magazines/SPAG/SPAG25

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     .\  \               | |             | o |          | | |
The  |___/ociety for the |_|romotion of  |_|_|dventure  \___|ames.

                         ISSUE #25

           Edited by Paul O'Brian (obrian SP@G colorado.edu)
                       June 20, 2001

           SPAG Website: http://www.sparkynet.com/spag

SPAG #25 is copyright (c) 2001 by Paul O'Brian.
Authors of reviews and articles retain the rights to their contributions.

All email addresses are spamblocked -- replace the name of our magazine
with the traditional 'at' sign. 

ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE ----------------------------------------------------

The SPAG Interview with Stephen Granade

REVIEWS IN THIS ISSUE -----------------------------------------------------

Busted!
Degeneracy
FailSafe
Guess The Verb
Kaged
Nothing More, Nothing Less
Ralph
So Far
SpeedIF 8: A Freak Accident Leaves Seattle Pantsless
Textfire Golf
Zugzwang

SPECIFICS
=========
Symetry

EDITORIAL------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to the twenty-fifth issue of SPAG, marking over seven years of
continuous publication. If this were a comic book, I'd make it a
double-sized issue, and maybe have a guest appearance by Spider-Man.
Since SPAG is instead a collection of freely-submitted reviews, I really
don't have a lot of control over what size it is. And even if Marvel was
willing to lend me one of their properties for the celebration, I think
ol' Spidey would lose a bit in the ASCII format. So instead, I'll mark
the occasion by announcing a couple of new SPAG features, both of which
were brought about by requests and discussion from the rec.*.int-fiction
newsgroups on Usenet.

First off, I'm proud to herald the advent of The SPAG Interview, which
(barring various disasters) will appear in every issue of SPAG
henceforth. Now, SPAG is no stranger to interviews -- our annual
competition issue has featured interviews with highly-ranked comp game
authors for as long as the IF competition has existed. SPAG readers have
always enjoyed these interviews, and lately that sentiment has grown
into a groundswell of enthusiasm for a regular interview feature in
SPAG. Since I'm never one to ignore a groundswell, I've instituted just
such a feature, and we inaugurate the series by talking with Stephen
Granade. Granade has written several acclaimed pieces of IF including
"Losing Your Grip", "Arrival", and "Common Ground"; he's been the Big
Kahuna of the IF Competition for the past two years; he runs the premier
IF web site at http://interactfiction.about.com -- this is a guy who has
given a *lot* to IF. If SPAG had a cover, he'd be on it. I'm pleased
with the interview, and looking forward to talking with other IF
luminaries in the future. I'm also quite open to receiving submissions
for The SPAG Interview, though I'd ask that you query first.

The other new feature I'm starting with this issue is the SPAG New
Releases Shelf, but that won't, technically, be a part of SPAG itself.
Rather, it'll appear on the SPAG web page. This new feature comes as a
result of discussion on the int-fiction newsgroups, where it was argued
that a dependable reference source for recently released games would be
a Good Thing. Regular readers may have noticed how each SPAG's News
section contains such a listing of new games, and Lucian Smith suggested
to me that since I compile that data anyway, maybe I could put it on a
web page. I queried our friendly SPAG Webmaster, Joe DeRouen, and he
said, "Sure!" -- thus was the SPAG New Releases Shelf born. The page
will list all games that have been released in the past 3-6 months, at
least all those that I'm aware of via announcement posts to the
newsgroups. Because of the fundamental instability of these games'
initial locations as they move from the incoming directory to the
archive proper, the page will not feature links to the games, but I
trust that stalwart adventurers such as yourselves will be able to solve
the puzzle of where to download a particular game. If the game is
announced but not on the archive, I'll try to include a URL for it. The
SPAG New Releases Shelf will be updated irregularly, since IF games
(except for competition entries) don't really emerge on any rigorous
schedule -- I'll always include a "last update" date on the page, and
don't panic if your newly released masterpiece doesn't appear on the
page within moments of your announcement. It'll get there!

Meanwhile, all the regular SPAG features like news, scoreboard, and of
course reviews will continue, at least as long as people keep submitting
them! Thanks for sticking with us for the past seven years -- here's to
the next 25 issues!

NEWS ----------------------------------------------------------------------

NEW RELEASES SHELF
To correspond with its web presence, the regular "New Games" section of
SPAG News gets a spiffy new name. The past few months have been a
mini-comp-o-rama, and the new releases reflect this, but there are some
other non-minicomp-related games in there, highlighting lesser-known
development systems like ADRIFT and Alan. (How's that for an
overhyphenated sentence?)
   * LOST by Eric Mayer
   * Degeneracy by Leonard Richardson
   * The Last Sonnet of Marie Antoinette by Emily Short
   * Menagerie by David Good
   * HighlandComp games
   * LOTECHComp games
   * Douglas Adams tribute SpeedIF games
   * Walkthrough-comp games
   * Bugged by Anssi Raisanen

> OOPS
SPAG #24 hadn't been out five minutes when I received notice that it
contained not one, but two aggravating errors. First of all, my claim
that Kaged did not receive any XYZZY nominations was simply flat-out
wrong. It *was* nominated, in the "best NPCs" category. Secondly, the
author of the SmoochieComp entry "Nothing More, Nothing Less" (reviewed
in this issue) is named Gilles Duchesne, not Giles. I apologize for the
mistakes.

SUPERCHUNG
Last issue I mentioned that chungkuo.org has become far and away the
supreme IF telnet site (not that there was a lot of competition for the
title.) Well, the best has become even better, by including all past
issues of SPAG! Yes, you too can telnet to chungkuo.org and read a back
issue of SPAG, then click on the review's link to play the game it
discusses. Granted, this functionality is substantially similar to
what's offered in the Review Index of the SPAG web page, but these are
connected to the issues themselves rather than indexed reviews. Plus,
you can telnet to it. How cool is that? Telnet!

BACK TO AVALON
Every community has its legends, and one of ours centers around a game
called Avalon, later retitled Once and Future. This gigantic TADS game
was announced, then re-announced, then re-re-announced (repeat as
necessary) until it became the unchallenged king of all vaporware IF. In
fact, now authors are cautioned from announcing their games in advance,
lest they "pull an Avalon." It was the Daikatana of text adventures,
except that when it finally did come out, it didn't suck. It was
published by the now-defunct Cascade Mountain Publishing, and SPAG
devoted an entire issue (#16) to it. It was a commercially published
text adventure, and many enjoyed it. Now the game has come full circle,
having been released as freeware on, well, April 1st. But it's no hoax:
Once and Future is now available for free from an IF Archive near you.

IT'S RAINING MINICOMPS
Long, detailed games have been conspicuous by their absence from the IF
scene lately, but a swarm of tiny little games have come in to fill the
vacuum. I don't really have the time or inclination to run down all the
details here, but I'm happy to hit you with a swath of URLs by which you
can chase down the details yourself. Ready? Here goes:
   * IF art show: http://members.aol.com/iffyart/gallery.htm
   * SpeedIFs past and present: http://www.fourcoffees.com/if/speedif
   * HighlandComp: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/mini-comps/highland/
   * LOTECHcomp: http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/4746
   * Douglas Adams tribute SpeedIF: http://www.fourcoffees.com/dna/
   * Walkthrough Comp: http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/walkthrough2.htm

REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW, WHERE ARE YOU? WE NEED SOME HELP FROM YOU NOW...
Okay, so maybe that headline doesn't really work unless you've got the
Scooby-Doo theme song running through your head, but the sentiment is
what's important: SPAG needs reviews! Every three months I acquire
several new gray hairs worrying about whether I'll have enough reviews
to fill a respectably-sized issue. Please save me from a Clairol future
by submitting your reviews for IF games! In case you're wondering what
to review, here's our traditional list of wants:

SPAG 10 MOST WANTED LIST
========================
1. The Adventures of Helpfulman
2. Bugged
3. Dr. Dumont's Wild P.A.R.T.I.
4. Douglas Adams tribute SpeedIF games (any, some, or all!)
5. Dungeon (the mainframe version of Zork)
6. Heroine's Mantle
7. Lost
8. LOTECHcomp games (any, some, or all!)
9. Menagerie
10. Westfront PC

THE SPAG INTERVIEW---------------------------------------------------------

[For this issue, it was my privilege to interview Stephen Granade about
the IF Competition, his games, and his excellent About.com website.
Enjoy. --Paul]

   SPAG: The first question is traditional: Could you tell us a little
   about yourself? Who are you, what do you do for a living, and so
   forth?

SG: I've been interested in interactive fiction for a long time. My dad
bought a TRS-80 Model IV when I was young, and one of the first games I
had for it was a strange little text adventure called House of the Seven
Gables, which had nothing to do with the book of the same name.
Eventually I moved on to Infocom games, by which time I was hooked. A
friend of mine and I worked our way through Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy, managing to get through the babel fish puzzle in only a handful
of trials. I remember trying to read the microscopic printing on a
circuit board in that game, coming up with various crazy solutions.
("Maybe if I put tea substitute on the board, the drops of liquid might
magnify the print!")

The release of the Lost Treasures of Infocom helped revive my interest
in text adventures, as did my discovery of AGT at about the same time. A
year later, in 1992, I stumbled upon the two int-fiction newsgroups and
TADS and never looked back.

Quite some time ago I moved to Durham, North Carolina to attend Duke
University's physics graduate school. This had the benefit of giving me
both a flexible schedule with plenty of free time and a fast internet
connection on which to squander that free time.

These days I am finally within sight of my PhD. Graduate school is odd
in that you have a long-term plan and short-term goals but cannot make
mid-range plans with any accuracy. I can tell you what I'll be doing for
the rest of the month and be mostly right; I can make an informed guess
as to what I'll be doing in three months; anything further and you might
as well consult a Magic 8-Ball.

After I graduate...well, I'm not sure. "Cannot Predict Now"

   SPAG: Let's talk a little about the competition. This is your third
   year organizing it -- what have you learned during that time?

SG: Be patient and thoughtful. Running the competition involves a fair
amount of responsibility, and it's not something I take lightly. I make
the rules; I can change what I want as I deem necessary. But having that
power doesn't mean I should exercise it willy-nilly.

I've also learned to be content with decisions once I've made them. I
won't be able to please everyone, regardless of what I decide to do.

Overall, the past two competitions have gone smoothly. This has more to
do with the nature of the interactive fiction community than with any
great Comp Cheez skill I possess. The community is very interested in
having the competition go well, and does its best to see that it does
so.

   SPAG: What's the plan for this year's comp? What will be the same,
   what will be different, and most importantly, will there be t-shirts
   again?

SG: It will be mostly the same as in previous years. The only large rule
change I've made is that authors who enter anonymously or under a
pseudonym must reveal their real names at the end of the competition.
And there will be t-shirts, though probably no CDs.

   SPAG: I know that as the organizer you've maintained a pretty
   impartial stance, but you can tell us now: what have been your
   favorite comp games of the past few comps?

SG: Arrival, of course.

No, wait, that's from before I ran things. Being Andrew Plotkin has a
special place in my heart -- when I began receiving games last year I
found myself playing through it based on the title alone, and once I
began I couldn't stop. I enjoyed For a Change, Metamorphosis, The HeBGB
Horror!, and Six Stories a lot.

It's very interesting to see the titles and blurbs of games beforehand.
Authors send that information to me a month or more before the start of
the competition, so I get to imagine what each game will be like based
solely on that advance information. Two years ago, when Andrew Plotkin
sent me the information for "Hunter, in Darkness," including his chosen
pseudonym -- Dave Ahl, Jr. -- I managed to guess correctly that he was
doing an IF version of Wumpus. Such feats of prognostication are rare,
though. Often the games are completely different from what I had
imagined.

   SPAG: As somebody who's written several significant non-comp games,
   but who also organizes the competition, what's your take on the
   argument that competition games get the lion's share of attention and
   that non-comp games are unfairly slighted?

SG: I am ambivalent. Back in 1998, Lucian Smith did a rough-and-ready
analysis of games released from 1994 through 1997 and concluded that
about six large games were released in any given year, and that that
number had not dropped during the years of the competition. But Lucian's
data is now several years old. The number of large games per year hasn't
really increased, and it certainly hasn't kept pace with the growing
author pool.

It's hard to measure how much attention large games get. People mention
them for a while on the newsgroups if you're lucky, but pretty soon the
game has dropped out of sight. Games entered in the yearly competition
are buried under piles of reviews and feedback. Large games take so much
effort to create that it's easy to be disappointed at the potentially
miniscule response. Projects like the Interactive Fiction Review
Conspiracy and the IF Bookclub are trying to put the spotlight on longer
games, but those can only do so much.

What we've seen recently are mini-competitions for small games. The
number of minicomps keeps growing each year, and I worry that between
them and the yearly competition, few authors will be interested in
putting in the time and effort required for a large game.

   SPAG: Can you talk a little about your interactive fiction site on
   About.com? It's pretty widely regarded as first-rate, but I'm
   interested to know how you got the job, what your arrangement is with
   About, things like that.

SG: About, Inc., a Primedia property; formerly About, Inc.; formerly
About.com; formerly MiningCo; formerly The Mining Company; formerly (for
a brief period) Total Quality Network. They began recruiting "guides,"
as they call us, in early 1997. Recruiters looked at web pages devoted
to different topics and then invited the authors of those pages to apply
for a job. (Why was interactive fiction included? To this day I have no
idea.) This sparked a running discussion on rec.arts.int-fiction about
the unsolicited mail and whether what the company planned on doing was
reasonable. The overall newsgroup response was tepid; this leads me to
believe that I was the only one who applied, and thus got the job by
default.

My job is an interesting blend of librarian and essayist. I write
columns about adventure games and maintain a library of links to other
pages. I also have a news page and watch over a forum and weekly
newsletter. For this I am paid via an arcane formula involving how many
people visit the site and how much advertising revenue is taken in. I
cover both text adventures and graphic adventures, with an emphasis on
design issues.

As I see it, the main benefit of my site is that it introduces new
people to interactive fiction. I've gotten mail from people who came to
my site to find information about graphic adventures and were pleasantly
surprised to learn that text adventures were still being written.

   SPAG: What's been the best part of running that site?

SG: The people I've met. I've had the opportunity to talk to Brian
Moriarty and Jane Jensen about adventure games; I've also gotten to know
a number of my regular visitors, who've turned out to be neat folks. I
have friends I would never have met were it not for my site.

The site's even helped people, as unlikely as that sounds. One woman
told me how she was unable to leave her house much due to illness. To
distract herself from her pain she'd play adventure games. My site
helped her find more games, and gave her a place to go to read more
about adventures. When I started working for About, I had no idea that
it would grow so much or that it could have such an effect on people.

   SPAG: You've been a fairly prolific author. Which of your games are
   you proudest of, and why?

SG: This is remarkably like asking me to choose which of my fingers is
my favorite.

All of my games do at least one or two things which I am proud of. If I
had to choose one on which to pin the ribbon, I'd choose "Common
Ground." Not because I think it was a spectacular success, but because
it is the most I've stretched myself in writing a game.

Let me wander a bit afield for a moment. I'm one of the poster children
for "You can get better at writing IF through practice." Writing
interactive fiction requires skill as well as native talent. Practice
can improve your skill immensely. Few can spring full-formed from Zeus's
brow, ready to craft works of great import. Just because your first game
wasn't all that wonderful isn't reason in and of itself not to write
another one.

Mind you, if you're on your fifth game and still don't seem to be
getting better, then you might consider a different line of work.

   SPAG: Do you plan to write more IF in the near future? If so, can you
   give us a little preview of the projects you have in mind?

