| /~~\ /~~~\ /\ /~~~\ | |
| \ \/ | |> | //\\ | | |
| /\ \ | _/ ||__|| | ~~\ | |
| The \__/ociety for the |_|reservation of || ||dventure \___/ames | |
| _ | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | |----\ | |
| |------/ives! | |
| ISSUE # 5 | |
| Edited by G. Kevin Wilson (whizzard SP@G uclink.berkeley.edu) | |
| April 19, 1995 | |
| All email addresses are spamblocked -- replace the name of our magazine | |
| with the traditional 'at' sign. | |
| EDITORIAL-------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| As you can see by the rather unusual magazine header, this issue SPAG | |
| focuses on the much awaited, and much speculated upon, Adventions game, _The | |
| Legend Lives!_. Within these electronic pages lurks an interview with Dave | |
| Baggett, a review of "Legend" by Molley the Mage, and information on "Legend" | |
| in the NEW GAMES section, which incidentally, is freeware. Ah, if only my | |
| low morals could aspire to such heights. But, I'm just a capitalist pig-dog | |
| businessman. Oh well. :) | |
| Of course, "Legend" isn't the only thing in this issue, the largest | |
| issue of SPAG yet. Mind you, it's almost entirely due to Graeme Cree's | |
| efforts (He's the author of Tossed into Space). Graeme sent me so many | |
| reviews that, at the current quota of 2 reviews a year, he's covered until, | |
| I believe, the year 2175, but I could be wrong. :) | |
| As expected, I had a sad and meager response to my "Breathers" | |
| contest. Maybe sometime I'll try it again, with a prize. :) Still, the ones | |
| I did receive, I enjoyed heartily, and printed them all so you could enjoy | |
| them too. | |
| SPAG has about 30 new subscribers this month. Welcome folks! Glad | |
| to have you aboard. | |
| "Whizzard's Guide to Text Adventures" has been delayed so that I | |
| might get some work done on Avalon, which I know some of you will be thrilled | |
| to hear. The rest of you, keep the yawning to a minimum, okay? Avalon is | |
| fast approaching its second anniversary, which is, well, pretty depressing | |
| any way you look at it. So I'll try to hurry it up. For those keeping | |
| score, I began Avalon in Oct. '93 with the tentative title Avalon: The Return | |
| of a British Monarch. The title was pretty bad, I admit. Not at all spiffy | |
| like the current title. One Britisher even pointed out to the capitalist | |
| pig-dog that England already has a monarch, thank-you-very-much. Whoops. | |
| I then turned to the Vietnam Vets mailing list for information. Wow, | |
| was that a mistake. They were so insulted by the fact that my game used the | |
| Vietnam War that they set phasers to kill and flamed the heck out of me. I | |
| quickly unsubscribed from there, let me tell you. I believe the term | |
| "mewling puke" was used. Yoinks! I even received several threats of | |
| lawsuits if my game used any of their stories/anecdotes or whatnot. Of | |
| course, they did fight in a war, not a game, so it's very understandable to | |
| me now. As they say, hindsight is 20/20. After that, I kept my use of the | |
| Vietnam War to a minimum, and restricted my research to books, magazines, and | |
| encyclopedias. Of course, it still bewilders me why it's okay for movies and | |
| books to mention serious subjects, but not for a text adventure to do the | |
| exact same thing. Probably due to the current commercial games on the | |
| market being as trite as they are. Oh well. Experience is the best teacher, | |
| except at Berkeley, where the best teachers all have PhD's. | |
| Anyways, that's enough reminiscing for one issue (Hey, wake up, it's | |
| over, okay?). So, without further ado, I give you SPAG. (Well, technically, | |
| the reviewers give you SPAG.) | |
| G. Kevin Wilson | |
| "Whizzard" | |
| INTERVIEW WITH DAVE BAGGETT-------------------------------------------------- | |
| [Here's that interview I promised you. You may want to skip down to | |
| Molley the Mage's review and read that first.] | |
| From: David Baggett <dmb SP@G ndi.mca.com> | |
| >So Dave, why did you decide to write this great new game of yours? | |
| It started life as Unnkulian Unventure V. I had just finished UU2, and we | |
| had III and IV in the works --- these were to be written by some new | |
| authors (who have subsequently gotten busy with other things). | |
| The basic idea was to look at life in the Valley in the future --- to see | |
| what happened to all the people and places we'd introduced in UU1 and UU2. | |
| In the end, that ended up being a fairly minor part of the work. | |
| If you play all the Unnkulian games all the way through, however, you'll | |
| recognize a great deal of continuity. We work hard to put in little | |
| details that veteran Unnkulian players will notice and chuckle at. Because | |
| of this, we encourage people to play through the games again once they've | |
| run through the whole series. Little things you didn't understand the | |
| first time through will make sense the second time. | |
| There's a section of Legend that is there just for the sake of continuity: | |
| in Unnkulia Zero you end up in the future at one point, and it turns out | |
| that this future is actually Legend's present. So you (in Legend) get to | |
| see "you" (in Unnkulia Zero). | |
| Similarly, some characters appear in many different places and times. (The | |
| bartender in Legend is a good example --- try spraying him with the Snayk | |
| spray you get out of the prototypes machine.) There's a lot more going on | |
| in the Unnkulian universe than first meets the eye. There's a specific and | |
| peculiar philosophy behind all the wackiness --- that something (time | |
| travel, reincarnation, or something else supernatural) binds these | |
| characters together across time and space. For example, Gavin Kelly ("you" | |
| in Legend) is an "echo" of another character you know well. The game tells | |
| you who, but in a very roundabout way --- you have to think a bit and try | |
| some silly things to figure it out. | |
| One thing I find especially attractive about interactive fiction is that | |
| you can go through the whole work and still not read 50% of the text. This | |
| means that authors can put in lots of (for lack of a better word) subtext | |
| --- secret messages, hidden objects --- little things that bind the game | |
| world together and reward extensive study of the game. | |
| I like to think of this as the weave of a fine Persian rug. You can look | |
| at the rug from afar and marvel at the beautiful pattern, and this is a | |
| perfectly good way to appreciate the piece. But you can also flip it over | |
| and put your face right up against the weave, and see how finely it's | |
| crafted --- how many threads there are per inch and so forth. One side | |
| tells you a lot about the other. | |
| >Why did you decide to call it The Legend Lives! of all things? | |
| There's nothing deep about the title. It just reflects the fact that you | |
| (as Gavin Kelly) are familar with stories about these supposedly mythical | |
| "Unnkulians", and then find out that they're actually around and up to no | |
| good. (Of course, it's turns out that it's not that simple in the end.) | |
| Keep in mind that you (the player) know that that the Unnkulians were | |
| indeed "real" in Gavin's world, since you've played UU1 and UU2. But in | |
| Gavin Kelly's world, UU1 and UU2 are fictional works, so he doesn't know | |
| that the Unnkulians are anything but the stuff of legend. | |
| This is part of a general propensity I had in Legend for confusing the | |
| reader in order to get him to suspsend his disbelief. The more you think | |
| about what's real and what's not, the more confused you get. So eventually | |
| you just give up and go along for the ride. :) | |
| Reality vs. unreality ties in nicely, because there's a bit of the same | |
| confusion with software in general. A piece of software *does* things -- | |
| it acts as an agent for the programmer. But it doesn't really exist in the | |
| physical world; or at least, what makes it useful --- the instructions that | |
| determine what it does --- don't. They're just numbers that can be stored | |
| and transmitted in uncountably many ways. | |
| There can be thousands of copies; there is infinite potential there. And | |
| in the abstract it takes no space. If you think about it, it really is | |
| quite strange. The UU3 bit in Legend underscores this. | |
| I remember seeing a report on TV about modern art, and one of the most | |
| ridiculed works was a a pile of candy. The work's owner explained that | |
| anyone is free to take candy from the sculpture, or add candy to it. The | |
| narrator dismissed the work as utterly absurd --- he wondered aloud: if | |
| people are adding to and taking away from the pile of the candy, what was | |
| it, exactly, that the artist created? | |
| The answer is that the artist created the *rule* --- the software. The | |
| physical sculpture is not important; it's the rule ("anyone can add candy | |
| to and take candy away from the sculpture") that's important. If I'm in a | |
| room with you, and point to the bare floor, then I'm pointing at an | |
| instance of this artist's sculpture. How peculiar! | |
| The narrator completely missed the point of the work. The fact that such a | |
| work is so easy to produce doesn't change the fact that it's a very | |
| interesting piece. (The first time someone does it, at least. The problem | |
| with works of art that are trivial to produce is that so many people rip | |
| them off that they quickly lose their impact.) | |
| (One does wonder how much the owner paid for the work, however! And again, | |
| we often have the same feelings about software --- we feel a bit taken | |
| paying for something that can be copied effortlessly. We want to own the | |
| *only* copy of a work of art. But the days of owning originals are over!) | |
| [I dunno, Dave. It seems pretty deep to me. -GKW] | |
| >Were you trying to get a specific message across to the player when you | |
| >wrote "Legend"? | |
| There are many issues that I hope the work prompts the reader to think | |
| about. I think that some of these require some study to "get", and this is | |
| perhaps indicative of weakness in the work. | |
| Fundamentally, Legend invites you to think about what life really is. What | |
| aspects of life do we consider the exclusive domain of biological entities, | |
| and why? What would a machine have to do to change our idea of what life | |
| is? | |
| Intelligence is of course one area where machines lag behind people and | |
| animals right now. But suppose this weren't the case --- I think that we'd | |
| still be reluctant to call intelligent machines "living" or "conscious". | |
| Why? Because we have this notion of soul --- that there is something | |
| external to our physical world that somehow guides us and really determines | |
| who we are. Only religion talks about the soul, and that's why I thought it | |
| imperative for Legend to have a strong religious component. Understanding | |
| the role religion plays in Legend is crucial to understanding the work as a | |
| whole. | |
| Beyond the central theme, Legend also talks about good and evil (this is | |
| mainly to fool you into thinking the game is a text adventure like all | |
| others, so you'll dive right into it); fascism and how it creeps up on you | |
| when beaurocracies get too old and powerful, and how technology contributes | |
| to this; the nature of time; and how technology both brings people together | |
| and simultaneously eats away at their individuality --- particluarly, how | |
| it helps people to work together much more efficiently, but likewise makes | |
| each person's individual contribution less significant. | |
| >Hunh. Well, I've heard a lot about the new techniques you say you used | |
| >in "Legend". Exactly what sort of unusual techniques did you use? | |
| For one, I tried to increase the text density significantly. You can | |
| examine the world to greater depth, and the text you get is lengthier. | |
| This is not really a new technique; it's just a style. | |
| However, I do think Legend treats characters in a new way. I call this the | |
| "actor/character" distinction. "Actors" are those game entities that the | |
| player can interact with --- the troll on the bridge in Adventure, for | |
| example. "Characters", on the other hand, are not interactive --- they | |
| exist only in the running text. Of course, some entities can have both | |
| character and actor components (though as we see in Legend, not entirely | |
| successfully). | |
| I came up with this mainly out of frustration. It's almost impossible to | |
| make good actors, because AI is not up to the task, and won't be for quite | |
| some time. As a result, I feel that making convincing actors is a lost | |
| cause. | |
| Static fiction tells us a great deal about how to make strong *characters*, | |
| however. If you read _Catcher in the Rye_ alone, you can see many of the | |
| basic devices authors use to fashion believable characters. I wanted to | |
| put some of these to use in IF. Hence the actor/character distinction. | |
| [Well, of course I disagree. Anything possible in static fiction is | |
| possible in interactive fiction, only more so. -GKW] | |
| >So, why use WorldClass for "Legend"? It's my understanding that you | |
| >wrote it originally for adv.t. | |
| Yes, Legend was an ADV.T game for more than half its deveplopment. I wrote | |
| WorldClass for another project (GC, the 1994 MIT AI Lab Olympics game) but | |
| liked using it a lot more than ADV.T. Half the reason WorldClass exists is | |
| that I was getting tired of little annoying problems with ADV.T. Going | |
| back to ADV.T now would be very frustrating. | |
| To be honest, though, Legend doesn't use much of WorldClass's power. | |
| >Do you have any plans for your next game? Is it going to be freeware or | |
| >commercial, like the "Horror of Rylvania"? | |
| I'm working on a couple of things, neither of which is nearly as large or | |
| commercially viable as Legend. | |
| I probably won't make any more IF works commercial, but I'm not going to | |
