| ___. .___ _ ___. | |
| / _| | \ / \ / ._| | |
| \ \ | o_/ | | | |_. | |
| .\ \ | | | o | | | | | |
| The |___/ociety for the |_|romotion of |_|_|dventure \___|ames. | |
| ISSUE # 18 | |
| Edited by Paul O'Brian (obrian SP@G colorado.edu) | |
| September 15, 1999 | |
| SPAG Website: http://www.sparkynet.com/spag | |
| SPAG #18 is copyright (c) 1999 by Paul O'Brian. | |
| Authors of reviews retain the rights to their contributions. | |
| All email addresses are spamblocked -- replace the name of our magazine | |
| with the traditional 'at' sign. | |
| REVIEWS IN THIS ISSUE ----------------------------------------------------- | |
| Aisle | |
| Anchorhead | |
| The Awakening | |
| Detective | |
| Golden Wombat of Destiny | |
| Jewel of Knowledge | |
| Mystery Science Theater Adventure #1 ("Detective") | |
| Varicella | |
| Wearing the Claw | |
| EDITORIAL------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| Interactive fiction has been a part of my life for over 15 years. It's | |
| hard for me to believe it's been that long since my Dad brought home a | |
| copy of Zork I for the brand-new disk drive of our sleek Atari 400, but | |
| it's true. For me, just playing a game that didn't take a half-hour to | |
| load from a cassette tape was pretty cool, but this new program that | |
| understood what I typed, that challenged the agility of my mind rather | |
| than of my fingers, and that transported me into a breathtaking new | |
| imaginative vista... well that was downright *magical*. | |
| From that time forward, Infocom games were the only computer games I | |
| wanted. The most exciting thing about Christmases and birthdays was the | |
| prospect of a new Infocom game. Infidel, Planetfall, Sorcerer, Suspect, | |
| Trinity -- I remember each one as an event. Back then, nothing could | |
| duplicate the thrill of thumbing through each nifty "feelie" and seeing | |
| that very first introductory screen of text. I was never all that good | |
| at them; I'd get irretrievably stuck at some point, sometimes for | |
| months (or even, in one case, years), and would have to find some | |
| friend or acquaintance for a hint, or worse yet, break down and buy a | |
| hint book (which was that much less money to spend on the next game!). | |
| I didn't care, because solving the puzzles was only a small part of the | |
| pleasure of IF. For me, it was always more about that feeling of | |
| immersion in a fictional world. That was my teenage addiction. | |
| I fell away from it for a little while, during my college years. Infocom | |
| had disappeared, and I couldn't work up much excitement about the games | |
| remaining on computer store shelves. Fast-forward to 1993. I was in the | |
| first year of a Master's program in English Lit., browsing in a computer | |
| store when a familiar word caught my eye. The package said "Lost | |
| Treasures of Infocom." I could barely believe it, but it seemed to be a | |
| packaging of *twenty* Infocom games for the same price I used to pay | |
| for *one*. Even that money was more than I should have been spending at | |
| that dirt-poor student stage, but you see, I had no choice. My love of | |
| IF, so long dormant, roared up once again, stronger than ever. Besides, | |
| I rationalized, I was in the middle of a literary theory class, and | |
| wouldn't it be cool to write my final paper on interactive fiction? | |
| I bought it (both the rationalization and the game), wrote the paper, | |
| found LTOI 2, and was back in IF bliss. Around that same time, I was | |
| working a graveyard shift job in the university's dorms, long quiet | |
| nights with just me and the lobby computer. Following my reawakened | |
| interest, I looked through various Gophers (remember those?) for | |
| information on interactive fiction. That's where I found some vague | |
| hints about something called a "rec.arts.int-fiction", a "USENET", and | |
| most confusing of all, a "Curses." It took me a little while, but I | |
| puzzled it all out, and figured out the most astonishing fact of all: IF | |
| is not just an object of sweet nostalgia. It is *alive*! | |
| I've been a part of the Internet IF community ever since, posting, | |
| writing reviews, and even contributing a game of my own to the IF | |
| archive. Around the same time I started reading the int-fiction | |
| newsgroups, something else was just starting: a magazine called SPAG. | |
| (Wondering when I'd finish talking about myself, weren't you?) Founded | |
| by Gerry Kevin "Whizzard" Wilson, SPAG's purpose was to review pieces | |
| of interactive fiction, both old and new, and by doing so to advance | |
| the cause of the modern text adventure. Whizzard helmed SPAG for over | |
| three years before handing it off to Magnus Olsson, winner of the 1995 | |
| IF competition (TADS division) and frequent contributor to the IF | |
| newsgroups. Now, as SPAG passes its fifth anniversary, Magnus has given | |
| the reins to me. | |
| I'm honored to be chosen, and grateful to my predecessors for making | |
| SPAG an important voice in the IF community. I believe that SPAG's | |
| reviews are valuable, and I'm pleased to be able to continue their | |
| collection and dissemination. I'll do my best to keep SPAG a vital | |
| and invigorating presence, and I believe that this issue is an | |
| auspicious start on that goal. We've got reviews from a variety of | |
| contributors, including looks at new games Jewel of Darkness and | |
| Varicella, re-examination of some older pieces, and contributions | |
| from articulate reviewers like okblacke and Duncan Stevens. In short, | |
| I'm excited about the contents of this issue, and I hope you are too. | |
| Thanks to everyone who has welcomed me into this position -- it's a | |
| wonderful feeling when you know that the hobby of your past has a | |
| dazzling future too. | |
| NEWS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| Normally this section will contain all the news I've collected since the | |
| publication of the previous issue of SPAG. However, due to the editorial | |
| shift, I haven't been collecting news this time around, so instead I'll | |
| provide a Top Five list of interesting and exciting things currently | |
| happening in the IF world. For the competitive among you, let me state | |
| clearly that this list is in no particular order -- all news items are | |
| equal to me! | |
| 1) PHOENIX RISES FROM THE ASHES | |
| Adam Atkinson, Graham Nelson, and Gunther Schmidl have combined their | |
| energies to help resuscitate some very old games. These games resided on | |
| the central computer at Cambridge University, which was known as | |
| "Phoenix," after its operating system. Schmidl sought and cleared rights | |
| to the source code of these games, while Atkinson and Nelson worked on | |
| testing the source code and creating a translator program which output | |
| z-machine binaries from this code. So far, the fruit of their labor is | |
| a trio of cave games by Jonathan R. Partington: Crobe, Fyleet, and The | |
| Quest for the Sangraal. | |
| 2) HE'S NOT CHOKING, HE'S SAYING "GLULX" | |
| Andrew Plotkin is hard at work on the next generation of virtual | |
| machine for interactive fiction. For his own always-arcane reasons, he | |
| has chosen to call this machine "Glulx." The executable interpreter for | |
| this virtual machine is called "Glulxe", and work on an Inform-to-Glulx | |
| compiler is proceeding apace. (A beta version is currently available for | |
| early testing.) The products are a little rough at this point, but being | |
| refined at a rapid rate. The result will be a lifting of nearly every | |
| current limitation of the z-machine. | |
| 3) KNOWLEDGE AND TREACHERY | |
| With the competition nearly upon us, we prepare to be flooded with new | |
| short games very soon. In the meantime, we enjoy a couple of recently | |
| released longer games, Francesco Bova's "Jewel of Knowledge" and Adam | |
| Cadre's "Varicella." One is a traditional cave crawl while the other is | |
| a courtly intrigue. Both are reviewed in this issue. | |
| 4) I MAY NOT KNOW ART, BUT I KNOW WHAT I LIKE | |
| The summer IF Art show has come to a close. The show was a modest one, | |
| with only two entrants, but both entries are worth attention. Also | |
| rewarding are the reviews from the panel of judges, comprised of David | |
| Dyte, David Lebling, Michael Gentry, Marnie Parker, and Mike Roberts. | |
| The "Best of Show" award was given to "Statue", by David Clysdale. The | |
| web site of the IF Art shows is http://members.aol.com/iffyart/gallery.htm. | |
| 5) EVERYDAY HE WRITES THE BOOK | |
| Cascade Mountain Publishing (the publishing venture owned by former | |
| Implementor Mike Berlyn) is preparing to publish a printed version of | |
| Graham Nelson's Inform manual. Graham is hard at work on the revised | |
| edition of this book, which will include lots of new sections, | |
| exercises, and updated coverage of the latest library and features. | |
| These manuals will be sold at cost, so only a limited number will be | |
| printed. To reserve your copy, email mberlyn SP@G cascadepublishing.com. Be | |
| sure to put "Inform Manual" as the subject of your message. | |
| Finally, I'd like to finish this section with another list. The SPAG | |
| "10 Most Wanted" list will name ten games which have not yet been | |
| reviewed in SPAG, but which richly deserve to be. I plan to make it a | |
| regular feature of the SPAG news section. Once again, this is not a | |
| ranked list; all reviews are desired equally. In addition, I welcome | |
| suggestions for games that ought to be on this list (or better yet, | |
| reviews of those games!) | |
| SPAG 10 MOST WANTED LIST | |
| ======================== | |
| 1. BSE | |
| 2. Crobe | |
| 3. Deadline | |
| 4. Dr. Dumont's Wild P.A.R.T.I. | |
| 5. Frobozz Magic Support | |
| 6. Fyleet | |
| 7. I-0 | |
| 8. Lost New York | |
| 9. Quest for the Sangraal | |
| 10. Spiritwrak | |
| KEY TO SCORES AND REVIEWS---------------------------------------------------- | |
| Consider the following review header: | |
| NAME: Cutthroats | |
| AUTHOR: Infocom | |
| EMAIL: ??? | |
| DATE: September 1984 | |
| PARSER: Infocom Standard | |
| SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters | |
| AVAILABILITY: LTOI 2 | |
| URL: Not available. | |
| When submitting reviews: Try to fill in as much of this info as you can. | |
| If you choose, you may also provide scores for the games you review, as | |
| explained in the SPAG FAQ. The scores will be used in the ratings | |
| section. Authors may not rate or review their own games. | |
| More elaborate descriptions of the rating and scoring systems may be found | |
| in the FAQ and in issue #9 of SPAG, which should be available at: | |
| ftp://ftp.gmd.de:/if-archive/magazines/SPAG/ | |