SG: I just wrote "Constraints" for Emily Short's TranscriptComp, after a
hiatus of over a year (not counting the two IF Arcade games I wrote). I
have a few ideas kicking around. One involves a $70 time machine and a
TV remote control; the other is for a traditional score-driven
puzzlefest. I'm hoping that the release of TADS 3 will help encourage me
to actually write the damn things. Of course, I'm sure I'll have plenty
of time to write them once I'm supposed to be writing my dissertation.

   SPAG: Finally, here's something I've always wondered about: why is
   your name on the ifMUD "Sargent?"

SG: Ah, an easy one. My initials are SRG; long ago I came up with a
number of words and names based on those initials. When I first logged
into ifMUD lo those many years ago, I chose Sargent from that
half-remembered list.

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: Murderous <patch SP@G evilemail.com>

NAME: Busted!
AUTHOR: Jon Drukman (also did port)
EMAIL: jsd SP@G cyborganic.com
DATE: July 1993 ADVSYS; 2001 Inform port
PARSER: Infocom Standard
SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters; unreviewed ADVSYS version
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/busted.zip
     ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/advsys/busted.dat

This is a port of an older Advsys title in order for the author to learn
Inform and two things are clear: the game is firmly-rooted in the "old
school" of adventuring; and that the author is not yet a master of
Inform.

You start as a University student with an urgent story-hook: an
answerphone message from a friend who has just been ... busted! He has
given you enough warning that you can hide all your 'stuff' before the
cops catch up with you.

You're provided with plenty of locations, but you visit rather than
explore; there's plenty of objects, but their placement is so obvious
it's fake. 'Random' events (turn-timed or location dependent) range from
the disjointed to the outright daft. Nothing subtle here.

The introduction was quite effective in bringing the immediacy of the
situation to play, but it's abandoned for 'eat in X turns or die'.
Thereafter the urgency proved too difficult to resurrect, so it was
replaced by a 'get some sleep or die'. Eh? What happened to the urgent
starting hook? 

Tech warning - there are a number of bugs, object conflicts, and the
parser is 'functional' at best; but while they can be annoying they
don't entirely destroy the game, just keep it simple. It's a plain urban
school adventure, on mild drugs.

The trump-card of this title is the humour, and if you hate/hated parts
of your academic life then you'll find the game all the more funny: the
truly appalling food, the space-case friends, evangelical Christians --
BUSTED certainly has its moments. There are funny remarks and cute ideas
that break up the otherwise sparse text. It's free. And you start with a
joint in your inventory, which is an immediate saving grace, so the game
isn't entirely without merit. But with all the brilliant IF in the world
it's hard to be enthusiastic about it either.

PLOT: Strays (0.7) ATMOSPHERE: Suitably rendered (1.3)
WRITING: Functional, with humour (1.0) GAMEPLAY: Flat or dips (0.7)
SOME HUMOUR AND FUN: Can't deny it (1.3)
TOTAL: 5.0

CHARACTERS: Colourful cardboard (1.1) PUZZLES: Arbitrary obituary (0.7)
DIFFICULTY: Not a brain taxer, but parser and bugs don't help.

SUMMARY: Check it out if you're interested in some retro adventuring
with a drug twist, but it's probably better st0ned.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

From: Duncan Stevens <dnrb SP@G starpower.net>

TITLE: Degeneracy
AUTHOR: Leonard Richardson
E-MAIL: leonardr SP@G segfault.org
DATE: 2001
PARSER: Inform standard (modified slightly)
SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/degen.z5
VERSION: Release 0.50

One of the nice things about fantasy IF--particularly the sort of
fantasy IF that Graham Nelson has called "lazy medieval," which covers
anything prior to the invention of gunpowder--is that the ground is so
heavily trodden that it's easy'n'fun to stand the player's expectations
on their head. Leonard Richardson's Degeneracy does just that, and while
the trick itself isn't an unqualified success, it works well enough.

It seems you've been enlisted to kill a certain Baron--not only have you
been enlisted, in fact, you've gone and done it just before the game
starts, and your mission is now to get out of the Baron's castle.
Problem is, the Baron has cursed you, and the curse prevents you from
escaping, so you need to delve into some alchemy books to undo the
curse. There's also a time limit of sorts, it turns out, though it's
generous enough that you don't need to be extremely efficient. The game
itself isn't particularly long--it can easily be solved in under 100
moves, and the time limit kicks in at about 200 moves or so.

The puzzles aren't especially exciting--there are only a few of them,
and reading the manuals you find is essentially all you need to do--but
there's lots of fun to be had in the writing. Much of it is
mock-Elizabethan or thereabouts--lots of Surprising Capitalizations, for
one thing, often put to amusing purposes. (There's one object containing
water that you can pour over your head; suitably instructed, the game
tells you that "you fit your Head under the deluge from the [object],
and moisten your Hair." Better still are the antics of a pig you
encounter, such as:

   The Pig wanders over to the heavy Portcullis & pokes its snout
   through on of the gaps in the iron Gate. A wistful look comes across
   the Pig's face, as it ponders a more carefree time in its life, a
   time redolent with Rolls in cool Mud & games of <<Got Your Snout>>
   with its thirty-seven Grand-Children.

The hints, liberally sprinkled with fake hints in the style of Infocom's
Invisiclues, add to the humor. (E.g., in response to a question about
how to get out of a certain room: "You might follow the carpet." "It
leads off 'toward the sunrise'." "From which direction does the sun
rise?" "Go east." "This is not technically a puzzle.") It's true that
the game doesn't take every opportunity for humor that comes along--at
least, so it seemed to me--but there are some surprisingly funny bits.
(All the funnier because the game appears to take the dour persona of
the PC so seriously.) The author wrote "Guess the Verb!", from the 2000
competition, which was similarly full of sly humor.

As mentioned, there's a trick of sorts in the game, on which I won't
elaborate here. It's not a total success; some players, I know, thought
it was a bug, which it most certainly isn't. There are indications that
something's afoot well before the trick happens, though they depend to
some extent, I think, on whether the player's moving around--fewer, if
any, of the clues would be apparent to a player who's staying in one
room working on a puzzle. (Technically, none of the puzzles are so hard
that such concentration should be warranted, but you never know.) The
nature of the trick is such that, unless duly warned, the player's
likely to attribute the effect to a bug--that the author isn't extremely
well known works against him in this case. (If it were Zarf trying to do
the same thing, in other words, the player might tend to have more
faith.) The moral is that an author planning a surprise of this kind
should err on the side of overcluing (and taking excessive precautions
to ensure that the player will see the clues). That aside--and I did get
the clues, so it did work for me--it's a pretty clever idea, and again,
the medieval setting helps: the player expects breaches of the fourth
wall less, perhaps, than he or she might otherwise.

It's also worth noting that, for a short game that may well exist for
purposes of the above trick, Degeneracy's world is quite thoroughly
created. There's a religion that, if not exhaustively described, comes
across enough to be understood. There's a political system (well, hints
about one). There' s a reasonably complex system of alchemy. And aside
from all this, there are a couple of magic systems that have a variety
of effects and are reasonably consistently applied. The production
values are good enough, then, that this isn't simply lazy medieval
fantasy.

Degeneracy isn't a masterpiece, but it's not strictly a one-trick pony
either--there's plenty to appreciate aside from the central gimmick.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

From: Duncan Stevens <dnrb SP@G starpower.net>

TITLE: FailSafe
AUTHOR: Jon Ingold
E-MAIL: ji207 SP@G cam.ac.uk
DATE: 2000
PARSER: Inform standard
SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/FailSafe.z5
VERSION: Current release

The "narrative at war with a crossword" that describes most IF
games--the competing demands of plot and puzzles, and the attempt to
accommodate both without sacrificing either--is actually, as many have
noted, a stand-in for a more fundamental question: how to involve the
player in the story the author wants to tell while still telling that
particular story? The answer is usually "with puzzles that don't detract
from the structure/pacing/logic of the plot," but not always--it's
possible to get the player involved in a story by means other than
puzzles. Jon Ingold's FailSafe is a might-have-been in this
respect--it's a story that could, I think, have stood on its own, and
which is hindered more than helped by the puzzles it includes.

The protagonist is the only one alive on a spaceship which has taken a
beating after a battle with an alien ship, and is radioing to you, the
player, for help. Specifically, the protagonist wants you to help him
get the ship back in order before the next attack comes along. The
signal isn't very good, though, and the protagonist is less than fully
coherent, so ascertaining what's going on (or has gone on) secondhand is
something of a challenge. (Particularly because all of the standard
system commands--QUIT, SAVE, UNDO, the whole lot of them) are
disabled--the better to reproduce the sense of actually communicating
with someone, of course.) It's an interesting challenge,
though--reconstructing past events (for purposes of gaining insight into
a present situation) is an underused and potentially fruitful IF
technique.

As it happens, though, that's not the focus of what goes on here--there
are a few puzzles, and then you reach one of a variety of endings. The
puzzles aren't especially good; one amounts to trial and error (made all
the more irritating by the absence of UNDO), and another is hindered by
some thoroughly unhelpful syntax. (Yes, admittedly, a person is not a
parser, and it's not entirely realistic to expect a person's
comprehension to work the same way as a parser, but guess-the-syntax is
guess-the-syntax.) The endings are good--thought-provoking and well
worth reaching--but the puzzles, to my mind, don't fit.

Here, it seems, you have a premise that makes the interactive hook, in
the form of puzzles, largely unnecessary. The *game* is a puzzle in
itself; you' re trying to figure out what exactly happened, and you're
battling the protagonist's vagueness and confusion and the chaos
inherent in a partly wrecked ship. The nasty/strange/welcome surprises
that you come across should be able to tell the story and keep the
player involved all by themselves, particularly when the game is this
small. (Well, okay, it would probably have to be a little larger if
there were no puzzles.) There's also room for more story development in
the distance between player and protagonist: do they trust each other?
What do each of them know that the other doesn't? (FailSafe does hit
that angle at one point, but there's more that could be done with it.)

Unnecessary puzzles aside, though, FailSafe has its moments. One
particularly effective touch is a series of messages that the player
receives from a computer analyzing what's happened and who was aboard
the damaged ship, messages that the protagonist doesn't receive; the
juxtaposition between the player's semicoherent account and the
computer's records is occasionally chilling. The inadequate descriptions
are part of what makes the game compelling--when several turns of static
pass before the protagonist's voice returns, there's genuine suspense.
There are also some nicely done red herrings--while there isn't as much
exploration potential as there might be, there's enough to keep the game
from feeling like a small set of puzzles. And the endings are genuinely
surprising (though spoiled somewhat by the game's XYZZY award
nomination; don't read the nominee list before you play the game), and
force the player to rethink what's come before.

FailSafe's small size works against it, I found--there's too little
there for the player to be really pulled up short by any surprising
turns. (The player doesn't spend long enough interacting with the
protagonist, and getting a mental picture of the story, to be truly
caught off guard by unexpected events; the assumptions and mental
pictures aren't around long enough to cause much surprise when they're
challenged or disproved.) Still, it's got an intriguing premise and it's
creatively done, and its spin on the player-PC relationship makes it a
must-play for IF theorists.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

From: Cedric Knight <ADDRESS REMOVED>

TITLE: Guess the Verb
AUTHOR: Leonard Richardson 
EMAIL: leonardr SP@G segfault.org
DATE: 2000
PARSER: Inform (plus)
SUPPORTS/PLATFORM: Inform standard
AVAILABILITY: Freeware, GMD
URL: http://www.crummy.com/devel/if/gtv/
VERSION: 1

PLOT: 1.3 ATMOSPHERE: 1.1
WRITING: 1.8 GAMEPLAY: 1.4
WIT: 1.9
OVERALL: 7.4
CHARACTERS: 1.4 PUZZLES: 1.2
DIFFICULTY: Easy

At the recent XYZZY awards, the idea of a Best Comedy award was bruited
about. There seems a lot of logic to this. For example, suppose "Being
Andrew Plotkin" was up against "Anchorhead" for Best Writing.
"Anchorhead" is one of the best-written games ever, but has hardly a
joke in it; "Being Andrew Plotkin" has humorous writing, which is quite
a different talent. It is said that good writing is all about using the
right words, and good humorous writing is about using the words in the
right order. My favourite for Best Comedy of 2000 would have been "Guess
the Verb".

The title says it all, really. What player has not been in that
position where they have the correct puzzle solution, but find it
impossible to get the game's parser to understand that? So why not turn
the problem around, and make a feature of it? Hence, in this game you
are an 11-year-old boy or girl at the "Guess the Verb" fairground booth
run by Lalrry [sic] the parser, who is described as "looking much the
way Peter Norton would look if Peter Norton were made of stainless steel
and had, instead of a head, an Ethernet hub..."

I laughed out loud at several parts of this game. The author's spoof
"Introduction to IF Concepts" is particularly silly, and shows that this
game is not for newcomers to IF at all. The intended audience is anyone
who spends a lot of time playing and writing Inform programs and
programming in general. Someone like the author, most likely. At one
point, one NPC remarks accurately that the game might be getting a
little too self-referential, which may limit its potential as a Work of
Art, but does gives scope for a lot of knowing in-jokes. To be fair,
there is also plenty of other humour spoofing funfairs, parenting,
B-movies and so on.

Once you've got the general idea, you can just go with the flow, having
effectively "solved" some puzzles (by guessing the verb) before you even
encounter them. "Guess the Verb" relates to general IF both as pastiche
and montage. There's not enough time to get bored or frustrated with the
game as it flits between locations and game fragments so quickly, but
some of the scenarios have obviously had more work than others. I was
lucky to get the UNDO section first off which includes lots of fun
objects such as a spell book copied from "Harry Potter and the 2000
Magical Middle Education Standards", and the only complex puzzle of the
game. The least developed scenario is definitely DISEMBARK, with the
others somewhere between these extremes. The NPCs may not be that
important to the plot but have a wide repertoire of amusing responses.

GTV is a short game, but then it would be hard to maintain the concept
to feature length without spoiling the joke. It reminded me of the
sample games like "Toyshop" and "Ruins" that come with Inform. If so, I
would say the object lesson that this game illustrates to designers is
that if you do use some obscure verb ("CAUTERIZE" even), then you can
drop that word (casually) into the text beforehand.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

[Our man in Russia has sent us this rather scathing review of Kaged, and
as usual I've gone over its sentences and tried to wrestle them into
something resembling standard English. Any misinterpretations or errors
in the translation (and apparently there were a few in my work on last
issue's Gateway 2 review) are my fault. --Paul]

From: Stas Starkov <stas_ SP@G mail.rb.ru>

NAME: Kaged
AUTHOR: Ian Finley
EMAIL: domokov SP@G aol.com
DATE: 2000
PARSER: TADS Standard
SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/tads/kaged_s.gam
VERSION: 1

HOLLYWOOD STRIKES AGAIN

First, I must warn you that this review is an attempt to provide an
opinionated critique of the game that won the 2000 IF Competition. But I
don't like this game a lot. So as you can guess, I'll pour manure on
"Kaged" in this review. That's the reason why I wrote the review. And
this review includes personal comments about the author of the game, as
well as a lot of cynicism and flame provocation (please, resist this
possibility). Also I must add that I live in Russia, and consequently my
points of view differ a lot from those of Americans. So you understand
that this review is more than a little biased. So, if you're easily
angered, stop reading now. That's not a joke. So there.

The shareware version of "Kaged" includes images but no music. That's
odd, because I know that his Competition 2000 entry contained both
sounds and images. But I didn't bother downloading these rather big
files (in sum more then 12 Mb), so I don't know what quality these
additional "things" add. And I have played only the competition entry.

When I started playing the game I felt that it was a parody on
dystopias. Why? Look at this chunk of text from the beginning of the
game:

   The madness started a week ago.  The entire Citadel of Justice is on
   razor edge.  It began in the Department of Enforcing when a patrolman
   shot his partner.  He begged to be locked away, claiming to see
   devils.

and a bit later:

   >z
   Time passes...