| promise that! In addition to all of Legend's DOS problems and its | |
| incredible lateness, our experiences with Rylvania led me to go the | |
| freeware/shareware route to ensure that the game would get wide | |
| distribution. I still feel that Rylvania is an extremely important and | |
| innovative IF game --- one that has been unjustly ignored. It's | |
| disappointing that although there are so many IF enthusiasts out there, so | |
| few are willing to pay a fair price for such a strong work. | |
| >Thanks alot for answering my questions. Anything you'd like to add? | |
| If you play these games for the puzzles alone --- if you just tear through | |
| a work in a couple days --- you will never see what makes Rylvania (or | |
| Legend, for that matter) different from its predecessors. Whether or not | |
| these works are entirely successful is a separate issue (though I think | |
| Rylvania is, and very much so). In my opinion, they are taking IF in new | |
| directions. | |
| Dave | |
| [Bravo, and thanks for the insights, Dave. -GKW] | |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR-------------------------------------------------------- | |
| From: "Graeme Cree" <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> | |
| I would like to comment on Stefan Jokisch's review of my game, | |
| Tossed into Space" in SPAGS #4. | |
| First, the original version of the game that won an honourable | |
| mention in the 7th AGT Game Writing contest was not in fact a Lost in | |
| Space parody at all, but a direct and explicit Lost in Space story. | |
| "Tossed", the special parody version with the names changed to protect | |
| the guilty was specially created to be able to upload to the Compuserve | |
| Gamer's Forum without any legal difficulties. As a result, the | |
| Designer's Notes that explained the purpose of the game had to be | |
| omitted, since they contained numerous references to Lost in Space. | |
| Mr. Jokisch comments that the game is extremely easy and was | |
| probably intended for beginners. Not quite. It is intended not for | |
| beginning gamers, but for non-gamers. Many times I have tried to | |
| introduce my non-gaming friends to text games and have been rebuffed | |
| with responses like "they take forever to play", "they're too hard", | |
| and the occasional "I hate using graph paper". They invariably end up | |
| playing the latest version of Space Zap or Pong 2000. | |
| Whenever I have a group of friends over, some of us will watch a | |
| video, others will play a boardgame, and invariably one person will see | |
| the computer and ask if I have anything for them to play. I wanted a | |
| fast and easy text game for other people to be able to play on MY | |
| computer when they came over. I especially wanted one that they would | |
| be able to finish before they went home, and didn't want difficulty or | |
| length to cause them to abandon it in the middle and become soured on | |
| text games that way. | |
| Marc Blank's "Catch A Butterfly" Tutorial was TOO short and easy. | |
| I tried using Border Zone - Chapter 1, but the puzzles were a little | |
| too hard, and the generic background didn't capture people's | |
| imagination. So I decided to write my own. | |
| A familiar subject matter would attract interest, and a lot of my | |
| friends are science-fiction fans. Lost in Space had a very small space | |
| ship, meaning that the players could visualize the whole map in their | |
| mind without using graph paper, and would be aided by the fact that | |
| they already had some idea of what the playing area looked like. | |
| Another factor was that I have one friend who is actually a Lost in | |
| Space fan, and another who is named Dr. Smith. In addition, Lost in | |
| Space revolved around a quest for Earth that was never resolved. Why | |
| not write a conclusion to the story? But a story where the Robinsons | |
| heroically nursed their ship back to Earth seemed a bit anti-climactic. | |
| Then I remembered the old axiom that good writing made the reader | |
| care about the characters. "Surely," I thought, "Lost in Space's | |
| writing was so bad that nobody would care if I let Dr. Smith steal the | |
| ship and go back to Earth by himself." And the idea was born. | |
| To make it more appealing to the first time player I weighted it | |
| heavily towards story and against puzzles. Puzzles are there, but are | |
| very easy so that the player who tried a text game once, but got stuck | |
| after 5 minutes and never came back will be able to progress through | |
| the game without getting frustrated. One thing I didn't like in | |
| shareware games I had seen was that the authors often wrote responses | |
| only for correct actions. If you did something wrong, you often got | |
| just a generic "you can't do that message". As a result, I tried to | |
| fill the game with specially written responses for all sorts of | |
| incorrect or useless actions, so that the player would not only have | |
| fun while he was winning, but also while he was just exploring around | |
| trying to figure out what to do. | |
| The original version of the game is a bit better than the parody. | |
| Lost in Space is itself a sort of unintentional parody of good science | |
| fiction, so a parody isn't quite as funny as doing it as a straight | |
| Lost in Space story. Also, the original version has a few cute little | |
| extras, such as Pianoman versions of both Lost in Space theme songs as | |
| opening and closing credits, and a .gif of the game map that the batch | |
| file offers to show the player at the end. However, it's not possible | |
| to distribute the original version due to the copyright. | |
| I'm rather pleased with the final result, and think that the game | |
| does well what it was intended to do. For better or worse, the final | |
| result is almost exactly what I had visualized. | |
| [And now, the moment you've all been waiting for (suurrree.): The | |
| winners of my "Breathers" Contest from SPAG #4. They will each be mailed a | |
| free copy of SPAG #5 to celebrate their success. :) ] | |
| From: "Christopher Angelini" <cangelin SP@G uoguelph.ca> | |
| You stand in darkness. Through your socks, you feel the rounded | |
| edges of floor tiling, cool and hard. Your dressing gown brushes against | |
| a counter as you walk through the room, stirring the still air, and | |
| forcing a slight whiff of chlorine into your nose. You feel your leg | |
| almost ache in anticipation of banging against that counter, but you have | |
| managed to avoid it for once. Slowly, your hand glides across wallpaper, | |
| flowing over small air-bubbles and peeling seams, finally locating the cold | |
| metal of the light switch, which you throw. Your eyes blink reflexively as | |
| the room explodes into view, revealing a sterile, white washroom, and a grey | |
| door through which lies your room. | |
| From: "Magnus Olsson" <mol SP@G df.lth.se> | |
| Drums. At first, just a noise that shoots fingers of pain through | |
| your aching head; then, as unconsciousness releases its grip and you slowly | |
| become aware of the smell of smoke, the taste of blood in your mouth, | |
| the dusty ground pressing against your face, you start perceiving the | |
| urgent, almost threatening rhythm. Carefully opening your eyes, | |
| you see only the dark wall of the jungle; then dancing, dark shapes | |
| sillhouetted against it. As you slowly turn over, the events of your | |
| capture leap back into your mind: the oppressive jungle atmosphere, | |
| the sudden parting of branches to reveal painted Ngongo warriors, the | |
| short struggle mercilessly ended by a war club. Not until your eyes | |
| focus on the big, black kettle by the fire do you remember the Ngongos' | |
| grim reputation - as cannibals. | |
| Flexing your aching muscles, gathering what strength you've left, you | |
| desperately seek an opportunity for escape. | |
| KEY TO SCORES AND REVIEWS---------------------------------------------------- | |
| Consider the following review header: | |
| NAME: Cutthroats PARSER: Infocom Standard | |
| AUTHOR: Infocom PLOT: Two Seperate Paths | |
| EMAIL: ??? ATMOSPHERE: Well Done | |
| AVAILABILITY: LTOI 2 WRITING: Good | |
| PUZZLES: Good SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports | |
| CHARACTERS: Not Bad DIFFICULTY: Medium | |
| First, you'll notice that the score has been removed, and replaced | |
| by one or two word ratings. These are pretty arbitrary, and should allow | |
| more freedom to the reviewers. The EMAIL section is for the e-mail address | |
| of the game author, not the reviewer. AVAILABILITY will usually have either | |
| Commercial ($price), Shareware ($price), or Freeware. If the commercial | |
| price varies in stores, then it will just say Commercial. If it has been | |
| released in the LTOI collection, this line should say so. Lastly, if it is | |
| available on ftp.gmd.de, the line should add GMD. (Demo) if it's a demo | |
| version. The body of the review hasn't changed. | |
| When submitting reviews: Try to fill in as much of this info as you can. | |
| Also, scores are still desired along with the reviews, so send those along. | |
| The scores will be used in the ratings section. Authors may not rate or | |
| review their own games. | |
| SPAG accepts reviews of any length, letters to the editor, the occasional | |
| interesting article on text adventures (no reprints please), and even just | |
| ratings for your favorite game, if you don't have the time to do a full | |
| review. Please though, at least send me info for each game you have rated | |
| equivalent to the review header for Cutthroats, above. All accepted | |
| materials will be headed by the submitter's name and e-mail address, unless | |
| you request that they be withheld, in which case the header will read as | |
| "Anonymous." | |
| NEW GAMES-------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| As I'm sure you all know, this month heralds the release of | |
| Adventions' _The Legend Lives!_ which is available from ftp.gmd.de in the | |
| appropriate directory, which should be found within | |
| if-archive/games/adventions/. Be sure to use binary download format when | |
| getting it (type 'bi' before downloading), or you may experience trouble | |
| when you try unpacking it. | |
| As "Legend" is so big, and uses WorldClass, Dave Baggett's updated | |
| library for TADS, it can only run using the protected mode version of TADS | |
| on IBM compatibles. You need not worry about this, as Legend is packaged in | |
| the .exe format. However, users have often complained of difficulty when | |
| running the game. If you experience this problem, try running Legend from | |
| within a DOS shell running under Windows 3.1. This may help the problem. If | |
| Windows 3.1 refuses to install on your computer, as it does on mine, then get | |
| your roommate to let you play it on his/her Macintosh, as I am doing. There | |
| have been no reports of difficulties using a Macintosh computer. Oh, by the | |
| way, you'll need at least a 286 to run it. Oh well. | |
| But before you get discouraged by all this, let me say that Legend is | |
| worth all the hassle. The puzzles are interesting, the prose is terrific, | |
| and the story is marvelous. Of course, the characters are two dimensional, | |
| but I haven't seen a good NPC since Floyd anyways. :( | |
| REVIEWS---------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| From: "Graeme Cree" <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> | |
| NAME: A Mind Forever Voyaging GAMEPLAY: Infocom Standard | |
| AUTHOR: Steve Eric Meretzky PLOT: Quite Good | |
| EMAIL: ? ATMOSPHERE: Perfect | |
| AVAILABILITY: LTOI 2 WRITING: Quite Good | |
| PUZZLES: Not puzzle-oriented SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports | |
| CHARACTERS: Well developed DIFFICULTY: Advanced | |
| A Mind Forever Voyaging is often billed as Infocom's first serious | |
| science fiction (much to the chagrin of Starcross and Suspended fans). | |
| You are Perry Sim, who believed himself a normal human being until one | |
| day (in adult life) you awake to find that you are in fact the world's | |
| first sentient computer, and that the illusion of your earlier life had | |
| been a necessary part of your programming process. | |
| Your first mission is to test the value of the controversial Plan | |
| for Renewed National Purpose, a long-term economic stimulus program. | |
| To do this you must travel into a virtual reality computer simulation | |
| of the nation ten years in the future and make recordings of several | |
| everyday activities you will find there. After doing so, you discover | |
| that simulations of times even farther in the future have been made | |
| available for you to investigate. In the final section of the game you | |
| must deal with the information you have discovered. | |
| Right away I had two serious problems with the game's premise. | |
| First, computer simulations of the future have always been extremely | |
| unreliable, and here we're asked to believe that we will develop one so | |
| accurate that it can actually determine the location of (as yet | |
| unplanned) parks and small businesses in Rockvil, South Dakota, where | |
| the game takes place. It is simply impossible to have enough | |
| information about people's private thoughts, especially ones that they | |
| haven't even had yet, to be able to factor this into a simulation. | |
| Secondly, even if such simulations were available, why couldn't the | |
| data simply be retrieved from the computer, rather than have | |
| to send someone into the simulation to view it directly? | |
| If you can suspend disbelief enough to accept the situation, then | |
| the game is quite good. Unlike other Infocom offerings, it is meant to | |
| be experienced, rather than played. The first two parts of the game | |
| have almost no puzzles, focusing instead on exploration and discovery | |
| as you walk the streets of Rockvil, watching daily life, seeing what | |
| activities can be attributed to the effects of the Plan, and watching | |
| the changes that take place over time. | |
| If you've ever enjoyed returning to places you once lived to see | |