| and at http://www.sparkynet.com/spag | |
| REVIEWS ---------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| From: Duncan Stevens <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu> | |
| TITLE: Aisle | |
| AUTHOR: Sam Barlow | |
| E-MAIL: sam.barlow SP@G talk21.com | |
| DATE: 1998 | |
| PARSER: Inform standard, with some additions | |
| SUPPORTS: Z-machine interpreters | |
| AVAILABIILITY: Freeware (GMD) | |
| URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/games/zcode/aisle.z5 | |
| VERSION: Release 1 | |
| Sam Barlow's Aisle is without a doubt one of the most unusual works to hit | |
| the IF community in quite some time. In no sense is it a game; trying to | |
| "win" it is futile, and the suboptimal outcomes aren't bad choices to be | |
| avoided as such. Rather, the point is to explore the central character and | |
| take a look at the various possibilities available to him from one point | |
| in time. That said, however, it's not clear that Aisle is an entirely | |
| successful experiment. | |
| The premise is simple: the game has one move, and it "ends" after that | |
| move and automatically sends you back to your original position. By | |
| interacting with what's around you -- and by incorporating knowledge | |
| gained thereby into future moves -- you learn about your own character and | |
| make sense of his various neuroses, fears, and hangups (to some degree, | |
| anyway). In the process, you get a sense -- at least, I did -- that your | |
| character, in this one move, is at a crossroads of sorts (or, at least, | |
| that the moment can mark a turning point, a change, if treated that way), | |
| and you take a look at where various paths might lead. In a sense, it's IF | |
| compressed -- while most good IF lets the player decide how a story will | |
| come out, to some extent, but draws that input out over several dozen or | |
| hundred moves, Aisle limits the input to one turn and tells the rest of | |
| the story for you. This structure allows the author to greatly multiply | |
| the range of options available, of course. | |
| In practice, however, Aisle can be thoroughly confusing--in part because | |
| the author both lets the player discover the PC's past and gives the PC | |
| multiple pasts to discover. The player might therefore initially assume | |
| that the key to understanding the player is piecing together his | |
| memories -- but there are too many memories that are inconsistent, | |
| incapable of fitting together, to do that successfully. As a result, it's | |
| difficult to make sense of what the PC does in the present, given that he | |
| has multiple pasts which might or might not explain his actions, and the | |
| character splinters into several parts, Sybil-like. The command "think | |
| about" or "remember" gives the player access to the PC's past, which is | |
| handy -- but the significance of the events recalled is largely a matter | |
| of interpretation. | |
| Though this may be a product of the assumptions built into most IF (i.e., | |
| polite conversations are rare), it also seemed that most of the PC's | |
| options at this moment in time are profoundly antisocial; many involve | |
| violence, many of the other options are simply bizarre, and your character | |
| often treats apparently normal conversational gambits as an excuse to act | |
| psychotic. All this has its place, of course -- the PC is supposed to be | |
| unhappy and under stress -- but it does make Aisle a bit tedious after a | |
| while, when the options for civilized behavior run out. | |
| On the other hand, many of Aisle's outcomes are quite effective on an | |
| emotional level, product of antisocial behavior or not; there is a strong | |
| sense in many of the scenarios that the PC doesn't really know why he does | |
| what he does. (Which, of course, puts him in the same boat as the player.) | |
| Whether intended this way or not, it's an intriguing take on the player-PC | |
| relationship in works of IF, since the player is free to tell the PC to do | |
| irrational, bizarre, or suicidal things -- but here the consequences of | |
| those irrational actions, and their effect on the PC, are played out again | |
| and again. Thus, as unattractive as the PC occasionally seems, it's hard | |
| to entirely lose one's sympathies for him. Since most of the story | |
| revolves around the PC's emotions, the player's reaction to the PC | |
| determines her reaction to the story as a whole, however -- and it should | |
| also be noted that the repetitive nature of the game, and the sameness of | |
| most of the outcomes, may tax the patience of the player and erode her | |
| sympathy for the hapless antisocial PC. | |
| The writing, on the whole, is strong -- memories come back to the PC in | |
| jumbled, scattered fragments that force the player to cobble together the | |
| story (or one of the stories), and the fragments -- a pasta meal, a | |
| waiter, an accident -- are vividly rendered, with striking images to carry | |
| them along. (It would spoil the game, however, to reveal what the images | |
| are.) The technical aspect, though obviously very simplified, is likewise | |
| well done; most actions, logical and illogical, are provided for, and | |
| those that aren't generally are omitted for a good reason. | |
| It's difficult to say, in the final analysis, what Aisle is setting out to | |
| do. If the point was simply to experiment with the classical IF form, this | |
| was clearly a successful effort. But the introspective nature of the game | |
| leads one to believe that the point is to portray a character and paint | |
| his emotional portrait, and the effectiveness of that aim turns on the | |
| player's reaction. For those who don't care for the PC or for his | |
| behavior, Aisle gets old fast, and there isn't much flexibility for the | |
| player to try to send the PC in different directions or otherwise change | |
| his ways. The lack of any sort of cathartic finale also means that the | |
| story always feels incomplete: the player is likely to try a series of | |
| options, eventually conclude there is nothing more to see, and quit, with | |
| no particularly resonant ending to make the whole thing more emotionally | |
| satisfying. | |
| Aisle is an interesting idea that has its moments, and it's worth a look | |
| for anyone interested in the theory of IF. Its effectiveness depends on | |
| whether it makes an emotional impact, however, and without such an impact, | |
| it's a dreary experience at best. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: Duncan Stevens <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu> | |
| TITLE: Anchorhead | |
| AUTHOR: Michael Gentry | |
| E-MAIL: edromia SP@G concentric.net | |
| DATE: 1998 | |
| PARSER: Inform standard | |
| SUPPORTS: Z-machine interpreters | |
| AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD) | |
| URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/anchor.z8 | |
| VERSION: Release 5 | |
| There's a certain skill to writing horror fiction: the author has to know | |
| how to build suspense in such a way that the story is interesting | |
| throughout. The challenge is doubled for IF, since the author cannot | |
| control the pacing in the same way as a static fiction writer can -- and | |
| the puzzles need to be forgiving enough that the player doesn't bog down | |
| in a particularly difficult one and lose the rhythm of the story. Michael | |
| Gentry's Anchorhead is very good horror IF; the author has a nice feel for | |
| the challenges posed by the genre, and the game is consistently both scary | |
| and playable, no small feat. | |
| Among the challenges is, of course, making the game feel fresh. | |
| Lovecraftian horror is a fairly well-explored IF genre -- between | |
| Infocom's Lurking Horror, Brendan Wyber's Theatre, Dennis Matheson's | |
| Awakening, and Anchorhead, Lovecraft seems to have quite a few imitators. | |
| (Most or all of whom, incidentally, write better than he did.) The trodden | |
| nature of this particular ground means that the seasoned IF veteran needs | |
| more than unnameable horrors and unspeakable rituals to stay interested in | |
| a game that borrows from Lovecraft. But Anchorhead is up to the job: the | |
| story is more than good enough to overcome the familiarity of the horror | |
| devices. Part of the reason is that the story revolves around the | |
| relationship between the PC and her husband, which comes alive as much as | |
| any relationship between two IF characters in memory -- and much of the | |
| progress of the story is marked by changes in that relationship. | |
| But I'm getting ahead of myself. The story is that your husband has | |
| inherited a family home in the New England town of Anchorhead, and picked | |
| up a full professorship at the local university, so you and he are moving | |
| in. You don't know much about his family -- in fact, when the story | |
| begins, you don't even know the family name (of this branch, at least) -- | |
| and much of the first half of the game is spent wandering around gleaning | |
| details. It's to the game's credit that you do have to glean the | |
| details -- as in, progress is cut off until you've actually found certain | |
| bits of information and made use of them in certain obvious ways. | |
| Knowledge from prior games, in other words, isn't enough. This makes | |
| particular sense given the genre: a Lovecraft fan might well skip straight | |
| to the conclusion and cut out the information-gathering, which would throw | |
| off the pacing of the story's buildup (and make later events rather | |
| confusing for someone who hadn't bothered to collect the evidence). And | |
| for those of us who don't know intuitively where the story is heading, the | |
| various details heighten the creepiness factor considerably. To be sure, | |
| there are improbabilities and coincidences, but such things are inherent | |
| in the Lovecraftian universe -- and given the assumptions of the genre, | |
| nothing in Anchorhead strains disbelief unnecessarily. | |
| The game is divided into three days, but time passes only when certain | |
| puzzles are solved; you are only on the clock at a few select times (and, | |
| even then, the timing isn't all that tight). The pacing is therefore | |
| fairly leisurely for the bulk of the game, which takes away the scare | |
| factor inherent in time limits. In light of that, the author has to ensure | |
| that the story does, in fact, move along when the threat of imminent death | |
| isn't forcing it to move along -- and he succeeds, mostly; few of the | |
| puzzles should detain the player long enough that she forgets what had | |
| been going on in the story before she started on the puzzle. From the | |