   Pieter's stomach growls.  It's not a noise you want to hear again.

   >examine pieter
   Pieter has a sausage face set with two piggy eyes, like raisins.
   His spectacles are huge, saucer-like things that don't help the
   appearance.

   Pieter taps you on the shoulder.  "Um...  where would our office be,
   Commissar?"  There's something incredibly irritating about his voice,
   like the whine of a petulant child.

   >z
   Time passes...

   Pieter coughs behind you, a wet, phlegmy noise.

Well, you see that it is possible to interpret the game comically. But
then things show their darker side, and suddenly you notice all the
misery of the world. And, gee, it's another dystopia. And not the best
one I must add. I've read several dystopias but never found one that
feels true enough for me. But more about that subject below.

Ian Finley is not a novice author. This is his fourth (I think) game,
but the first that I have played. And I don't want to play his other
games now. Ian Finley was 20 years old (according to SPAG #23) when he
wrote "Kaged" and he was studying acting at the University of Utah at
that time. And I think that his theater and movie influences caused all
that I don't like in this game.

I live in Russia but I see a lot (and I mean *a lot*) of bad American
movies. Even the latest Oscar's big winner "Gladiator" got me sick. It's
not that this movie is bad. Not at all. But when I see that rich and
beautiful woman run to a dying man that she hardly knows but already
loves, I can sympathize and even (barely) understand her the first,
second or even tenth time I see this thing. But when I see the same
scene for the hundredth time (and I mean hundredth) in yet another
movie, I get sick. I want to say that "Kaged" is very similar to _bad_
American movies. The only thing that's missing is a girl-friend of the
PC (and the pseudo-hero running hand in hand with her with a huge
explosion in the background, as at the end of the usual bad movie). I
read quite a lot of SF stories, so I'm hard to surprise, though. And
this game shows nothing that I haven't read or seen before. Nothing that
doesn't reek of decay.

Which brings me to the question of plot. The plot wouldn't be that bad
if you took only the very beginning and very ending of the game. At
least it would be original. But when I saw the middle of the game and
all those story twists I felt that I was seeing another bad movie with
all the cliches and standard devices that I have already seen a thousand
times. And the author manages to place at least two conflicting plots in
this game. During the middle part of the game, my best guess was that
this plot was entirely a mad dream of a druggie after a good joint.
Later I found that my supposition was not far from the real plot, since
for half the game author just lies to you. Yet another story of mind
manipulation -- yet another idea that was beaten to death (Example: the
dystopian movie "Brazil", which, by the way, is far better than
"Kaged"). Another feeling that I had during game play: I felt that the
author grabbed me from behind and I was dragged to the end of the game.
This feeling was due in large part to the puzzles.

Puzzles? Hah. There are puzzles but they're not the strongest side of
the game. And considering my above descriptions I think you understand
that I think that the puzzles stink badly. Why? This game is not a
puzzleless game, so there are puzzles. But they are the worst puzzles I
have ever seen. Why? OK, I'll give you an example (not from the game):
Imagine that you only have a big piece of flammable wood (which you must
get by helping an old man to find all his long lost teeth), a bottle of
gasoline (which you steal) and a single match (which you found by
pushing a high tree). When you have all of the above, you are teleported
to the dark room. Huh! What do I need to do to find a ray of light in
the kingdom of darkness? I hope you can guess the "solution". Yes, you
can work out the solution easily, but can you find the match so easily?
So, I ended up with the walkthrough, which is twice as odd because the
puzzles in common are very straightforward. It's very, very annoying when
all puzzles are based on _giving_ you the right and obvious tools to
solve another puzzle. (And did you notice the old man in my example? He
is there only to give you a piece of wood, but you must solve his errand
first.) And this feels so unnatural, that I got sick (again). The
puzzles stink badly. So there.

Another feature that is not very interactive is the "talk" verb (as in
"talk to worker"). According to the game, "this action will cause your
character to examine the current situation and say whatever would be
most appropriate." Someone on R*IF said that the menu-based
interrogation system is a bad thing, but this "most appropriate"
conversation is far less interactive and looks like a device from
graphic adventures. Well, you have now two possible ways to interrogate:
(a) to talk or (b) not to talk. But this restriction is solved
brilliantly -- the game ignores your silence and continues to talk to
you as usual. Dumb, dumb!

But you might still believe that this game didn't get first place in the
Competition for nothing. OK, I'll open your eyes. I'll tell you about
the prose in this game. First, the amount of writing in "Kaged" is just
huge. Second, for me any good (but not outstanding) prose with rotten
thoughts behind it is just useless crap. And the more text in any art
form, the worse, because I must force myself to read all these chunks of
text trying to find something good. Well, it is possible to interest me
with extraordinary writing wedded to a lame story (plot, I mean), but
"Kaged" is not on this level of art. Writing must be on the same level
as a story. If the writing is lower than the plot, the whole work will
be unenjoyable (but that's not a rule). If a bit higher, the work will
be boring and overblown. "Kaged"'s writing is the latter type.

Many people like the atmosphere of the game. Well, yes that's something
that you can try to play a game for, but for me atmosphere was broken by
the rotten plot and stupid puzzles. Ian Finley shows himself as a
skilled author, but concept of the game was a total disaster.

This game reminds me of Stephen King's stories -- a lot of text, a lot
of fake story turnings, a lot of characters, but the result is just
boring. Yes, both authors (King and Finley) tried hard to make me
believe in the story, but they failed. But King, at least, writes for
money and the more text he produces, the more money he'll get.
"Hollywood strikes again," I must say. "Kaged", for me, is a game where
bad movies merge with the unstoppable urge to write.

The dystopia is an old genre. (The first dystopia was written, I think,
in the first half of the nineteenth century.) And all dystopias look the
same to me. There's always a common story -- some variety of "Big
Brother looks at you.", i.e. mega-government takes total control over
people's lives, people who are just foolish soulless dolls and who work
(the prime purpose of their lives) during all their miserable lives. Why
is this concept is not working for me? Because life doesn't work like
that. Life can be more grim but not so obviously evil. Sure, it's very
visually striking to show a dystopia, but it was beaten to death ages
ago. So if "Kaged" is somewhat of a premiere for IF (at least for me),
for literature it's something like the rotten carcass of a horse. And as
far as I can recall, _new_ dystopias are not published any more.

What can I recommend to the author? Better spend your time on books and
movies (and not only on good ones) first. And when you're sick from all
this crap, you'll understand how not to implement a game. Write a story
on the paper, read it and if you don't hear as your stomach growling in
hate then, and only then, start to write an IF game. At least the game
will be original.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

From: Francesco Bova <fbova SP@G pangea.ca>

NAME: Nothing More, Nothing Less
AUTHOR: Gilles Duchesne
EMAIL: lonecleric SP@G bigfoot.com
DATE: February, 2001
PARSER: Hugo
SUPPORTS: Hugo interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware
VERSION: 1.21
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/hugo/NMNL.hex

Nothing More, Nothing Less (NMNL) was a late entry to the 2001
SmoochieComp by a first-time author who, in his own words, "used the
SmoochieComp as an excuse to learn an IF language", so as you might
expect there were some first time growing pains and perhaps a few
awkward game design choices, and I hope that the author takes the
following review as the constructive criticism that it is intended to
be. To his credit, the author attempts a few novel game design
initiatives and that's what I'll be focusing on for the first part of
this review.

NMNL is a fairly small game that takes place in the protagonist's (and
most likely the author's) small apartment, with the usual rooms (i.e.,
bedroom, bathroom, living room) accounted for. There is no use of
cardinal directions in the game. Movement through the apartment is
simply done through the typing in of room titles. I found this fairly
easy to get used to, even though I've grown accustomed to mapping out a
landscape in my head with the use of cardinal directions. The room
descriptions are fairly succinct, describing the basic necessities of
life that surround the PC and his girlfriend, but room descriptions
change depending on what challenge the PC is facing. No doubt, this is
an attempt by the author to clue the player in to a certain problem by
bringing current dilemmas to the foreground of the player's perception.
For example, during a section of the game involving the PC's
girlfriend's cat, the living room changes from this:

   Living Room
   This is the part of the apartment in which I spend most of my waking
   hours. This is due to three important pieces of furniture here: the
   large oak desk that holds my much-used computer; the TV, favorite
   appliance of my beloved after a long day a work; and the futon which
   we both like to cuddle upon.

TO

   Living Room
   This is the place where my girlfriend's evil cat sleeps... when it's
   the least convenient, of course. From here, I can reach the kitchen,
   the dining room, and the hallway.

Not a big deal, right? Except, there's no longer any mention of the TV,
computer or futon; all objects which are still in scope but aren't
described in the room's current description. In certain rooms, you have
to manipulate some of these "hidden" objects to boot. When I ran into
the repeated problem of trying to remember what had been in each room
the only remedy was to save my position, restart the game, get a good
look at what was in each room, then use that prior knowledge during my
saved game. Thankfully, the game was only a few rooms big so the saving
and restoring wasn't too overwhelming. Still, it was probably more
trouble than it should've been. 

Another interesting game design choice involved progressively revealing
items of importance throughout the course of the game. So, for example,
a cursory look in a certain room may not reveal much of interest the
first time around, but another look a few turns later may reveal
something new and useful. Other reviewers of NMNL have enjoyed this
feature, but I found it kind of tedious. I'm of the opinion that if
something's in scope at the beginning of the game and hasn't been
manipulated somehow then it should always be in scope. What ended up
happening when I faced a challenge was that I'd just type in each room
name, take a look around, and mysteriously bump into what I needed.
Again not a big deal, but from a playing experience I could effectively
turn my brain off until I stumbled into what I needed and as a result,
it wasn't as much fun as it might have been.

The game's focus was unfortunately a little off-kilter, too, for what is
an extremely linear game. When the intro tells me my goal is to bring in
a photo receipt (which incidentally, is the ultimate goal of NMNL),
that's generally what I'm aiming to do, but every time I tried to exit
my apartment the game would come back with an, "Oh, wait you forgot to
do <insert apartment related chore here>". This again isn't a big deal
but perhaps a smoother game design would have had one puzzle finishing
then linking to the beginning of another puzzle, as opposed to
segregating them.

There is also a novel hint system included which spirits you away to a
car being driven by the author and his girlfriend where you can ask or
tell the author about a subject and get responses. Unfortunately the
responses aren't terribly helpful; more descriptions about objects than
a nudge in right direction. The hint system actually serves more as a
backdrop for some banter between the author and his girlfriend where we
learn about the author's experience concerning the city he lives in,
participation in the IF community, and other more menial activities.
Inadvertently most likely, the author also designed the hint system so
that I, for the life of me, couldn't find my way out of it. Typing in
random words finally got me to 'PLAY', which kicked me back into the
game.

So, to sum up so far: Some interesting game design choices, some of
which were not overwhelming successes but most of which I'd certainly
applaud as a good attempt at something novel. Outside of the game's
infrastructure though, how does the game stack up in the prose and plot
department? Well before I address those areas, I'd like to do something
they taught us never to do back in IF Review school: I would like to
discuss the author as opposed to the game and to start off, I'd like to
make the assumption that you the protagonist are in fact the author.
Where does this assumption come from? Well number one, all the responses
are cast in the first person as opposed to the second and two, the
familiar tone of the work when the author describes his surrounding
would indicate to me that he's talking about himself. 

If this assumption was in fact the author's intent, then I think it's
also fair to say that the author is pretty crazy about his girlfriend.
The initial indications come from the banter between the author and his
girlfriend during the hint system piece but the real proof comes from
the fact that almost every object description is framed by how it
relates to her. For example, look at the following: 

   >examine bed
   It's a big a comfy bed, with plenty of space for us both. Even if my
   beloved wasn't living here when I bought it, I thought I should play
   safe... and I was right. She moves a lot during her sleep, you know?
   (Well, come to think of it, I don't think I want you to know.)

OR

   >examine sink
   I basically need to use this sink for four things: washing my teeth,
   combing my hair, washing my hands and... oh, make that three things.
   I used to shave daily, but in the recent weeks my beloved has taken a
   fancy to the bearded look, and I have been willing to oblige her.

Boy that's sweet; sugary, feeling-it-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach sweet.
Which of course is completely acceptable for a SmoochieComp game, but
would get to be a bit much for me personally were it just a normal
non-thematically based release. The game is so sweet in fact, that it
reads to me more like a homage to the author's girlfriend with the plot
and puzzles added after the fact as simple window dressing. There is of
course absolutely nothing wrong with that, but the personal nature of
the piece may not be to everybody's taste. Now to really go out on a
limb, considering the release date for the SmoochieComp games (February
14th), I think it may also be the case that this platform experiment
turned out to be a pretty nice valentine for someone special.

It could also be the case that I'm assuming way too much and we all know
that when people assume: they make an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me', so
maybe I should stop before I get myself into too much trouble. To wrap
up then: NMNL as far as a piece of first-time IF and platform experiment
is pretty average and pretty much what I'd expect, to be honest, but as
a publicly accessible piece that expresses love for someone special
(which I believe, perhaps incorrectly, NMNL to be) NMNL is mostly a
success, and one a few of us could probably take some lessons from.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

From: Duncan Stevens <dnrb SP@G starpower.net>

TITLE: Ralph
AUTHOR: Miron Schmidt
E-MAIL: mironi SP@G comports.com
DATE: 1996
PARSER: Inform standard
SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/ralph.z5
VERSION: Release 7

Latter-day IF has seen quite a few innovative experiments with point of
view, so it's worth remembering the game that, as far as I know, started
the trend, namely Miron Schmidt's Ralph, a 1996 competition entry. In
Ralph, you play a dog, a thoroughly doggy dog at that-and while it's not
a revolutionary exercise in PC characterization, it's a charming game
that ably tackles the challenges of point-of-view experimentation.

Your task is to find a lost bone that you've buried somewhere (belying
the notion that dogs can always find bones, or other things, that
they've buried). The puzzles are somewhat over the top--they involve a
more subtle grasp of human and animal psychology than most dogs have,
and they strain the limits of a dog's physique--but they're not bad
puzzles, on the whole. On the other hand, the puzzles are probably the
least doggy thing about the game, since they don't involve thinking like
a dog as such, nor are the limitations of inhabiting a dog's body
particularly limiting. (Compare A Bear's Night Out, where being a teddy
bear was an obstacle to overcome on several fronts, and A Day for Soft
Food, where puzzle solutions reflected housecat thinking in several
instances.) They're perfectly good human puzzles, but they don't exactly
fit here.

What does fit, however, is the Easter eggs, of which there are many.
Doggy verbs implemented include BARK, BITE, GROWL, SCRATCH, PEE ON,
LICK, SMELL, SLOBBER, WAG--and when the verb is transitive, there are
logical responses for most of the objects in the game. Particularly
amusing in that respect is Christopher Robin, your family's
two-year-old, with whom you can interact in a wide variety of levels;
likewise, the cat offers amusement opportunities. Beyond that, the game
does capture the single-minded psychology of a pet--you note humans'
frustration or anger with you casually, but you really only care about
that bone. The setting is less than vividly rendered--this is a suburban
yard with basic suburban-yard objects--but you're afforded quite a
variety of things to do in that suburban yard. Truth to tell, if Ralph
had skipped the puzzles entirely and simply devoted itself entirely to
Easter eggs, it would have been-well, a pretty aimless game, but
possibly quite a lot of fun.