| the changes, then you will probably enjoy this game. Vacant lots become | |
| drugstores, buildings get torn down and replaced with different ones, | |
| and people's attitudes towards you may change from time to time. On | |
| the other hand, if what you enjoy most about text games is the puzzle | |
| solving, you will probably get quite bored. It isn't clear why Infocom | |
| rated this game as Advanced. | |
| Most of the puzzles are in the third section of the game. As | |
| should surprise no one, the Plan turns out to be not such a good | |
| idea, and you must defend yourself and your friends from its supporters | |
| who are not entirely pleased with the data you have uncovered. | |
| Meretzky was so pleased with the puzzle at the end of this section that | |
| he used virtually the identical one at the end of Leather Goddesses of | |
| Phobos 2. | |
| Years ago in an online Compuserve conference, Dave Lebling remarked | |
| that most of Infocom's games were done tongue-in-cheek because those | |
| titles invariably sold better than the others (this may explain why | |
| some of their non-tongue-in-cheek games, like Spellbreaker and | |
| Cutthroats, had funny documentation). A Mind Forever Voyaging is no | |
| exception, as it never sold particularly well. Nevertheless, I consider it | |
| one of Infocom's top three serious games (Spellbreaker and Arthur being the | |
| other two), and worth a playthrough by anyone except the most die-hard puzzle | |
| fanatics. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: "Graeme Cree" <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> | |
| NAME: The Adventures of Elizabeth (El) Highe | |
| GAMEPLAY: Poor, but adequate | |
| AUTHOR: Bill Larkins PLOT: Slightly below average | |
| EMAIL: ? ATMOSPHERE: Below Average | |
| AVAILABILITY: CIS Gamer's Forum WRITING: Average | |
| PUZZLES: Not so hot SUPPORTS: AGT | |
| CHARACTERS: Slightly below average DIFFICULTY: Trivial | |
| In THE ADVENTURES OF ELIZABETH (EL) HIGHE, you play Elizabeth | |
| Highe, a game designer for Sierra who must write a sequel to the | |
| hit, G-String Gertrude so that Ken and Roberta Williams will allow her | |
| to leave the building (all the names have been slightly changed, of | |
| course; i.e. Sierra to Appalachia, Roberta Williams to Robert Bills, | |
| etc.). You write your game by entering the computer (in a manner | |
| similar to the movie TRON) and physically retrieving it. | |
| The AGT manual, in describing various uses for adventure games, | |
| suggests that you could write a game about your co-workers and | |
| play it on a Friday afternoon. This seems to be exactly what Bill | |
| Larkins has done here (though I don't know if he ever worked for | |
| Sierra). The game is short (I was able to complete it in 42 moves), | |
| simple and lighthearted. | |
| The AGT parser is much maligned, but is really as good as the | |
| author makes it. It doesn't do much in this game, but it doesn't need | |
| to. The only problem I encountered was when I performed one important | |
| action, and got no response at all, even though the action was | |
| registered. Some might mistakenly take this to mean that the action | |
| was not important and get sidetracked. | |
| The game is meant to be simple, cute, and quickly over, and it is. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: "Graeme Cree" <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> | |
| NAME: Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor | |
| GAMEPLAY: Infocom Deluxe | |
| AUTHOR: Brian Moriarty PLOT: Roller Coaster | |
| EMAIL: ? ATMOSPHERE: Rich | |
| AVAILABILITY: LTOI 1 WRITING: Very Good | |
| PUZZLES: Multiple Solutions SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports | |
| CHARACTERS: Very Good DIFFICULTY: Advanced | |
| Beyond Zork, the first game in the Zork series since the | |
| publication of Zork III five years earlier, really owes much more to | |
| the Enchanter trilogy than the Zork trilogy. | |
| The story takes place concurently with Spellbreaker and begins in | |
| the Guild Hall of Borphee shortly after your departure. The remaining | |
| Guild Heads (still in enchanted form), realizing that your quest in | |
| that game will result in the destruction of magic itself, decide that | |
| the legendary Coconut of Quendor must be seized from the Implementors | |
| and stored away, to be brought out again in the distant future. | |
| Considering that the Implementors are literally the staff of Infocom | |
| (try to ZIFMIA IMPLEMENTORS in Enchanter to see what I mean) this could | |
| present a thorny metaphysical problem if one thought about it too much. | |
| In a move reminiscent of Enchanter, they decide that an untrained | |
| initiate must be selected for this quest. | |
| Beyond Zork was one of the format experiments Infocom conducted | |
| during the 1987-1989 period, and certainly contains the best parser of | |
| any of the non-graphics games. The function keys could be programmed | |
| to represent any input desired, with or without a carriage return. The | |
| top left part of the screen contained a box that constantly displayed | |
| the room description, while the top right contained a small onscreen | |
| map that displayed the immediate vicinity. | |
| The game was an attempt to integrate role-playing with text | |
| adventures, and was surprisingly successful. While most text games | |
| have one or two random elements, Beyond Zork has many. You begin by | |
| setting your character's attributes from a pool of points that you are | |
| given (or you can select a preset character) as in a proper RPG. | |
| Several puzzles cannot be solved unless a certain attribute is high | |
| enough, even if you are aware of the proper action to take. Combat is | |
| conducted as in normal RPG's, with your attributes being | |
| cross-referenced against a computerised die-roll. Even the map changes | |
| slightly from game to game. | |
| The scale of the map areas vary greatly. Some "rooms" are as small | |
| as a tavern's common room, while others are the size of a city. The | |
| main playing area spans over several towns scattered through the | |
| Westlands, but parts of the game may take you through geological ages | |
| of time, or on a trip to the land of Oz (the name is changed in the | |
| game of course). | |
| Beyond Zork is a game with a great amount of play and replay | |
| value. Many of the puzzles have multiple solutions, and will keep | |
| players coming back to find more even after they have played the game | |
| to a conclusion. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: "Graeme Cree" <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> | |
| NAME: Bureaucracy GAMEPLAY: Infocom Standard | |
| AUTHOR: Douglas Adams PLOT: Great | |
| EMAIL: ? ATMOSPHERE: Excellent | |
| AVAILABILITY: LTOI 2 WRITING: Excellent | |
| PUZZLES: Difficult SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports | |
| CHARACTERS: Archetypal DIFFICULTY: Expert | |
| In Bureaucracy, you have just moved to a new town and must get your | |
| bank to acknowledge your change of address form before embarking on | |
| your all-expense paid trip to Paris, as well as untangle several other | |
| Bureaucratic mishaps from missed connections to surly waitresses. | |
| The game is divided into four parts. In the first, you must cash | |
| your check to get money for the cab ride to the airport. In the | |
| second, you must get through the airport to reach your flight. In the | |
| third, you must escape from the wrong airliner you have found yourself | |
| on before it crashes (or does it?). In the final part, you must take | |
| care of the computer hacker who is responsible for most of your | |
| problems. | |
| This game has become the standard by which almost all tongue-in-cheek | |
| games about real life are measured, and has been imitated many times, but | |
| seldom equalled. The atmosphere is not surprisingly, very much like The | |
| Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but is in many ways funnier since it hits | |
| areas that the gamer will have experienced firsthand. | |
| By the time this game came out Infocom had abandoned their difficulty | |
| rating system, but this game is as difficult as any other Infocom game with | |
| the exception of Spellbreaker. Many of the puzzles are intuitive rather than | |
| logical and force you to recreate Douglas Adams' twisted thinking to make | |
| sense of them (for example, the way you get your check cashed at the bank). | |
| Others are logical, but require you to grasp complicated patterns to solve | |
| them (i.e., the way you dispose of your Zalagasan Stew on the airliner). | |
| There are many well-developed characters that represent a cross-section | |
| of the most annoying people in daily life from the llama treat delivery man | |
| (who comes up with the brilliant idea that you should get your expired credit | |
| card replaced) to the surly waitress, to the survivalist, to Random Q. Hacker | |
| himself. | |
| One problem with the game is getting to the end of it. The story | |
| is so rich in detail that many will not want to remain stuck indefinitely on | |
| one of the puzzles. Unfortunately no editions of Bureaucracy contain | |
| onscreen hints, and it was included in Lost Treasures 2, which had no hint | |
| books enclosed. If you get stuck, your best bet is to download a walkthrough | |
| from GMD or the Compuserve Gamer's Forum, or to call Activion's 900 hint | |
| number. [I suggest ftp.gmd.de:/if-archive/solutions/infocom/ for you ftp | |
| capable readers. -GKW] | |
| The freebies are some of Infocom's best. One is a copy of Popular | |
| Paranoia magazine, which gives you the low down on the conspiracies | |
| that threaten to destroy your life. Another is the infamous carbonless | |
| triplicate form. Most people sign these daily, taking it for granted | |
| that the lower copies are identical to the top one. Activision did | |
| this itself, and only reproduced the top copy for their Lost Treasures | |
| documentation. But if you look more carefully, you may find that the | |
| line for your zip code on page 1 may ask for your wife's weight, or the | |
| number of pancakes that you have eaten today on succeeding copies. | |
| Too bad Adams never made this into a book... | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: "Graeme Cree" <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> | |
| NAME: Castaway GAMEPLAY: No synonyms | |
| AUTHOR: Conrad Button PLOT: Rudimentary | |
| EMAIL: ? ATMOSPHERE: None | |
| AVAILABILITY: MS-DOS WRITING: Basic | |
| PUZZLES: Basic SUPPORTS: MS-DOS | |
| CHARACTERS: None DIFFICULTY: Novice | |
| In Castaway, by Conrad Button, you are first mate of the cargo | |
| ship, Katie Sue (I don't know why, but I suspect that this is Button's | |
| daughter. A little nepotism here, hmm?). When your ship is smashed on | |
| a reef, you fortunately wash ashore on an island that has a rescue ship | |
| anchored a mile away. Your job is to find the fixins' for a signal | |
| fire, as well as locate ten treasures hidden on the island. | |
| The mixing of the rescue theme with the treasure hunt theme | |
| produces some bizarre results. Though you will probably spot the ship | |
| a few moves after landing, you will avoid signalling it until you've | |
| gotten all the treasures. In real life you'd be much more concerned | |
| that the ship might leave. You can get around this problem by | |
| signalling the ship but not boarding it until you've gotten all the | |
| treasures, but this creates another bizarre situation: the ship | |
| sitting in the lagoon waiting around until you feel like being rescued | |
| ("Snap it up fella, we haven't got all day!"). | |
| In your search, you will encounter the lost city of Pango Tongo, | |
| which has several of the treasures you need. We are never told | |
| anything about this city like "what is it doing there", and "what | |
| happened to the people". It is just there. | |
| The game features the traditionally bad Buttonware parser; two-word | |
| input and absolutely no synonyms. If you call the "parrot" a "bird", | |
| the game will have no idea what you're talking about. The game's | |
| difficulty level is Novice, so you probably won't have much trouble | |
| solving it anyway, but generally introductory games should be as | |
| user-friendly as possible, to encourage the player to play more text | |
| games. This one doesn't. | |
| One nice feature (that I wish more Introductory games would | |
| emulate) is that each room lists the directions that you can travel on | |
| a separate line. This is much easier for the novice trying to draw his | |
| first map than having to pick all of the directions out of the room | |
| description. | |
| Castaway is not up to scratch by 1995 standards, but one must | |
| remember that it was written in the pre GAGS/LADS/AGT/TADS/Inform days | |
| of 1986. Under the circumstances, putting out any shareware text game | |
| at all was an impressive feat. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: "Graeme Cree" <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> | |
| NAME: Cosmoserve - An Adventure for the BBS Enslaved | |
| PARSER: Great | |
| AUTHOR: Judith Pintar PLOT: Many Twists | |
| EMAIL: ??? ATMOSPHERE: SIM BBS | |
| AVAILABILITY: GMD WRITING: Very Good | |
| PUZZLES: Quite Good SUPPORTS: AGT Ports | |
| CHARACTERS: Very Good DIFFICULTY: Above Average | |
| In Cosmoserve, you play R.J. Wright, a plumber and freelance | |
| computer programmer in 1999. The program you are using to complete one | |
| of your assignments has a glitch in it, and you must sign on to | |
| Cosmoserve to download a patch file. Along the way you will encounter | |
| computer viruses, virtual reality games, lost passwords, online | |
| conferences, FBI raids, online stalkers, and Rick's Cafe Americain. | |
| I think that Cosmoserve is my favourite non-commercial text game, | |
| and certainly the all-time best AGT game. Judith Pintar performs | |
| wonders with the AGT parser. You can actually navigate through the | |
| hard drive of your 786 computer using DOS commands. When you logon, | |
| you are treated to phone dialing and modem sounds. When you are in an | |