| author's notes, this appears to be a conscious choice, and it's a wise | |
| one; repeating the same scene dozens of times doesn't serve any sort of | |
| story well, but it's particularly damaging for horror, since there's | |
| little shock value in a gruesome death when you're reading it for the | |
| twentieth time. As it is, there are only a few scenes where the player is | |
| likely to have to replay several times, and the more recent releases have | |
| streamlined those as well -- particularly one involving a certain asylum. | |
| (Anchorhead is much better in this respect than Lurking Horror, which had | |
| some very difficult puzzles and several ostensibly scary sequences that | |
| most players probably end up playing through multiple times.) | |
| Anchorhead is a _very_ large game -- not so much in the amount of area | |
| covered, but in the length and complexity of the story, the amount of | |
| items you encounter and use in one way or another, and the potential | |
| different paths through the game. Very few of the game's items are | |
| artificially cut off from each other to save the bother of coding their | |
| interaction, moreover, meaning that the combinatorial explosion factor | |
| must have been considerable. In light of that, the technical aspect of | |
| Anchorhead is impressive indeed (there's a reason why this was the first | |
| Inform data file to exceed half a meg in its compiled form). There were | |
| some bugs from the first few releases, but they've largely been cleaned | |
| up. One of the nicest things about Anchorhead, moreover, is its | |
| player-friendly nature: you have a rucksack-like trenchcoat that can carry | |
| just about everything in the game, but the game does all the item-juggling | |
| for you when you try to pick up something you don't have room for in your | |
| hands. Better still, the umpteen locked doors and keys to those doors that | |
| you encounter along the way are handled automatically, through a keyring: | |
| type UNLOCK DOOR before one of the locked doors, and the game will | |
| automatically flip through the keyring and try all the keys. Without this | |
| innovation, trying to keep track of which key opens which door would be a | |
| puzzle in itself; with it, the player is free to pass through the doors | |
| without giving them a second thought. A game as complex as Anchorhead is | |
| clearly the product of considerable attention to detail. | |
| The best thing about Anchorhead, however, is the writing, which is itself | |
| the product of some very careful choices. Horror writing can easily lose | |
| its force over the course of a story; the author has to strain to come up | |
| with fresh grotesqueries that shock or terrify in new and different ways. | |
| There's no formula for avoiding repetition in such writing, but somehow | |
| Anchorhead manages -- to the end, I never had a sense of deja vu when | |
| reading about my latest gory death. The author also exercises enough | |
| restraint to avoid slipping into self-parody, another pitfall of horror | |
| writing -- every sight and smell is not, in fact, pronounced the most | |
| horrible sight you've ever witnessed or the foulest stench you've ever | |
| smelled. Vital on this point is that the author avoids injecting the PC's | |
| emotions into the story almost completely; when you're not told that | |
| you're terrified out of your wits at every moment (and can infer such | |
| things when you care to), the story avoids excessive repetition. Nor, in | |
| fact, are you told, with a few exceptions, how you react to your various | |
| experiences -- no "you scream in terror" or "you gasp in horror" or | |
| equivalents. The emotional reactions are left to the player. | |
| Those are some of the things Anchorhead doesn't do that win it points in | |
| my book, but the things it does do are just as good. This game won the | |
| 1998 XYZZY for Best Setting, and the award is well-deserved: the | |
| atmosphere is skillful, particularly in the early scenes: the author | |
| conveys a feeling of general gloom and decay without crossing the line | |
| into horror prematurely, and without laying on the foreboding and unease | |
| stuff too thickly. This is one of the better passages: | |
| Pallid gray light trickles in through the drawn blinds. The office is | |
| deserted, papers still scattered across the top of the desk. The front | |
| door lies west, and the file room lies east. | |
| Sitting on the corner of the paper-strewn desk are a telephone and an | |
| answering machine. | |
| Someone seems to have left a cup of coffee sitting out, half-finished and | |
| cold. | |
| With just a few details -- the "pallid gray light", the unfinished cup of | |
| coffee -- the author sets a subtly disturbing scene; not everything gets a | |
| description filled with ominous portents (there is nothing to suggest that | |
| the desk was abandoned in haste or any such thing, which might tempt a | |
| lesser writer). It is inevitable, given the nature of the materials, that | |
| things get a bit over the top now and again, but that's the exception | |
| rather than the rule here. | |
| Are there flaws in Anchorhead? Yes, but they don't detract much from the | |
| story -- and recent releases have cleaned them up. There's a sequence | |
| toward the end of the third day with no time limit (after a chase of sorts | |
| had already happened) in which the player doesn't really have much | |
| direction in figuring out what to do next, and it's possible to wander | |
| around aimlessly for quite a while, trying to figure how where to go, and | |
| lose the feel of the story. Some points are awarded for nonessential | |
| things, which might leave the player wondering what she's missed when she | |
| completes the game with less than a perfect score. The one puzzle that | |
| struck me as potentially frustrating involved an NPC who would give the PC | |
| an object, given the proper prompting -- but it's not necessarily obvious | |
| how to prompt him, and it's easy to get on the wrong track. | |
| Still, these problems are insignificant given the scope of the game, and | |
| most things about Anchorhead work more than well enough to keep the player | |
| involved throughout. It's an impressively coded, impeccably written work, | |
| one of the best in recent memory. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| FROM: okblacke SP@G usa.net | |
| NAME: The Awakening | |
| AUTHOR: Dennis Matheson | |
| EMAIL: Dennis.Matheson SP@G delta-air.com | |
| (I pulled this off of Deja News. The E-mail listed in SPAG#15 may be | |
| better. Dennis_Matheson SP@G compuserve.com) | |
| DATE: July 1998 | |
| PARSER: Inform | |
| AVAILABILITY: GMD | |
| URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/awaken.z5 | |
| VERSION: Release 1 | |
| "The Awakening" is a short-short horror with a clear and admitted | |
| homage to H. P. Lovecraft (HPL), complete with elements lifted directly | |
| from "The Outsider" and other of that seminal author's works. It's a | |
| "first game", too, and taken as such, it's certainly not bad. | |
| But the game can be seen to illustrate some of the larger issues that | |
| arise when trying to bring the feel of HPL to IF. On the good side, a | |
| lack of dialogue and human interaction (which HPL felt to be | |
| antithetical to the atmosphere he was trying to create) makes | |
| sidestepping classic IF NPC issues easier. On the bad side, the | |
| kleptomaniacal, Wile-E.-Coyote-esque aspect of the adventurer doesn't | |
| mix well with lurking horrors. | |
| In other words, running around with ladders and being chased by dogs | |
| present me with comic images--made even more comic by the fact that I | |
| knew from the start (as any reader of HPL would) the secret behind the | |
| "purple tablecloth". | |
| I know the writing worked for a lot of people, but I'm still scratching | |
| my head over "storm tossed sky" (not to mention the Zork-esque "storm | |
| tossed branches"), concaphony, and the "iron-barred fence" in the | |
| initial descriptions. (A fence barred by iron? A fence made of iron | |
| bars?) Not to mention prose peppered with "seems". (I'll assume that | |
| the adjective-heavy segments in the beginning of the game are an homage | |
| to HPL.) | |
| Some of the weather effects didn't quite make it for me, either. The | |
| frequency of the intermittent hailstorms drew my attention to the fact | |
| that I was being fed random weather effects. | |
| There was some satisfaction in solving the puzzles, although there is | |
| an instant death puzzle at the end (which you can avoid by talking to | |
| an NPC). They mostly made sense and some effort was made to avoid | |
| having the player get into unwinnable state. (Though the hint system | |
| actually encourages the hapless user to get into an unwinnable state, | |
| if he's trying to minimize his use of it.) | |
| The arrangement of hints is poor: I'd say half the hints are worthless, | |
| and they detract from any sense of atmosphere, even ending with "That's | |
| All Folks" when they have been exhausted. | |
| There are a number of out-of-place messages, some from the Inform | |
| standard library (like "Violence isn't the answer to this one.") and | |
| one gets the idea that the author hasn't quite patched up all the | |
| holes. You can, for example, tie a rope to the limb of the tree, only | |
| to receive the message "The broken limb isn't attached to anything" | |
| when you try to "untie limb". | |
| This is a somewhat harsh review but, as I point out, the game isn't bad. | |
| There are some nice atmospheric touches and the author shows more care | |
| with the story than one might expect from such a small game. Nonetheless, | |
| a game (however short) that is dependent so heavily on atmosphere needs | |
| to take impeccable care with the details or risk losing his audience | |
| before they get to the "frisson". | |
| Plot: 1.2 | |
| Atmosphere: 0.8 | |
| Writing: 1.2 | |
| Gameplay: 0.9 | |
| Characters: 1.0 | |
| Puzzles: 1.0 | |
| Overall: 1.3 | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| FROM: okblacke SP@G usa.net | |
| NAME: Detective | |
| AUTHOR: Matt Barringer | |
| EMAIL: Unknown | |
| (He probably doesn't want any mail about this anymore anyway.) | |
| DATE: 1993 | |
| PARSER: Inform | |
| AVAILABILITY: GMD | |
| URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/detectiv.z5 | |
| VERSION: Stuart Moore's Inform Port of an AGT classic! | |
| Have you ever had the experience of seeing a movie or reading a book only | |
| after a hundred people told you how good or how bad it was? The actual | |
| work almost never lives up to your expectations. So it is with | |
| "Detective" which is probably the "Plan 9 From Outer Space" of IF. (It's | |