Ralph illustrates nicely the challenge faced by concept games, games
where the gimmick is the raison d'etre: while it's one thing to think of
a good idea that translates well into the IF medium, as this undoubtedly
does, it's another thing to convert it seamlessly into puzzle-based IF.
This sort of thing can, of course, work both as concept and as puzzle
game, as later attempts have shown, but Ralph doesn't really work on
both levels (partly because it's so short). The concept, however, is
great, and as implementation of the concept this is quite good, more
than enough to make it worth playing. The lesson, perhaps, is that the
best games are those that marry up high concept with a high level of
interactivity (in the form of good puzzles, perhaps, or something else),
and Ralph isn't quite on that level, pioneering as it was.

At any rate, if you either like dogs or enjoy laughing at dogs' foibles,
Ralph is worth a quick look-see; it's got enough funny lines and knowing
references to doghood to make it enjoyable.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

From: Duncan Stevens <dnrb SP@G starpower.net>

TITLE: So Far
AUTHOR: Andrew Plotkin
E-MAIL: erkyrath SP@G eblong.com
DATE: 1996
PARSER: Inform standard
SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/sofar.z8
VERSION: Release 6

It's well known that latter-day IF has moved away from the
puzzle-centrism that marked earlier games (to the point where many
authors resist the term "game," though no one has come up with a
substitute, to my knowledge). Some recent, um, works of IF have shown
their defiance of puzzles by eschewing them altogether, but many authors
have managed to both incorporate puzzles into the IF they produce and to
convey that the puzzles aren't the raison d' etre. Andrew Plotkin's So
Far was one of the first games to make that break, and it did so in an
interesting way: there isn't a plot as such, but the game conveys themes
and impressions in a way that manages to tell a story nonetheless.

Trouble is, it's not easy to convey to the uninitiated what that story
is. A relationship that may or may not be broken is at the center of
it--as the game begins, you appear to have been stood up by Aessa, the
object of your affections, and everything that follows picks up the
thread in one way or another. You repeatedly encounter machines and
devices that don't work properly, usually because of neglect; you
repeatedly find yourself in situations where verbal communication seems
to be impossible; you repeatedly navigate through hostile and
uncomfortable settings. Does all that reflect the relationship in
question and the problems with it? Presumably, but nothing is ever
spelled out as such; in a sense, you learn about the relationship that
drives the game by observing the game and guessing at what pieces are
supposed to be allegorical or metaphorical, and in what way.

What's interesting about the thematic elements, though, is that they're
not just window dressing: at several points, puzzle solutions are
solutions because they reflect the themes. In other words, there's no
particular reason that could be expressed through any deductive process
why something should work, but an attentive player who recognizes the
parallel should try the correct solution because it seems to fit into
the story. So described, it sounds fairly crude--"gee, I think I'll have
everything in my game in threes, and then require the player to knock on
a door three times"--but it's done much more effectively than that; the
theme in question isn't just an arbitrary motif. To say that you have to
think on the game's terms overstates the case a bit; it's more that you
have to recognize where the game's sending you. Still, it's an unusual
twist.

The genre, to the extent there is one, has been called magic realism:
the settings aren't taken from fantasy as such, but the rules of the
game's world are surreal in some respects. It's a limited surrealism,
though: the "magical" aspects are few and limited, and many of the
reactions you set off, or problems you solve, are firmly rooted in the
ordinary and explicable. Moreover, for the most part, the game keeps the
fantastic and mundane elements distinct: with a few exceptions (and
those exceptions form an obvious pattern) you won't be wandering along
through a conventional setting and come upon something wild and weird.
Magic realism, like straight fantasy, can sometimes lead a player to
suspect laziness--"rather than trying to make sense of all this, I'll
just call it magic"--but So Far mostly resists that characterization:
the departures from realism eventually (though not right away) are
revealed to be part of a larger pattern and follow rules of a sort.

And the writing--ah, the writing. I'm reminded of a saying to the effect
that an master or expert is someone who knows when and how to break the
rules, because the writing in So Far breaks a lot of rules and gets away
with it every time. The prologue, for example:

   Hot, foul, and dark. How did indoor theater become so fashionable?
   Well enough in spring rain or winter, but not in the thick, dead
   afternoon of high summer. And though Rito and Imita looks very fine,
   shining with electric moonslight in the enclosed gloom, you're much
   more aware of being crammed in neck-by-neck with your sweaty fellow
   citizens.

   Damn the crowd, in truth: your mood was hot, foul, and dark when you
   sat down. Aessa was supposed to meet you here. She's made excuses
   before, and you don't think about what it might mean. Try not to
   think, rather. Just watch the story. One of your favorites. But it's
   miserably hot, and you just aren't caught up in the play...

A lesser writer would not be able to get away with that "in truth" or
"well enough," which should sound terribly stilted; a lesser writer
would not be able to get away with a neologism like "moonslight" in the
first paragraph; a lesser writer would not be able to get away with
calling the fellow playgoers "citizens." Here, though, it all works--the
seemingly stilted language not only anticipates the poetry of the play,
but doesn't even sound awkward here. ("Damn the crowd, in truth" has a
certain unlikely ring to it.) Even the shift back to more conventionally
colloquial language ("you just aren't caught up in the play") fits--the
earlier mood reflected in the unusual sentence patterns is broken, just
as the character's concentration breaks. "Moonslight" works because the
writing has already established that it's ever so slightly
off-kilter--and because the light in question is "electric," off-kilter
in its own right. And "citizens" suggests that the theatergoers are
there under some sort of duty or compulsion, as if the play is something
to be endured rather than enjoyed.

Another example:

   Grassy Hilltop
   Not a flat tame greensward, mind you; you are surrounded by wild,
   waist-high, reed-yellow growth that hisses and rattles in the dry
   breeze. The grasses roll to every cloudless horizon. Above you towers
   an immense tree -- the only one visible anywhere in this prairie
   world -- and its shadow slices blackness past your feet. A path of
   flat, trampled grass cuts south down the hill.

The direct address to the player ("mind you") could be distracting, but
it's terse enough here (and rare enough elsewhere in the game) that it
slides by without yanking the player out of the scene. There are also a
lot of adjectives here--"flat" twice, "tame," "wild," "cloudless,
"immense," "trampled"--but the active verbs ("hisses and rattles,"
"roll," "towers," "slices," "cuts") do most of the descriptive work; the
adjectives are mostly in a supporting role. "Greensward" feels a little
like a thesaurus word, but since it's impossible to miss the meaning of
it here (because of the contrast with the "wild, waist-high, reed-yellow
growth"), the use of the word doesn't feel willfully obscure.

In the gameplay department, So Far breaks some rules as well. For
instance, the game begins with a lengthy noninteractive sequence--you
can look around and examine things, but that's about it--which is hardly
a surefire hook. (And there's no hint at anything more interesting until
the noninteractive sequence is over.) Even after the game gets going, it
takes quite a while for the player to get a handle on where it's
going--and given the nature of the story, or lack thereof, most players
are likely to feel directionless for a while. It's rare that you
encounter IF with no clear goal, and a new author might not be able to
get away with such a move. Arguably, though, that aimlessness is
unavoidable, given what the game is trying to do; the alternative is to
give the player an ostensible plot that gives way to the introspection
that happens here, but there are problems with that as well.

There are also various unfairnesses--plenty of learning by screwing up,
and in one respect it's easy to send the game into an unwinnable state
simply by progressing too far in a certain direction without progressing
enough in another. (On the other hand, the point-of-no-return moment is
about as obvious as such a moment can be, and it's also fairly obvious
that more lies down the other path.) The game bills itself as "cruel,"
and while it isn't as cruel as Change in the Weather, it's far from
forgiving-it's easy to waste essential resources, and at one point it
takes only a few moves of waiting to game the game unwinnable.

So Far is not a particularly long game, and the overall puzzle-count is
relatively low, but the world you're exploring feels larger than it is.
Part of the way the game achieves this effect is by scattering locked
doors and inaccessible (for one reason or another) exits through the
game, which constantly reinforces the sense that you haven't seen
everything of interest in the game's world. It's been said that the
effect is also to remind you that you're not the center of attention --
the game's universe doesn't revolve around you -- and that effect is
particularly well achieved in one setting with a wide variety of
characters who can't be bothered to acknowledge your presence (unless
you break the rules somehow). Red herrings have always been with us, but
obstacles that aren't meant to be overcome are an unusual breed of red
herring; Infocom's Planetfall is the only game I can think of that used
unsolvable puzzles to set the scene in a similar way. It should also be
said, though, that puzzles that aren't meant to be solved at all and
puzzles that can only be solved by figuring out the logic of the game's
world make for a highly difficult game, and most players will probably
end up using hints at some point.

It's obvious enough to be hardly worth saying that when Andrew Plotkin's
So Far was released, in 1996, it was unlike any IF that had preceded it.
Part of what made it unique (then) was the emotional content--the
emotional impact of the game is, in many ways, the point. (For the PC,
anyway, and arguably for you too.) The prevailing theme of the game is
tension and separation: if you don't choose to feel that tension, you're
unlikely to find the game involving. It wasn't unknown then (though it
was far from common) to impute some sort of emotions to the PC, but
generally those emotions weren't particularly complex--now and again the
PC might be afraid of something, say--and usually things would be nicely
spelled out. Here, by and large, you figure out what the PC feels by
analogizing from the impact on you, the player. (The game also tracks
your mental state to some extent--the status line, while not recording
your emotional temperature as such, does note your general impression of
each setting. Examples are "hot, sticky," "mild spring, quiet," and
"cramped, crawling.") That reading points to the significance of the
PC's emotional state.)

It might be argued that that's true for every game that has any kind of
emotional content, and it simply doesn't matter what the PC feels--but
here, I think, it does matter. You're given a choice at the end of the
game, with two very different endings depending on which choice you
make--and the choice that most consider "better" (though there's debate
about that too) reflects a certain understanding of the emotional
significance of the terrain you've traversed. That is, to the extent
that the game can be understood as an introspective journey, the
"better" resolution of that journey reflects a specific emotional
reaction to the self-understanding you've achieved. Other games since
So Far have given emotions their place in various ways--Sunset Over
Savannah, for one, reproduced So Far's status line but made it describe
the PC's mental state more precisely than So Far does (and had the
status line reflect events that are likely to affect the PC's thoughts).
Other games have aimed at affecting the player's emotional state rather
than the PC's; Photopia and Exhibition come to mind. But it's the
subtlety of the emotional effects that So Far conveys that make it
notable: the feelings at issue are unfulfilled yearnings here, a sense
of alienation there, a sensation of conflict between duty and sympathy
at another point, and there are no full-orchestra emotional turning
points. In this respect, as in others, it's a game that rewards careful
reading.

It's difficult, in the end, to explain what it is that makes So Far so
memorable. The settings are vivid, but not spectacularly so, and the
strongest theme in the descriptions is decay and abandonment--compelling
on an emotional level but not necessarily captivating as IF. A few of
the puzzles are memorable, but there aren't enough puzzles here to make
the game work on that basis alone. My own sense of why I found the game
fascinating was that it demanded attention and analysis; indeed, without
analysis, it's not even vaguely memorable, because very little of what's
most interesting about So Far is there on the surface. More than any
other IF I can think of--Losing Your Grip is the only game that comes
close--So Far is best appreciated through poring over the transcript and
drawing connections between events that aren't necessarily juxtaposed in
space or time. (An example: dawn is a recurring theme throughout the
game. There are several references to "dawn-tales," and at a key point
you're told that "dawn is distant yet." As it happens, the woman you're
seeking is named Aessa, and the Latin for "dawn" is "aes.") (Another
example: a certain substance links two disparate scenes by protecting a
road from erosion in one setting and sustaining a trapped character in
another.) There's been plenty of IF that's been thought-provoking, but
very little that calls for textual analysis.

Is that good, or bad? Shouldn't IF be capable of appreciation without
transcript dissection? I dunno; I certainly wouldn't say that So Far is
to everyone's tastes, and I do enjoy IF where the relevant happenings
are closer to the surface. But much of the best contemporary fiction
works in a way that's closer to the way So Far works, and it's exciting
to see a work of IF that aspires in that direction. That the product is
less than ideal as a game, in the final analysis, seems almost beside
the point.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

[Note: This overview does not include Dan Shiovitz's game "You Are A
CHEF!", which Skip suggests is so perfect that to review it would be
wrong. --Paul]

From: Jonathan "Skip" Rosebaugh <skiprosebaugh SP@G email.com>

NAME: SpeedIF 8: A Freak Accident Leaves Seattle Pantsless
AUTHORS: Matthew Amster-Burton, David Cornelson, Christopher Huang,
         Admiral Jota, and Dan Shiovitz [not included in review]
DATE: 2000
PARSER: TADS and Inform standard
SUPPORTS: TADS and Inform interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/mini-comps/speedif/SpeedIF08.zip
VERSION: 1

The Games reviewed:
* A Freak Accident Leaves Seattle Pantsless by Christopher "Miseri" Huang
* I Went to the WTO Ministerial Conference and All I Got Was This
Souvenir Delegate From Mauritius by Matthew "mamster" Amster-Burton
* Pantsless in Seattle by David "Jarb" Cornelson
* A Freak Accident Leaves Seattle Pantsless III: Endgame by Admiral
"Jota" Jota

SpeedIF is a blot on society. As indicated by the name, a SpeedIF entry
is a work of IF written very fast -- two hours is the usual time limit.
The parameters for each SpeedIF are usually generated via a mad-libs
style audience participation thingie on ifMUD. The parameters for
SpeedIF 8 were:

   SpeedIF8, entitled, 'A Freak Accident leaves Seattle Pantsless[1]',
   outside of a shop (type of which is your choosing) named 'End Of
   Days' serving something on the menu named 'Blitzkreig', 'ViReX', and
   'Macrolicious'. At another location, 23rd and Lincoln, an experiment
   is taking place that you need to help complete. This experiment
   involves corn, an electrical kite, and a missing sock. Bonus points
   for ZeroG Sex, and _any_ references to BWP (Blair Witch Project).

[1] Pants are considered to be inherently funny on ifMUD, particularly
when they are not being worn.

As might be expected, the entries were many, various, and totally off
the wall. Below is a transcribing of the notes left behind by an
adventurer who failed to protect his sanity.

   A Freak Accident Leaves Seattle Pantsless

Entropy fascinates me. I loved, for example, "The Entropy Effect."
Physics fascinates me. On the first day of physics class, I managed to
use both words in the same context, and was overjoyed, so it's only
natural for this game to please me. You have a quest. You must recover a
sock -- a sock that vanished in a clothes dryer. Along the course of
your quest you will encounter two out of three of the following items: a
voodoo doll, a rectal thermometer, and an artifact of Jack the Ripper.
Why? There's no reason; there doesn't have to be. This is SpeedIF. Once
you complete your quest, you find that you have socks. You have, in
fact, all the socks ever lost for the past few decades. However, since
the law of conservation of mass applies to plane transfer, everybody for
miles around loses their pants. Provided that the protagonist escapes
lynching, he will have both a mighty terrorist weapon and an excellent
source of socks. Also, he will have popcorn. Mmm, popcorn. The virgin
adventurer might be tempted to look for meaning in this work of SpeedIF.
After all, we have physics and meta-physics. We have complicated
experiments designed to reverse the flow of time. We have food. Alas,
no. The only meaning is that there is not, and can never be a meaning in
SpeedIF. Unless there can be one. The only possible thing to take away
from playing this game is a newly-enhanced respect for the limitless
possibilities for counterfeiting involved in transformation of physical
matter.