| online conference the other users' statements come one at a time, as in | |
| real life. Maxis could market this game as "SIM BBS". | |
| The plot is delightfully interwoven, as the simple task of finding | |
| your patch file takes you on a trip through a myriad of forums, file | |
| directories, conferences and e-mail encounters. | |
| There is limited online help in three places. There is a hints | |
| forum (GO HINTS) that will answer a few questions. Also, Ms. Pintar | |
| herself makes a cameo appearance in the Virtual Reality game as Judith, | |
| the Cosmoserve Hints Sysop. Thirdly, your Aunt Edna will drop by early | |
| in the game if you are unable to find your new password. | |
| The atmosphere is superb. Watching the debate in the Plumbers & | |
| Electricians forum over which profession provides a better metaphor for | |
| the human condition (one purifies with water, the other with fire) is | |
| frighteningly funny. Tongue-in-cheek games about real life are | |
| invariably compared to Infocom's Bureaucracy, and they usually fall far | |
| short. This one doesn't. | |
| This is probably not a game that can be completed in one pass. You | |
| are on a time limit of less than 12 hours, and some things can only be | |
| done at certain times. It is likely that you will have to restart the | |
| game from the beginning at some point to optimize your time | |
| utilization. | |
| A couple of points. Although Cosmoserve is available for all AGT | |
| ports, MS-DOS users will have a slight advantage, as the game is keyed | |
| to simulate a PC. Also, people who have logged on using generic | |
| communications software will be better prepared for the game, as there | |
| is no "Cosmoserve Information Manager". | |
| Incredibly this game only tied for first in the AGT Game Writing | |
| Contest. | |
| From: "Donna McCreary Rodriguez" <drodrig SP@G tenet.edu> | |
| Name: CosmoServe Parser: AGT 1.32 | |
| Author: Judith Pintar Plot: Linear | |
| Email: Compuserve 76636,2067 Atmosphere: Unusual | |
| Availability: GMD; Freeware Writing: Fair | |
| Puzzles: Clever; logical Supports: AGT ports | |
| Characters: Fairly Flat Difficulty: Easy to Medium | |
| "CosmoServe: An Adventure Game for the BBS-Enslaved" has a | |
| "play-within-a-play feel." You are an absent-minded, self-employed computer | |
| consultant/programmer and erstwhile plumber who is trying to beat a project | |
| deadline. Solutions to the bugs in your creation may be found on CosmoServe, | |
| but--alas--you have forgotten your password, and , what's more, you've go a | |
| bbs hacker time-bandit to contend with once you finally logon. Things | |
| escalate from there to a fairly engrossing set of subplots and | |
| games-within-games. Much of the game is set in a simulated computer/bbs | |
| environment, and therein lies its appeal. The novel atmosphere more than | |
| makes up for the flat characterization. The puzzles are clever and logically | |
| solved, and the plot is tightly written, with only 86 locations. | |
| Give this one a try. Hats off to the author, Judith Pintar, who doesn't ask | |
| a fee, just that you e-mail her "the meaning of life, in 20 words or less." | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: "Graeme Cree" <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> | |
| NAME: Detective GAMEPLAY: Limited AGT | |
| AUTHOR: Matt Barringer PLOT: None | |
| EMAIL: ATMOSPHERE: None | |
| AVAILABILITY: GMD WRITING: Baaaad! | |
| PUZZLES: None SUPPORTS: AGT PORTS | |
| CHARACTERS: Cardboard DIFFICULTY: Zero | |
| Detective was previously reviewed in SPAG 4, but I'd like to do it | |
| again, as I have a slightly different take. This review stems from an | |
| e-mail conversation with Magnus Olsson, in regards to his review of | |
| Space Aliens Laughed at My Cardigan (also in SPAG 4), which had stated | |
| that despite its flaws the game had some cult value, calling it | |
| "Infocom on acid". I agreed with him, stating that Mystery Science | |
| Theater 3000 had demonstrated that there were "good" bad movies (which | |
| provide loads of unintentional laughs), and "bad" bad movies (which | |
| were merely painful), and that Space Aliens was definitely a "good" bad | |
| game. He responded by comparing it to Detective, a "bad" bad game, | |
| that has no puzzles, and requires only compass directions to win. | |
| Now that I've played Detective, I'm not sure I agree. I think | |
| that it too is a "good" bad game. Oh, it doesn't have the whacked-out | |
| psychedelic Eraserhead surrealism of Space Aliens, but it has more than | |
| its share of entertainment (not to mention equally bad spelling). | |
| I feel that I may owe a slight apology to Electrabot, which I | |
| criticize for lack of plot. Detective is like a stripped-down version | |
| of Electrabot. Like Electrabot, it has a fairly linear path that you | |
| must run, with several rooms of instant death, but at least Electrabot | |
| had a Rogues Gallery of hostile characters who could be killed by | |
| incongruous objects. Detective only has one hostile character, who can | |
| be easily bypassed. | |
| The game begins with your being told that the mayor has been | |
| murdered and that you must solve the crime to avoid bad publicity (!!). | |
| You can then go into the next room and get your gun. The description | |
| of the gun tells you that you only have 10 shots and should use them | |
| wisely. Fair enough, but no matter how many times you fire you will | |
| still have 10 shots. | |
| Another interesting feature is what I call the closets of | |
| teleportation. At one point you are in a hallway, with closets to the | |
| east and west. If you go east you will enter the west closet, and must | |
| go east again to reenter the hallway (and vice versa). | |
| The few items generally have bizarre adjectives. Along the way | |
| you may acquire the "food hamburger", and the "wooden wood", though you | |
| don't need any of them to win. | |
| Like Electrabot, Detective has several rooms that kill you without | |
| warning when you enter, but Detective's are more interesting. There is | |
| one that I call "The Room of Mysterious Death". The description says | |
| that you have reached a dead end and can go back west. But you can't | |
| because the game then proceeds to kill you without giving any | |
| explanation. In another instance, you are standing in a hallway and | |
| see a door to the east marked "Pool". If you enter you are told that | |
| you were in the pool when the killer shot you. WHY the heck did I get | |
| INTO the pool? I just wanted to check out the room!! | |
| The game has a terrible (and amusing) problem with blending room, | |
| object, and character descriptions with each other. When you meet the | |
| game's only character, the room description tells you all about what | |
| he's doing. Which of course means that it keeps telling you even after | |
| he's dead. The description of the hamburger tells you that you should | |
| just eat it and go north. This is, of course only valid if you are | |
| still in the room where you got it. In another case, you see a knife | |
| on the floor, but if you try to take it you are told "What knife? | |
| There is no knife here." It would have been easy enough to make the | |
| knife takeable, or at least give a message saying that you don't need | |
| it, or mustn't touch it because it hasn't been fingerprinted yet, or | |
| something. But this is much more amusing. | |
| The game can't seem to decide what time period it takes place in. | |
| In one room a passerby tells you to boycott FDR. In the next, a | |
| convict tells you he was busted for possession of crack. | |
| At another point, you enter an area and are told that the killer's | |
| rumoured hotel is in one direction, his favourite hangout in another, | |
| and his workplace in a third. You never learned any of this | |
| previously. Real police work should be so easy. | |
| All of this is but a prelude to the big ending. When you enter | |
| the room where the killer is, you are told that after a fierce battle | |
| you overcame him. In other words, "Yes, there was a big fight, but we | |
| couldn't afford to show you any of it". | |
| I'm not going into all this detail just to pile on the criticism. | |
| Mr. Barringer obviously enjoys playing and writing text games, and I'd | |
| be the last to tell him not to do it. I'm only writing this because | |
| unlike Stefan Jokisch (in his review), I think that you SHOULD get this | |
| game and you SHOULD play it. It's very quick (as little as 26 moves), | |
| loaded with such unintentional laughs, and unlike Space Aliens, you can | |
| play it to a conclusion, with no headaches or technical glitches. The | |
| parser is terrible, but when you only need "north", "south", "east", | |
| and "west", what the heck? Mr. Barringer's goal in writing the game was | |
| to entertain his audience, and as far as I'm concerned he suceeded in | |
| ways that the rating system can't show. | |
| If you like Mystery Science Theater 3000, you will enjoy playing | |
| this game. I'm going to e-mail a copy to Dr. Clayton Forrester myself, | |
| for use in a future experiment. Heads up, Mike, Tom, and Crow! | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: "Graeme Cree" <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> | |
| NAME: Electrabot GAMEPLAY: Poor | |
| AUTHOR: Woody Hunt PLOT: Meaningless | |
| EMAIL: ? ATMOSPHERE: None | |
| AVAILABILITY: CIS - Gamer's WRITING: Adequate | |
| PUZZLES: Arbitrary SUPPORTS: AGT Ports | |
| CHARACTERS: Generic DIFFICULTY: Trivial | |
| In Electrabot you play the part of a prototype android seeking to | |
| rescue your creator from the clutches of the evil Barbarith. | |
| I don't want to be too hard on the game, as it's no mean feat to | |
| download a program like the Adventure Game Toolkit, read the | |
| instructions, understand them, and put together a reasonably | |
| grammatical game that will run to completion without crashing or | |
| causing the player numerous unintended headaches. Author Woody Hunt | |
| has done all of these things. The problem is that there's not much | |
| there. | |
| In Electrabot, you follow a more or less predetermined course | |
| (there are a couple of side routes), picking up objects and meeting | |
| creatures along the way. Each object kills exactly one creature. | |
| That's it. That's literally all there is to the game. | |
| Well, not quite. There are two other puzzles. One involves a | |
| direction you can use that isn't mentioned in the room description. | |
| The other involves a set of 3 or 4 rooms that will kill you without any | |
| warning if you enter them. | |
| For the most part, the weapons are generic. Common sense will tell | |
| you which weapon kills the giant slug and the giant rat, but all of the | |
| others are totally arbitrary. It's also worth mentioning that although | |
| you're supposed to be a high-powered android, everybody you meet (from | |
| the insane artist to the butler) is capable of completely cleaning your | |
| clock if you don't have the right item handy. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: "Graeme Cree" <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> | |
| NAME: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | |
| AUTHORS: Douglas Adams GAMEPLAY: Infocom Standard | |
| & Steve Meretzky PLOT: Very Good | |
| EMAIL: ? ATMOSPHERE: Outstanding | |
| AVAILABILITY: WRITING: Outstanding | |
| PUZZLES: Excellent SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports | |
| CHARACTERS: Very Good DIFFICULTY: Standard | |
| [Possible minor spoilers, folks. -GKW] | |
| The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was Infocom's first game based | |
| on a novel (Shogun was the second), and is certainly their most famous | |
| product. As such, it faced heavy expectations both from the text game | |
| crowd and from fans of the book (I saved this game until I had played | |
| all of Infocom's 34 other text games, hoping to guarantee finishing | |
| with a winner). Fortunately, the game meets most expectations. | |
| For those who don't know, you begin the game as Arthur Dent, a | |
| typical Englishman whose home is about to be demolished to make way for | |
| a new highway. Soon afterward, the earth itself is destroyed to make | |
| way for a new interstellar spacelane, and you must escape the holocaust | |
| with your alien friend Ford Prefect; first to a Vogon warship, and then | |
| to the Heart of Gold, run by Ford's friend Zaphod Beeblebrox. Once | |
| there, your goal becomes to land safely on the lost planet of | |
| Magrathea. To do this, you must search various corners of reality | |
| (changing identities a few times along the way) to acquire several | |
| different pieces of fluff, which when used properly will produce an | |
| item that will give you the clairvoyance necessary to open the hatch | |
| and set foot on the planet. | |
| The writing is some of Infocom's very best, which is fortunate | |
| because the game itself is a little too short (only The Witness and | |
| Seastalker have fewer locations). The atmosphere produced is almost | |
| exactly like that of the book, even if specific details of the plot are | |
| often changed. The puzzles (including the legendary Babel Fish puzzle) | |
| are based on a brand of "consistent illogic" that is rather reminiscent | |
| of Lewis Carroll, and make the game one of those few that many will | |
| some day play again even after having solved it once. Hitchhiker's is | |
| one of the more literate text games on the market, as you will often | |
| have to pay more attention to how things are worded than you might in | |
| other games. | |
| There are a few things that may aggravate purists. As in | |
| Sorcerer, there is an action which must be taken at the beginning in | |
| order to win the game. If you don't do it, you may play for quite some | |
| time before realizing that victory is impossible. [Not quite so. You have | |
| another opportunity later in the game to take this action. -GKW] Perhaps the | |
| biggest disappointment is the absence of the promised sequel. The story does | |
| not really end, it merely pauses and gives you a "to be continued" | |