| not the worst piece of IF ever written by a long-shot but it may be the | |
| most infamous.) | |
| I'm not entirely sure of the history of the game, beyond the author | |
| uploading it to a BBS and things getting out of hand from there, but if | |
| I'm not mistaken there are two ports of the original AGT game and two MST | |
| versions. That may be some kind of record for a game held in such loving | |
| low esteem. | |
| I hadn't ever played it, so when I saw that Stuart Moore had created an | |
| Inform version, I thought I'd take the time to play this and the so-called | |
| MSTied version. Truth is, it's not that bad. It's not any kind of good, | |
| either, because it's basically a puzzle-less IF piece without solid, | |
| compelling writing to sustain it. Enough has been said about the program's | |
| various faults (the lack of a proofreading, instant death, one way doors, | |
| incidents built into room descriptions, near complete non-interactivity, | |
| no story development beyond the original idea, incoherency and so on) that | |
| the game could serve as a model on how not to write IF. | |
| I won't embellish on the game's faults here except to say that, having | |
| known what to expect, I can't really share in the frustration that players | |
| of the original AGT version must have experienced if they were looking for | |
| a game. | |
| It's short, arbitrary and pointless, but it *is* short! It may even be | |
| historical. (Can you count yourself a true IF afficionado if you don't | |
| know of this game?) It's also sincere in its way. If you look at other | |
| bad IF, you often find a cynicism, rampant insults to the player, and | |
| sleazy bad humor. It's clear that the author's intentions are good. | |
| Rating is somewhat problematic because (as outlined by Whizzard) the | |
| ratings system deals with "attempts" and "effort" and I believe the | |
| attempts and effort were there, just not successful. Nonetheless, I can't | |
| really give a high score for "trying" except to bump up the "overall" | |
| category somewhat. | |
| Plot: 0.1 | |
| Atmosphere: 0.0 | |
| Writing: 0.1 | |
| Gameplay: 0.0 | |
| Characters: 0.1 | |
| Puzzles: 0.0 | |
| Overall: 0.5 | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: Duncan Stevens <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu> | |
| TITLE: Golden Wombat of Destiny | |
| AUTHOR: Huw Collingbourne | |
| E-MAIL: huwcol SP@G aol.com | |
| DATE: 1989 | |
| PARSER: Home-brewed, but adequate | |
| SUPPORTS: MS-DOS | |
| AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD) | |
| URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/pc/wombat.zip | |
| VERSION: 1.2 | |
| The IF Archive is filled with no end of strange stuff, and Golden Wombat | |
| of Destiny is one of the strangest. The author is Welsh, I believe; I | |
| don't know the circumstances that led to writing this game, nor precisely | |
| what language it's written in. But while it isn't up to the technical | |
| standards of IF produced now, it's fun in its own quirky way. | |
| It seems you're looking for a lost city in the middle of a mangrove swamp, | |
| drawn on by vague talk of a mighty civilization destroyed by a plague, a | |
| nameless horror, wonderful treasures, and a Book of Knowledge. The swamp | |
| serves as a maze of sorts, not at all a highlight; as you have no objects | |
| to map with, the approach of choice seems to be wandering around randomly. | |
| The game does note your footprints in the mud, but that's your only | |
| guidance. Eventually, you stumble on the city, the game proper begins, and | |
| you save the game and never bother with the mangrove swamp again. A | |
| peculiar design choice, admittedly, and a harbinger of some equally | |
| peculiar choices. Once inside the city, you stumble across a giant | |
| termite, a skull guarded by an ant, a Room of Lesser Hallucination, a | |
| Death Ray Room -- and it gets odder from there. | |
| The puzzles are difficult, often unfairly so -- one requires some | |
| Shakespeare knowledge, another requires a realization that two machines on | |
| opposite sides of the city are linked somehow, and most require startling | |
| leaps of logic. The walkthrough in the solutions directory on GMD is | |
| handy. On the other hand, there is a certain elegance to a few of the | |
| puzzles -- at one point, careful study of the geography of the city is | |
| rewarded. And the parser, for the most part, is good enough to recognize a | |
| variety of syntaxes, so "guess-the-verb" is never an issue. For a homemade | |
| parser, Golden Wombat's is fairly effective -- full sentences are handled | |
| well (though not pronouns or undo, irritatingly), and there are no | |
| disambiguation problems that I encountered. And the writing, while hardly | |
| flowery, is competent -- important events are thoroughly described, while | |
| ordinary rooms are simply treated as ordinary. (At one initially confusing | |
| moment, you actually encounter the nameless horror mentioned above -- | |
| rendered as " ".) | |
| As indicated, "quirky" is the name of the game here. Particularly | |
| memorable is a funnel buried in the ground (examining it yields "It is | |
| extraordinarily funnel-shaped"); when the proper object is deposited in | |
| the funnel, you get this: | |
| there is a noise of ancient machinery which has become activated somewhere | |
| under the ground beneath you...After a few moments, there is a curious | |
| rustling sound amongst the vegetation nearby and a tiny sign unexpectedly | |
| pops up just behind the funnel. It says: "Thankyou [sic] for your | |
| generosity; "You have given that a wombat "May romp again in peace..." | |
| There is the sound of tuneless music somewhat like the British National | |
| Anthem being played on a didgery-do on a warped cassette buried in the | |
| ground. You stand to attention and salute. | |
| The upshot of the scene is that a hamster appears -- "looking very bemused | |
| and sad - the way that homeless hamsters usually do." A little of this | |
| sort of thing alerts the player that this game is not played by your | |
| ordinary logical rules. Most of the game is cute, but a good deal of it is | |
| just downright peculiar. | |
| The plot, despite the rather cursory background given at the beginning, is | |
| reasonably well developed, though some things remain unexplained. Central | |
| to the story is an empress imprisoned (after a fashion) in the city, whom | |
| you endeavor to free--but the consequences upon freeing her are rather | |
| surprising, and the ending is a real shocker: just when the player thinks | |
| he understands where the game is going, or has gone, the ending pulls the | |
| rug out from under him. (The original Zarfian ending, in a sense.) Though | |
| most of the story does ultimately hang together, many of the connections | |
| are left to be filled in rather than dutifully supplied. The effect is | |
| initially frustrating, but it actually fits the enigmatic feel of the game | |
| rather well. | |
| Golden Wombat of Destiny is obviously nothing like any IF produced | |
| recently; it's very much a product of the early days of freeware and | |
| shareware, when home-brewed parsers were common and cooperation among | |
| authors to develop and test games was sporadic (at least, as compared to | |
| today). But it's no less creative for all that, and it's offbeat fun, for | |
| the most part, with a thoroughly surprising finale. Though best played | |
| with a walkthrough at hand, it's certainly one of the more intriguing | |
| denizens of the IF archive. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: Duncan Stevens <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu> | |
| TITLE: Jewel of Knowledge | |
| AUTHOR: Francesco Bova | |
| E-MAIL: fbova SP@G pangea.ca | |
| DATE: 1999 | |
| PARSER: Inform standard | |
| SUPPORTS: Z-machine interpreters | |
| AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD) | |
| URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/jewel.z5 | |
| VERSION: Release 1 | |
| Is the truest/highest purpose of IF entertainment, or art, or a fusion of | |
| the two? Is a game that provides an enjoyable playing experience as worthy | |
| as one that questions the nature of the form, or slyly sends up cliches or | |
| assumptions about its genre? Should the IF community turn up its nose at | |
| games that aspire to be nothing more than a collection of puzzles, bound | |
| by a tried-and-true plot? | |
| Francesco Bova's recently released Jewel of Knowledge does not pose these | |
| questions, technically, but playing through it does bring to mind some | |
| issues at the very core of IF--because, in its essense, Jewel of Knowledge | |
| is a puzzle-fest dungeon crawl in the tradition of Colossal Cave, Zork, | |
| and other foundational works of IF. To be sure, it gives the player | |
| considerably more backstory than most of the seminal dungeon-crawl works, | |
| and your motivations are considerably more developed. But what really | |
| works here is what made the canonical dungeon crawls work, namely good | |
| puzzles and a well-described setting; the moments where the author tries | |
| to question the assumptions of those traditional dungeon crawls are far | |
| less effective. | |
| Let me be clear, though: there are many intriguing innovations in Jewel of | |
| Knowledge that may well catch a Zork veteran off guard. Particularly | |
| notable is the opening sequence, which makes the backstory/prologue of the | |
| game interactive and forces the player to pay attention to the story | |
| rather than ignoring it and blithely jumping into the puzzles. While the | |
| plot does not at first glance appear novel--defeat three dragons, obtain | |
| the McGuffin of the title--the story follows a rather different path than | |
| the fantasy-game aficionado might expect. Other mild surprises include a | |
| maze that isn't what it appears to be and a false puzzle of sorts, an | |
| obstacle that cannot be passed in the expected way. These are effective in | |
| the context of the game because they keep the player guessing. | |
| Moreover, many of the puzzles are genuinely creative. Particularly notable | |
| is a cloak into which the player can insert other objects (the exact | |
| physical process here is left vague); the cloak then assumes the | |
| properties of those objects. The game doesn't do as much as it might with | |
| the implications of this power--some of the stranger and more interesting | |
| results are left sadly underdescribed. Still, it's an interesting idea | |
| that gives rise to some unusual puzzles. The maze mentioned above is | |
| clever as well and accommodates different solutions, in a sense, and other | |
| puzzles turn on recognizing relationships between objects in ways that | |