   I Went to the WTO Ministerial Conference and All I Got Was This
   Souvenir Delegate From Mauritius

Aha! Here we have both entertainment and social commentary in one small
package with a very long name. Featuring both a famous author and a
mayor, and also a bonus appearance of the author, this little game
manages to make us concerned enough about the fate of world trade that
we too will drop our pants -- erm, I mean, practice civil disobedience.
Also, this game features hilarious puppets. This is likely the only
SpeedIF game ever to feature more puppets than NPCs, even though it has
10,003 NPCs. Also, I was disappointed that Neal Stephenson prefers
Sherman tanks to his own All-Purpose Plex Armed Strife Mobile Unit. In
fact, Neal Stephenson isn't even really a part of this game; he just
stands around playing with advanced weaponry. In fact, why are hydrogen
bombs even available to World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference
protesters? Is this the kind of world you want your children to inherit?
If not, then get out there and protest the protesters. What is in fact a
part of this game is removing pants as a statement and protest, which
gets you trucked off to jail in the ending statement. Like small
countries, this small, short game has a very, very long name, and like
small countries, it may be worth visiting.

   Pantsless in Seattle

At last a game that respects the integrity of science enough to include
a Professor, and a game that respects the integrity of hormones enough
to include a beautiful woman. Er, that's just one game, in case you were
counting. Like every other game in the SpeedIF universe, this game is
short, sweet, and gets worse every time you play it. (Actually, it
doesn't, but I felt compelled to work entropy in here somewhere.) This
game does, however, feature what I think must be a character from
Spellbreaker, in that this NPC does some magic. Like another game, this
game features loss of pants. There is a NPC responsible for this
atrocity, but he is never brought to justice. What is this world coming
to when a pants thief can, in addition to his previously heinous theft
of socks, get away scott-free with the theft of all of Seattle's pants?
Obviously, the problem is scott-free. If Adventureland were not packaged
with Inform, the knowledge of Scott Adams games would be limited to an
elite few. Once this happens, there would be a socialist revolution
within the IF community, and pants would be shared equally.

   A Freak Accident Leaves Seattle Pantsless III: Endgame

Once again, we have a criminal. In this case, however, our arch-fiend is
not a magic-wielding pants-thief, but a deranged sock. Also, despite the
title, this game takes place in Acapulco. This game is the third in a
tragically non-existent series and it makes frequent reference to the
precursing games. Furthermore, since it takes place in Acapulco, all
dialogue is in Spanish. Fortunately, subtitling is provided for
non-Spanish-speakers. Those who can speak Spanish, however, will be
laughing. The Spanish dialogue is the second-funniest thing in the game,
right after the sock. The game ends with a promise of more to come.

[Here the scribbled hand ended. I can only presume that he died of
starvation, while frantically waiting for A Freak Accident Leaves
Seattle Pantsless IV: Tentative Title.]

So, there you have it, folks. Once upon a time, only the IF Gods could
enjoy games made humorous due to time limits, but now these games are
available even to mere mortals. So play away, and come join the ifMUD so
you too can help keep the tradition of quickly written Interactive
Fiction alive.

Please note: The author is not on crack. The author is on caffeine.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

From: Francesco Bova <fbova SP@G pangea.ca>

NAME: Textfire Golf
AUTHOR: J. T. Adams AKA Adam Cadre
EMAIL: ac SP@G adamcadre.ac
DATE: 2001
PARSER: Inform
SUPPORTS: Z-code (Inform) interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware
VERSION: 1.01
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/golf.z5

Do you know why you don't see any extremely tall golfers on the PGA
tour? Sure there are the odd anomalies, but by and large most
professional golfers are under 6'2'' (and over 90% shoot right handed,
but I won't get into that). The reason: Tall golfers have more in the
way of mechanics that they have to get right to hit a ball properly.
Because their arms and legs are longer, and correspondingly the arc of
their swing is bigger, the distance traveled from back swing to contact
is longer and more can potentially go wrong as the clubface approaches
the ball. As a result, any mistake (i.e., opening up the club face too
much) during a tall golfer's swing is magnified to a much greater extent
than it would be had the golfer been shorter. Having said that, if a
taller golfer gets all of his mechanics in place correctly, then the
resulting swing should produce a much better drive, all things being
equal, than that of a shorter golfer because of the extra power provided
by the increased leverage of the golfer's longer arms and body. The net
effect of this concept is that good shorter golfers should be more
polished and consistent than good taller golfers, but when taller
golfers get everything done correctly, they should be able to produce
better individual results than shorter golfers. 

Strangely enough, this concept parallels many an IF piece (nice segue,
eh?). Before we look at the comparison, let's start with a little IF
theory. The larger the IF game, the more rooms and more objects to
implement, and the greater the combinatorial explosion. What it means to
a game designer is this: Every time you add one object to the game, you
have to consider how it may need to interact with every other object in
the game. In essence, by adding one object you're potentially DOUBLING
the number of interactions that may need to be allowed (or disallowed,
with appropriate "you can't do that" messages). 

An example of how this can be a problem crops up in one of the largest
IF releases in recent memory, The Mulldoon Legacy. Mulldoon is a game
that taxes Inform's memory capabilities with an incredible amount of
rooms and objects. Although still impressively good, the problem with
its first release was that players tried to utilize obviously single-use
inventory items in logical ways, even though the author hadn't accounted
for all the possible uses of the many items in his game. And, in a few
cases, alternate solutions were found that were never intended by the
author. This lead to a bit of frustration on my part, although once I
thought about it, the sheer task of trying to come up with all the
possible combinations in a game like Mulldoon would be quite difficult
even for the most experienced author. 

The point is that the bigger the game, the more little oversights and
errors can be magnified into bigger ones and, much like a tall golfer's
swing, can cause adverse affects that affect the bigger picture. Suffice
it to say that bigger games that are technically competent and
consistent deserve much praise due to the sheer difficulty of reducing
this combinatorial explosion. The combinatorial explosion (or lack
thereof), is also the reason why I would expect a higher degree of
polish for a smaller game and be much more critical of such oversights.

Textfire Golf is a fairly small game and so, keeping my previous
opinions in mind, I would expect a high degree of polish (not as nice a
segue, I know, but I've been trying to work that golf analogy into a
review for, like, ever, and this seemed an appropriate place to do it).
To be honest, I would expect a high degree of polish anyway because of
the name in the authorial credits, so it was no surprise that Textfire
Golf impressed me in many ways. 

A halfway Z-abuse (not completely ASCII art-based like Z-snake, for
example), Textfire Golf also incorporates an interesting storyline for a
quick 9-hole game of golf. What makes this game really work though, is
the arcade-like feature of being able to control your ball's pace and
trajectory. This is done with a power meter that you stop with a press
of the space bar, and a trajectory meter that will result in you
slicing, hooking, or driving dead center. The method follows the
standard arcade power and trajectory meter pretty faithfully, and is
certainly an improvement on some of the older style golf games I've
played (the one I'm thinking of involves pushing a little white ball set
in the arcade's console, which gave the player little to no control over
the ball's distance and direction). 

The course itself isn't too difficult to play, and with the benefit of
the UNDO command you can always go back and retry a stroke if you've
made a mistake (if only it were that easy in real life). I actually
would have preferred it if the author removed the UNDO command, just to
keep us a bit honest. It would have, at the very least, provided me with
more incentive to replay the game in an attempt to get my score a little
lower. For players who only play the game to fiddle with the golfing
interface, this is especially true. Still, even with the UNDO feature
enabled, there are many reasons to try replaying this game as there are
multiple endings that take into account almost every contingency you can
think of (i.e., hitting your ball out of bounds 20 times in a row, or
putting with your driver). I came up with roughly 16 endings myself, but
I'm sure that there are more I didn't find.

The fiction side, as is typical of a Cadre game, is well written with
witty dialogue and Mr. Cadre's trademark snarky parser. The best bits of
prose for me came from your foursome's bastardized golfing lingo and
constant cheap shots. Here is a typical example:

   Ted's ball sails over the bridge and lands on the far side of the
   lake.

   Ed taps the ball off the tee and onto the fairway. "You do realize
   that if you keep us here till eleven it's coming out of your pay,"
   Ted points out.

   Fred shanks the ball into the lake. "Maggie, call Aquaman!" Ted
   yells.

Although interaction with the NPCs is limited (all you can really do is
ask your caddy for a certain club type), the interaction with the game's
environment is surprisingly rich, as the author has allowed for many
common golfing actions (common cheating techniques for example), and
some not-so-common actions that generate some interesting non-default
responses. Each hole is described creatively as well, and that's more of
a challenge than you'd probably think considering most golf holes have
similar types of scenery.

The storyline also proves to be more substantial than its initial
premise of a simple foursome of golf. You play the part of Ned, a lowly
hack who works for a construction company and wants to play with the big
boys. When an opening in the usual foursome appears, you're invited to
play and with the invitation comes an opportunity to assert your
position within the company's hierarchy. What may get lost while you're
enjoying the mechanics of swinging your golf club and taking in the
beautifully described scenery however, is that there are lofty issues
afoot with the PC. Ned, as it turns out, is a character fraught with
insecurity; so much so in fact that his constant overanalyzing leads to
an abnormal inability to act. In this respect, he reminded me of the
2000 XYZZY-award-winning PC from the 2000 IFComp game Rameses. When I
played through Textfire Golf I could see shades of J. Alfred Prufrock's
quote, "Do I dare to eat a peach?", creeping into the protagonist's
mindset as his constant self-critiquing leaves him unable to act, and
this was similar to my playing experience with Rameses. 

Comparing Rameses' protagonist with Ned, the big difference is that
while both are overanalytical in their mindset and are therefore unable
to act proactively, the Rameses PC WILL NOT act regardless of what the
player types. This essentially relegates the player to the role of
conscience or voice of reason that the protagonist refuses to listen to.
Ned, on the other hand, can be broken out of his cocoon to do just about
anything. Also, unlike the Rameses PC where the failings of the
protagonist are specifically driven by his own inabilities, Ned seems to
have a streak of bad luck working against him that affects him
regardless of his actions. Of the 16 or so endings I found in the game,
none were positive (although it may be the case that I never saw the
optimal one). It's as if the golfing gods are punishing him for having
the hubris to elevate himself above his current place in the corporate
chain.

Hmmm... maybe I'm overanalyzing a bit. I suppose it could also be the
case that Ned's just unlucky and a bit shy. Also, keeping the author's
previous works in mind, there seems to be a real trend towards more
realistic endings as opposed to the overly happy, utopic ones. The
comment here may be that Ned was na�ve in the first place to think one
golf game could change his future. Whatever the case, Ned is an
interesting PC to be sure, and more than I expected considering this
game was initially labeled a Z-abuse. 

OK, I think I've said enough. Let's wrap this baby up. For you golfing
fans, I think you'll get a real kick out of Textfire Golf and it's novel
golfing interface, and for everyone else, the dialogue and scenery
descriptions coupled with a more-than-skin-deep NPC are worth the time
it takes to download. 

Golfing score: BIRDIE

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

[This review popped up in my mailbox on April 1st, and while I've edited
the language, I've made no effort to fact-check the contents. Make of it
what you will... --Paul]

From: Stas Starkov <stas_ SP@G mail.rb.ru>

NAME: Zugzwang - The Interactive Life of a Chess Piece
AUTHOR: Magnus Olsson
EMAIL: zebulon SP@G pobox.com
DATE: 1999
PARSER: Inform Standard
SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware
URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/zugzwang.zip
VERSION: Release 2

If you don't know what the term 'zugzwang' means, I don't want to spoil
your fun of playing the game. But if you're one of those several
geniuses who play chess sometimes, you already know what it means. Yes,
this game is about chess. I'll tell you more -- this game is a sort of
chess simulation. You yourself are a chess piece -- imagine this. But
this is not so bad as it sounds -- in the beginning you're only a Pawn
(the least powerful piece in chess). And if you're smart and bold (you
must be very bold or, umm, very bald -- I'm not sure) you will really
win. Your moves can bring peace and order on the chess fields.
Incredible responsibility lies on your weak (in the beginning) shoulders
-- it is up to you to save the entire world. 'Zugzwang' features many
never-before-seen aspects of RPG (role-playing games) and RTS (real-time
strategy). There are about ten big battle fields, and hundreds of types
of armor and weapons. The deepest depth of NPC implementation that the
IF world has ever seen would be enough already to earn Zugzwang the
honor of most intellectual game in GMD. But it must not distract you
from the game: 'Zugzwang' features a floating level of difficulty; that
is, the game observes your playing skill and if you're good, the
difficulty rises and vice versa. The AI (Artificial Intelligence) never
lets you stay bored.

There are some bad things about game itself: if you own a quite small
computer screen you can't enjoy the beautiful almost-3D graphics. But if
you have a good fast 3D accelerator (like Voodoo 5 or GeForce 256 -- I
have both) and a really fast computer you'll experience the full quality
of this technically high-end game. But if you want more, a good
expensive sound system will help, as well your favorite joystick. This
game compelled me to buy a professional sound card, and I don't think
that my money was lost. And there is this unique feature: 'Zugzwang'
supports VR-helmets of six types. But most important, this game is
compatible with almost every computer system (Windows 2000, Linux, Mac
etc., etc.).

You must know that this particular game is only a demo. To receive the
full story of 'The Interactive Life of a Chess Piece' you must register.
And I can say that it is worth your money. The full version comes on
_two_ DVDs or on _twelve_ CDs. "But what is the special offer mentioned
in the demo game?" you can ask. It is source code for the _entire_ game,
which means that you yourself can create a game that you can sell after
that. Yes, sell -- and get really big money for several hours work. This
game is really good from the standpoint of creating your own version.
And, of course, even the demo version supports multiplayer mode via the
Internet.

This game is the apotheosis of the text adventure. You _must_ play at
least a demo. But I'm sure that after the very beautiful, stunning, mind
bending climax, for the next several hours you'll only be able to do one
thing: reminisce over the greatest moments of the game. And after that
you'll smash your piggy bank and order the full registered version of
'Zugzwang'.

One last thing that I absolutely must say -- this game is fully
compatible with RAIF-POOL. And if you're not a beginner in IF, that will
definitely mean something to you.

READERS' SCOREBOARD -------------------------------------------------------

The Readers' Scoreboard is an ongoing feature of SPAG. It charts the
scores that SPAG readers and reviewers have given to various IF games
since SPAG started up. The codes in the Notes column give information as
to a game's availability and the platforms on which it runs. For a
translation of these codes and for more detailed information on the
scoreboard's format, see the SPAG FAQ. This FAQ is available at the
ftp.gmd.de IF-archive or on the SPAG web page at
http://www.sparkynet.com/spag.