| message just as you set foot on Magrathea. Though the sequel was | |
| promised many times (such as in the New Zork Times, and in the crystal | |
| ball in Beyond Zork), it never materialized. Since Infocom no longer | |
| has the rights to Hitchhiker's, it is unlikely that it ever will. (For | |
| those of you keeping track, the sequels promised by Infocom/Activision | |
| that have not yet come out are: Hitchhikers 2, Journey 2, Leather | |
| Goddesses 3, and Simon the Sorcerer 2). | |
| Despite this, Hitchhiker's plusses massively outweigh the negatives, | |
| and the game remains one of the great classics of interactive fiction. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: "Graeme Cree" <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> | |
| NAME: Horror30.zip GAMEPLAY: Generic | |
| AUTHOR: John Olsen PLOT: Not Bad | |
| EMAIL: ? ATMOSPHERE: Varies | |
| AVAILABILITY: S20_IBM_GMD WRITING: Minimal | |
| PUZZLES: Good SUPPORTS: MS-DOS | |
| CHARACTERS: None living DIFFICULTY: Below average | |
| Horror30.zip is a trilogy of games by John Olsen (author of | |
| magic.zip, another trilogy reviewed in SPAG 3). The package includes | |
| NIGHT OF THE WALKING DEAD, FRANKENSTEIN'S LEGACY, and THE SEA PHANTOM. | |
| These three games were each written by Mr. Olsen using his own interpreter, | |
| and none is larger than 38K. | |
| In NIGHT OF THE WALKING DEAD, you are trying to find your Aunt | |
| Bedilia's grave to recover a locket buried with her in order to | |
| prove your identity (how graverobbing proves this is unclear) and claim | |
| your inheritance. FRANKENSTEIN'S LEGACY is reminiscent of the sample | |
| transcript for THE LURKING HORROR. You arrive at Victor Frankenstein's | |
| house, instructed by him to find the monster and bring it to life. In | |
| THE SEA PHANTOM, you arrive at the coastal mansion of the late Captain | |
| Thorne. Once every 10 years his old ship appears offshore. It is your | |
| job to put his spirit to rest and recover his treasure. | |
| All three are interactive short stories having from 20 to 40 | |
| locations each. They are not especially difficult, but have a couple | |
| of arbitrary puzzles. This combined with the poor parser may make them | |
| a little aggravating if you don't immediately guess what the author is | |
| thinking. S.O.P. for an arbitrary puzzle is to keep trying whatever you | |
| can think of until you hit on the right thing, but these games have | |
| have only 1 or 2 generic "failure" messages, and after a bit it may get | |
| maddening to keep reading "You can't", or "You see nothing special". | |
| Especially since you get the "You can't" message for just about | |
| anything that isn't useful, even actions that you obviously COULD do | |
| (i.e. "Throw dagger"). The parser can also be misleading at times. In | |
| one of the games you encounter a locked object. There is no key, you | |
| must use some other means of opening it. But if you try to pick the | |
| lock or unlock it with the wrong key you are told that you need the | |
| right key (implying that such exists). Another problem is that if the | |
| parser doesn't know what you're talking about, it will sometimes give | |
| you an answer that looks like it does. In one game, I tried to do the | |
| right action, using the wrong words. The message led me to believe | |
| that the ACTION had failed rather than the command, and I spent two | |
| days stuck, believing that I had already tried and rejected the correct | |
| thing. | |
| This is not to be too hard on Mr. Olsen. Considering that he's | |
| written these games from scratch without AGT, TADS, Inform, et al, he's | |
| done rather a good job. But if we compare his games to ones made using | |
| public compilers, then they suffer, even though it may be unfair to | |
| make the comparision in the first place. | |
| The atmosphere varies from horror to unintentionally comic. NIGHT | |
| OF THE WALKING DEAD at times seems more like Night of the Zombie | |
| Keystone Cops. You will often be running along with some item that you | |
| need, only to be hit over the head and have it stolen just when you get | |
| to where you would have used it. You must then chase down the creature | |
| that took it and drag him off to the crematorium to prevent him from | |
| doing it to you again. FRANKENSTEIN'S LEGACY's lack of graphic | |
| description is at times comic also. If you order the game to cut open a | |
| dead body, you are told "OK". That's it, just "OK". If you then take | |
| an organ out of the body and examine it, you are told simply "You see | |
| nothing special." | |
| Although this review has focused primarily on negatives, these are | |
| not at all bad games, and all three are well worth spending an | |
| afternoon playing. However, I would advise having a walkthrough handy | |
| before you start, and use it you get stuck for more than, say, half an | |
| hour. These games are short stories and as such their pacing demands | |
| that the plot keep moving. If you get stuck by an arbitrary puzzle, a | |
| bad parser, or a guess-the-word problem, they become very unrewarding. | |
| If you don't, you will probably have rather a pleasant gaming experience. | |
| [I have to agree with Graeme's review, although I enjoyed the games | |
| somewhat more than he seems to have. The games are very reminiscent of the | |
| Scott Adams adventures that some of you may have played. -GKW] | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: "Graeme Cree" <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> | |
| NAME: Journey GAMEPLAY: Multiple Choice | |
| AUTHOR: Marc Blank PLOT: Extremely Linear | |
| EMAIL: ? ATMOSPHERE: Good | |
| AVAILABILITY: LTOI 2 - CD ROM WRITING: Well Done | |
| PUZZLES: Slightly less than average SUPPORTS: Some Infocom Ports | |
| CHARACTERS: Good DIFFICULTY: Relatively Easy | |
| Journey is an extremely difficult game to classify; not quite a | |
| text adventure, even less of a graphic adventure, and certainly not a | |
| role-playing game. Billed as a "role-playing chronicle", this helps us | |
| little, as it is the only one of its kind. It is generally classified | |
| as one of Infocom's text games, because it uses the same interpreter as | |
| Zork 0, Arthur, and Shogun. | |
| While every other text adventure is written in Second Person, | |
| Journey is written in First Person, from the point of view of your own | |
| character, who keeps a journal of your progress through the story. | |
| While most text games have a parser that requires complete sentences, | |
| Journey's parser resembles a graphic adventure. It lets you choose | |
| from a set of actions in a separate window, and even allows mouse | |
| support. While the AGT Master's Edition allows one to use a similar | |
| parser, it is probably unique in commercially published text games. | |
| And ultimately, Journey must be considered a text game, as it is | |
| through the text rather than the graphics that the interaction takes | |
| place. | |
| Though the parser is extremely easy to use, it makes for very | |
| linear game play. In most cases it is impossible to return to a room | |
| that you have just left. At times the game seems more like one of | |
| those Adventure Game Decision Books than it does a computer game, | |
| though it still presents you with many more choices to be made than the | |
| average book does. Still, the game allows less interaction than most | |
| text games do, and the graphics only partially compensate for it. Some | |
| sort of sound and music capability should have been included. | |
| Journey's plot is a variation on that made famous by Tolkien and | |
| imitated many times since then. A Dark Lord (here called "Dread Lord") | |
| is wreaking havoc on the countryside and its populace, so a questing | |
| party is formed and sent to seek the wizard Astrix for his advice. | |
| After many perils, they reach Astrix who sends them on a quest to break | |
| the Dread Lord's power. Since Journey is only part 1 of the Golden Age | |
| Trilogy, and parts 2 and 3 were never written, we don't get to see the | |
| Dread Lord's final defeat. | |
| Due to the menu system, Journey's puzzles are generally not too | |
| difficult, but there are some that will challenge the experienced | |
| gamer, and one at the end that can only be solved if you were paying | |
| attention earlier. | |
| Journey is one of several "experiments" in formatting that Infocom | |
| undertook around this time (some others being Nord & Bert, Beyond Zork, | |
| Border Zone, and of course the infamous Infocomics). This is one of | |
| their less successful attempts. The game is fairly enjoyable to play | |
| by itself, makes a nice change of pace, and presents the gamer with a | |
| new way of doing things to try to assimilate, but ultimately the | |
| reduced interaction, and the difficulty of doing challenging, | |
| interesting puzzles with this parser would have made a whole line of | |
| such games rather less interesting. The moral: play Journey and have | |
| a good time with it, but don't feel too bad that the series was never | |
| continued. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: "M. Sean Molley" <mollems SP@G pulsar.cs.wku.edu> | |
| NAME: The Legend Lives! PARSER: TADS + WorldClass | |
| AUTHOR: David M. Baggett PLOT: Visionary | |
| EMAIL: dmb SP@G ai.mit.edu ATMOSPHERE: Incredibly rich | |
| AVAILABILITY: Freeware, GMD WRITING: Extremely good | |
| PUZZLES: Creative SUPPORTS: TADS ports | |
| CHARACTERS: Unfulfilled potential DIFFICULTY: Slightly above average | |
| _The Legend Lives!_ is probably one of the most highly anticipated text | |
| adventures since the demise of Infocom. Written by David Baggett, author | |
| of the popular shareware game "Unnkulian Unventure II", _Legend_ takes | |
| the Unnkulian Universe far into the future. However, it is a future | |
| where despite the soaring technological advancements of mankind (and | |
| creaturekind in general), the threat of the dread Unnkulians still | |
| lurks. You, as student Gavin Kelly, stumble upon the most horrifying | |
| plot the Unnkulians have ever unleashed as a part of your thesis | |
| research. Your quest will take you across the universe and even through | |
| time as you seek to once again penetrate the secrets of the Akmi | |
| corporation and uphold the tenets of Dudhism. | |
| However, _Legend_ was not so highly anticipated just because it's another | |
| game in the popular Unnkulian series. It was billed as an experiment of | |
| sorts, an attempt to see if the interactive fiction medium can be used to | |
| do more than just provide entertaining puzzles -- to see if IF can be | |
| used to make a statement, convey a message, really get inside your head | |
| and make you think. In this, _Legend_ succeeds admirably. The emphasis | |
| here is clearly not on the puzzles (although there are plenty of those) | |
| but rather on the experience: the atmosphere, the writing, the message. | |
| To this end, there are a fair number of very long text sequences which | |
| are many pages and contain a great deal of conversation between the | |
| player (you) and certain NPCs. These "vignettes" are the strongest | |
| point of the whole game. They are very well written and loaded with all | |
| sorts of allegory and subtleties. I was disappointed that there were not | |
| more of these "cut scenes", in fact, because they add a lot to the | |
| storytelling aspect. I certainly don't mind reading 10 screens of text | |
| if it helps to advance the story and give me something to think about. | |
| And _Legend_ will definitely give you something to think about. | |
| I won't spoil the plot for you, but I should mention the overall "quest": | |
| the goal of the game is to thwart an unbelievably powerful computer virus | |
| unleashed by the Unnkulians which is self-aware, self-replicating, and | |
| taking over the entire universal computer network. Once it has | |
| established control over the technology, it will have established control | |
| over the people, and the Unnkulians' dream will be fulfilled. This of | |
| course would be a Very Bad Thing (tm) for the rest of creation, and you | |
| are the only person who is even aware that the virus exists. | |
| Unfortunately, Akmi (the corporation which runs basically everything and | |
| controls nearly all information) is on to you and they will attempt to | |
| foil you as you try to gain information about and eventually defeat the | |
| virus, thus saving all of creation from an Unnkul fate (sorry). | |
| Of course, you can't do it alone; and _Legend_ provides a suitable cast | |
| of NPCs to help you (or hinder you). There are computer programmers, a | |
| star musician, aliens of various sorts, and an artificial intelligence | |
| program, among others, who will appear along the way. Sadly, this is | |
| where _Legend_ suffers the most. The NPCs are not developed well | |
| enough. In fact, some of them are not developed at all. This is a real | |
| shame, because there is an awesome amount of potential in these | |
| characters. I was really disappointed by this aspect of the game, but | |
| the quality of the writing goes a long way to make up for it, and the | |
| environment (the "Unnkulian" mythos) is top-notch. Still, no story can | |
| be fully successful without effective, quality characterization. | |
| [See the interview with Dave Baggett for more on this.] | |
| And there will be obstacles in your path; after all, defeating the | |
| nefarious schemes of the Unnkulians will require you to be even more | |
| devious than they. There are a good number of puzzles in the game, | |
| ranging from very easy to quite difficult. However, David did not want | |
| players to get distracted from the story by being stuck on a puzzle, so | |
| he provides a remarkable "adaptive hint system" which will give you | |
| intelligent hints based on your current situation. There is no penalty | |
| for using the hints, or limit to how many you can use, but be warned that | |
| they do go right on up to the outright spoiler level after the first | |
| couple of hints. Luckily, there is an encryption feature you can turn on | |
| to prevent yourself from reading all the hints too quickly. The game is | |
