’m comfortable giving the game a “2” for writing, and after some mental back-and-forth about the story, I’m also scoring a “2” there. The puzzles and the implementation, however, don’t fare as well. The puzzles need work, but earn a “1,” while the implementation just seemed broken and frustrating at times. Obvious effort went into the game, but a review of my transcript shows way too much frustration with it on a technical level. I’m giving it no point for implementation, but it gets the bonus point for being unlike anything I’ve played before (in a favorable way). That means my review score is one point less than the vote -- in short, a “7.”

     I’m not encouraging the author to try harder to disappoint next year; far from it. But neither am I encouraging him to submit a real entry next time. My guess is that he’s after a last-place finish and some witty thrashings from angry reviewers. But... meh. I actually expected that it might do a better job of pretending as though something interesting was just around the next corner, if only I’d keep at it, much the way 2006’s Sisyphus -- a far more successful joke entry -- did.

     It’s a “1” from me. Was there ever a doubt?

     The game is typical of what I’ve come to expect from David Whyld. It’s interesting, with a sort of dark, cynical humor to it. The characters -- or caricatures -- seem familiar in their stereotypical and “one trick” behavior. It’s usually fun, but maybe too easy to get stuck at a point that prevents further progress. I’ve rated it a “1” in every category (including the bonus, mainly because I feel guilty for not putting even more time into trying to get unstuck) for a composite score of “6.” That was my gut reaction at the two-hour mark (hence, my vote) as well.

     David Whyld is one of the most prolific among Adrift authors -- well, among all writers of IF, actually. I haven’t played many games from his back catalog, but of the few I have, there seems to be a... sort of sameness, for lack of a better word. I’m not claiming I could tell you a game was written by David Whyld simply by playing it, but he does seem to gravitate towards the same kind of twisted humor. That’s not necessarily a complaint. There is a “sameness” to Star Trek and Star Wars books (of course), or in the picaresque plots of Jack Vance (incidentally, the one author I consider my “favorite” among several I enjoy incredibly). And that’s not meant to be a comparison -- merely an observation. My round-about point is, I think this might be holding David back. Something different, unexpected, and in a vein far different than A Date With Death could prove worthwhile too.

     If this is Jeremy Freese’s first game, he’s a fount of previously untapped brilliance. Violet harnesses the structure of and the talent shown in last year’s one-room IFComp third-place finisher, Lord Bellwater’s Secret. While there are little indications that Freese may in fact be Sam Gordon (how the walkthrough is presented, the game packaged as .zblorb, etc), it’s certainly not decisive evidence. As of this writing, it’s just as likely that Jeremy Freese has knocked the ball out of the proverbial ballpark on his first effort.

     And having fifteen beta-testers didn’t hurt his odds.

     (Update: Sam has set the record straight by stating that he had nothing to do with Violet and that he’s not Jeremy.)

     Violet takes place in a single room: the protagonist’s office. In this kind of design, everything the player needs to complete the adventure is (usually) within reach. The room is given “zones” -- by the desk, by the door, in the corner, by the bookshelf -- but it’s not necessary to move explicitly from place to place. An element of some puzzles does involve pushing something into these zones, but the game is smart about bringing things back when needed and describing the implicit actions of the protagonist.

     That’s just one of the many ways in which Violet is silky smooth. The author has anticipated obvious and non-obvious actions (and he probably owes a debt to a few of his testers for this), making sure that most of the time the game knows the appropriate way to react if the action is tried on any object in the game. I only found a couple very small bugs, and the worst of these were a blank response to >throw square at pen, and some lag in displaying my inventory. That’s it. In nearly every other way, the game is perfectly solid.

     If Jeremy Freese isn’t Sam Gordon, the two should become friends. Violet uses exactly the same kind of plot pacing devices. The player isn’t required to read a thousand lines of exposition all at once, about anything and everything, which is what one might expect of a poorly designed one-room game. Instead, the author first gives the basic essentials -- the cabinet, the desk, the door, and a little more. Each top-level “thing” is the gateway to second-tier objects and scenery, and so on, for however deep is necessary. The deeper the player digs, the more of the backstory is handed out.

     The game even makes assumptions (which are usually accurate) about why the player is attempting certain things, which can be used as subtle clues or as redirection back to more important tasks. Often, this takes the form of a blanket assumption that you’re just trying random stuff to avoid the protagonist’s primary task, but I really had the impression that the author had thought things through to such a large extent that anything I tried was already anticipated. As illusions go, it was a convincing one.

     Some of the puzzles seemed to border on impossible, yet everything was solvable right at two hours without the hints or the walkthrough. This is an even more impressive trick. Not only were the puzzles satisfying without being too easy, but two hours was exactly time enough to also poke around the game’s edges looking for flaws, trying things that didn’t even seem to relate to the tasks at hand. I like doing this in interactive fiction, especially when I intend to score the game and write a review. This could be freakish coincidence, but I’d rather think (especially given how well written the entire game is) that Jeremy obsessively tweaked the difficulty to get it just right. For me, it was just right: the pacing, the difficulty, the kinds of puzzles -- all of it.