Name                   Avg Sc     Chr     Puz # Sc  Issue Notes:
====                   ======     ===     === ====  ===== ======
1-2-3...                  4.1     0.9     0.5    3     23 F_INF_GMD
9:05                      6.3     0.6     0.7    8     20 F_INF_GMD
Aayela                    7.4     1.2     1.5    5     10 F_TAD_GMD
Abbey                     6.8     0.6     1.4    1        S10_I_GMD
Above and Beyond          7.3     1.5     1.6    5        F_TAD_GMD
Acid Whiplash             5.1     0.6     0.2    4     17 F_INF_GMD
Acorn Court               6.1     0.5     1.5    2     12 F_INF_GMD
Ad Verbum                 7.4     0.9     1.7    3     23 F_INF_GMD
Adv. of Elizabeth Hig     3.1     0.5     0.3    2      5 F_AGT_GMD
Adventure (all varian     6.0     0.5     1.1   13   8,22 F_INF_TAD_ETC_GMD
Adventureland             4.4     0.5     1.1    6        F_INF_GMD
Adventures of Helpful     7.0     1.3     0.9    2        F_TAD_GMD
Aftermath                 4.0     0.7     0.7    1        F_TAD_GMD
Afternoon Visit           4.1     1.0     0.8    1        F_AGT
Aisle                     6.6     1.4     0.3    8     18 F_INF_GMD
Alien Abduction?          7.5     1.3     1.4    5     10 F_TAD_GMD
All Alone                 8.2     1.3     0.7    2     22 F_TAD_GMD
All Quiet...Library       5.0     0.9     0.9    6      7 F_INF_GMD
Amnesia                   6.9     1.5     1.3    4      9 C_AP_I_64
Anchorhead                8.8     1.7     1.5   25     18 F_INF_GMD
And The Waves...          7.9     1.5     1.1    2     23 F_INF_GMD
Another...No Beer         2.4     0.2     0.8    2      4 S10_I_GMD
Arrival                   7.9     1.3     1.4    5     17 F_TAD_GMD
Arthur: Excalibur         8.0     1.3     1.6    44,14,22 C_INF
Asendent                  1.7     0.0     0.3    1        F_INF_GMD
At Wit's End              7.1     1.2     1.3    1     23 F_TAD_GMD
Augmented Fourth          7.9     1.2     1.6    7     22 F_INF_GMD
Aunt Nancy's House        1.3     0.1     0.0    2        F_INF_GMD
Awakened                  7.7     1.7     1.6    1
Awakening                 5.6     0.9     1.1    2  15,18 F_INF_GMD
Awe-Chasm                 3.0     0.7     0.7    2      8 S_I_ST_GMD
Babel                     8.4     1.7     1.3   10     13 F_INF_GMD
Balances                  6.6     0.7     1.2    9      6 F_INF_GMD
Ballyhoo                  7.3     1.5     1.5    6      4 C_INF
Bear's Night Out          7.3     1.1     1.3    7     13 F_INF_GMD
Beat The Devil            5.5     1.2     1.1    4     19 F_INF_GMD
Being Andrew Plotkin      7.5     1.5     1.1    2     23 F_INF_GMD
Best Man                  5.2     0.8     1.2    2        F_INF_GMD
Beyond the Tesseract      3.7     0.1     0.6    1      6 F_I_GMD
Beyond Zork               7.7     1.5     1.7   10  5, 14 C_INF
Big Mama                  5.4     1.2     0.6    3     23 F_INF_GMD
BJ Drifter                6.5     1.2     1.2    5     15 F_INF_GMD
Bliss                     6.3     1.1     0.8    4     20 F_TAD_GMD
Bloodline                 7.7     1.4     1.1    2     15 F_INF_GMD
Border Zone               7.2     1.4     1.4    7      4 C_INF
Breakers                  7.5     1.5     1.1    1        C_I_AP_M_64_S
Break-In                  6.1     1.1     1.4    3     21 F_INF_GMD
Breaking The Code         0.4     0.0     0.0    2        F_INF_GMD
Brimstone: The Dream.     6.5     1.4     1.1    1        C_I_AP_M_64_S
Broken String             3.9     0.7     0.4    4        F_TADS_GMD
BSE                       5.7     0.9     1.0    3        F_INF_GMD
Bureaucracy               6.9     1.5     1.4   12      5 C_INF
Busted                    5.1     1.1     0.9    2     25 F_INF_GMD
Calliope                  4.7     0.9     0.8    3        F_INF_GMD
Cask                      1.5     0.0     0.5    2        F_INF_GMD
Castaway                  1.1     0.0     0.4    1      5 F_I_GMD
Castle Amnos              4.6     1.0     0.8    2        F_INF_GMD
Castle Elsinore           4.3     0.7     1.0    2        I_GMD
Cattus Atrox              4.9     1.2     0.8    1     17 F_INF_GMD
CC                        4.2     0.4     1.0    1        F_ALAN_GMD
Change in the Weather     7.5     1.0     1.3   14 7,8,14 F_INF_GMD
Chaos                     5.6     1.3     1.1    2        F_TAD_GMD
Chicken under Window      6.6     0.8     0.3    4        F_INF_GMD
Chicks Dig Jerks          5.2     1.1     0.7    9     19 F_INF_GMD
Chico and I Ran           7.2     1.7     1.1    1        F_INF_GMD
Christminster             8.2     1.6     1.6   20     20 F_INF_GMD
Circus                    3.4     0.5     0.8    1
City                      6.1     0.6     1.3    2     17 F_INF_GMD
Clock                     3.7     0.8     0.6    1        F_TAD_GMD
Coke Is It!               5.6     1.0     0.9    3        F_INF_GMD
Coming Home               0.6     0.1     0.1    1        F_INF_GMD
Common Ground             7.2     1.6     0.4    2     20 F_TAD_GMD
Commute                   1.3     0.2     0.1    1        F_I_GMD
Comp00ter Game            0.9     0.1     0.1    1        F_INF_GMD
Congratulations!          2.6     0.7     0.3    1        F_INF_GMD
Corruption                7.2     1.6     1.0    4 14, 21 C_MAG
Cosmoserve                7.8     1.4     1.4    5      5 F_AGT_GMD
Cove                      6.5     0.8     0.7    4     22 F_INF_GMD
Crimson Spring            6.9     1.5     1.2    1        F_HUG_GMD
Crypt v2.0                5.0     1.0     1.5    1      3 S12_IBM_GMD
Curses                    8.0     1.2     1.7   19  2, 22 F_INF_GMD
Cutthroats                5.7     1.3     1.1    9      1 C_INF
Dampcamp                  5.0     0.8     1.1    3        F_TAD_GMD
Danger! Adventurer...     3.2     0.3     0.7    1        F_INF_GMD
Dangerous Curves          8.6     1.5     1.6    1        F_INF_GMD
Day For Soft Food         6.8     1.0     1.3    5     19 F_INF_GMD
Deadline                  6.9     1.3     1.3    9     20 C_INF
Death To My Enemies       4.4     0.9     0.7    4        F_INF_GMD
Deep Space Drifter        5.6     0.4     1.1    3      3 S15_TAD_GMD
Deephome                  4.0     0.5     0.9    2     21 F_INF_GMD
Delusions                 7.9     1.5     1.5    5      14F_INF_GMD
Demon's Tomb              7.4     1.2     1.1    2      9 C_I
Desert Heat               6.0     1.3     0.7    1     23 F_TAD_GMD
Detective                 1.0     0.0     0.0    9 4,5,18 F_AGT_INF_GMD
Detective-MST3K           6.0     1.2     0.2   10 7,8,18 F_INF_GMD
Dinner With Andre         7.2     1.6     1.4    1     23 F_INF_GMD
Ditch Day Drifter         6.3     0.9     1.6    5      2 F_TAD_GMD
Djinni Chronicles         7.1     1.1     1.1    3     23 F_INF_GMD
Down                      6.0     1.0     1.2    1     14 F_HUG_GMD
Downtown Tokyo            6.1     0.9     1.0    6     17 F_INF_GMD
Dungeon                   7.1     1.0     1.7    2        F_GMD
Dungeon Adventure         6.8     1.3     1.6    1      4 F_ETC
Dungeon of Dunjin         6.0     0.7     1.5    5  3, 14 S20_IBM_MAC_GMD
Edifice                   8.0     1.4     1.8   10     13 F_INF_GMD
Electrabot                0.7     0.0     0.0    1      5 F_AGT_GMD
E-Mailbox                 3.1     0.1     0.2    2        F_AGT_GMD
Emy Discovers Life        5.0     1.1     0.8    3        F_AGT
Enchanter                 7.3     1.0     1.4    9   2,15 C_INF
End Means Escape          6.1     1.4     1.1    1     23 F_TAD_GMD
Enhanced                  5.0     1.0     1.3    2      2 S10_TAD_GMD
Enlightenment             6.5     1.1     1.5    3     17 F_INF_GMD
Erehwon                   6.2     1.2     1.5    4     19 F_TAD_GMD
Eric the Unready          7.4     1.4     1.4    6        C_I
Essex                     5.7     1.2     0.9    1        C_I_AP_M_64_ST
Everybody Loves a Par     7.0     1.2     1.2    3     12 F_TAD_GMD
Exhibition                6.2     1.4     0.3    6     19 F_TAD_GMD
Fable                     2.0     0.1     0.1    3      6 F_AGT_GMD
Fable-MST3K               4.0     0.5     0.2    4        F_AGT_INF_GMD
Fear                      6.3     1.2     1.3    3     10 F_INF_GMD
Fifteen                   1.5     0.5     0.4    1     17 F_INF_GMD
Firebird                  7.1     1.5     1.3    4     15 F_TAD_GMD
Fish                      7.5     1.3     1.7    4 12, 14 C_MAG
Foggywood Hijinx          6.2     1.2     1.3    3     21 F_TAD_GMD
Foom                      6.6     1.0     1.0    1        F_TAD_GMD
For A Change              8.0     0.9     1.3    6 19, 22 F_INF_GMD
Forbidden Castle          4.8     0.6     0.5    1        C_AP
Four In One               4.4     1.2     0.5    2        F_TAD_GMD
Four Seconds              6.0     1.2     1.1    2        F_TAD_GMD
Frenetic Five             5.3     1.4     0.5    3     13 F_TAD_GMD
Frenetic Five 2           6.6     1.5     1.0    3 21, 22 F_TAD_GMD
Friday Afternoon          6.3     1.4     1.2    1     13 F_INF_GMD
Frobozz Magic Support     7.2     1.2     1.5    3        F_TAD_GMD
Frozen                    5.5     0.7     1.3    1        F_INF_GMD
Frustration               5.7     1.1     0.9    1     21 F_TAD_GMD
Futz Mutz                 5.3     1.0     1.1    1        F_TAD_GMD
Galatea                   7.8     1.9     0.7    3     22 F_INF_GMD
Gateway                   8.6     1.4     1.8    7     11 C_I
Gateway 2: Homeworld      9.0     1.7     1.9    6        C_I
Gerbil Riot of '67        6.3     0.7     1.1    1        F_TAD_GMD
Glowgrass                 6.9     1.3     1.3    5     13 F_INF_GMD
Gnome Ranger              5.8     1.2     1.6    1        C_I
Golden Fleece             6.0     1.0     1.1    1     21 F_TAD_GMD
Golden Wombat of Dest     6.3     0.7     1.1    1     18 F_I_GMD
Good Breakfast            4.9     0.9     1.2    2     14 F_INF_GMD
Got ID?                   6.2     1.4     1.0    1        F_INF_GMD
Great Archeolog. Race     6.5     1.0     1.5    1      3 S20_TAD_GMD
Guardians of Infinity     8.5             1.3    1      9 C_I
Guess The Verb!           6.5     1.2     1.4    2     23 F_INF_GMD
Guild of Thieves          6.9     1.2     1.5    4     14 C_MAG
Guilty Bastards           6.9     1.4     1.2    5     22 F_HUG_GMD
Guitar...Immortal Bar     3.0     0.0     0.0    1        F_INF_GMD
Gumshoe                   6.2     1.0     1.1    7      9 F_INF_GMD
Halothane                 6.6     1.3     1.2    4     19 F_INF_GMD
Happy Ever After          4.6     0.5     1.2    1        F_INF_GMD
HeBGB Horror              5.7     0.9     1.1    2        F_ALAN_GMD
Heist                     6.7     1.4     1.5    2        F_INF_GMD
Hero, Inc.                6.8     1.0     1.5    2        F_TAD_GMD
Hitchhiker's Guide        7.3     1.3     1.5   16      5 C_INF
Hollywood Hijinx          6.3     0.9     1.5   12        C_INF
Holy Grail                6.2     0.9     1.2    1     21 F_TAD_GMD
Horror of Rylvania        7.2     1.4     1.4    5      1 F_TAD_GMD
Horror30.zip              3.7     0.3     0.7    2      3 S20_I_GMD
Human Resources Stori     0.9     0.0     0.1    2     17 F_INF_GMD
Humbug                    7.4     1.6     1.3    4     11 F_I_GMD
Hunter, In Darkness       7.3     0.9     1.4    7     19 F_INF_GMD
I didn't know...yodel     4.0     0.7     1.0    5     17 F_I_GMD
I-0: Jailbait on Inte     7.7     1.5     1.2   20     20 F_INF_GMD
Ice Princess              7.5     1.4     1.6    2        A_INF_GMD
In The End                4.8     0.6     0.2    3     10 F_INF_GMD
In The Spotlight          3.2     0.2     1.0    2     17 F_INF_GMD
Infidel                   6.9     0.2     1.4   15      1 C_INF
Infil-Traitor             2.9     0.1     0.7    1        F_I_GMD
Informatory               5.5     0.5     1.3    1     17 F_INF_GMD
Ingrid's Back             7.0     1.6     1.6    2        C_I
Inheritance               5.0     0.3     1.0    3     20 F_TAD_GMD
Inhumane                  4.4     0.3     0.9    4  9, 20 F_INF_GMD
Intruder                  6.7     1.3     1.1    4     20 F_INF_GMD
Jacaranda Jim             7.5     1.0     0.9    3        F_GMD
Jacks...Aces To Win       7.1     1.3     1.2    3     19 F_INF_GMD
Jarod's Journey           2.5     0.5     0.3    1        F_TAD_GMD
Jewel of Knowledge        6.3     1.2     1.1    3     18 F_INF_GMD
Jeweled Arena             7.0     1.4     1.3    2        AGT_GMD
Jigsaw                    8.2     1.5     1.6   18    8,9 F_INF_GMD
Jinxter                   6.1     0.9     1.3    3        C_MAG
John's Fire Witch         6.5     1.0     1.5    9  4, 12 S6_TADS_GMD
Jouney Into Xanth         5.0     1.3     1.2    1      8 F_AGT_GMD
Journey                   7.2     1.5     1.3    5      5 C_INF
Kaged                     6.8     1.0     1.0    3 23, 25 F_INF_GMD
King Arthur's Night O     5.9     0.9     1.0    4     19 F_ALAN_GMD
Kissing the Buddha's      7.9     1.8     1.5    6     10 F_TAD_GMD
Klaustrophobia            6.4     1.1     1.3    6      1 S15_AGT_GMD
Knight Orc                7.2     1.4     1.1    2     15 C_I
L.U.D.I.T.E.              2.7     0.2     0.1    4        F_INF_GMD
Lancelot                  6.9     1.4     1.2    1        C_I
Land Beyond Picket Fe     4.8     1.2     1.2    1     10 F_I_GMD
LASH                      8.2     1.4     1.1    3     21 F_INF_GMD
Leather Goddesses         7.2     1.3     1.5   12      4 C_INF
Leaves                    3.4     0.2     0.8    1     14 F_ALAN_GMD
Legend Lives!             8.2     1.2     1.4    4      5 F_TAD_GMD
Lesson of the Tortois     6.9     1.3     1.4    5     14 F_TAD_GMD