| difficult; however, I was able to finish it in about a week without | |
| needing to resort to the hints. Nice to have them if you want them, | |
| though, and the hint system is really a great piece of work. | |
| As for the quality of the puzzles themselves, they are by and large very | |
| good. (And no mazes!). Most of the puzzles are logical and fair, and | |
| I got a real sense of satisfaction out of solving them. There are | |
| exceptions to this rule of course; but every game has a few bad spots. I | |
| would imagine that most people will need a hint or three as they go | |
| through the game. Then again, I didn't, so you might not either. Some | |
| of the puzzles are very tricky, though. Others, however, can be solved | |
| purely by dumb luck -- ie, having the right item in your inventory when | |
| you speak to a particular character. Puzzles like that irritate me. | |
| However, as I have said, the puzzles are not the emphasis in _Legend_. | |
| They are supposed to add to the story instead of distract from it, and | |
| for the most part this is fairly successful. | |
| Until you get to the end of the game. This is my biggest complaint about | |
| _Legend_. The ending is a tremendous disappointment. Not because it's | |
| an emotional downer or anything like that; it's just totally unexpected | |
| and very unsatisfying. I would say that the ending seems like an | |
| afterthought, except that it was obviously carefully written to make | |
| certain statements. Unfortunately they fall flat and there is not a | |
| satisfactory resolution to the main plot themes. | |
| However, I cannot in good faith say anything *too* bad about the game, | |
| because it's one of the most visionary and daring works to come along | |
| since, well, "A Mind Forever Voyaging" from Infocom. Honestly, AMFV is | |
| the better game, but _Legend_ is damn fine as well. If you liked AMFV, I | |
| think you will not be disappointed by _Legend_. If you like good | |
| puzzle-solving games, you won't be disappointed by _Legend_. If you like | |
| good writing and lots of prose, you won't be disappointed by _Legend_. | |
| If you like a great atmosphere and enticing plot, you certainly won't be | |
| disappointed. The only place _Legend_ fails is that it does not exploit | |
| the incredible amount of potential for characterization. But you | |
| probably will forget that in the wake of all the other images _Legend_ is | |
| going to throw at you. | |
| Let me sum it up this way: _The Legend Lives!_ is not the best IF game I | |
| have ever played in my life. It is, however, the best IF game I have | |
| *experienced* in a very long time. That, perhaps, is the highest | |
| recommendation I can give. Hats off to David Baggett for a fun game | |
| which is also a fine work of fiction. Even though it doesn't completely | |
| succeed in getting the message across, _Legend_ really pushes the | |
| envelope and challenges our definitions of interactive fiction. It also | |
| challenges a lot of other things, like our relationship with technology | |
| (a major theme of the work). _Legend_ deserves to be played if for no | |
| other reason than to think about what David is trying to say. I mean, | |
| when was the last time you played an IF game which *really* had a message | |
| and a vision? Maybe never. Well, now's your chance. | |
| And best of all, it's freeware, which means that after reading this review | |
| you have absolutely no excuse for not downloading it right now and playing it. | |
| [Well, except for the excuse that you weren't done reading yet. :)] | |
| You'll be glad you did. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: "Magnus Olsson" <mol SP@G df.lth.se> | |
| NAME: Mop and Murder PARSER: AGT (insufficient) | |
| AUTHOR: Brad Friedman PLOT: Linear, predictable | |
| EMAIL: ??? ATMOSPHERE: A bit thin | |
| AVAILABILITY: GMD, F WRITING: Competent | |
| PUZZLES: Not very exciting SUPPORTS: AGT | |
| CHARACTERS: Few, non-interactive DIFFICULTY: Below average | |
| In the infancy of text adventure games, the number of rooms in a game | |
| was used as a measure of quality; basically, the more rooms, the better | |
| the game - or at least that's what advertisers thought. Judged by that | |
| antiquated standard, this game wouldn't stand much of a chance. In | |
| fact, its most distinctive feature is that the entire game takes place | |
| in one room! (There are actually two rooms, but one of these is the | |
| corridor where you start out, and is irrelevant to the rest of the | |
| game). Fortunately, there are other criteria of quality than the number | |
| of rooms. | |
| This alone would be enough to make the game interesting, but the | |
| scenario is also very promising: being a lowly janitor at CIA | |
| headquarters, working late at night cleaning the deserted building, you | |
| enter an office only to find its occupant lying in a pool of blood, with | |
| a suicide note on the desk. But was it really suicide? There's | |
| something's fishy about the whole business. Maybe this is your big | |
| chance to prove that you were meant for bigger tasks than sweeping | |
| floors! | |
| This is your starting point; as you start examining the room, you'll | |
| discover more and more evidence that points to murder. Your finds will | |
| help you unravel the plot that led up to the agent's death, and, finally | |
| who killed him and why. | |
| Unfortunately, while this may sound very promising, the game turned | |
| out to be a disappointment. This is partly due to the fact that the | |
| author, while competent enough at producing easily flowing prose and a | |
| logically consistent plot, has somehow failed at making the whole | |
| thing very memorable; the atmoshere is rather thin (considering that | |
| the setting - a closed, windowless CIA office with a dead body on the | |
| floor - should provide ample opprotunity for atmosphere), the puzzles | |
| not very original or challenging, and the story that is gradually | |
| unraveled by your investigations just isn't very interesting (not even | |
| the murderer's identity was much of a surprise to me). Still, viewed | |
| as interactive _fiction_, the game isn't too bad. | |
| What really ruins things, however, is the game-play aspects. The | |
| author doesn't seem to have put enough effort into making the game | |
| playable - not only are there quite a few outright bugs, as well as | |
| some nasty cases of "guess the right word" ("cut paper with scissors" | |
| works, but "cut paper" produces the message "you can't do that"), but | |
| the descriptions you get when examining things don't change when you | |
| manipulate them. For example, even if you remove all the objects that | |
| were on the desk to start with, "examine desktop" will gladly list all | |
| the objects anyway. This is a serious handicap when there are so many | |
| objects stuffed into one room! The fact that the parser (as in most | |
| AGT games) isn't quite up to the task doesn't improve things. Of | |
| course, all this may be due to this being the author's first game, or | |
| to shortcomings in AGT, but this really is no excuse - no author | |
| should ever release a game that's so awkward to play (or a game whose | |
| shortcomings would be so easily detected by letting a friend try it). | |
| If this sounds overly harsh to you, my irritation is mainly due to | |
| the fact that I got totally stuck on a problem that should be quite easy: | |
| opening a desk drawer. In fact, that problem had me (figuratively) | |
| running round in circles, trying every possible verb-noun combination | |
| I could think of, examining and re-examining every object for clues - | |
| with a total lack of success. Finally, I had to give up and ask for | |
| help on rec.games.int-fiction. The Usenet is wonderful - I did get in | |
| touch with somebody who had solved the problem (and was able to help | |
| him finish the game - he was stuck on another problem). | |
| As it turned out, opening the drawer was only possible if a certain | |
| object was in a certain state (I'm not saying anything more here - | |
| feel free to email me if you're stuck, too, and want a more explicit | |
| hint). While not inconceivable after the fact, the solution wasn't exactly | |
| obvious, either - and there isn't an inkling of a hint in the game; | |
| perhaps you were supposed to solve that problem through | |
| trial-and-error, or by sheer inspiration - who knows? | |
| To summarize, the setting and plot shows promise; the game is | |
| initially quite enjoyable, but after a while you realize that nothing | |
| really interesting is happening, and then you start to get irritated | |
| by all the bugs and misfeatures. The puzzles feel rather contrived | |
| (sure, an agent working under a death threat would hide his notes | |
| carefully, but would he leave clues about how to find them lying | |
| around?) and just aren't challenging enough, and the plot isn't | |
| interesting enough to make it worth the inconvenience. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: "Graeme Cree" <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> | |
| NAME: Odieus' Quest for the Magic Flingshot | |
| GAMEPLAY: Problematic (0.8) | |
| AUTHOR: Unknown PLOT: Below Average | |
| EMAIL: ? ATMOSPHERE: Below Average | |
| AVAILABILITY: GMD, F WRITING: Below Average | |
| PUZZLES: Below Average SUPPORTS: LADS, AGT, Inform | |
| CHARACTERS: Poor DIFFICULTY: Easy | |
| Odieus has rather an interesting history. It was originally | |
| uploaded to the Compuserve Gamer's Forum in 1987 by an unknown author | |
| who wrote it using the LADS compiler. That version seems to have | |
| disappeared, but the game lives on. About a year later David | |
| Malmberg, author of the Adventure Game Toolkit converted it to AGT | |
| format as a coding exercise. Recently Teo Kwang Liak converted the | |
| game to Inform, also as a coding exercise. | |
| In the game, you play Odieus, whose magic Flingshot has been stolen | |
| by the evil Blackwing. You are tossed by a giant into the approximate | |
| location and must solve a series of puzzles to retrieve it. The game | |
| is fairly short and simple, having fewer than 25 locations, and one and | |
| only one use for each item (which may explain its apparent value as an | |
| exercise). | |
| Surprisingly, the older AGT version plays better than the newer | |
| Inform one, as the Inform version is a bit buggy. I saw a review of | |
| Odieus in another magazine which stated that the author couldn't even | |
| finish the Inform version due to a difficulty in cooling down the hot | |
| springs, which was accomplished easily in the AGT version. Whenever | |
| you try to do it, you get a nonsensical message that says "Alas, it is | |
| closed". I fiddled with the game until I found the proper command | |
| which was 16-12-1-14-20 2-12-21-5 2-5-1-14 (for those who wish to | |
| decipher this spoiler, simply convert the letters to numbers; i.e. 1=A, | |
| 2=B, 3=C, and so forth). | |
| A few of the puzzles are altered in the Inform version. Your light | |
| source, for example, is totally different. A couple of other items are | |
| changed, and a useless room is given signifigance. Nevertheless, when | |
| I played the Inform version I only got 148 out of 150 points, and | |
| haven't yet bothered to go back and track down the other 2. | |
| A couple of the puzzles are completely arbitrary. There is no | |
| clue at all to as how to open the lock at the end, unless you have | |
| figured out the pattern that each item has a single use. | |
| In any case, the game is not bad, and makes a nice little | |
| diversion. It shouldn't take more than a half hour to solve it. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: "Magnus Olsson" <mol SP@G df.lth.se> | |
| NAME: The Sound of One Hand Clapping PARSER: Advsys (not quite sufficient) | |
| AUTHOR: Erica Sadun PLOT: Many linear sub-plots | |
| EMAIL: gt5052b SP@G prism.gatech.edu AVAILABILITY: GMD, S10 | |
| PUZZLES: Simple WRITING: Beautiful, poetic | |
| ATMOSPHERE: Beautiful DIFFICULTY: Quite easy | |
| SUPPORTS: DOS (portable source for Advsys run-time included) | |
| CHARACTERS: Non-interactive but interesting | |
| It's a sad fact that the world of interactive fiction seems to be an | |
| almost exclusively male one; although many women enjoy IF, there are | |
| very few female IF authors. In fact, the present game is probably the | |
| only one by a female author that I've played. Had this been the only | |
| unusual thing about this game, it would have been noteworthy as a | |
| curiosity, perhaps; fortunately, it has other qualities that make it | |
| a very unusual experience. | |
| To start with, the setting and general idea of the game are quite | |
| different from the logical, puzzle-oriented world of most adventure | |
| games, which tend to have a rather mechanistic view of the world | |
| (pardoxically, this seems to be especially true of magic-based games; | |
| indeed, the magic systems of games like "Enchanter" are more logical | |
| and mechanistic than most scientific gadgetry in SF games). As one | |
| might infer from the full title of the game, "The Sound of One Hand | |
| Clapping - a Riddle in Subtlety", the focus of the game is different, | |
| emphasizing emotion, empathy and analogy, rather than deduction. This | |
| is not to say that the puzzles aren't logical (they are - see below), | |
| just that the emphasis is on a different kind of thinking; for | |
| example, several puzzles can only be solved through meditation (in the | |
| game, that is - you don't have to be a Zen master in real life to solve | |
| them). | |
| What makes this game truly outstanding, however, is the atmosphere and | |
| the quality of the writing. I can't put it in any other way than | |
| saying that this is by far the most beautiful piece of IF I've ever | |
| come across. My experience is that most good IF reads like either | |
| "hard-boiled" novels, gothic horror stories or slightly absurdist | |
| comedy - all of these pretty "male" genres (if I'm allowed to continue | |
| flogging the rather moribound horse of gender differences in writing). | |
| "One Hand Clapping", on the other hand, at its best reads like a prose | |