| reward careful reading. | |
| It is obvious to anyone who has finished Jewel of Knowledge, however, that | |
| the author had more on his mind when writing the game than coding original | |
| puzzles and arranging them in a satisfying sequence. There are Weighty | |
| Issues Afoot; progressively stronger hints develop them throughout the | |
| game, such that the finale is a surprise only for the player who hasn't | |
| been paying much attention at all. But while the game does a nice job of | |
| developing the PC's character and fitting him into the story, the author | |
| overdoes his theme--and what was presumably supposed to be a surprise | |
| ending becomes painfully obvious. The loudly moralistic ending is | |
| exacerbated by a guess-what-the-author's-thinking game for the optimal | |
| ending; even if the player recognizes the action that would lead to the | |
| suboptimal ending, she's likely to try it just to get a clue toward what | |
| the author _really_ wants her to do. The trouble is partly that the point | |
| isn't all that novel--Zork III made it much more subtly--and the | |
| alternatives presented at the end are painted in such stark colors that it | |
| doesn't actually say much to us. (Admittedly, it may be asking a lot to | |
| expect a fantasy game to say anything of note, but a more nuanced set of | |
| options might have helped.) | |
| There are similar problems with the writing. Parts of Jewel of Knowledge | |
| are impressively well-written: the scenes, by and large, are set vividly | |
| and economically, and the cave setting comes alive even for players who | |
| have already seen thousands of cave settings. There is plenty of | |
| geological detail (shades of Colossal Cave) that reduces the feeling that | |
| the cave is just a generic setting for the author's House o' Puzzles. (The | |
| geology even plays a part in some of the puzzles.) Other descriptions give | |
| the setting some atmosphere, though on the whole there isn't much of that. | |
| But there are also many awkwardly phrased moments, and, unsurprisingly, | |
| many of them come along when the author is reminding us of his Themes. | |
| This passage, from a conversation with your companion, is not entirely | |
| atypical: | |
| "Of course, returning the Jewel to Amylya will provide us with a lifestyle | |
| we could have only dreamed of," continues Jacob, "and the omniscience that | |
| the Jewel brings would tempt any person." | |
| Any person? Conversation isn't easy to write, but jarring moments like | |
| these don't help. Likewise, in what is presumably supposed to be a | |
| chilling moment, you discover the body of your companion: | |
| Oh, the horror! Lying face down on the cold granite ledge is your former | |
| colleague Ariana! Looking up through the shaft, you deduce that this must | |
| have been the air pocket she fell through a few layers up. | |
| The tone wobbles badly--any "horror" the player feels is minimized by the | |
| ill-placed observation about the air pocket. On the other hand, in the | |
| same scene, there is one particularly well-done line: | |
| You feel a lump in your throat as you realise that your nimble friend | |
| won't be around to experience the joy of your triumph as you bring home | |
| the Jewel. | |
| The author makes a rather surprising point here about the essential | |
| selfishness of the PC--and while it's jarring to interrupt the player's | |
| sympathy for Ariana, it does serve the purposes of the story. The writing | |
| isn't world-class, in other words, but it's good enough to be worth paying | |
| attention to--particularly in in the way it develops the protagonist's | |
| character. | |
| Likewise, from a technical standpoint, Jewel of Knowledge is mostly | |
| successful despite some rough spots. Some puzzles take more experimenting | |
| with verbs and syntax than seems strictly necessary, and others take more | |
| manipulation and searching of apparently insignificant scenery than one | |
| would expect from the average player. (At one point, moreover, the author | |
| seems to have unintentionally created a puzzle involving your escape from | |
| a dream or reverie, since the required action is rather obscure.) But | |
| there are very few bugs, and the design flaws don't significantly impede | |
| the player's progress. There are well-done little bits here and there, | |
| such as a warning system when the player is about to render the game | |
| unwinnable, and a "practice" puzzle reminiscent of Edifice. | |
| Jewel of Knowledge is, in fact, well-crafted enough that the forced ending | |
| is all the more disappointing--and yet it does manage to say something, | |
| even if unwittingly, about the state of IF. It is not exactly a secret | |
| that generic cave crawls focused entirely on gathering treasure are no | |
| longer in fashion, but Jewel of Knowledge, it may fairly be said, goes out | |
| of its way to avoid that label just a bit too much. No doubt this is the | |
| product of envelope-pushing IF that have left the traditional fantasy | |
| quests looking unimaginative, but it should still be possible to combine | |
| the traditional fantasy game with a modicum of irony; that was, after all, | |
| Zork III's approach. Perhaps more importantly, the split in personality | |
| between the "game" side of Jewel of Knowledge, which is by and large well | |
| done, and the "fiction" side, which is a worthy effort but needs some | |
| help, leaves the whole thing feeling a bit schizophrenic. | |
| My point, if I have one, is that not all IF needs to be dedicated to | |
| pushing envelopes, erasing boundaries, overturning tropes. Certainly, it's | |
| fun and a good idea to send up familiar settings or introduce fourth-wall | |
| humor to show the player that you're hip to the latest trends. (Jewel of | |
| Knowledge does do this in a few spots, and quite well at that.) But IF can | |
| be perfectly serviceable as _entertainment_, hardly an illegitimate goal, | |
| without beating the player over the head with a message about the | |
| limitations or assumptions of the genre. Jewel of Knowledge feels like it | |
| wants, in its heart of hearts, to be a Spider and Web, a Losing Your Grip, | |
| a Photopia, and it just isn't up to the job. | |
| There is plenty to like about Jewel of Knowledge; in most respects, it's a | |
| worthy heir to the tradition of fantasy quests, and while it has some | |
| problems, they don't detract from the game aspect much. Unfortunately, as | |
| interactive fiction, the overall effect is best described as uneven. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| FROM: Karen Tyers <karvic SP@G btinternet.com> | |
| Jewel of Knowledge is the first offering by a promising new author, | |
| Francesco Bova, and hopefully it won't be the last. It is a | |
| traditional dungeon crawl, so for you purists out there, it's ideal. | |
| In my opinion (not worth much, but there you are), there are far too | |
| few traditional text adventures being written nowadays, and I have to | |
| confess I am not too sure that I like the way that interactive fiction | |
| is heading. I like to have puzzles to scratch my head over, and the | |
| trend towards puzzleless games doesn't appeal to me at all. You might | |
| just as well write a book and be done with it. | |
| There, now I'll get off my soapbox, and on with the game. When you | |
| start, you find yourself deep underground, obviously in the middle of | |
| some quest or other, but with very little information on what you are | |
| supposed to be doing. This had me stumped at first, but you do have a | |
| travelling companion (Jacob), and if you start talking to him about | |
| various things, you will find the game soon opens up, and since poor | |
| Jacob doesn't live very long, as usual in this type of game, you find | |
| yourself alone and very much up the creek without a paddle! I am not | |
| giving away anything here by telling you this, since in order for the | |
| game to start properly, unfortunately poor Jacob has to go and meet his | |
| Maker. | |
| OK, so you're now even deeper underground, and you must start to wander | |
| round the various tunnels and passageways in order to achieve your | |
| object of finding this wondrous jewel which is reputed to give it's | |
| owner unlimited knowledge and power. I really don't want to say much | |
| about the puzzles since it would give too much away, but there are lots | |
| of things to do in a very small playing area. What about that porous | |
| wall that you can look through - can you get to the other side of it? | |
| What about that shaft above the geyser - are you able to get up there? | |
| What about the crack in the roof of one of the tunnels? What about | |
| that skeleton that seems to be hiding something? The list goes on, and | |
| you haven't even met the three dragons yet! Is there any way of | |
| getting in contact with the people who sent you on this foolhardy | |
| mission in the first place? | |
| These are just a few of the questions you will have to find the answers | |
| to while playing this game. There are many more of course, and I have | |
| to say that although I got stuck in several places, none of the | |
| problems were insoluble with a little thought, and a lot of lateral | |
| thinking. Just a word of warning, don't be too quick to be destructive | |
| and violent - think about things. | |
| When I finally got to the endgame and found the jewel, I was quite | |
| relieved. I know from messages on the newsgroups that I subscribe to, | |
| that several people didn't like the ending, but I have to say that I | |
| found it to be a very refreshing change. I won't say more than that, | |
| as I don't want to spoil things, but I would be very interested to know | |
| what other people think. | |
| There are still one or two minor bugs in the game, but nothing that | |
| will stop you completing it. The author is aware of them, and they | |
| should be cleaned up shortly. | |
| I may be a little biased here, since I was involved in the | |
| beta-testing, but I would thoroughly recommend this as a smashing | |
| little game to while away a few hours. I do hope the author continues | |
| to write games like this, for those of us who still prefer a good old | |
| 'zorky' type of game. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| FROM: okblacke SP@G usa.net | |
| NAME: Mystery Science Theater 3000, Adventure 101 ("Detective") | |
| AUTHOR: C.E. Forman, Gareth Rees, Graeme Cree, Stuart Moore ("Detective" | |
| by Matt Barringer) | |
| EMAIL: various | |
| DATE: This version, 1998 | |
| PARSER: Inform | |
| AVAILABILITY: GMD | |
| URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/MST3K1S.Z5 | |
| VERSION: Stuart Moore's Inform Port of the original MST3K IF. | |