Lethe Flow Phoenix        6.9     1.4     1.5    5      9 F_TAD_GMD
Letters From Home         6.4     1.1     1.5    1        F_INF_GMD
Life on Beal Street       5.4     1.3     0.1    3        F_TAD_GMD
Light: Shelby's Adden     7.5     1.5     1.3    6      9 S_TAD_GMD
Lightiania                1.9     0.2     0.4    1        F_INF_GMD
Lists and Lists           6.3     1.3     1.1    3     10 F_INF_GMD
Little Billy              1.1     0.4     0.0    1        F_I_GMD
Little Blue Men           8.2     1.4     1.5   10     17 F_INF_GMD
Lomalow                   4.6     1.0     0.6    3     19 F_INF_GMD
Losing Your Grip          8.5     1.4     1.4    6      14S20_TAD_GMD
Lost New York             7.9     1.4     1.4    4     20 S12_TAD_GMD
Lost Spellmaker           6.1     1.3     1.1    4     13 F_INF_GMD
Lunatix: Insanity Cir     5.6     1.2     1.0    3        F_I_GMD
Lurking Horror            7.2     1.3     1.4   16    1,3 C_INF
MacWesleyan / PC Univ     5.1     0.7     1.2    3        F_TAD_GMD
Madame L'Estrange...      5.1     1.2     0.7    1     13 F_INF_GMD
Magic Toyshop             5.2     1.1     1.1    5      7 F_INF_GMD
Magic.zip                 4.5     0.5     0.5    1      3 S20_IBM_GMD
Maiden of the Moonlig     6.4     1.3     1.5    2     10 F_TAD_GMD
Masque of the Last...     4.7     1.1     0.8    1        F_INF_GMD
Masquerade                7.3     1.6     1.0    1     23 F_INF_GMD
Matter of Time            1.4     0.3     1.4    1      14F_ALAN_GMD
Mercy                     7.3     1.4     1.2    6     12 F_INF_GMD
Metamorphoses             8.7     1.3     1.6    1     23 F_INF_GMD
Meteor...Sherbet          8.1     1.5     1.6    8 10, 12 F_INF_GMD
Mind Electric             5.2     0.6     0.9    4    7,8 F_INF_GMD
Mind Forever Voyaging     8.3     1.4     0.9   13   5,15 C_INF
Mindwheel                 8.5     1.6     1.5    1        C_I
Mission                   6.0     1.2     1.4    1     21 F_TAD_GMD
Moist                     6.4     1.3     1.1    5        F_TAD_GMD
Moment of Hope            5.0     1.3     0.3    3     19 F_TAD_GMD
Moonmist                  6.1     1.2     1.0   15      1 C_INF
Mop & Murder              5.0     0.9     1.0    2      5 F_AGT_GMD
Mother Loose              7.0     1.5     1.3    2     17 F_INF_GMD
Mulldoon Legacy           7.4     1.2     1.8    1        F_INF_GMD
Multidimen. Thief         5.6     0.5     1.3    6    2,9 S15_AGT_GMD
Muse                      7.9     1.5     1.2    4     17 F_INF_GMD
Music Education           3.7     1.0     0.7    3        F_INF_GMD
My Angel                  8.2     1.8     1.4    2     23 F_INF_GMD
Myopia                    6.1     1.3     0.6    2        F_AGT_GMD
Mystery House             4.1     0.3     0.7    1        F_AP_GMD
Nevermore                 7.2     1.5     1.4    1     23 F_INF_GMD
New Day                   6.6     1.4     1.1    4     13 F_INF_GMD
Night At Computer Cen     5.2     1.0     1.0    2        F_INF_GMD
Night at Museum Forev     4.2     0.3     1.0    4    7,8 F_TAD_GMD
Night of... Bunnies       6.6     1.0     1.4    1        I_INF_GMD
Nord and Bert             6.1     0.6     1.2    9      4 C_INF
Not Just A Game           6.9     1.0     1.3    1     20 F_INF_GMD
Not Just... Ballerina     5.3     0.8     0.9    3     20 F_INF_GMD
Obscene...Aardvarkbar     3.2     0.6     0.6    1        F_TAD_GMD
Odieus...Flingshot        3.3     0.4     0.7    2      5 F_INF_GMD
Of Forms Unknown          4.5     0.7     0.5    1     10 F_INF_GMD
Offensive Probing         4.2     0.6     0.9    1        F_INF_GMD
On The Farm               6.5     1.6     1.2    2     19 F_TAD_GMD
On The Other Side         2.2     0.0     0.0    1        F_I_GMD
Once and Future           6.9     1.6     1.5    2     16 F_TAD_GMD
One That Got Away         6.4     1.4     1.1    7    7,8 F_TAD_GMD
Only After Dark           4.6     0.8     0.6    4        F_INF_GMD
Oo-Topos                  5.7     0.2     1.0    1      9 C_AP_I_64
Outsided                  2.5     0.7     0.2    2        F_INF_GMD
Pass the Banana           2.9     0.8     0.5    3     19 F_INF_GMD
Path to Fortune           6.6     1.5     0.9    3      9 S_INF_GMD
Pawn                      6.3     1.1     1.3    2     12 C_MAG
Perilous Magic            6.0     1.1     1.3    2     21 F_INF_GMD
Perseus & Andromeda       3.5     0.4     0.9    2        64_INF_GMD
Persistence of Memory     6.2     1.2     1.1    1     17 F_HUG_GMD
Phlegm                    5.2     1.2     1.0    2     10 F_INF_GMD
Photopia                  7.4     1.5     0.7   25     17 F_INF_GMD
Phred Phontious...Piz     5.2     0.9     1.3    2     13 F_INF_GMD
Pickpocket                4.1     0.6     0.8    1        F_INF_GMD
Piece of Mind             6.3     1.3     1.4    1     10 F_INF_GMD
Pintown                   1.3     0.3     0.2    1        F_INF_GMD
Pirate's Cove             4.8     0.6     0.6    1        F_INF_GMD
Planet of Infinite Mi     6.8     1.1     1.3    1     23 F_TAD_GMD
Planetfall                7.3     1.6     1.4   13      4 C_INF
Plant                     7.3     1.2     1.5    4     17 F_TAD_GMD
Plundered Hearts          7.4     1.4     1.3   11      4 C_INF
Poor Zefron's Almanac     5.6     1.0     1.3    3     13 F_TAD_GMD
Portal                    8.0     1.7     0.2    3        C_I_A_AP_64
Prodly The Puffin         5.8     1.3     1.1    2     23 F_INF_GMD
Punk Points               6.4     1.4     1.3    1        F_INF_GMD
Purple                    5.6     0.9     1.0    1     17 F_INF_GMD
Pyramids of Mars          5.8     1.2     1.1    2        AGT_GMD
Quarterstaff              6.1     1.3     0.6    1      9 C_M
Ralph                     7.1     1.6     1.2    3 10, 25 F_INF_GMD
Rameses                   8.0     1.6     0.4    2     23 F_INF_GMD
Rematch                   7.9     1.5     1.6    1     22 F_TAD_GMD
Remembrance               2.7     0.8     0.2    3        F_GMD
Reruns                    5.2     1.2     1.2    1        AGT_GMD
Research Dig              4.8     1.1     0.8    2     17 F_INF_GMD
Reverberations            5.6     1.3     1.1    1     10 F_INF_GMD
Ritual of Purificatio     7.0     1.6     1.1    4     17 F_GMD
Saied                     4.6     1.0     0.2    1     15 F_INF_GMD
Sanity Claus              7.5     0.3     0.6    2      1 S10_AGT_GMD
Save Princeton            5.6     1.0     1.3    5      8 S10_TAD_GMD
Scapeghost                8.1     1.7     1.5    1      6 C_I
Sea Of Night              5.7     1.3     1.1    2        F_TAD_GMD
Seastalker                5.2     1.1     0.8   11      4 C_INF
Shade                     8.5     0.7     1.0    2     23 F_INF_GMD
Shades of Grey            7.8     1.3     1.3    6   2, 8 F_AGT_GMD
Sherlock                  7.0     1.3     1.4    5      4 C_INF
She's Got a Thing...S     7.0     1.7     1.6    3     13 F_INF_GMD
Shogun                    7.0     1.2     0.6    2      4 C_INF
Shrapnel                  7.1     1.3     0.5    6     20 F_INF_GMD
Simple Theft              5.8     1.3     0.8    1     20 F_TAD_GMD
Sins against Mimesis      5.5     1.0     1.2    3     13 F_INF_GMD
Sir Ramic... Gorilla      6.0     1.2     1.2    2      6 F_AGT_GMD
Six Stories               6.3     1.0     1.2    4     19 F_TAD_GMD
Skyranch                  2.8     0.5     0.7    1     20 F_I_GMD
Small World               6.2     1.3     1.1    3     10 F_TAD_GMD
So Far                    8.0     1.1     1.4   13 12, 25 F_INF_GMD
Sorcerer                  7.2     0.6     1.6    7   2,15 C_INF
Sound of... Clapping      7.1     1.3     1.3    8      5 F_ADVSYS_GMD
South American Trek       0.9     0.2     0.5    1      5 F_IBM_GMD
Space Aliens...Cardig     1.5     0.4     0.3    6   3, 4 S60_AGT_GMD
Space under Window        7.1     0.9     0.4    6     12 F_INF_GMD
Spacestation              5.6     0.7     1.1    1        F_INF_GMD
Spellbreaker              8.5     1.2     1.8    8   2,15 C_INF
Spellcasting 101          7.4     1.1     1.5    4        C_I
Spellcasting 201          7.8     1.6     1.7    2        C_I
Spellcasting 301          6.0     1.2     1.2    2        C_I
Spider and Web            8.5     1.6     1.7   16      14F_INF_GMD
SpiritWrak                6.7     1.2     1.3    6     22 F_INF_GMD
Spodgeville...Wossnam     4.3     0.7     1.2    2        F_INF_GMD
Spur                      7.1     1.3     1.1    2      9 F_HUG_GMD
Spyder and Jeb            6.2     1.1     1.4    1        F_TAD_GMD
Starcross                 6.6     1.0     1.2    7      1 C_INF
Stargazer                 5.4     1.1     1.1    1        F_INF_GMD
Stationfall               7.7     1.6     1.5    7      5 C_INF
Statuette                 3.7     0.0     0.1    1        F_INF_GMD
Stiffy                    0.6     0.0     0.0    1        F_INF_GMD
Stiffy - MiSTing          4.4     1.0     0.4    6        F_INF_GMD
Stone Cell                6.0     1.1     1.0    3     19 F_TAD_GMD
Strange Odyssey           4.0     0.0     1.0    1
Strangers In The Nigh     3.2     0.7     0.6    2        F_TAD_GMD
Stupid Kittens            2.9     0.6     0.4    2        F_INF_GMD
Sunset Over Savannah      8.7     1.7     1.4    6     13 F_TAD_GMD
Suspect                   6.2     1.3     1.1    8      4 C_INF
Suspended                 7.5     1.5     1.4    7      8 C_INF
Sylenius Mysterium        4.7     1.2     1.1    1     13 F_INF_GMD
Symetry                   1.1     0.1     0.1    2        F_INF_GMD
Tapestry                  7.1     1.4     0.9    5 10, 14 F_INF_GMD
Tempest                   5.3     1.4     0.6    3     13 F_INF_GMD
Temple of the Orc Mag     4.5     0.1     0.8    2        F_TAD_GMD
Textfire Golf             6.9     1.3     0.0    1     25 F_INF_GMD
Theatre                   7.0     1.1     1.3   13      6 F_INF_GMD
Thorfinn's Realm          3.5     0.5     0.7    2        F_INF_GMD
Threading the Labyrin     1.9     0.0     0.0    1        F_TAD_GMD
Time: All Things...       3.9     1.2     0.9    2 11, 12 F_INF_GMD
TimeQuest                 8.0     1.2     1.6    4        C_I
TimeSquared               4.3     1.1     1.1    1        F_AGT_GMD
Toonesia                  5.8     1.1     1.1    6  7, 21 F_TAD_GMD
Tossed into Space         3.9     0.2     0.6    1      4 F_AGT_GMD
Town Dragon               3.9     0.8     0.3    2 14, 22 F_INF_GMD
Transfer                  7.6     1.0     1.6    2     23 F_INF_GMD
Trapped...Dilly           5.1     0.1     1.1    2     17 F_INF_GMD
Travels in Land of Er     6.1     1.2     1.5    2     14 F_INF_GMD
Trinity                   8.7     1.4     1.7   17    1,2 C_INF
Trip                      5.4     1.2     1.1    2        F_TAD_GMD
Tryst of Fate             7.1     1.4     1.3    1     11 F_INF_GMD
Tube Trouble              4.2     0.8     0.7    2      8 F_INF_GMD
Tyler's Great Cube Ga     5.8     0.0     1.7    1        S_TAD_GMD
Uncle Zebulon's Will      7.3     1.0     1.5   12      8 F_TAD_GMD
Underoos That Ate NY      4.5     0.6     0.9    3        F_TAD_INF_GMD
Undertow                  5.4     1.3     0.9    3      8 F_TAD_GMD
Undo                      2.9     0.5     0.7    4      7 F_TAD_GMD
Unholy Grail              6.0     1.2     1.2    1     13 F_I_GMD
Unnkulian One-Half        6.7     1.2     1.5    9      1 F_TAD_GMD
Unnkulian Unventure 1     6.9     1.2     1.5    8    1,2 F_TAD_GMD
Unnkulian Unventure 2     7.2     1.2     1.5    5      1 F_TAD_GMD
Unnkulian Zero            8.4     0.7     0.8    21,12,14 F_TAD_GMD
Varicella                 8.2     1.6     1.5    9     18 F_INF_GMD
Veritas                   6.6     1.3     1.4    4        S10_TAD_GMD
Vindaloo                  2.9     0.0     0.4    1        F_INF_GMD
VirtuaTech                6.1     0.0     1.2    1        F_TAD_GMD
VOID: Corporation         3.2     0.4     0.8    1        F_AGT_GMD
Water Bird                5.0     1.1     0.8    1        F_TAD_GMD
Waystation                5.5     0.7     1.0    4      9 F_TAD_GMD
Wearing the Claw          6.5     1.2     1.2    7 10, 18 F_INF_GMD
Wedding                   7.4     1.6     1.3    3     12 F_INF_GMD
What-IF?                  1.6     0.0     0.0    2        F_INF_GMD
Where Evil Dwells         5.1     0.8     1.1    1        F_INF_GMD
Winchester's Nightmar     6.9     1.5     0.5    1     22 F_INF_GMD
Winter Wonderland         7.6     1.3     1.2    7     19 F_INF_GMD
Wishbringer               7.6     1.3     1.3   16    5,6 C_INF
Withdrawal Symptoms       4.4     0.5     0.7    1        F_INF_GMD
Witness                   6.7     1.5     1.2   10  1,3,9 C_INF
Wizard of Akyrz           3.2     0.3     0.8    1
Wonderland                6.4     1.4     1.1    3        C_MAG
World                     6.5     0.6     1.3    2      4 F_I_ETC_GMD
Worlds Apart              7.8     1.7     1.4    9     21 F_TAD_GMD
YAGWAD                    6.7     1.1     1.3    2     23 F_INF_GMD
Your Choice               5.5     0.0     1.1    1        F_TAD_GMD
Zanfar                    2.6     0.2     0.4    1      8 F_AGT_GMD
Zero Sum Game             7.2     1.5     1.5    3     13 F_INF_GMD
Zombie!                   5.2     1.2     1.1    2     13 F_TAD_GMD
Zork 0                    6.3     1.0     1.5   10      14C_INF
Zork 1                    6.1     0.8     1.4   24  1, 12 C_INF
Zork 2                    6.4     1.0     1.5   13  1, 12 C_INF
Zork 3                    6.5     0.9     1.4    8  1, 12 C_INF
Zork Undisc. Undergr.     5.9     0.9     1.1    3      14F_INF_GMD
Zork: A Troll's Eye V     4.4     0.6     0.1    3     14 F_INF_GMD
Zuni Doll                 4.0     0.6     0.9    2     14 F_INF_GMD