     The brilliance of the game’s puzzle design isn’t that they’re new puzzles, or puzzles with clever twists. It’s that the author managed to minimize the potential usefulness of any one thing, while allowing multiple uses where appropriate. The author doesn’t give the player a hammer, and then only implement one single thing you can break with it, denying attempts to break everything else. If it can reasonably be attempted, the game usually lets you attempt it, with perfectly rational explanations as to why it doesn’t work as you had hoped. (Incidentally, there are no hammers in Violet.) This is done by paying attention to the size, shape, and other properties of things. Although it doesn’t feel contrived or intentional at the time, it’s obvious that the construction of these puzzles was most likely a long, thought-out process. Every solution that introduces a new object can potentially mislead the player, or present too easy a solution to some other puzzle, which in itself could be overlooked by the author. Yet here, everything is perfectly placed, and nothing (that I found) was overlooked. The game is consistent and expertly crafted.

     Violet also employs a twist on the second person narrative, and the relationship between the narrator and the protagonist. I doubt this is something new, but in my limited experience, no other game I can recall does exactly this. (In my pre-results review draft at intfiction.org, the next paragraph will get the hidden spoiler treatment.)

     The narrator is the protagonist’s mental representation of his own girlfriend. He does this seemingly not due to any level of insanity, but because he needs that directive force to accomplish the very task that will drive his actual girlfriend away if it can’t be completed. So, when the game says “you” it’s the protagonist imagining his girlfriend commenting to him (essentially, the whole game), but “I” becomes valid as well, since that’s the make-believe girlfriend commenting about herself. Narrators have been given an identity in second person IF before, but has this narrator ever been the protagonist’s inner voice cast in the role of his own girlfriend? It would be memorable enough even if it didn’t work, but more so because it does. She comes across as sensible and likeable, and the extent to which her patience has been stretched seems completely believable. Her personality is just as developed as the protagonist’s, if not more so.

     The story is nothing groundbreaking, but it has emotional moments, funny moments, and various moments of “ah! I get it!” Along the way, the importance of those promised “one thousand words” becomes more and more clear. At the beginning of the game, I found myself trying to do the very thing the protagonist intended to avoid -- looking at stuff, trying to move things, listening to the conversation in the hall and checking out the spectacle in the park beyond the window -- generally, goofing off and wasting time. I didn’t want to avoid these distractions, because they were fun. Little by little, exactly as required by the story, I began to sympathize. I began to focus my efforts. I began to cheer for the protagonist, hoping that this entire effort would end in his favor. It’s possible that I did this more for the narrator’s benefit than the protagonist’s, but this is one of the few games I’ve felt compelled to complete not just for my benefit (as a player who wants to win), but for these make-believe characters as well.

     I think many good things will be said about Violet, and in ways better expressed than this. Just in browsing various blogs for other reviews of the games I’ve already completed, it has been impossible to avoid mentions of this one. I scroll down or avert my eyes to the best of my ability, but couldn’t help getting the preconception that this was going to be a good one. (Really, guys -- I think we collectively need to agree on some way of preventing cross-pollination of game chatter next year, at least until the end of the voting period.)

     I’m scoring it a “9” (which is perfect in every category), but if it holds its place as my favorite for the rest of the competition, I’m going to add the bonus point and vote it a “10”. Strictly speaking, I logged two hours and five minutes in the game. However, five minutes is a good estimate of how long I spent distracted on other matters (tabbed out for email, answering the phone, or whatever). This could easily turn out to be the winner of IFComp 2008. It’s at least a shoe-in for the top three.

     The only real negative I have -- saved until the very end -- is that the whole “one room” design thing may feel less original if something just like this pops up again next year. That’s not to say it isn’t a good design; only that it could begin to feel more like a gimmick if the trend goes on.

     (Update: As my favorite of the competition, I did add the bonus point to my vote, for a top score of “10.” And this was the 2008 IFComp winner. Congrats!)

     Why, then, this lukewarm response? Part may be to do with the truly excellent entry I played just prior to this (don’t click that link if you don’t yet want opinions on IFComp ’08 entries you might not have played). That’s a very tough act to follow. Recognizing my bias, I have given April in Paris the reviewer bonus point -- just in case I’m being too critical.

     In the two days I’ve put off writing this review, I’ve given some thought to why April in Paris didn’t captivate me the way it could have. My biggest problem was with the game’s geography. It’s essentially three rooms, but the main one has been subdivided into six room-like zones. The included .PDF map makes this layout clearer, but I didn’t check it until afterwards for fear of spoilers. The game uses a TADS 3 extension for handling movement within a single room (I think that’s right; in response to my transcript, Jim offered a little insight into the game’s construction).

     I was initially confused by the layout, but even when I understood it, I was constantly unclear on who and what was where. Since this main area is open, the player can see what’s happening all around. The waiter is said to move around, but often between other zones. Things are described as they pertain to these six zones (near the south end of the railing, north end of the interior area, etc). The game is good about implicitly moving the player (for instance, an attempt to sit at your table will return you to the proper zone automatically), but the cumulative result -- for me -- was constant confusion.

     Scrapping the zone concept and sticking to a room-based approach might have worked. I think I understand why the game doesn’t, though, and it’s for realism. It wouldn’t make sense to be oblivious to the goings-on just a few feet north of where you stand, when it’s essentially an open area. A better solution might have been the “one room” concept. Except for the runaway dog (which could be adapted), it might have been possible to condense the game’s main area into a single room, making accommodations for the ways this might affect the puzzles. Referring to the map might have helped too, but it still would have been a little awkward to mentally manage what was happening where.