| Having survived "Detective" relatively unscathed, I then went on to play | |
| the MST3K version of the game. As a rule, if someone is poking fun at | |
| someone else's work, I tend to be more critical and keep a sharper eye out | |
| for errors than otherwise, and right off the bat I noticed a few errors in | |
| the game. | |
| For example, the game has "role call" instead "roll call". Some of the | |
| initial jokes don't display any greater creativity than the source | |
| material. Also, the printing of the complete opening song from the MST3K | |
| TV show is probably a copyright violation. After the initial scenes, | |
| however, it's clear that the adaptation is more "good-natured ribbing" | |
| than mean-spirited criticism, and it won me over. | |
| You don't have to be a fan of the show "Mystery Science Theater 3000" or | |
| of bad movies, but if you're not, a fair portion of the jokes will be lost | |
| on you, and the introduction (which you can skip) may not make any sense | |
| at all. Suffice to say that the text of the original game has been "spiced | |
| up" with comments from characters (Mike Nelson and his two robots) who | |
| watch as you play. | |
| There is considerable creativity here, and the quality of the humor can | |
| give you an appreciation for "Detective" that you may miss just playing it | |
| "straight" (though I really think you should play it straight to begin | |
| with). For example, I knew there were "one-way" doors in Detective, but I | |
| never noticed them as the game was positively aggressive in telling me | |
| which way I could go. Knowing how bad the game was, I never bothered to do | |
| anything other than what the text was leading me to do. | |
| But with the MST3K version, it becomes fun to open all the doors and see | |
| what various deaths were planned. As they're all instant deaths, you can | |
| just undo and go on playing along. Also things like trying to backtrack | |
| and go in circles pays off when Mike and the 'bots riff on the "scenery" | |
| not reflecting your most recent actions. (At one point, you shoot a guy | |
| and his body vanishes, but he's still in the room description.) | |
| Personally, I think that any game, movie, or work of literature can be | |
| given this sort of treatment. (I've always wanted to see Mike and the | |
| 'bots do "Citizen Kane".) But a game like "Detective" gets a new lease on | |
| life from efforts like this, and reminds us how to laugh...and love | |
| again*. (*A quote from the show and the interview of Matt Barringer by | |
| C.E. Forman.) | |
| To rate the game, I've used the adapted text wherever possible to | |
| influence the ratings I gave detective. Since the MST3K version didn't add | |
| any puzzles (an intriguing notion were someone to pick it up), I didn't | |
| alter its score. Also, if you don't know the show, the atmosphere, | |
| characters and plot will probably work less well, since the game relied | |
| heavily on these known characters and spent little time explaining them. | |
| Plot: 1.0 | |
| Atmosphere: 1.0 | |
| Writing: 1.5 | |
| Gameplay: 1.0 | |
| Characters: 1.0 | |
| Puzzles: 0.0 | |
| Overall: 1.5 | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: Duncan Stevens <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu> | |
| TITLE: Varicella | |
| AUTHOR: Adam Cadre | |
| E-MAIL: ac SP@G adamcadre.ac | |
| DATE: 1999 | |
| PARSER: Inform standard | |
| SUPPORTS: Z-machine interpreters | |
| AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD) | |
| URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/ganes/zcode/vgame.zip | |
| VERSION: Release 1.00 | |
| Varicella, Adam Cadre's third game, has almost nothing in common with his | |
| first two, I-0 and Photopia--which, in turn, have just as little in common | |
| with each other. (One wonders how long Adam can go without producing IF | |
| that bears any resemblance to anything he's already written.) "Almost" is | |
| operative because Varicella does have a few things in common with Adam's | |
| previous works. The writing is terrific, of course; this is one of the | |
| best-written works of IF ever, bar none. Beyond that, though, such a | |
| wealth of intelligence went into the designing of this game that, even | |
| when the playing experience is unedifying, the player can only appreciate | |
| the author's artwork. | |
| The premise: you're Primo Varicella, the Palace Minister in the palace of | |
| Piedmont, a small Italian city-state (and the product of a somewhat | |
| reworked history, since the setting is modern enough to include telephones | |
| and electronic surveillance). The king is dead, leaving a five-year-old | |
| heir, you're bent on seizing power for yourself- -and you have no apparent | |
| compunctions about how you get that power. Your primary tool for the | |
| purpose is murder; for your purposes, evidently, your rivals are only out | |
| of the way when they're dead. Fortunately, all your rivals for the throne | |
| are as evil as you, so the player is unlikely to feel any qualms--and all | |
| sorts of nasty stuff ensues. | |
| Varicella is a black comedy, with the accent on "black"--mayhem and | |
| self-aggrandizement are your character's primary objectives. It follows | |
| the lead of last year's "Little Blue Men" in making the PC amoral, driven | |
| by greed and unimpeded by sentimental things like compassion--but it | |
| addresses a factor that Little Blue Men did not, namely the problem of | |
| expecting the player to go along with the PC's objectives. All of the | |
| rivals you bump off, or arrange to have bumped off, are profoundly evil; | |
| most of them seem to enjoy abusing or exploiting those weaker than | |
| themselves. (It is arguable whether you, the PC, are just as evil, but | |
| certainly your enemies are unsavory folks.) The player can see Varicella | |
| as a sort of avenging force, therefore, even if there are no signs that | |
| Varicella actually feels that way or cares about the various evils | |
| perpetrated by his enemies except insofar as they affect him personally. | |
| It's a rationalization, but a useful one. | |
| Varicella himself is one of the most intriguing PC's in memory, but also | |
| one of the most frustrating. He is fastidious to the point of caricature; | |
| the game regularly keeps you from touching or exploring things because the | |
| character finds the idea "unseemly." In fact, "unseemly" is Varicella's | |
| favorite word; he uses it as a sort of all-purpose denigration, and it | |
| gets applied indiscriminately to actions like walking into a wall | |
| inadvertently, lying on the floor, or dying messily. His tastes in | |
| interior decoration are exacting, and he feels compelled to comment on the | |
| furnishings of virtually every room in the palace--in fact, redecorating | |
| seems to be among his main objectives in seizing the throne. The persona | |
| that emerges is a sort of C-3PO gone Machiavellian, whose main concern in | |
| seizing power is ensuring that there are no bloodstains on the carpets. | |
| Varicella is an amusing invention, to be sure, but accomplishing his aims | |
| while observing his scruples can be aggravating; the verb TELL is almost | |
| never useful, as the game invariably returns "You're not about to divulge | |
| your secrets to a hysterical female," or with some substitute for the | |
| "hysterical female." In fact, though Varicella speaks in the beginning of | |
| a "flawless plan," I had the impression that this sort of character would | |
| ordinarily fuss over details and never actually dispose of anyone--and | |
| that it's the player's intervention that makes him a murderer. If so, it's | |
| a disturbing spin on the player-PC relationship. | |
| Unfortunately, none of the other characters are nearly as vivid, and most, | |
| with the exception of Miss Sierra, the cynical, clear-eyed prostitute, are | |
| wearily familiar. There's the dissolute younger brother, the corrupt | |
| priest, the ambitious War Minister, and others. To be sure, Adam gives | |
| many of them backstories that put their behavior in context, but they | |
| don't do much that could be considered surprising. Miss Sierra is the | |
| exception, though; she has definite opinions on everything that goes on, | |
| and the perspective that she affords on every aspect of the game is rather | |
| disconcerting. (In fact, she seems to function as the author's | |
| mouthpiece.) If there is a defect to Miss Sierra, it is that she speaks | |
| cynically about everything and initially seems to care personally about | |
| nothing, so that discovering something that does touch her personally | |
| leaves one wondering why. (It seems, in other words, that she could | |
| perfectly well shrug it off as typical of the depraved world she inhabits | |
| and understands so well, and it's not clear why she reacts as strongly as | |
| she does.) On the other hand, the point of Varicella is served just as | |
| well without 10 exhaustively developed characters; the author does what he | |
| sets out to do quite well with only a few. | |
| Lots and lots goes on in Varicella, and the timing for your required | |
| actions is very tight; ascertaining what you need to do requires several | |
| games' worth of information-gathering, along with considerable logistical | |
| planning so that you can time everything properly. Constant restarting | |
| isn't my favorite mode of gameplay, but it's acceptable in Varicella | |
| because the game is so short--with less than a hundred moves to replay, | |
| starting from scratch isn't such a chore. (There's even an inside joke | |
| toward the end of the game on this very subject: Varicella says to one of | |
| his rivals, "None of us really has the luxury of going back and trying it | |
| all over again until we get it right, now do we?" Varicella, of course, | |
| has had that very luxury.) The other reason why repetition isn't as | |
| irritating as it might be elsewhere is that, as mentioned, Adam is a hell | |
| of a writer, and reading his prose is consistently enjoyable no matter how | |
| often it goes by. Notable, but by no means atypical, is the following | |
| passage in the prologue: | |
| For if this letter you've just received is correct, just such a disease | |
| has claimed the life of the King. This leaves the principality in the | |
| hands of his son, Prince Charles. Prince Charles is five years old. | |
| Piedmont, it seems, will be requiring the services of a regent for the | |
| foreseeable future. And you can think of no better candidate than | |
| yourself. | |
| One can almost see the character rubbing his hands together (in a | |
| fastidious sort of way, of course) at the prospect of snatching the | |
| regency. The phrasing captures his personality nicely--"requiring the | |