| poem: the imagery vivid, the prose gently flowing. | |
| This kind of writing makes very high demands on the author, and she is | |
| in general up to the challenge. There are, as might be expected of an | |
| amateur author, some beauty spots. Occasionally, the rhythm of the | |
| prose falters (rhythm being especially important in this kind of | |
| poetic writing), turning it into a drab march of short descriptive | |
| sentences, which renders the imagery peculiarly ineffective; | |
| occasionaly, the metaphors seem a bit overdone, dangerously close to | |
| empty rhetoric; but these are mere blemishes that hardly detract from | |
| the overall impression. More serious is, perhaps, a certain tendency | |
| to bathos; for example, the long build-up towards the encounter with | |
| Crystal Dragon results not in the expected profundity, but in a | |
| rather trivial conversation, and the final confrontation with Black | |
| Dragon (the villain of the piece) culminates in a disappointingly | |
| trite plot device. Still, I'm willing to forgive these shortcomings of | |
| the writing; the game is a pearl, albeit flawed, and flawless pearls | |
| are few and far between. | |
| As for the atmosphere, it is as beautiful as the writing: in typical | |
| fairy-tale fashion, you are transported to the World Beyond to find | |
| six dragons and obtain six keys in order to confront Black Dragon, and | |
| restore balance to this world as well as the one Beyond. The fairy | |
| tale atmosphere is not the usual, Western, one, but Chinese, or rather | |
| generally "Oriental" - in the author's own words, it's not | |
| realistically Chinese, but "Chinoiserie", the reflection of the | |
| Oriental world in the mirror of Western folklore and prejudice, and | |
| some aspects of the game, such as the Zen allusion of the title and a | |
| puzzle involving a bonsai tree, are decidedly Japanese rather than | |
| Chinese. The dragons are not the fire-breathing monsters of Western | |
| folklore that you generally find in adventure games, but Chinese | |
| dragons: supernatural beings of great subtlety, not to be confronted | |
| by violence but to be won over by empathy, provoked into action, or | |
| perhaps simply outsmarted. The World Beyond is as perfect as a Chinese | |
| painting; serene, meditative, with just enough detail for your imagination | |
| to fill in the rest. | |
| So much for writing and atmosphere. Had these been the only aspects of | |
| the game, it would have been close to a masterpiece. However, the | |
| game-play aspects are, unfortunately, on a totally different level of | |
| perfection. | |
| The puzzles are not bad. Most of them are quite simple, but I don't | |
| mind simple puzzles; in fact, having too difficult puzzles in a game | |
| like this would perhaps only distract the player from the beauty of the | |
| World Beyond. A few of the puzzles are quite subtle, one perhaps | |
| overly so, since it hinges on the player's interpreting a clue quite | |
| literally. Without being too explicit, let me say that at one point, | |
| when obeying certain instructions, you should carry them out to the | |
| letter, without thinking or rephrasing them into the verb you'd | |
| normally use. You could claim that this is an example of the different | |
| way of thinking needed to solve these puzzles; to me, however, it is | |
| dangerously close to "guess the verb". | |
| Despite what I've written above, many of the puzzles are not very | |
| unusual or even imaginative, but just standard fantasy game puzzles. | |
| On the other hand, they are not trivial, and a few of them offer new | |
| twists on old ideas. Perhaps there are a few too many puzzles of the | |
| type "find hidden object X, give it to dragon Y" with nothing more to | |
| it; this, however, may be a plus for the inexperienced player. | |
| Meditation plays an important role, as several of the puzzles can only | |
| be solved through insights gained that way; the player is advised to | |
| meditate frequently, since only a fraction of meditations lead to | |
| enlightenment (there is a random factor involved). | |
| A plus regarding the puzzles is that the plot is multi-linear; if | |
| you're stuck on, say, how to extract a coin from a bonsai tree, you | |
| could always try to climb a glass mountain or explore a mysterious | |
| cave instead. The map branches out with six-fold symmetry from the | |
| central point, Rainbow Fountain; similarly, the Fountain is the | |
| central point of the sub-plots, which with six-fold symmetry branch | |
| out from it. | |
| The NPCs, most notably the dragons, are unfortunately not very | |
| interactive; they don't care very much about human affairs and generally | |
| only pay you any attention when you perform the right action to | |
| rouse their interest - and you can generally only do this once. This, | |
| however, is the nature of dragons, so maybe one shouldn't complain. | |
| Like in most IF, you feel distinctly alone; the dragons aren't very | |
| sociable. Your most memorable companion is a "fire iguana", a curious | |
| lizard with a tendency for quasi-profound Taoist utterances. Though | |
| the iguana doesn't make a very good conversationalist, he's really | |
| quite charming. There are also some more NPCs that aren't very interactive. | |
| The area where I feel I must be the most critical of the game is its | |
| interactivity and general playability. To begin with, the parser isn't | |
| very good and has some annoying quirks (the game was written with | |
| Advsys, to which I'd like to return in another article); | |
| fortunately, no sophisticated commands are needed, but there's still | |
| an element of "hunt-the-right-word", especially since the game's | |
| vocabulary is pretty limited. However, you can live with a bad parser. | |
| What's worse in my opinion is that you can't do very much. Most | |
| objects are in the game for one specific purpose only; you can't do | |
| anything with it until you find out that purpose, and then it's rather | |
| evident. | |
| It may seem that interactivity is not very important; after all, we | |
| can never hope for an accurate simulation of reality in a text | |
| adventure, and, unlike the "simulationist" school of IF theorists, I | |
| don't think authors should even aim for such realism. However, if the | |
| game introduces a highly complex and usable object, like (to use a | |
| real example from the game) a box of rubber bands, the player will | |
| want to play around with it, or at least get some sensible message | |
| when trying to do so; in this game, the player has far too little | |
| freedom to interact with the simulated world; there are far too many | |
| possible actions that are just not possible to perform, and there are | |
| far too many interesting objects described in the text that either | |
| aren't recognized by the parser or produce a message about "that's | |
| just scenery". At least to me, this produces a feeling of being led by | |
| the hand through a beautiful diorama with a few useful artifacts | |
| strewn about; your hands itch with eagerness to touch and manipulate | |
| things, but you are constantly reminded that you're not supposed to do | |
| that, just to watch and admire. | |
| By contrast, the really great games of IF (such as Infocom's best) may | |
| have a less perfect atmosphere, and far coarser writing, but they | |
| actually let you experience their world, not just observe it. _This_ | |
| is the great potential of IF, as opposed to books, plays or films: not | |
| only do you experience the world "as if you were there", but you can | |
| actually interact with it. Alas, "One Hand Clapping" to a large extent | |
| misses exploiting that potential. | |
| Had this game had a better parser and a larger vocabulary, and had the | |
| author put more effort into the interactive aspects, this would have | |
| been a great work of IF. Had she polished her prose just a little more | |
| (avoiding, for example, the occasional anticlimax), and added perhaps | |
| just a little bit more dramatic tension (let's face it, the plot is | |
| rather thin). While I don't hesitate to give this game near-perfect | |
| marks for writing and atmosphere, I must unfortunately rank it as | |
| less-than-average on gameplay, and the plot is only of average | |
| quality. Still, with my wildcard points for overall impression, this | |
| adds up to an impressive (for a shareware game) 7.5. | |
| And: despite all my criticism, let's not forget that "One Hand | |
| Clapping" is an unforgettable experience. Play it, if only for the | |
| writing; immerse yourself in the atmosphere, let the gently flowing | |
| prose entice you away from the usually cold and logical world of | |
| computers, enjoy for a while the subtle simplicity of this world of | |
| imagination: | |
| The peace of summer, | |
| Fish gliding through still waters, | |
| Subtle as dragons. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: "Graeme Cree" <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> | |
| NAME: South American Trek GAMEPLAY: No synonyms | |
| AUTHOR: Conrad Button PLOT: Unintentionally funny | |
| EMAIL: ? ATMOSPHERE: Almost none | |
| AVAILABILITY: MS-DOS WRITING: Passable | |
| PUZZLES: Uninteresting SUPPORTS: MS-DOS | |
| CHARACTERS: Unimportant DIFFICULTY: Easy | |
| South American Trek by Conrad Button is an educational text | |
| adventure designed to teach children about South American geography. | |
| The plot is a bizarre cross between a wasteful Federal pork program, | |
| and a college fraternity initiation. | |
| You are sent by the President to spy on South America. But rather | |
| than seeking to learn about troop strengths or drug lord activity, your | |
| mission is to learn things like Venezuela's leading export, and the | |
| capital of Peru (a quick look in the atlas could have saved millions of | |
| taxpayer dollars). | |
| You start on Devil's Island and must travel to South America by | |
| raft (here's where the fraternity-like stuff comes in). Once there, | |
| you wander around learning about the various countries and solving | |
| puzzles to try to acquire the item you need to signal the submarine | |
| waiting for you at Cape Horn. Once you've reached the sub, the captain | |
| will ask you six trivia questions about South America. If you get a | |
| question wrong, back you go. You have a maximum of three opportunities | |
| to get all six questions right. | |
| The map scale varies tremendously. Some areas are no bigger than a | |
| temple or a mine shaft, others are the size of a city, or even an | |
| entire region. | |
| But since South American Trek, or S.A.T. (appropriate acronym) is | |
| an educational game, we should not be asking whether its plot is | |
| plausible, but rather, whether or not it fulfills its goal of educating | |
| while making learning fun. Unfortunately, the answer is that it most | |
| certainly does not. The programming may have been good by 1986's | |
| shareware standards, but now or then, the game is worse than a month of | |
| detention. | |
| Like all Buttonware text games, the 2-word parser is rock bottom. | |
| There are absolutely no synonyms for anything. If you try to refer to | |
| the "rowboat" as a "boat", the game will not know what you are talking | |
| about. To make it even more confusing, some items are known only by | |
| their adjective. If you see "copper ore", you must type "take copper". | |
| "Take ore" will not work. | |
| In addition, the map is especially confusing. Generally speaking, | |
| there are two ways that text game authors can make their map | |
| challenging. The first way is to change directions in transit. For | |
| example, suppose that you leave a room by going south, but must go west | |
| rather than north to return. | |
| The second way is by varying the transit length. For example, look | |
| at the following map: | |
| E D C | |
| A B | |
| As you can see, the distance between A and B is longer than the | |
| distance between E and D. As a result, if you go from A to B first, | |
| you will probably draw a short line, and only after you have then gone | |
| to C, D, E, and A will you discover that the first line wasn't long | |
| enough and have to redraw the whole thing. | |
| Using this motif once or twice may make a game a little more | |
| challenging, but South American Trek uses it extensively. Not only is | |
| the technique totally unsuitable for the beginning audience that the | |
| game is aimed at, but it is used to such excess that even the advanced | |
| gamer will be annoyed more than challenged. The beginner will never | |
| want to play another text adventure again. | |
| The information about South America is presented in the "room" | |
| descriptions, and in one or two speeches made by Miss Diddlemeyer, an | |
| American teacher you may pick up along the way, but who is not | |
| necessary to win the game. The presentation is hardly more interesting | |
| than just reading it out of a book, since the game doesn't really make | |
| you apply the information anywhere, except in the trivia quiz that the | |
| submarine captain gives you at the end. The rather dry information | |
| about major exports, highest mountains, and longest rivers, does | |
| nothing to bring the area alive, since it is primarily a sidebar to the | |
| game rather than being integrated into it. | |
| There are one or two laudable points. The game's contrived and | |
| unintentionally humourous plot may give the game a small amount of cult | |
| value, and the idea of mixing education with play value is a good one, | |
| despite the poor execution seen here. | |
| Unfortunately the kids will be too busy trying to redraw their maps | |
| and play "guess-the-word" to have time to learn anything, much less | |
| have any fun. Gaming parents would be much better advised to try | |
| Carmen Sandiego. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: "Graeme Cree" <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> | |
| NAME: Stationfall GAMEPLAY: Infocom Standard | |
| AUTHOR: Steve Eric Meretzky PLOT: Detailed & developed | |
| EMAIL: ? ATMOSPHERE: Excellent | |
| AVAILABILITY: LTOI 1 WRITING: Excellent | |