     The young woman, who seemed to be a central piece in the story, felt strangely flat. Two-dimensional characters are common enough in IF -- it’s even the norm -- and it’s not usually a problem (especially in puzzle games). This game is more story-centric, though, so I would have expected more characterization -- especially for this character. Maybe I didn’t talk to her enough. As the game progressed, she just seemed more and more like a puzzle piece, or maybe a prop. Initially, I didn’t even trust her. The lesser characters were fine. Even the waiter, with his obstinate attitude, seemed believable and developed enough to fit the needs of the story. Only the young woman seemed to need a more important role than she was given.

     Of the game’s title and blurb, and in an attempt to “guess” at what each of the thirty-five IFComp 2008 entries might be like, I made the following prediction:

     “Sounds artsy. Cultured. Over my head, perhaps... My expectations are high.”

     I expected that I might have to involve my wife (with her minor in French) in figuring out some of the dialogue. I expected something that would evoke strong images of this foreign city -- not necessarily a thinly veiled virtual tour as in 2004’s Blue Sky, but something that would spark the imagination and make me yearn for a vacation. I expected something grand and exciting, maybe.

     It’s clear that April in Paris wasn’t meant to be any of that. Even though the fault is mine for expecting that it might be, the game still has untapped potential. Somebody at a nearby table kept shouting “Extraordinary cuisine!” I would have expected to hear other kinds of random chatter, and a larger variety of random happenings in general. Even restricted to a single scene (the café), the game might have taken more opportunities to expound upon what it feels like to be a tourist in Paris. Ultimately, the story didn’t seem interesting enough, the puzzles had me pitying the poor hungry fellow for all that he had to endure just to get a good meal (rather than actively enjoying the effort), and confusion with the café’s geography left me as frustrated as the protagonist himself.

     It’s not a bad game by any means. It’s even a welcome change from the poorly-written, untested ones that make up a large number of the entries each year. I understand that Jim may be planning to release an updated version after the competition. That’s not likely to impact the underlying framework or the game’s modest story, but it would probably be a more recommendable version nonetheless. The competition version is still worth a play-through, if no update is released. I have scored it a “7,” which includes full points for writing and the reviewer bonus point.

     For some reason -- and despite the game’s subtitle -- I expected more whimsy than horror. The title suggests a parody of When Animals Attack (or something similar), yet WMA isn’t going for humor. It starts out strange, gets creepy, then creepier, and progresses through various scenes of the macabre and horrific. Despite its plethora^* of problems, I found WMA oddly riveting and not quite the chore to slog though that might be typical of a game with these issues. It has a style and gusto that, while seriously undermined by its broken writing and non-intuitive geography, I was able to appreciate for what it intended to be.

     Of last year’s P[E]TS, I said that “The writing has an odd appeal, but it’s full of technical problems of various kinds…” The same is true for wHen mAchines aTtack. “Your” and “you’re” are sometimes used correctly, but often interchanged. (Tip: pronouns aren’t made possessive with the use of an apostrophe. “Your” means “belonging to you” just like “its” means “belonging to it,” while “you’re” is a contraction of “you are” and “it’s” is a contraction of “it is.”) The text is riddled with grammatical problems -- missing words (“seems to refrigerator” is missing the “be a” that would make it “seems to be a refrigerator”), incorrect word usage (“fowl” when the author meant “foul,” and how does singing “ease the attention?”), typos (“down with” instead of “done with” for instance), and even inconsistencies in the game’s own made-up words (sometimes “integratron” but sometimes “integatron”). Rarely a paragraph goes by without several glaring problems of the kind that could have been caught if somebody other than the author had proofread the text.

     Even when the writing isn’t too technically flawed, it often feels rough-edged, too simple in form, or difficult to mentally parse. Sentences like these stand out in a negative way:

     “A drinking fountain is present on this side of the room, next to a closet door which is to the south of it, directly east of you.”

     “The receptionist talks some more.”

     “And because you said something, that also must have made Wong afraid of something.”

     “Resting on the shelves seem to be tons and tons of glass containers.”

     “The jars and the myriad of them makes your bones feel brittle and makes the atmosphere in this room seem really dense, in addition to being very eerie.”

     “You breathe a slight sigh of relief, although you aren't completely.”

     “You look around to see if anyone is in the current location and run off to the northeast.”

     It isn’t always easy to look past these problems, but some of the imagery conjured up succeeds surprisingly well when you do. The author has created a truly creepy scenario, although too often he resorts to telling the player just how unsettled he or she is supposed to feel by a given scene. This all makes for a strange balance. The story is often gripping, yet it fights for dominance against the poor way in which it’s written. It does lapse into accidental camp sometimes (especially when the author cranks up the weirdness knob to a level that’s way over the top), but the drive to see more is what kept me motivated for the more than six hours it took to complete.

     The author does a better job describing actions and interactions than in describing some of the game’s locations. The factory’s main area, comprised of several open “rooms,” was particularly difficult to picture. For instance:

North Side of Large Room
This is the northern edge of the very large room and is part of a side hallway that leads west towards the western edge of the room and east towards the eastern edge of the room.

Looming overhead, the presence of the catwalk platform covers your head in light shadows.