| services of a regent" is the sentence construction of a man who has spent | |
| most of his life trying to phrase indelicate matters delicately. The | |
| mock-serious tone of "you can think of no better candidate than yourself" | |
| likewise implies that the narrator has spent lots of time thinking it | |
| over, really, and is prepared to justify the conclusion to his superiors | |
| as a Palace Minister must. The writing reflects Varicella's personality | |
| throughout the game, and is almost invariably mordantly funny. | |
| Playing through Varicella is quite an experience; as noted, the player | |
| must devote himself to thoroughly unwholesome ends, sought for no | |
| particularly good reason, which isn't necessarily such a pleasant | |
| sensation. Beyond that, though, the game requires that you unearth all | |
| sorts of unsavory details about your fellow aspirants to the regency--and | |
| the nature of the things you learn is, by and large, unpleasant. Giving | |
| the relevant players their comeuppance is superficially satisfying, but it | |
| doesn't address or rectify the evils already done--and the ultimate ending | |
| reflects that fact. In that sense, the game is thoroughly depressing; | |
| there's such a remarkable concentration of evil in the game's world that | |
| the walls practically drip with it. (In fact, in a sense, they do.) Yes, | |
| it's fiction, but the story told is unremittingly bleak--part of the | |
| game's message is that evil inevitably engenders more evil (and, moreover, | |
| a purer and more monstrous evil). It's in the nature of IF that telling a | |
| story of dirty deeds leaves the player feeling a bit soiled himself. | |
| (Footnote: playing Varicella can also be a tad annoying for those who | |
| don't share the author's views, particularly on matters religious: the | |
| character who represents religion also emanates hypocrisy and cruelty, and | |
| the mouthpiece mentioned above gets to excoriate all religious doctrines | |
| as "sugary lies." Subtle.) | |
| But Varicella is a well-told tale, and that it's depressing and unedifying | |
| is a testament to how well it's put together; it arguably wouldn't serve | |
| the author's purposes as well if it were simply malicious fun. The ending | |
| pulls the player up short, forces her to reconsider what came before; | |
| suddenly, there are consequences to casual cruelty. That point wouldn't | |
| come across nearly as well if the player didn't have a sense of complicity | |
| in the events of the game (which she certainly should). There is another | |
| process loose in the palace--an infestation of a nefarious green | |
| substance--that tells its own story: the palace itself is decaying | |
| rapidly, though no one seems to notice but you, and if the decay goes | |
| unchecked, the whole place will shortly become unlivable. The infestation | |
| serves ably as a metaphor for the evil afoot. (The setting is vaguely | |
| reminiscent of the end of Hamlet, in fact, when the "rotten" remnants of | |
| Denmark destroy each other and what is left is overrun by Fortinbras and | |
| his army. The system's internal contradictions cause it to implode. As it | |
| happens, there's also an Ophelia-like character in the game who repeatedly | |
| quotes Ophelia.) | |
| This, in short, is one of the best pieces of IF ever to be produced; it | |
| works brilliantly on several different levels, from entertainment to IF | |
| theory. As IF, and as fiction, it's quite an achievement. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: Duncan Stevens <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu> | |
| TITLE: Wearing the Claw | |
| AUTHOR: Paul O'Brian | |
| E-MAIL: obrian SP@G colorado.edu | |
| DATE: 1996 | |
| PARSER: Inform standard | |
| SUPPORTS: Z-machine interpreters | |
| AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD) | |
| URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/claw.z5 | |
| VERSION: Release 3 | |
| One of the nice things about fantasy IF is that it's so malleable; rarely | |
| will the player complain that he couldn't suspend his disbelief enough to | |
| allow the author's innovation to work, because just about anything goes. | |
| As such, the fantasy setting serves Paul O'Brian's Wearing the Claw well, | |
| as it allows the author to incorporate some interesting experiments with | |
| the feel of traditional IF--and while the result isn't flawless, it's | |
| certainly good enough to be worth a look. | |
| The main innovation at issue is the replacement of the traditional | |
| point-based scoring system with something that actually relates to the | |
| plot. Specifically: your mission is to rid your homeland of a curse that | |
| has turned people's body parts into animal parts, and your own left hand | |
| has turned into a wolf's paw. As you overcome significant obstacles in | |
| your quest, however, your hand turns more and more human (and, conversely, | |
| when you screw up or otherwise get farther away from your goal, the | |
| wolfish part of you grows). The changes, one way or the other, are marked | |
| by a "tingling" or an "itching" in your hand, and the effect--to keep the | |
| player on course without the artificiality of points as a reward--is | |
| accomplished nicely. There was one time, however, when my hand became more | |
| wolflike even though I had just made progress toward my goal--but it's a | |
| minor flaw in a well-conceived experiment. It's true that, since the game | |
| was released, other IF has been released with more dramatic revisions of | |
| the standard scoring system--Sunset over Savannah, Little Blue Men--and | |
| still other games have abolished scoring systems entirely, among them | |
| Spider and Web. To my knowledge, however, Wearing the Claw was the first | |
| to rid itself of points as an indication of progress, and the author | |
| deserves credit for that. | |
| The other innovation that the author mentions was to weave the puzzles | |
| seamlessly into the plot, rather than having soup-cans-in-the-pantry sort | |
| of puzzles that don't fit into the narrative. This, likewise, succeeds, | |
| though it should be noted that there aren't all that many puzzles, and | |
| what there is isn't all that tricky. Still, given how most IF--then and | |
| now--simply tosses out puzzles to solve, with the implicit promise that | |
| the game will bestow something useful or interesting as a reward for | |
| solving the puzzle, a game that consciously avoids that path is a welcome | |
| change. It should be noted, however, that such an approach probably | |
| wouldn't be possible in a significantly larger game; it's difficult to | |
| provide a predetermined reason for overcoming every obstacle, particularly | |
| things like locked doors, other than that you feel a strange compulsion to | |
| explore your surroundings as thoroughly as possible. It would, at least, | |
| be interesting to see a longer work of IF that attempted to do what | |
| Wearing the Claw does in this regard. | |
| As mentioned above, Wearing the Claw isn't all that difficult; there is | |
| one logical leap toward the end that takes some thought, but most of the | |
| game flows by rather quickly. This was an entry in the 1996 Interactive | |
| Fiction Competition, meaning that it had to be short enough to be | |
| finishable in two hours--and it does, in fact, fit well within that limit. | |
| Though what's here is of high quality, the game does seem to end just as | |
| it gets going, and the player may be left wishing for more to do. (The | |
| "amusing" list is quite extensive, though.) There are quite a few rooms | |
| and objects (in proportion to the size of the game, at least) that play no | |
| part in the plot, which helps the game seem larger than it is--but, that | |
| aside, this shouldn't take anyone very long to finish. | |
| The find-the-McGuffin fantasy setting itself is nothing new, though it | |
| does allow the author to work with some of the hoary IF tropes--and there | |
| are a few twists at the end that do test the player's expectations | |
| somewhat. Moreover, the writing is good enough to sustain the game even | |
| when the plot feels familiar: room descriptions are economical and vivid, | |
| though the style of the conversations owes more to Tolkien than to | |
| everyday parlance. (Sample from the protagonist's mother: "I fear for you, | |
| dear one, but perhaps you can find on your quest some means of restoring | |
| prosperity to our village, which has been too long poor.") It also helps | |
| that the plot is largely free of glaring inconsistencies or incongruities, | |
| hardly a given even in fantasy settings. | |
| Those who genuinely dislike fantasy probably won't make an exception for | |
| Wearing the Claw, as it doesn't really push the boundaries of fantasy all | |
| that much. As fantasy IF goes, however, it's both thoughtful and | |
| imaginative, and manages to entertain consistently--and for those who | |
| weren't around for the 1996 competition, it might be worth going back to | |
| check this one out. | |
| READER'S SCOREBOARD --------------------------------------------------------- | |
| Notes: | |
| A - Runs on Amigas. | |
| AP - Runs on Apple IIs. | |
| GS - Runs on Apple IIGS. | |
| AR - Runs on Acorn Archimedes. | |
| C - Commercial, no fixed price. | |
| C30 - Commercial, with a fixed price of $30. | |
| F - Freeware. | |
| GMD - Available on ftp.gmd.de | |
| I - Runs on IBM compatibles. | |
| M - Runs on Macs. | |
| S20 - Shareware, registration costs $20. | |
| 64 - Runs on Commodore 64s. | |
| ST - Runs on Atari STs. | |
| TAD - Written with TADS. This means it can run on: | |
| AmigaDOS, NeXT and PC, Atari ST/TT/Falcon, DECstation | |
| (MIPS) Unix Patchlevel 1 and 2, IBM, IBM RT, Linux, Apple | |
| Macintosh, SGI Iris/Indigo running Irix, Sun 4 (Sparc) | |
| running SunOS or Solaris 2, Sun 3, OS/2, and even a 386+ | |
| protected mode version. | |
| AGT - Available for IBM, Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST. This does not | |
| include games made with the Master's edition. | |
| ADVSYS - Available for PC and Macintosh only, or so my sources tell | |
| me. (Source code available as well. So it can be ported | |
| to other computers.) | |
| HUG - Written with Hugo. Runs on MS-DOS, Linux, and Amigas. | |
| INF - Infocom or Inform game. These games will run on: | |
| Atari ST, Amiga, Apple Macintosh, IBM, Unix, VMS, Apple II, | |
| Apple IIGS, C64, TSR-80, and Acorn Archimedes. There may be | |
| other computers on which it runs as well. | |
| Name Avg Sc Chr Puz # Sc Issue Notes: | |
| ==== ====== === === ==== ===== ====== | |
| Aayela 7.9 1.2 1.6 2 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Acorn Court 3.8 0.0 1.0 1 F_INF_GMD | |