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The Top Ten:

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.

We received 72 submissions to the scoreboard this time around, for
which I thank the contributors very much. Interestingly, they didn't
have a significant impact on the top ten, though several entries did
receive more votes. In fact, the only change in the top ten from last
issue is that Spider and Web has moved up two slots, displacing
Spellbreaker and Babel by one.

1.  Gateway 2: Homeworld  9.0   6 votes
2.  Anchorhead            8.8   25 votes
3.  Sunset over Savannah  8.7   6 votes
4.  Trinity               8.7   17 votes
5.  Gateway               8.6   7 votes
6.  Losing Your Grip      8.5   6 votes
7.  Spider and Web        8.5   16 votes
8.  Spellbreaker          8.5   8 votes
9.  Babel                 8.4   10 votes
10. Mind Forever Voyaging 8.3   13 votes

As always, please remember that the scoreboard is only as good as the
contributions it receives. To make your mark on this vast morass of
statistics, rate some games on our website
(http://www.sparkynet.com/spag). You can also, if you like, send ratings
directly to me at obrian SP@G colorado.edu. Instructions for how the rating
system works are in the SPAG FAQ, available from GMD and our website.
Please read the FAQ before submitting scores, so that you understand how
the scoring system works. After that, submit away!



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 ___. .___    _    ___.     ___. 
/  _| |   \  / \  / ._|    /  _| 
\  \  | o_/ |   | | |_.    \  \  
.\  \ | |   | o | | | |    .\  \ 
|___/ |_|   |_|_| \___|    |___/ PECIFICS

SPAG Specifics is a small section of SPAG dedicated to providing in-
depth critical analysis of IF games, spoilers most emphatically
included.





WARNING! SPOILERS BELOW FOR THE FOLLOWING GAME:

Symetry




PROCEED NO FURTHER UNLESS YOU HAVE PLAYED THIS GAME!





THIS IS NOT A TEST! GENUINE SPOILERS TO FOLLOW!





LAST CHANCE TO AVOID SPOILAGE!




















From: Neil Yorke-Smith <neilys SP@G yahoo.com>

NAME:   Symetry
AUTHOR: Rybread Celsius
EMAIL:  rybread SP@G anok4u2.org
DATE:   September 1997
PARSER: Inform standard
SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
URL: /if-archive/games/competition97/inform/reflect/reflect.z5
VERSION: Release 1

SYMETRY: RYBREAD REFLECTED

Some hate his work, others express admiration. But to the intersection
of Rybread Celsius and interactive fiction, no-one can be indifferent.
"Symetry", or "A Matter of Self Trust", was Celsius' 1997 competition
entry. It's a short game, brimming with Celsius' trademark spelling and
grammatical innovations, and I found it impossibly obscure without the
walkthrough. Before proceeding, please try Symetry for yourself.

Rybread Celsius made his debut with two entries to the 1996 competition,
Rippled Flesh and Punkirita Quest 1: Liquid (both reviewed in SPAG #10).
He went on to become one of the most consistent IF authors, entering
every competition until 2000, and consistently taking a bottom five
placing. Celsius' best result was in 1998 with the bizarre Acid Whiplash
(reviewed in SPAG #17), co-authored with Cody Sandifer.

Horror, with Lovecraftian influences, is Celsius' trademark genre.
Symetry is set one evening in 1813, as you, the male player-character,
prepare to settle down in your canopy bed for the night. Earlier that
day you purchased a splendid mirror to add to your New England bedroom.
Turning out the light, you sleep -- to be woken standing in the middle
of the room, a strange light emanating from the mirror.

The mirror, unknown to you, is a portal. You are drawn to it. You are
almost unable to move as your menacing reflection takes control. Let the
dread consume you, and:

   The blue light slowly reenters the mirror, bringing with it untold
   parts of your essence. ... You go to make it out of the room, but
   soon realize this is not your room. It's all backwords [sic]. You
   stare through the mirror, at yourself, with human eyes. Your image
   waves back at you, and exits the room.

The single puzzle -- how to escape this fate -- is both the
distinguishing feature and greatest flaw of the game. The letter opener
can be used as a knife. To stab yourself. Your reflection copies you, of
course, but left-right symmetry is reversed in a mirror.

The flaw is in the execution of this idea. First, why do you need to
open your night-gown: will the knife not penetrate it? Second, the
letter-opener, if not picked up before you sleep, disappears from the
room. Third, you cannot refer to your chest or night-gown until the
moment of need. And fourth, Celsius is almost struggling against the
Inform parser rather than working with it: for instance, 'stab me'
should be recognised, as should 'stab chest on right side'. 

Indeed, Robb Sherwin [1] has asked whether the turning point can be
readily described in text-based IF:

   The inherent weakness of this game is that a great idea (since your
   actions are reflected, a right-side piercing stabs the entity in the
   mirror's heart) is almost impossible to successfully implement. A
   graphical adventure may be able to do it, but it would require a
   heavy text parser for Celsius to otherwise set the mood. It's almost
   as if Celsius is straining against the limits of the medium to get to
   where he needs it to be.

Once you stab yourself, the game ends with a static block of text. In
some ways this is necessary for Celsius to drive the story to its
pyrrhic conclusion, but the change to non-interactivity jolts, following
as it does the desperate "one night fight for your idendity [sic]", as
Celsius puts it.

In his in-game notes, Celsius writes that he had planned for the events
to unfold over several nights, as the entity progressively grew in
strength and took yours. Due to lack of time, however, this was
curtailed into the one evening, but the story loses nothing in so doing.

Symetry does give the impression of a rapid creation that cries out for
beta testing. There are not enough synonyms. Most of the objects in the
bedroom are irrelevant (the drawer, most notably). The lamp is
confusingly described. Despite the introductory text, 'letter' refers to
the knife and only 'note' to the letter. And, glaringly, 'get in bed' or
'enter bed' fail dramatically. These things and more have been noted by
every reviewer [2, 3], but should not be allowed to dominate the
inventive point of the game.

Celsius has been noted for his unorthodox use of English. Take, for
instance, one of the more conservatively-spelled paragraphs from the
opening scene:

   Bedroom        
   Soft cedar wood cushions your feet, as you stand in your bedroom.
   Splendid is the only word that escapes your gate of teath. Your
   studies tell you that perfection is a fool's impossibility, but this
   room is truly your paradise, refuge and sanctuary.

At times, the writing shows intensity and promise, and the spelling can
be overlooked:

   Hypnotically, you stare at your own reflection. ... Panic drips into
   your mind as you realize that you are staring into very foreign eyes.

But at other times, it is too jarring, as in the famous line:

   Human flesh bag! My blood pumper is wronged! Your fault, this is!

Or, especially in the opening, splendidly ostentatious without reason:

   A small persian rug sits as an isolated in the center of the room,
   taking away from its rather Spartanesque atmosphere that you love
   nevertheless.

As Celsius notes, "This game really only has one puzzle. The best, not
the biggest, hint I can give is simply the title.". Symmetry, of course,
hints to the saving act, which, as the subtitle points to, is a matter
of great self-trust. Celsius also hints to the solution by mentioning
the night-gown at the crucial moment. Despite these clues, however, the
saving act is too unintuitive, and I think the walkthrough is a must.

This leads to the question of the title: did Celsius misspell it
deliberately? Plotkin (who gave Symetry 5 out of 10) thinks not [4], and
Granade agrees [5]. It does seems it was accidental, as Celsius himself
[6] later wrote:

   They did with Symetry [sic (can I sic myself, should I?)] was called
   reflect.z5. Then again, I wrote it...

At the same time, Cadre comments "It just hit me... The spelling is
deliberate: it's an anagram for 'mystery'." [7]. This is probably a
fortuitous coincidence. But then again, a misspelling is not noticeably
unexpected from Celsius [8], and so:

   Precisely because it's misspelled, "Symetry" becomes a brilliantly
   subtle clue. It connotes *imperfect* symmetry -- as in the mirror,
   which reverses outer actions right/left, but fails to correspondingly
   reverse the internal organs.

There is an Easter egg, a hidden game, inside Symetry. In some works of
IF, 'xyzzy' is the magic work that opens the egg, but Celsius is not so
straight-forward. After your victory, the creature screams strange words
as it dies, and the next day, "...suddenly a thosand [sic] voices fill
your head with 'Cthulhu fhtagn.'". Indeed, 'fhtagn' teleports you to the
alternate game ('cthulhu' would be too obvious, of course):

   Dream Kedash        
   The mists block any hope of finding an exit. What utterance brought
   you to this dismal place?

   The ultimate hellspawn, a tamagotchi, is here!

   You can also see a sledge hammer here.

Ironically, this game-within-a-game reflects Celsius' flaws. It is buggy
(try 'kiss tamagotchi' then 'examine it'), poorly written and arbitrary
(on solving the 'puzzle', you find that "your [sic] stuck here
forever"). Yet at the same time, Celsius shows a flash of inspiration in
the descriptions of the two objects. One wonders, if a child's toy is
"the ultimate hellspawn", how the entity in the mirror should be
described.

Symetry is clearly Lovecraftian horror, to which Celsius' talents seem
better suited than others genres: the New England feel to your bedroom,
the sense of foreboding, the horror hinted and left to imagination.
Celsius even throws in a quote from "The Call of Cthulhu", quite
unnecessarily, in the ending sequence.

Does Celsius have someone specific in mind when he describes the rug as:
"A gift from Gunther, a German family friend, it's actually quite
hidious [sic]."? Ironically, perhaps, for another writer of Lovecraftian
IF is Gunther Schmidl. While Celsius does manage to create a certain
atmosphere of not-quite-described dread, Schmidl is much more effective
in his writing. 

There is a menu with the walkthrough and various insights into Celsius'
mind. While off-beat ("much rampant irrelevance" [9]), the menu entries
are not entirely random. For example, how to obtain the last point is
described. Since the score is out of one and no points are earned for
defeating the entity in the mirror, the scoring could be described as
childish. Such infantile elements are again ironic, given the subject
matter of Symetry -- except that with Celsius there is the nagging doubt
that it might all be an elaborate parody [10].

In view of the unconventional nature of Celsius' style, Symetry came in
32 out of 34 entries in the 1997 competition. This might be a little
harsh. At the top, certainly, the third annual competition was very
strong, but at the bottom were some breathtakingly dire games. And, to
my mind at least, Symetry has a little more to commend it than such
company.

Paul O'Brian, when reviewing Celsius' 1998 effort, Acid Whiplash, in
SPAG #17, remarks that Celsius "appears to have an enthusiastic cult
following who look at his works and see the stamp of genius, paralleled
by another group who look at those selfsame works and see only barely
coherent English and buggy code." As with contentious artists of most
genres, this must be true.

On the one hand:

   The author once again proves that it really is possible to write a
   BASIC program in Inform.
                                     -- R. Serena Wakefield [11]

   Rybread's games are products of Rybread's mind, and if you're
   interested in Rybread's mind, by all means check them out. Me, I
   prefer coherent, comprehensible IF, and this doesn't qualify. 
                                     -- Duncan Stevens [12]

   There are those who look at his work and see tortured genius. Me? I
   see the sort of games that remind me of a bad fever dream.        
                                     -- Stephen Granade [9]

   Rybread Celsius, who announced to the newsgroups that his games would
   suck, [has] proved himself extravagantly correct.        
                                     -- Paul O'Brian [3]

And on the other:

   I end up enjoying a Rybread romp far more than I think I should. Not,
   though, from laughing at the material, or the spelling and grammar
   mistakes. I end up enjoying it because it all makes some sort of
   twisted sense.
                                     -- Brad O'Donnell [13]

   Rybread Celsius is chock-full of ideas to express and things to say.
   Hopefully, he will continue to refine the delivery of his messages
   and programming skill. He will one day get it completely correct and
   release an absolute masterpiece ... He's already proven that he has
   the imagination and creativity to make something interesting,
   symbolic and disturbing. Programming technique and proper spelling
   can be taught. You can't, however, ever instruct someone on having
   something to say.
                                     -- Robb Sherwin [1]

   Rybread Celsius is an insane, inhuman genius.        
                                     -- Adam J. Thornton [14]

   In each game I genuinely had no idea what was happening next; I'd
   play one of Rybread's games over almost any fantasy one anytime.        
                                     -- Jonathan Fry [15]

The consensus view might be that Celsius displays some promise, marred
by disappointing execution. Perhaps one day his masterpiece will come.
Referring to the 'caskly' spell to perfect something, Matthew Russotto
[16] dryly comments:

   > CASKLY CELCIUS GAME        
   The game starts to change and mutate to a new form. Then, with a
   flash of light and a crack of thunder, it returns to its original
   form. Apparently some things are beyond the power of the CASKLY
   spell.

All would agree that the name Rybread Celsius has entered into IF
folklore. His output was prolific enough, and contained just enough
'genius', for him not to be written off. His fame or notoriety (take
your pick) was sealed on the newsgroup rec.games.int-fiction by his own
comments and those of others about him:

   It takes guts to do *anything* wearing a silver jumpsuit. My point: I
   bet Rybread wears *two* silver jumpsuits while he writes IF.        
                                     -- Brad O'Donnell [13]

Hence the term "a Rybread game" has entered the subconscious of the
interactive fiction community, as seen in the predictions for the annual
competition [17] (note the Symetry reference), and in jokes on the
newsgroups [18].

Celsius did not enter the 2000 competition. However, his single-handed
efforts in years past spawned a number of games that might be described
as Rybread-esque. At least one of them, Planet Of The Infinite Minds
(reviewed in SPAG #23), achieved a commendable result. Another,
Comp00ter Game, deservedly did not -- and the Rybread legacy continues.

Case study of classic Celsius notwithstanding, it is hard to recommend
Symetry. The setting is grotesquely derivative, the implementation is
poor and bug-laden, the writing is malformed, and the admittedly clever
turning point is unfathomable. Yet the idea is sublime. Take away the
Rybread-ness and Symetry could have scored highly, but who except
Celsius could have thought of it at all?

As Jake Wildstrom [19] put it:

   It's classic Rybread Celsius. Rybread's very good at what he does.
   Exactly _what_ that might be isn't entirely clear.


REFERENCES

[1] Robb Sherwin, "Symetry / Rybread Celsius (1997)",
http://members.dencity.com/petro/reflect.html, 1998

[2] Joe Mason, "Re: Yet more Comp97 reviews", rec.games.int-fiction,
1998/01/06

[3] Paul O'Brian, "COMP 97: My reviews, part 6", rec.games.int-fiction,
1998/01/01

[4] Andrew Plotkin, "COMP97: Zarf's comments", rec.games.int-fiction,
1998/01/01

[5] Stephen Granade, "Unique Games of the Millennium", About.com:
Interactive Fiction, 2000

[6] Rybread Celsius, "Re: Good IF archival: Lessons from the xxx
physics/math archives", rec.games.int-fiction, 1998/10/15

[7] Adam Cadre, "'Symetry' revelation", rec.games.int-fiction,
1998/03/14 

[8] 'Ted M', posting at http://members.dencity.com/petro/reflect.html,
2000/10/02

[9] Carl Muckenhoupt, "Baf's Guide to the Interactive Fiction Archive",
http://baf.wurb.com/if/, 2000/06/30

[10] Heiko Nock, "Re: Comp97: Incompetent Blather (1/0)",
rec.games.int-fiction, 1998/01/22

[11] R. Serena Wakefield, "Baf's Guide to the Interactive Fiction
Archive", http://baf.wurb.com/if/, 2000/07/29

[12] Duncan Stevens, "Symetry",
http://users.starpower.net/dnrb/symetry.html, 1997

[13] Brad O`Donnell, "Competition 97 Opinions, Broad Generalizations,
Reviews", rec.games.int-fiction, 1998/01/06

[14] Adam J. Thornton, "Re: Comment on L.U.D.I.T.E",
rec.games.int-fiction, 1999/11/19 

[15] Jonathan Fry, "Re: Younger authors", rec.games.int-fiction,
1998/01/11

[16] Matthew Russotto, "Re: perfect game", rec.arts.int-fiction,
2001/06/01

[17] J. D. Berry, "Re: IFComp: Your Predictions? + Repost of Luc
French's", rec.games.int-fiction, 2001/06/06

[18] 'LucFrench', "Two in-jokes that will last for a while",
rec.games.int-fiction, 1998/04/15

[19] Jake Wildstrom, "Re: Comment on L.U.D.I.T.E",
rec.games.int-fiction, 1999/11/17

SUBMISSION POLICY ---------------------------------------------------------

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