Dozens of manufacturing machines of various sizes fill the area in the of this room all over, in addition to a fairly large machine that blocks a main portion of your view.

A railing separates the machinery area from the rest of the room, and runs the length of the area in a square.

     The problem is often that the author has envisioned the scene from a certain angle or vantage point, without successfully relaying that information to the player. Sometimes, things are described as being just “in front of” you when a direction might have been better. Or, directions are used, but in misleading or confusing ways. This made navigation incredibly difficult until I took pen to paper to make a map.

     This, too, was a challenge. Sometimes, the author describes things to the east that are actually to the west, or vice-versa. Worse, room exits aren’t consistent. In many areas, coming back from an adjacent room isn’t as simple as just reversing the direction (in other words, when you go southwest, you can’t always return by going northeast). Some of it is evidently accidental, but sometimes it’s the author’s attempt to create what he probably feels to be a realistic geography. As an example, the player’s position in one particular hallway is probably its center. That puts the door to the player room southwest of that position. When inside the room, however, the door is due east. It makes sense rationally, but it relies on the player understanding that movement from room to room isn’t always a straight path. This is common throughout the entire game, and in areas where the relationship between the adjacent rooms isn’t even obvious.

     The next paragraph, detailing various other technical problems, will probably prove boring to everyone but the game’s authors. Feel free to skip ahead.

     Other problems are manifold. Some descriptions are painted on (for instance, the rope is always described in relation to the bathtub where it’s originally found). Vital objects are sometimes unmentioned in room descriptions (the game expects interaction with a “panel” at one point, but uses the word “pad” in the text; “machinery” is necessary at one point, but isn’t mentioned in the text). It’s possible to “examine” the note with the locker combination, but “read” fails. An exit south, back into the reception area, is blocked by a concern over what the receptionist might think about shirking your duty, even after such concerns are meaningless. In fact, it’s possible to get stuck there later in the game after re-entering the building. It’s possible to get completely stuck in other ways too, especially later in the game (for instance, a quirk with the fire pit left me in white smoke with no options), requiring multiple UNDO’s or a RELOAD. When the tension ramps up, the player is said to check the exits (to make sure the proverbial coast is clear), yet this pre-movement message continues for the duration of the game, well beyond the point where it no longer makes sense. The robot’s eyes “sink in” even though he has no eyes. Certain events are triggered only by taking a non-intuitive action, without additional prompts or clues or triggers (one example comes early on, when it’s necessary to be wearing a suit that some players will probably have already done an “UNDO” out of when its seemingly detrimental properties are clear; another comes later, where the only way to get through a door is to examine a box, thereby triggering a countdown that actually only counts down while you take additional turns in the same room). Doorways that don’t exist are described in the cave. A creature continues to act fully alive a turn or two after he’s rendered dead on the floor. Things dropped in a dream aren’t automatically returned to inventory. I even encountered engine-level “programming errors” at two points (attempting to go west when already at the cafeteria counter, and again when trying to put an eyeball on a sensor).

     At one point, the author is so anxious to develop a large chunk of the story that he resorts to a text-dump that is nineteen pages long.

     The game’s early puzzles are usually simple and straightforward. I really enjoyed figuring out how to use the protagonist’s assigned machine, for instance. The beginning seems more focuses, and the player is usually given goals (a definite improvement over last year’s entry). However, as the game progresses, the puzzles are increasingly obscured by bad design decisions and implementation problems that make them difficult or impossible to solve without hints. The hints helped in most of these cases, although a time or two they didn’t cover the situation. A walkthrough was also included with the competition version. I didn’t use it while playing, but it does appear complete.

     This is a game that’s likely to rank very low in the competition, although it has a shot at an upper-middle position if other judges agree that it somehow manages to be a little more than the sum of its parts. It’s a game that snubs its nose at the “two hour” target, though, which it would probably blow by even in a perfect play-through that required the player to merely read its text. At two hours, I hadn’t encountered some of the game’s more obscure puzzles and progress-halting bugs. I voted it a “6” -- which is justified by my self-imposed scoring guidelines by adding the bonus point (for being more than the sum of its parts). It’s a game for IFComp completists, but it needs extensive work to be recommendable in any other context.

     Like last year -- and as with all of this year’s entries that support it -- I kept transcripts (with comments) of the entire play-through. These are available to authors upon request. They’re no substitute for beta-testing (testing is supposed to happen before the competition), but they might be useful for a post-competition update. My advice remains unchanged: have several people play-test your game (and keep transcripts) in two or three phases after you think you’re finished with it. Add to this, however, a more serious adherence to the “two hour” rule. Some judges may be tempted vote a game down when it goes on and on and on in a competition where many other games have to be worked in before the deadline as well.

     ------

     ^*My apologies to Jefe and El Guapo.

     Piracy 2.0 feels a bit like Splashdown from IFComp 2004, in form and setting. It too, if I recall correctly, was heavily influenced by the works of Infocom. I gather from the game’s >ABOUT text that the author is new to the interactive fiction community, and may not have played many past IFComp entries (or other works of hobbyist IF since the demise of Infocom) as a more recent base of reference. Some of the game’s design decisions take an old-school approach, but it’s thankfully a playable and moderately solid work. I think this is probably because today’s IF continues to be influenced by those early works, even though many aspects have changed to accommodate the tendencies of today’s players to be less forgiving of brutally difficult games.