| Adv. of Elizabeth Hig 3.1 0.5 0.3 2 5 F_AGT | |
| Adventure (all varian 6.5 0.6 1.0 8 8 F_INF_TAD_ETC_GMD | |
| Adventureland 3.8 0.5 1.5 2 F_GMD | |
| Afternoon Visit 4.1 1.0 0.8 1 | |
| Aisle 6.3 1.2 0.0 1 18 F_INF_GMD | |
| Alien Abduction? 7.5 1.4 1.6 2 10 F_TAD_GMD | |
| All Quiet...Library 4.9 0.9 0.9 5 7 F_INF_GMD | |
| Amnesia 7.8 1.5 1.7 2 9 C_AP_I_64 | |
| Anchorhead 9.1 1.8 1.6 4 18 F_INF_GMD | |
| Another...No Beer 2.4 0.2 0.8 2 4 S10_IBM_GMD | |
| Arrival 7.8 1.0 1.4 2 17 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Arthur: Excalibur 8.0 1.3 1.6 4 4,14 C_INF | |
| Awakened 7.7 1.7 1.6 1 | |
| Awakening 5.4 1.0 1.0 1 15 | |
| Awe-Chasm 2.4 0.3 0.6 1 8 S?_IBM_ST | |
| Babel 8.2 1.7 1.3 2 13 F_INF_GMD | |
| Balances 6.8 0.7 1.2 6 6 F_INF_GMD | |
| Ballyhoo 7.7 1.8 1.5 4 4 C_INF | |
| Bear's Night Out 7.7 1.2 1.5 1 13 F_INF_GMD | |
| Beyond the Tesseract 3.7 0.1 0.6 1 6 F_I_GMD | |
| Beyond Zork 8.0 1.5 1.9 5 5 C_INF | |
| BJ Drifter 7.3 1.5 1.5 1 15 | |
| Border Zone 7.3 1.4 1.4 6 4 C_INF | |
| Broken String 3.6 0.5 0.4 3 F_TADS_GMD | |
| BSE 6.6 1.0 1.0 1 | |
| Bunny 6.6 1.0 1.4 1 | |
| Bureaucracy 7.5 1.6 1.3 6 5 C_INF | |
| Busted 5.2 1.0 1.1 1 F_INF_GMD | |
| Castaway 1.1 0.0 0.4 1 5 F_IBM_GMD | |
| Castle Elsinore 5.3 1.0 1.2 1 | |
| Change in the Weather 7.4 0.9 1.4 8 7, 14 F_INF_GMD | |
| Chicken under Window 6.9 0.0 0.0 1 | |
| Christminster 8.7 1.7 1.6 8 F_INF_GMD | |
| Corruption 7.8 1.6 1.1 3 x C_I | |
| Cosmoserve 8.4 1.3 1.5 3 5 F_AGT_GMD | |
| Crypt v2.0 5.0 1.0 1.5 1 3 S12_IBM_GMD | |
| Curses 8.5 1.3 1.7 11 2 F_INF_GMD | |
| Cutthroats 6.2 1.4 1.2 6 1 C_INF | |
| Dampcamp 6.0 1.0 1.4 1 | |
| Deadline 6.9 1.2 1.3 6 x C_INF | |
| Deep Space Drifter 5.6 0.4 1.1 3 3 S15_TAD_GMD | |
| Delusions 8.4 1.8 1.6 1 | |
| Delusions 7.4 1.3 1.5 2 14 F_INF_GMD | |
| Demon's Tomb 7.4 1.2 1.1 2 9 C_I | |
| Detective 1.2 0.0 0.0 6 4,5 F_AGT_GMD | |
| Detective-MST3K 6.2 0.9 0.1 5 7,8 F_INF_GMD | |
| Ditch Day Drifter 6.7 1.0 1.7 2 2 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Downtown Tokyo 5.5 0.3 0.6 1 17 F_INF_GMD | |
| Dungeon 7.4 1.5 1.6 1 F_GMD | |
| Dungeon Adventure 6.8 1.3 1.6 1 4 F_SEE REVIEW Issue #4 | |
| Dungeon of Dunjin 5.8 0.7 1.4 3 3, 14 S20_IBM_MAC_GMD | |
| Edifice 7.5 1.5 1.7 3 13 F_INF_GMD | |
| Electrabot 0.7 0.0 0.0 1 5 F_AGT_GMD | |
| Emy Discovers Life 4.1 1.0 1.0 1 | |
| Enchanter 7.1 0.9 1.4 6 2,15 C_INF | |
| Enhanced 5.0 1.0 1.3 2 2 S10_TAD_GMD | |
| Eric the Unready 6.9 1.5 1.5 2 x C_I | |
| Everybody...Parade 7.3 1.2 1.3 1 | |
| Fable 2.1 0.2 0.2 2 6 F_AGT_GMD | |
| Fear 7.6 1.5 1.6 1 F_GMD | |
| Firebird 8.1 1.7 1.6 1 15 | |
| Fish 7.6 1.2 1.7 3 x C_I | |
| Foggywood Hijinx 7.6 1.7 1.7 1 | |
| Forbidden Castle 4.8 0.6 0.5 1 x C_AP | |
| Frenetic Five 5.1 1.2 0.2 1 | |
| Friday Afternoon 6.3 1.4 1.2 1 13 F_INF_GMD | |
| Frobozz Magic Support 8.0 1.6 1.7 1 | |
| Gateway 8.3 1.4 1.7 3 x C_I | |
| Glowgrass 7.4 1.6 1.5 2 13 F_INF_GMD | |
| Great Archaelog. Race 6.5 1.0 1.5 1 3 S20_TAD_GMD | |
| Guardians of Infinity 8.5 1.3 1 9 C_I | |
| Guild of Thieves 7.3 1.2 1.6 3 x C_I | |
| Guilty Bastards 8.7 1.8 1.6 1 F_HUG_GMD | |
| Gumshoe 6.2 1.1 1.1 4 9 F_INF_GMD | |
| Hitchhiker's Guide 7.7 1.5 1.5 9 5 C_INF | |
| Hollywood Hijinx 6.4 0.9 1.6 7 x C_INF | |
| Horror of Rylvania 7.3 1.5 1.3 3 1 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Horror30.zip 3.7 0.3 0.7 2 3 S20_IBM_GMD | |
| Humbug 7.0 1.7 1.5 2 x F_GMD | |
| I didn't know...yodel 1.7 0.3 1.0 1 17 F_IBM_GMD | |
| I-0: Jailbait on Inte 7.5 1.7 1.2 5 F_INF_GMD | |
| Ice Princess 6.2 1.1 1.6 1 | |
| Infidel 6.9 0.0 1.4 9 1,2 C_INF | |
| Inhumane 4.5 0.3 1.0 2 9 F_INF_GMD | |
| Jacaranda Jim 7.9 0.9 1.0 2 x F_GMD | |
| Jewel of Knowledge 5.7 1.4 0.8 1 18 F_INF_GMD | |
| Jeweled Arena 8.0 1.5 1.5 1 x ? | |
| Jigsaw 7.8 1.4 1.5 8 8,9 F_INF_GMD | |
| Jinxter 6.4 1.1 1.3 2 x C_I | |
| John's Fire Witch 7.1 1.1 1.6 6 4 S6_TADS_GMD | |
| Jouney Into Xanth 5.0 1.3 1.2 1 8 F_AGT_GMD | |
| Journey 7.8 1.6 1.3 3 5 C_INF | |
| Kissing the Buddha's 8.1 2.0 1.2 1 | |
| Klaustrophobia 6.7 1.2 1.3 5 1 S15_AGT_GMD | |
| Leather Goddesses 7.0 1.3 1.5 9 4 C_INF | |
| Legend Lives! 8.9 0.9 1.6 2 5 F_TADS_GMD | |
| Lesson of the Tortois 8.1 1.6 1.6 1 F_TADS_GMD | |
| Lethe Flow Phoenix 6.8 1.4 1.5 3 9 F_TADS_GMD | |
| Light: Shelby's Adden 7.6 1.5 1.1 3 9 S?_TADS_GMD | |
| Lists and Lists 7.5 1.5 1.8 1 | |
| Little Blue Men 9.1 1.3 1.9 1 17 F_INF_GMD | |
| Losing Your Grip 8.2 1.3 1.4 2 14 S_TADS_GMD | |
| Lost New York 8.2 1.6 1.6 1 | |
| Lost Spellmaker 5.4 1.2 0.8 1 13 F_INF_GMD | |
| Lurking Horror 7.2 1.3 1.3 11 1,3 C_INF | |
| MacWesleyan / PC Univ 4.9 0.6 1.2 2 x F_TADS_GMD | |
| Magic Toyshop 4.3 0.7 1.1 2 F_INF_GMD | |
| Magic.zip 4.5 0.5 0.5 1 3 S20_IBM_GMD | |
| Matter of Time 1.4 0.3 1.4 1 14 F_ALAN_GMD | |
| Mercy 7.9 1.5 1.0 2 F_INF_GMD | |
| Meteor...Sherbet 8.5 1.6 1.9 1 F_INF_GMD | |
| Mind Electric 5.1 0.6 0.8 3 7,8 F_INF_GMD | |
| Mind Forever Voyaging 8.4 1.3 0.8 7 5,15 C_INF | |
| Moist 8.4 1.7 1.6 1 | |
| Moonmist 5.7 1.2 1.0 11 1 C_INF | |
| Mop & Murder 5.0 0.9 1.0 2 4,5 F_AGT_GMD | |
| Multidimen. Thief 5.6 0.4 1.0 3 2,9 S15_AGT_GMD | |
| Mystery House 4.1 0.3 0.7 1 x F_AP_GMD | |
| New Day 5.5 1.3 0.9 1 13 F_INF_GMD | |
| Night at Museum Forev 4.2 0.3 1.0 4 7,8 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Nord and Bert 5.8 0.6 1.2 5 4 C_INF | |
| Odieus...Flingshot 3.3 0.4 0.7 2 5 F_INF_GMD | |
| Once and Future 6.9 1.7 1.6 1 16 C30_TAD | |
| One Hand Clapping 6.9 1.2 1.4 3 5 F_ADVSYS_GMD | |
| One That Got Away 6.7 1.3 1.2 3 7,8 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Oo-Topos 5.7 0.2 1.0 1 x C_AP_I_64 | |
| Path to Fortune 6.7 1.5 1.0 2 9 S_INF_GMD | |
| Pawn 6.5 1.0 1.2 1 x C_I_AP_64 | |
| PC University: See MacWesleyan | |
| Perseus & Andromeda 3.4 0.3 1.0 1 x ? | |
| Photopia 8.8 1.8 0.7 3 17 F_INF_GMD | |
| Phred Phontious...Pizza 5.2 0.8 1.3 1 19 F_INF_GMD | |
| Planetfall 7.4 1.6 1.5 9 4 C_INF | |
| Plant 7.7 1.2 1.7 2 17 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Plundered Hearts 7.2 1.3 1.1 5 4 C_INF | |
| Pyramids of Mars 6.0 1.2 1.2 1 | |
| Quarterstaff 6.1 1.3 0.6 1 9 C_M | |
| Ralph 7.3 1.7 1.5 1 | |
| Reruns 5.2 1.2 1.2 1 | |
| Ritual of Purificatio 5.8 2.0 1.0 1 17 F_GMD | |
| Sanity Claus 9.0 1 1 S10_AGT_GMD | |
| Save Princeton 5.6 1.0 1.3 3 8 S10_TAD_GMD | |
| Seastalker 5.5 1.2 0.9 6 4 C_INF | |
| Shades of Grey 8.0 1.3 1.4 4 1,2 F_AGT_GMD | |
| Sherlock 7.3 1.4 1.4 3 4 C_INF | |
| She's Got a Thing... 7.8 1.8 1.8 2 13 F_INF | |
| Shogun 7.1 1.5 0.5 1 4 C_INF | |
| Sins against Mimesis 7.7 1.7 1.6 1 | |
| Sir Ramic Hobbs 5.0 1.0 1.5 1 6 F_AGT_GMD | |
| Small World 5.9 1.4 0.9 1 | |
| So Far 7.8 1.1 1.8 5 F_INF_GMD | |
| Sorcerer 7.3 0.6 1.6 5 2,15 C_INF | |
| South American Trek 0.9 0.2 0.5 1 5 ?_IBM_GMD | |
| Space Aliens...Cardig 1.6 0.4 0.3 5 3 S60_AGT_GMD | |
| Space under Window 7.3 0.0 0.0 1 | |
| Spellbreaker 8.4 1.2 1.8 6 2,15 C_INF | |
| Spellcasting 101 7.0 1.0 1.2 1 x C_I | |
| Spellcasting 201 7.8 1.5 1.6 1 x C_I | |
| Spellcasting 301 7.5 1.4 1.5 1 x C_I | |
| Spider and Web 8.6 1.8 1.7 4 14 F_INF_GMD | |
| SpiritWrak 7.1 1.3 1.2 3 9 F_INF_GMD | |
| Spur 7.1 1.3 1.1 2 9 F_HUG_GMD | |
| Starcross 7.0 1.1 1.3 5 1 C_INF | |
| Stationfall 7.6 1.6 1.6 5 5 C_INF | |
| Stiffy - MiSTing 4.2 0.1 0.1 1 | |
| Sunset Over Savannah 8.3 1.3 1.5 1 13 F_INF_GMD | |
| Suspect 5.8 1.2 1.0 3 4 C_INF | |
| Suspended 7.2 1.3 1.3 5 8 C_INF | |
| Tapestry 6.9 1.2 0.7 2 14 F_INF_GMD | |
| Tempest 5.6 1.0 0.6 1 13 F_INF_GMD | |
| Theatre 7.0 1.1 1.3 5 6 F_INF_GMD | |
| TimeQuest 8.6 1.5 1.8 1 x C_I | |
| TimeSquared 4.3 1.1 1.1 1 x F_AGT_GMD | |
| Toonesia 6.4 1.2 1.3 4 7 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Tossed into Space 3.9 0.2 0.6 1 4 F_AGT_GMD | |
| Travels in Land of Er 6.2 1.5 1.5 1 | |
| Treasure.Zip 0 3 S20_IBM_GMD | |
| Trinity 8.6 1.3 1.7 12 1,2 C_INF | |
| Tryst of Fate 7.1 1.4 1.3 1 | |
| Tube Trouble 3.3 0.5 0.4 1 F_INF_GMD | |
| Uncle Zebulon's Will 7.2 0.9 1.4 9 7 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Undertow 5.2 1.0 0.8 1 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Undo 1.9 0.1 0.4 2 7 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Unnkulian One-Half 7.0 1.2 1.6 7 1 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Unnkulian Unventure 1 7.1 1.2 1.6 6 1,2 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Unnkulian Unventure 2 7.2 1.4 1.5 4 1 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Unnkulian Zero 9.0 1 1 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Varicella 9.2 1.9 1.6 3 18 F_INF_GMD | |
| Veritas 6.9 1.7 1.4 2 | |
| Waystation 5.7 0.7 0.9 2 9 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Wearing the Claw 6.8 1.1 1.1 2 F_INF_GMD | |
| Wedding 8.0 1.7 1.6 1 | |
| Wishbringer 7.5 1.3 1.3 9 5,6 C_INF | |
| Witness 6.9 1.6 1.2 7 1,3,9 C_INF | |
| Wonderland 7.5 1.3 1.4 1 x C_I | |
| World 6.5 0.6 1.3 2 4 F_SEE REVIEW Issue #4 | |
| Zanfar 2.6 0.2 0.4 1 8 F_AGT_GMD | |
| Zero Sum Game 7.5 1.7 1.2 1 13 F_INF_GMD | |
| Zork 0 5.7 1.0 1.3 6 14 C_INF | |
| Zork 1 6.4 0.8 1.5 13 1,2 C_INF | |
| Zork 2 6.6 0.9 1.5 9 1,2 C_INF | |
| Zork 3 6.1 0.7 1.4 6 1,2 C_INF | |
| Zork Undisc. Undergr. 6.5 1.0 1.2 1 14 F_INF | |
| -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- | |
| The Top Ten: | |
| There being so many worthy games now on the list, I've expanded the | |
| former Top Five list to another Top Ten. Note that a game is not | |
| eligible for the Top Ten unless it has received at least three ratings | |
| from different readers. This is to ensure a more democratic and | |
| accurate depiction of the best games. | |
| The list has changed significantly since last issue, due in part to | |
| Anchorhead and some works of Adam Cadre's finally receiving the baseline | |
| three votes necessary to make the list. | |
| 1. Varicella 9.2 3 votes | |
| 2. Anchorhead 9.1 4 votes | |
| 3. Photopia 8.8 3 votes | |
| 4. Christminster 8.7 8 votes | |
| 5. Trinity 8.6 12 votes | |
| 6. Spider and Web 8.6 4 votes | |
| 7. Curses 8.5 11 votes | |
| 8. Cosmoserve 8.4 3 votes | |
| 9. Spellbreaker 8.4 6 votes | |
| 10. Mind Forever Voyaging 8.4 7 votes | |
| SUBMISSION POLICY --------------------------------------------------------- | |
| SPAG is a non-paying fanzine specializing in reviews of text adventure | |
| games, a.k.a. Interactive Fiction. This includes the classic Infocom | |
| games and similar games, but also some graphic adventures where the | |
| primary player-game communication is text based. | |
| Authors retain the rights to use their reviews in other contexts. We | |
| accept submissions that have been previously published elsewhere, | |
| although original reviews are preferred. | |
| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| Thank you for helping to keep text adventures alive! | |
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