| PUZZLES: Very Good SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports | |
| CHARACTERS: Very Good DIFFICULTY: Above Average | |
| The sequel to Planetfall, Stationfall takes place 5 years later. | |
| Sent in a shuttle on a routine bureaucratic errand to a local space | |
| station, you arrive to find the station deserted, a strange alien space | |
| ship in one of the docking bays, and mechanical devices behaving | |
| erratically. You must discover what happened to the crew, and deal | |
| with the unknown threat before your limited supplies run out. | |
| Generally, the problem with sequels is that they are either a | |
| boring rehash of the original, or they are so completely different that | |
| they are sequels in name only. Stationfall strikes a marvelous balance | |
| between these two extremes, and provides a quintessential example of | |
| what a sequel ought to be. The old happy-go-lucky Stellar Patrol charm | |
| is still there, but it only partially covers a new and more somber | |
| tone. Whereas in Planetfall, we see only empty buildings to show us | |
| that something is wrong, in Stationfall more grim clues show through | |
| the cracks: bloody notes; log entries that break off in mid sentence; | |
| common household appliances that may blow up in your face, and strange | |
| sounds coming from the sealed off lower decks. Where in Planetfall, we | |
| are able to undo virtually all of the damage in the end, in Stationfall | |
| all of the laughs can't change the feeling that somehow things won't | |
| work out so neatly this time, nor do they. | |
| The characters are few, but well developed, and disturbingly not | |
| always what you would expect. The puzzles go beyond the normal Infocom | |
| style at points. Deciphering ability will solve one, a trip to the | |
| dictionary may help with another. A few are quite obscure, but | |
| generally even these have some clue, generally in the form of a piece | |
| of guesswork made by the former occupants. | |
| The plot is extremely well detailed, and pieces of it are hidden | |
| all over the station. Some of the puzzles are almost as good as those | |
| in Starcross, but rather than being isolated, they all contribute to | |
| supplying a piece of the story. | |
| All in all, Stationfall is an outstanding blending of humour and | |
| suspense; puzzles and story. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: "Graeme Cree" <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com> | |
| NAME: Wishbringer: The Magick Stone of Dreams | |
| GAMEPLAY: Infocom Standard | |
| AUTHOR: Brian Moriarty PLOT: Pretty Good | |
| EMAIL: ? ATMOSPHERE: Very Good | |
| AVAILABILITY: LTOI 2 WRITING: Very Good | |
| PUZZLES: Average SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports | |
| CHARACTERS: Above Average DIFFICULTY: Introductory | |
| Although it's not widely realized, Wishbringer takes place in the | |
| Zork/Enchanter universe. The Festeron Town Library, where the Legend | |
| of Wishbringer book is checked out from is also the source of some of | |
| the documention found in the Zork Trilogy. In Wishbringer, you begin | |
| as a mail clerk in the Festeron Post Office, who is sent to deliver a | |
| letter to the Magick Shoppe at the other end of town. When you get | |
| there, you discover that the shop owners' cat is being held by the Evil | |
| One in exchange for the magick Wishbringer stone. | |
| When you leave the Shoppe you discover that the old woman has | |
| slipped you the stone, and that the town of Festeron has changed into a | |
| dark caricature of itself called Witchville. As you explore, you find | |
| that the former items and occupants of the town have transformed into | |
| twisted alter egos of themselves (the effect is much like that of | |
| classic Star Trek's "Mirror, Mirror" episode). Your mission is to | |
| defeat the Evil One and your boss, Mr. Crisp, and to transform the town | |
| back into Festeron, with the help of the Wishbringer stone, some | |
| friendly platypii, and your own raw wits. | |
| Wishbringer's puzzles are generally very easy, and most of them | |
| have multiple solutions, being solvable either through reasoning, or | |
| using the Wishbringer stone to wish for some sort of aid. But if you | |
| rely too much on the wishes, you may fail to acquire items that you may | |
| need to solve later puzzles. In online conferences author Brian | |
| Moriarty has said that because of this, the moral of the story is that | |
| frivolous wishing can be a bad thing. | |
| The atmosphere wavers between being comic and sinister, and is | |
| difficult to classify. At times it seems almost as though it is trying | |
| to be a children's game, what with having the plot revolve around a | |
| kidnapped cat, and supplying such fanciful images as talking platypii, | |
| and disembodied boots that patrol the town. | |
| Wishbringer was one of the 5 older titles chosen to be reissued in | |
| a bare bones Solid Gold edition with onscreen hints. This was probably | |
| purely to extend its marketing cycle, as it is one of the Infocom games | |
| that least needed onscreen hints. Indeed, the "wish for advice" | |
| function of the Wishbringer stone already partially fullfilled this | |
| role. Since the Solid Gold editions had greatly reduced documentation, | |
| the Legend of Wishbringer book was deleted from the packaging and | |
| incorporated into the program itself, appearing as a storybook in your | |
| starting inventory. | |
| Wishbringer was also one of the books chosen to be novelised in | |
| Avon's Infocom books series. The novelization of Wishbringer, written | |
| by Craig Shaw Gardner, author of the Batman Returns novelization (among | |
| others) deals with a different transformation of the town, and a | |
| different postman named Simon, who deals with the problem in a | |
| different way than in the game. Though very well written in points, | |
| and one of Avon's better Infocom books, the plot is not always | |
| completely consistent. For example, at one point we are told that the | |
| Evil One needed to physically acquire the stone to make the | |
| transformation permanent, and that if no one had it that that it would | |
| be temporary. Later, we are told contrarily the Magick Shoppe owner | |
| must herself possess the stone in order to prevent the transformation | |
| from being permanent. Since she had voluntarily let the stone out of | |
| her possession in the first place, this makes her look either very | |
| stupid, or very confused, or both. | |
| Wishbringer is generally a very fondly remembered game, even by | |
| those who feel moved to apologize for the ease of the puzzles. | |
| READER'S SCOREBOARD---------------------------------------------------------- | |
| Notes: | |
| A - Runs on Amigas. | |
| AP - Runs on Apple IIs. | |
| GS - Runs on Apple IIGS. | |
| AR - Runs on Archimedes Acorns. | |
| C - Commercial, no fixed price. | |
| C30 - Commercial, with a fixed price of $30. | |
| F - Freeware. | |
| GMD - Available on ftp.gmd.de | |
| I - Runs on IBM compatibles. | |
| M - Runs on Macs. | |
| S20 - Shareware, registration costs $20. | |
| 64 - Runs on Commodore 64s. | |
| TAD - Written with TADS. This means it can run on: | |
| AmigaDOS, NeXT and PC, Atari ST/TT/Falcon, DECstation | |
| (MIPS) Unix Patchlevel 1 and 2, IBM, IBM RT, Linux, Apple | |
| Macintosh, SGI Iris/Indigo running Irix, Sun 4 (Sparc) | |
| running SunOS or Solaris 2, Sun 3, OS/2, and even a 386+ | |
| protected mode version. | |
| AGT - Available for IBM, Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST. This does not | |
| include games made with the Master's edition. | |
| ADVSYS - Available for PC and Macintosh only, or so my sources tell | |
| me. (Source code available as well. So it can be ported | |
| to other computers.) | |
| INF - Infocom or Inform game. These games will run on: | |
| Atari ST, Amiga, Apple Macintosh, IBM, Unix, VMS, Apple II, | |
| Apple IIGS, C64, TSR-80, and Archimedes Acorn. There may be | |
| other computers on which it runs as well. | |
| Name Avg Sc Chr Puz # Sc Rlvt Ish Notes: | |
| ==== ====== === === ==== ======== ====== | |
| Adv. of Eliz. Highe 3.1 0.8 0.3 1 5 F_AGT | |
| Another...No Beer 2.5 0.1 1.0 1 4 S10_IBM_GMD | |
| Arthur: Excalibur 8.6 1.8 1.7 1 4 C_INF | |
| Ballyhoo 7.0 1.8 1.6 2 4 C_INF | |
| Beyond Zork 8.0 1.6 2.0 2 5 C_INF | |
| Border Zone 6.1 1.1 1.4 2 4 C_INF | |
| Bureaucracy 8.4 2.0 1.8 2 5 C_INF | |
| Castaway 1.1 0.0 0.4 1 5 F_IBM_GMD | |
| Cosmoserve 8.7 1.3 1.4 2 5 F_AGT_GMD | |
| Curses 8.3 1.3 1.7 6 2 F_INF | |
| Cutthroats 6.3 1.4 1.2 4 1 C_INF | |
| Crypt v2.0 5.0 1.0 1.5 1 3 S12_IBM_GMD | |
| Deadline 7.2 2 x C_INF | |
| Deep Space Drifter 5.5 1.4 1 3 S15_TAD_GMD | |
| Detective 0.7 0.0 0.0 2 4-5 F_AGT_GMD | |
| Ditch Day Drifter 7.1 1.2 1.6 1 2 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Dungeon Adventure 6.8 1.3 1.6 1 4 F_SEE REVIEW | |
| Dungeon of Dunjin 7.0 1.0 1.5 1 3 S20_IBM_MAC_GMD | |
| Electrabot 0.7 0.0 0.0 1 5 F_AGT_(GMD?) | |
| Enchanter 7.0 0.8 1.3 4 2 C_INF | |
| Enhanced N/A 0 2 S10_TAD_GMD | |
| Great Archaelog. Race 6.5 1.0 1.5 1 3 S20_TAD_GMD | |
| Hitchhiker's Guide 8.2 1.6 1.8 4 5 C_INF | |
| Hollywood Hijinx 5.5 2 x C_INF | |
| Horror30.Zip 3.6 0.0 0.9 1 3 S20_IBM_GMD | |
| Horror of Rylvania 7.7 1 1 C20_TAD_GMD (Demo) | |
| Humbug 7.4 1 x S10_GMD (Uncertain) | |
| Infidel 6.9 5 1-2 C_INF | |
| Jacaranda Jim 7.0 1 x S10_GMD (Uncertain) | |
| John's Fire Witch 8.5 1.2 1.5 1 4 S6_TADS_GMD | |
| Journey 6.9 1.3 0.8 1 5 C_INF | |
| Klaustrophobia 7.3 1.3 1.4 3 1 S15_AGT_GMD | |
| Leather Goddesses 8.0 1.6 1.7 3 4 C_INF | |
| The Legend Lives! 8.2 0.8 1.5 1 5 F_TADS_GMD | |
| Lurking Horror, The 6.9 1.4 1.2 4 1,3 C_INF | |
| Magic.Zip 4.5 0.5 0.5 1 3 S20_IBM_GMD | |
| Mind Forever Voyaging 8.4 1.5 0.3 3 5 C_INF | |
| Moonmist 5.8 4 1 C_INF | |
| Mop & Murder 4.9 0.5 1.0 1 4-5 F_AGT_GMD | |
| Multidimen. Thief 5.3 0.4 1.0 2 2 S?/F_AGT_GMD | |
| Nord and Bert 3.9 2 4 C_INF | |
| Odieus': Flingshot 3.2 0.4 0.7 1 5 F_INF_GMD | |
| One Hand Clapping 7.1 1.1 1.3 2 5 F_ADVSYS_GMD | |
| Planetfall 7.1 3 4 C_INF | |
| Plundered Hearts 7.9 1.2 1.2 1 4 C_INF | |
| Sanity Claus 9.0 1 1 S10_AGT_GMD | |
| Save Princeton 5.6 1 x S10_TAD_GMD | |
| Seastalker 5.4 2 4 C_INF | |
| Shades of Grey 7.8 1.2 1.5 2 1-2 F_AGT_GMD | |
| Sherlock 8.5 1.5 1.8 1 4 C_INF | |
| Shogun 7.1 1.5 0.5 1 4 C_INF | |
| Sorceror 7.3 0.6 1.6 4 2 C_INF | |
| South American Trek 0.9 0.2 0.5 1 5 ?_IBM_GMD | |
| Space Aliens...Cardigan 1.6 0.5 0.4 3 3 S60_AGT_GMD | |
| Spellbreaker 8.1 1.2 1.8 3 2 C_INF | |
| Starcross 7.2 4 1 C_INF | |
| Stationfall 7.5 1.6 1.5 3 5 C_INF | |
| Suspect 5.9 1 x C_INF | |
| Suspended 7.0 1 x C_INF | |
| Tossed into Space 3.9 0.6 0.2 1 4 F_AGT_GMD | |
| Treasure.Zip N/A 0 3 S20_IBM_GMD | |
| Trinity 8.8 1.4 1.7 6 1-2 C_INF | |
| Unnkulian One-Half 7.0 1.3 1.7 4 1 F_TAD_GMD | |
| Unnkulian Unventure 1 8.0 1.3 1.7 3 1-2 S10_TAD_GMD | |
| Unnkulian Unventure 2 7.2 1.4 1.5 3 1 S10_TAD_GMD | |
| Unnkulian Zero 9.0 1 1 C25_TAD_GMD (Demo) | |
| Waystation 8.0 1.2 1.5 1 x F_TAD_GMD | |
| Wishbringer 6.7 1.2 1.0 2 5 C_INF | |
| Witness, The 7.0 1.7 1.2 3 1,3 C_INF | |
| World 6.9 1.0 1.4 1 4 F_MISC_GMD (See Rev.) | |
| Zork 0 6.5 1.1 2.0 1 x C_INF | |
| Zork 1 5.9 0.6 1.5 6 1-2 C_INF | |
| Zork 2 6.7 0.8 1.6 4 1-2 C_INF | |
| Zork 3 6.0 0.6 1.4 4 1-2 C_INF | |
| -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- | |
| The Top Three: | |
| A game is not eligible for the Top Three 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. | |
| 1. Trinity 8.8 6 votes | |
| 2. Mind Forevr Voyagn. 8.4 3 votes | |
| 3. Curses 8.3 6 votes | |
| -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- | |
| Editor's Picks of the Month: | |
| This month has been good to us. We've been handed The Legend Lives! | |
| on a platter. That's my first pick of the month. | |
| My other pick of the month is Waystation, advertised just below. It | |
| is a fairly enjoyable game, with a few puzzles that seemed somewhat unfair to | |
| me. Both are TADS, both are free. How can you lose? | |
| The Legend Lives | |
| ftp.gmd.de:/if-archive/games/tads/ and then just pick one of the | |
| versions you find there. | |
| Waystation and Solution | |
| ftp.gmd.de:/if-archive/games/tads/way.zip | |
| ftp.gmd.de:/if-archive/unprocessed/waystn.sol [Temporarily.] | |
| ADVERTISEMENTS--------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| From: "Stephen Granade" <sgranade SP@G obu.arknet.edu> | |
| Newly released! Yet Another Sci-fi Adventure Game (tm)! It's fun, it's | |
| kooky, it's... | |
| WAYSTATIONNNnnnnn..... | |
| While driving home one night, your car mysteriously dies. You get out, pop | |
| the hood, and wham! that's the last you remember...until you wake up | |
| trapped in a cell. With no idea of how you got there and no one to ask, | |
| you must escape and find out why you were kidnapped. | |
| Visit the lovely sewage dump Melica! Tour abandoned Comanis! Avoid Efric | |
| at all costs! The game is guaranteed 99.9% maze free, and is freeware. | |
| That's right, freeware. (I wrote it as an exercise to see what TADS could | |
| do.) | |
| The game is in TADS .gam format, and can be found at ftp.gmd.de in the | |
| directory if-archive/games/tads, under way.zip. (If necessary, e-mail me | |
| at sgranade SP@G obu.arknet.edu, & I'll put a .tar'ed file there as well.) All | |
| comments are welcome, all suggestions are listened to. | |
| See what one man, a twisted imagination, and lots of free time hath | |
| wrought. Waystation! Get yours today. | |
| CLOSING REMARKS-------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| Well folks, SPAG is getting automated. That's right, no longer will | |
| I have to suffer through typing 30 names into my e-mail program. This is all | |
| thanks to Magnus Olsson. I thank you, Magnus, and my fingers thank you. The | |
| next version of the FAQ will detail the functioning of the new mailing list, | |
| and I will post the details as soon as I figure them out myself. :) | |
| Well, that's all until next issue. | |
| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| Thank you for helping to keep text adventures alive! | |
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