     Sean’s game isn’t brutally difficult, but it does feature some elements of those old-school designs that make it borderline frustrating in places. Although the blurb is ambiguous, these are space pirates (rather than the high seas kind), and a very simple combat mechanism gives the player a finite amount of health before death. I didn’t realize it at first, but the encounters and hit/miss chances appear to be random. This makes >UNDO your friend. (Randomness -- especially randomized combat -- is one of those old-school features that has fallen out of favor.) It’s possible to recover health at a point later in the game (useful if you haven’t been using >UNDO), but this appears to offer a limited number of uses. Around then (at least for me), the pirates stopped attacking, so it wasn’t as rough as it could have been. The combat, too, doesn’t really fall into complex RPG territory, so it shouldn’t be daunting to most IF enthusiasts.

     One of the biggest problems I noticed in the design (especially the later parts) was that it became easy to block off success in several ways. That’s not inherently bad, as long as the player is clear on what action was taken several turns back to cause the losing ending. At a minimum, the player should be clued into what might have been done differently to avoid failure. Certain actions cause a ten-turn countdown, and that works well. Other actions, though, are less obvious. As I worked toward finding the “best” ending, I had trouble figuring out if I was supposed to have waited to turn on the distress signal, or waited to lay in a new course, or if I should have started one of the countdowns at a certain point before or after either of those things. Ultimately, it feels like I stumbled into the 100-point ending by pure luck, rather than by fully solving the game’s endgame puzzles.

     Speaking of score, the game seems confused on whether or not it even has a score. During the game:

     >score
     Life has no score. However, you have used 151 moves. And your health report: The cold feeling in your fingers is almost gone. You have two wounds.

     But after the game, I scored 80 points (and later, the full 100):

     “In that game you scored 100 out of a possible 100, in 540 turns.”

     It’s also confused on the first officer’s name (and gender). A crew roster calls “her” Lisa McGregor, yet this doesn’t mesh with later statements:

     “This is a letter from your First Officer to his wife on Bromax.”
     “Ah. Yes. Matt Blake's letter to his wife, Stephanie.”

     Several locations have a computer console and a monitor, offering the player a variety of command abbreviations. For most of the game I used the prompted form of “type code on keypad.” This was okay -- they’re very short codes. Later, though, I realized the author had implemented these codes as stand-alone commands, which really helped alleviate the tedium of interacting with the various computer consoles.

     The game is pretty solid, with “bugs” that are generally very minor. I noticed a missing blank line once or twice, an extra blank line once or twice, and even a missing response for >put battery in panel. Later in the game, some sort of meta-text was shown at the end of the room description for the Main Bridge, stating “ceres.state not between 1 and 8.”

     Even though what’s implemented is pretty solid, I noticed a number of cases where the author should have implemented more. Sometimes, this took the form of the dreaded “guess-the-verb” problem. In one particularly difficult instance (and this is a puzzle spoiler -- be warned), I wanted to replace a gun’s dead battery with a fresh one. After some frustrating back-and-forth with the parser, I first solved it by dropping the new battery in one room, moving to a different room so I would be able to extract the gun’s depleted battery, then going back to retrieve the good battery so I could make use of it. Afterwards, I poked around a little more until I figured out what was happening. The game wasn’t asking for disambiguation for “battery,” probably expecting me to use its adjective also (or instead). To make matters worse, it wasn’t possible to refer to the gun at all when removing it, and in fact, “remove” wouldn’t even work.

     My transcript illustrates this frustration nicely:

     >x pistol
     This is a standard issue laser pistol. It's pitted and scratched. Typical of weapons owed by space pirates. A scratched battery is in the grip. There is a small red light flashing on the grip.

     >put battery in pistol
     (the shiny battery in the pistol)
     There is no room for a second battery in the pistol.

     >get battery from pistol
     That seems to be a part of the pistol.

     >get battery
     (the shiny battery)
     You already have that.

     >remove battery from pistol
     That seems to be a part of the pistol.

     >remove battery
     (the shiny battery)
     You're not wearing that.

     >get scratched battery from pistol
     That seems to be a part of the pistol.

     >get scratched battery
     You take the scratched battery from the pistol.

     The game was clearly tested, but maybe not by anyone familiar with the common failings of interactive fiction. The response to >X ME is the default “As good-looking as ever.” The game has toilets, but “flush” isn’t a verb (nit-picky I know, but of quite a few IFComp games this year with toilets, I only recall two -- so far -- where >flush toilet is understood). The writing on a piece of paper can be examined, but >read paper responds with “that's not readable.”

     The text, fortunately, fares better. It isn’t flashy or awe-inspiring, but it’s descriptive enough without being excessive, free of spelling and grammatical errors (I noticed none, at any rate) and a pleasant read after too many poorly written IFComp entries. This is the only of my scoring categories in which I have awarded the game top points.

     Of the plot -- the game’s story -- I have mixed feelings. On one hand, it’s interesting enough, and I’m a sucker for science fiction. I tend to enjoy exploring space ships in text adventures. On the other hand, it really doesn’t introduce anything new. The author was wise to abandon the humor of his Piracy 1.0 (described in the >ABOUT information) in favor of a more serious tone, but the game plays out with only minor surprises. It didn’t feel like a fresh idea, or even a fresh telling of a stale idea. Parts of it may be Trek-inspired (a bridge section that can be separated from the rest of the ship in times of emergency conjures up mental images of the Enterprise D, for instance).

     The puzzles work pretty well, yet they often seem at odds with the story. The protagonist -- the ship’s captain -- should be supremely familiar with all aspects of his ship. I would expect him (or her – if I’m right, the captain is gender-neutral to make it easier for all players to assume the role) to know exactly what computer commands are available, how those systems work, and the dangers to be faced in certain areas. Yet most of the time, the protagonist is only as informed as the player, which requires reading instructions and experimenting with options. This might have been solved if the protagonist was just a lesser crew member, but being the captain does serve to explain why you were initially spared (plus, it feels less clichéd than a typical generic-crewman adventure). Given the puzzles, it’s impossible to make a player feel like an all-knowing ship’s captain from the start, but something might have been done to get more mileage out of the premise. Maybe a stronger personality for the PC would have helped make him (or her) a more convincing captain.

     On the subject of plot-point head-scratchers, why do the pirates come and go randomly? This gives Piracy 2.0 more the feel of a video game, and that may not be what the author intended. I would have expected the pirates to become a little more organized, and with their obviously impressive numbers perhaps stake out every location instead of roaming around. And did anyone else notice that the 100-point ending (unless I missed an alternate path) is obtained in a way that effectively disposes of the only loyal, surviving crewman? (To be fair to Sean, I did the same thing in a prior game, although here it almost feels accidental.) I also thought there might be a final face-to-face confrontation with the pirate leader, but this only transpired as a remote communication (but again, maybe I missed an alternate path).

     A link in the >ABOUT text points to this website, where the author has provided a title image, a map of the ship’s interior, and a “blueprint” of the ship itself. It’s all very nice work, and I’m surprised it wasn’t included with the game. In keeping with the Infocom tradition, an actual feelie (the purple DataCube) is even available at a modest price (and this would make an appropriate listing for feelies.org).

     Piracy 2.0 is a solid, recommendable game overall. It even gets the bonus point, but for what’s probably one of the most random, trivial reasons imaginable. In the author’s notes, he identifies himself as a fan of Doctor Who. Coincidentally, I’m Netflixing my way through the recovered (and the never-lost) back episodes of the first seven Doctors, after fond memories of watching the Tom Baker (fourth Doctor) episodes as a kid (and the ninth/tenth doctor episodes now – Season Three in particular had a few really excellent episodes). Also, I too wrote games for the TRS-80 CoCo (most still available here), and these two things combined get a bonus point (for a composite score of “7”) that’s just as random as the pirate crew in Piracy 2.0.

     Before I launch into those things, though, the story itself deserves some discussion. Successful children’s literature (and the same is true of movies) will have aspects that may appeal to adults as well. In my experience, these stories tend to be fantastical in nature. Even “slice of life” stories (for children) tend to have exaggerated premises or unreal aspects. For instance, one of my three-year-old daughter’s favorite books, Pinkalicious, features a little girl who turns pink after eating too many pink cupcakes. (She’s also a big fan of Dr. Seuss books.) If these elements are missing, the story could still be something exciting or foreign in nature: stories about life in another country, for instance, or stories that feature things the young reader (or in my daughter’s case, the listener) may never have the opportunity to experience. It’s a perfect time to spark their imaginations.

     The story in Recess At Last is a double whammy. I can’t imagine it being of interest to most adults. Those days are far behind us, and a homework simulator doesn’t rekindle that youthful spirit. For reasons unknown to me, it has been easier to fill the text-rendered shoes of a vampire, or a detective, or a spaceman, or even an animal than to step into the role of a fourth-grader who has to turn in his homework so he can go out to recess. Nothing is remotely fun about that. The kicker is that I’m not sure this would be fun for fourth-graders either, hence the double whammy.

     Let’s move on to its implementation.

     The more complicated the actions required of the player, the more robust and comprehensive the command grammar should be. One of the easiest ways for any work of IF to fail is by requiring non-standard actions and then recognizing only a very small range of possible ways the player might express those actions. Many hours of development can be sunk into working out all these possibilities (and adding more as a result of beta-testing), but it’s important to do so or the game will suffer.

     As a generic example, imagine a game where a puzzle involves tying a string to a heavy medallion and then hanging it from a hook to trigger some sort of trap door. If the game only allows the player to TIE the medallion to the string, then HANG the string on the hook, it’s going to be a serious sticking point for players. That’s traditionally called “guess the verb”, and it’s among the biggest reasons IF isn’t taken seriously by many who have tried it in the past. Suppose the player first wants to ATTACH the string to the hook, and then LOOP the string through the medallion. If your game triggers on the action of hanging an already-weighted string to the hook -- and especially if your grammar definitions are lacking -- you’ve just given the player a legitimate reason to complain.

     These problems plague Recess At Last. In one example, the game doesn’t know how to parse an intended target from the “write” verb. I’m guessing this was a little tricky to code, but even so, it’s not what the player is likely to expect. Paper was on my desk, which is where I would expect it to be before attempting to write on it. Yet:

     >write on paper
     In your best cursive handwriting, you write "On paper" on your blue jeans.

     >get paper
     Taken.

     >write on the paper
     In your best cursive handwriting, you write "On the paper" on the clean sheet of paper.

     Even more guess-the-verby was this:

     >x buzzer
     A small gray box with a small button and speaker so that visitors can buzz in to the office to be let in.

     >press button
     It is fixed in place.

     >push buzzer
     It is fixed in place.

     >in
     You still have the same two options. Wait, or try the buzzer.

     >try buzzer
     You press the buzzer and wait nervously for the secretary to answer.

     Incidentally, >buzz in also works, but >buzz buzzer doesn’t.

     The game’s design and implementation problems aren’t limited simply to actions that aren’t nearly as smooth as they need to be. A piece of paper is described as blank, even after you’ve written on it. After telling the teacher I didn’t need another copy of the worksheet, she told me to ask again if I changed my mind, yet I wasn’t allowed to bother her again for it after that. I didn’t realize I needed to mention the library to the teacher to get permission to leave the room, probably because I’ve forgotten that such things are mandatory in the fourth grade (thereby sticking me there in the classroom until I checked the hints). It wasn’t clear that the protagonist’s brother wasn’t in gym class; until I played a second time using the walkthrough and took an action where it’s mentioned that the brother is sick at home, I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t refer to or see him in the gym. Attempting to open the letter from mom gives a misleading response, and this sort of sabotaged my understanding of what the envelope was for. >search binder says the binder is empty, even though it’s not. Sam continues to look for his worksheet, even after he finds it (in fact, he doesn’t even express interest in it after I borrow it and attempt to give it back).

     The game sometimes even refuses to honor actions it understands:

     >x unfinished worksheet
     I only understood you as far as wanting to examine Sam's unfinished Henry Hudson project.

     The problems seem to continue ad nauseam, but the most frustrating of all is some sort of engine error that happens every single turn after playing for a short while:

     *** Run-time problem P12: Too many activities are going on at once.

     I have no idea what activities are going on, because from where I sat, nothing much was happening. I tried updating WinGlulxe, but no joy. Even starting over didn’t do the trick, as the problem simply started in a different place. Yet this didn’t appear to interfere with gameplay, other than the unfortunate side effect of separating my input on a different line than the > (prompt symbol).

     After a time, I relied heavily on the built-in hints. After completing the game one way, I checked the walkthrough and was pleased to find that both of the possible objectives for turning in the completed worksheet were valid solutions.

     So no, I don’t know how Recess At Last went wrong. The writing seems error-free and appropriate for the target audience, and the puzzles (although made more difficult by implementation problems) are interesting enough to give the game merit outside its bland plot. The game even has a nice title graphic. In most other ways, though, it falls flat. The author could have imagined a story far more interesting than this. More testing (especially by people more familiar with the workings of interactive fiction) would certainly have helped make this story smoother and more playable than it is. It probably still wouldn’t appeal to an older audience, but it might be something kids could enjoy more.

     I have scored Recess At Last one point for the writing, one point for the puzzles, and the base “free” point. Anything more -- especially since I feel more guilty than usual at the amount of criticism I’ve heaped onto this game -- would be dishonest. That’s a score and vote of “3.” Although that’s not an encouraging score, I do hope that the author stays interested and motivated enough to play and write more interactive fiction.

     The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom gets one point in every category. I’ve also awarded the bonus point, because I had more fun with the game’s narrowly focused puzzles than might be implied from the score. That’s a composite score of “6” -- about average -- making for a good (if unassuming), recommendable game.

     Although I’ve scored the story a “2” (top points for the category on my scoring system for this year), it didn’t fully win me over or come with the emotional impact it might have. I may be alone in thinking this, but it seems the story wasn’t developed enough. It ends too soon after it begins, and with the whole thing feeling so hazy and rushed, it was hard to connect on the level that this particular story deserved. That doesn’t seem to be a direct result of the way it was constructed, or that the author told it in a surreal way. In fact, I found it sufficiently immersive. Maybe the author just intended it more as a reminder, without actually trying for an emotional punch.

     It’s implemented well enough on a technical level, but given the small scope, it doesn’t have to do much. I didn’t note any problems (although I did notice that “states” is spelled “staes” on a page of the >about info). The writing succeeds in being surreal, and it manages to say plenty using few words. These two aspects of the game earn 1’s -- not necessarily because of identifiable shortcomings that hold them back from 2’s, but because neither seems ambitious or developed enough to be labeled “great.”

     As the first game I’ve played in this year’s competition that lacks puzzles, it’s the first test of my scoring definition for interaction in place of puzzles. This too earns it a “1” after much thought, for a composite score of “6.” It’s an interesting story -- perhaps an interesting experiment in storytelling -- but it seems too short to draw the player in fully, and not ambitious enough to make a lasting mark among similar works of IF. It’s worth a play, though, being perfectly solid and undemanding of both a player’s time and his or her puzzle-solving abilities.

     Players without sound -- or with their computer’s volume turned down -- will wonder why this game’s primary file weighs in at fifty megabytes. Several strange melodies (ambient “soundscapes” by composer Thom Brennan) play throughout the game, apparently embedded in the glulx game file.

     After completing A Martian Odyssey, I intended to base my review around several observations. The story seems to take place in an alternate history, where somebody named “Doheny” invented atomic power, somebody named “Cardoza” was the first visitor to the moon, and decades of NASA studies are disputed by its very premise, which is that our neighbor in space, Mars, is teeming with alien life and structures that would be easily identifiable by today’s long-range observation. I was going to applaud the author’s statistical research (although I didn’t verify the numbers shown). I was going to mention that the series of encounters reminded me quite a bit of vintage sci-fi (Hal Clement, perhaps). I was going to point out, maybe, that this would have made a good story back when everything under the sun really hadn’t been written, and when humanity had a more shrouded and mysterious perception of our own solar system. I was even going to suggest that “Dick” and “Putz” are less than flattering names.

     However, A Martian Odyssey doesn’t just sound like something that should already exist. It does exist. Despite a collection of old sci-fi novels and anthologies numbering in the thousands, I was completely unfamiliar with Stanley G. Weinbaum. The story, originally published in an issue of Wonder Stories in 1934, is not protected by copyright and can be downloaded here. (Update: Ha! I do have this. It’s the first story in the 1970 Science Fiction Hall of Fame paperback, edited by Robert Silverberg.)

     So, this review shifts to different points: does this static-to-interactive conversion work here, and does it succeed as interactive fiction in its own right?

     I haven’t read the complete story (although it’s short enough, I probably will) -- I’ve merely skimmed it. But it’s clear that the events on Mars are related by Jarvis to the others after the adventure has ended. In his game, Romosan sticks with the traditional second-person imperative. This makes it more a typical exploration adventure, rather than the frequently interrupted telling to wide-eyed disbelievers that Weinbaum intended it to be.

     Romosan takes inspiration from the story for the game’s few puzzles, but they’re often so poorly clued that the walkthrough becomes a player’s only salvation.

     This, from the original story...

     “Anyway, I rigged up a harness from some seat straps, and put the water tank on my back, took a cartridge belt and revolver, and some iron rations, and started out.”

     ...becomes a puzzle in which I attempted, with increasing levels of frustration, to somehow disconnect and untie the tank from my suit, since the game was adamant that I could not leave with it “connected” or still “tied to” me. I had overlooked the straps in the seat, disregarding them as unnecessary scenery. Even when the thought occurred to me that I might leave with the tank, I found no good way to harness it to my suit. This could have worked, but it needed better clueing.

     And this...

     “...and then I noticed the smoke eddying and swirling past us, and sure enough, there was the entrance!”

     ...becomes an exercise in mind-reading, where a player must deduce that >follow smoke is a viable course of action. This may be solvable just by moving in the same direction as the smoke, but when I tried that at first, the smoke seemed to disappear from the room descriptions.

     Romosan allows players to stray from Weinbaum’s story in a few instances. It’s possible to kill Tweel as early as the first meeting, for instance. I did not play forward to see how that works out, but I suspect there are no circumstances that would force a no-win situation as a result. It’s even possible to die, which certainly wouldn’t have meshed with an after-the-fact telling. This justifies the leap to interactivity, sure -- but at the risk of becoming a different story. This is one of the many debatable points in static-to-interactive conversions. Even if it’s good to allow freedom and flexibility, the game probably should have taken steps to encourage more communication between Jarvis and Tweel earlier in the story. It wasn’t until much later that I even tried, and only then learning it had a name.

     A few implementation problems give the game a not-so-polished feel. Missing blank lines and extra blank lines throw off the layout in places. A “programming error” dealing with distance, when viewing the controls in the downed rocket, seemed the sort of thing that would have been noticed in beta-testing (and for that matter, some of the numbers keep changing). Guess-the-verb was problematic (an instance springing readily to mind is when >enter mine wasn’t the correct action but >down was). Going west from the mine links back to the wrong location (and incidentally, this allows the player to encounter a waving Putz again, even though it’s just painted onto the room text). Too few “things” in the game world (scenery, mainly) are implemented even for basic examination.

     As interactive fiction, A Martian Odyssey doesn’t succeed in the same way its source material does. Underclued puzzles and minor implementation problems aside, it just feels too sparse. Weinbaum got away with it because his Jarvis was skimming over the dull and focusing on the exciting. Told in a traditional text adventure way, though, a player needs more than just one-liners to describe the thrill and grandeur of standing on a different planet for the first time. Do the following passages inspire awe? Not really.

     Crash site
     A barren desert stretches as far as you can see. Only the crashed rocket breaks the surrounding monotony.

     >n
     You start cussing the fellows for not picking you up.

     Thyle II
     A desert of soft sand with nothing to see.

     >n
     You cuss Karl's cranky motor.

     On the edge of a canal on Thyle II
     Just a dry, green ditch about four hundred feet wide, and straight as a railroad on its own company map.

     >n
     As you step into the canal, the green lawn surrounding you moves out of the way!

     Everything just comes across as too bland and rushed-through in the game. That’s not to say A Martian Odyssey the short story couldn’t work as interactive fiction. Only that, in this reviewer’s opinion, it didn’t here. I’ve given it a “1” (half-points) in every category, which scores it a “5” out of 10. I considered the bonus point as well (the ambient music, while not the author’s, was appropriately moody), but didn’t after noticing that my score distribution was pretty “6”-heavy already.

     A minor gripe, saved as an afterthought, is that it isn’t possible to bring Tweel along at the end. The game seemed to hint that it should be, so I spent some time replaying the last few moves hoping to accomplish something more. The end, however, plays out just like the Weinbaum original, so it stands to reason this wasn’t meant to be.