___. .___ _ ___. / _| | \ / \ / ._| \ \ | o_/ | | | |_. .\ \ | | | o | | | | The |___/ociety for the |_|romotion of |_|_|dventure \___|ames. ISSUE # 12 Edited by Magnus Olsson (zebulon SP@G pobox.com) December 13, 1997. SPAG Website: http://www.afn.org/~afn55673/spag.html Contest Website: http://www.afn.org/~afn55673/contest/ SPAG #12 is copyright (c) 1997 by Magnus Olsson. Authors of reviews retain the rights to their contributions. All email addresses are spamblocked -- replace the name of our magazine with the traditional 'at' sign. REVIEWS IN THIS ISSUE ----------------------------------------------------- Acorn Court Bastow Manor Everybody Loves a Parade Fish! John's Fire Witch Mercy The Meteor, the Stone, and a Long Glass of Sherbet Mystery Island The Pawn So Far The Space Under the Window Time: All Things Come To An End Unnkulia Zero: The Search for Amanda The Wedding Zork I Zork II Zork III EDITORIAL------------------------------------------------------------------ Finally - a new issue of SPAG. A bit late, I'm afraid; my IF activities are in a bit of an Avalonish state at the moment. I can only hope that you will find the contents worth the wait. Christmas is drawing near, but I'll refrain from dubbing this the Holiday Issue - if only for the fact that there is nothing Christmas-related at all in this issue. I will, however, use the season as a pretext to indulge in something not uncommon at this time of year: a bit of looking back, perhaps even some nostalgia. One of the reviews in this issue happens to be of a game called "John's Fire Witch". This was one of the first games I reviewed for SPAG (in issue #4, March 1995), and I remember being quite enthusiastic about it. Why? Because it's a good game, of course, but also because back then, in the grey mists of antiquity (almost three whole years ago!), we IF fans weren't exactly spoiled with new releases. New games were few and far between, and each new release was quite an event in the IF community. Things have changed a lot since then. Today, it's difficult to keep up with all the new IF, especially during the contest season, the net-wide IF community has grown considerably, and general interest in IF seems to be re-emerging - an IF Rennaissance after the Dark Ages that followed the decline and fall of Infocom. Yes, it's been three great years for us IF fans! And just as European artists and scientists of the Rennaissance were beginning to realize that it was possible to go beyond the achievements of the ancients, so we're beginning to see new IF that's in many ways better than the Infocom classics. It is very fitting that this issue of SPAG contains reviews both of classics, such as the Magnetic Scrolls games; new works in the classic tradition, such as last year's competition winner "Sherbet", and efforts in entirely new directions, such as "Space Under The Window". And as a final nostalgic end-of-the-year touch, the review section ends with Duncan Steven's reviews of the Zork trilogy (yes, I know that we've put up a moratorium on Infocom reviews; but rules are made to break). But on to the reviews. The next issue will probably be dominated by this year's competition and have no space for looking back. I'm eagerly looking forward to what next year has in store for the IF community! Magnus Olsson NEW GAMES-------------------------------------------------------------------- For obvious reasons, there aren't many new releases this time - apart from the competition entries, of course. Two hardy souls have braved the risks of drowning in the competition deluge, however, and released new Inform games: The Zuni Doll, An Interactive Horror Story, by Jesse Burnenko (ftp://ftp.gmd.de/games/infocom/doll.z5) Kook U, An Interactive Kook Adventure, by sbfaq SP@G genesis.nred.ma.us (ftp://ftp.gmd.de/games/infocom/kooku.z5) { To stay impartial regarding the ongoing competition, I'll refrain from making any "Editor's Pick" this issue } SUBMISSION POLICY ---------------------------------------------------------- SPAG is a non-paying fanzine specializing in reviews of text adventure games, a.k.a. Interactive Fiction. This includes the classic Infocom games and similar games, but also some graphic adventures where the primary player-game communication is text based. Authors retain the rights to use their reviews in other contexts. We accept submissions that have been previously published elsewhere, although original reviews are preferred. At the moment, we are reluctant to accept any more reviews of Infocom games (though exceptions happen). KEY TO SCORES AND REVIEWS---------------------------------------------------- Consider the following review header: NAME: Cutthroats AUTHOR: Infocom EMAIL: ??? DATE: September 1984 PARSER: Infocom Standard SUPPORTS: Infocom ports AVAILABILITY: LTOI 2 URL: Not available. 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. More elaborate descriptions of the rating and scoring systems may be found in the FAQ and in issue #9 of SPAG, which should be available at: ftp://ftp.gmd.de:/if-archive/magazines/SPAG/ REVIEWS---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: agt20 SP@G phy.cam.ac.uk (Alistair G. Thomas) NAME: Acorn Court AUTHOR: Todd S. Murchison DATE: September 1997 PARSER: Inform Standard SUPPORTS: Infocom ports AVAILABILITY: Freeware URL: ftp.gmd.de//if-archive/games/infocom/acorncourt.z5 You start Acorn Court in the courtyard of the title, with no idea what you're trying to achieve. This early location shows the effort that's been made to imbue the setting with a distinct atmosphere. A bit overdone, in my opinion, but I was pleased the effort had been made and was looking forward to exploring this world. However, 'twas not to be. There's a reason why you have no idea what's going on - nothing is. This is a one-location game, containing one relatively straightforward puzzle, and no plot. I can't really give examples of the text or sub-puzzles without revealing a fair proportion of the game. I don't know if this was written as a get-to-grips-with-Inform exercise? If so it's fine. The one quite complex object is quite well programmed, and while there's the odd quirk (You are carrying: twelve tennis balls, six tennis balls and) and the odd misleading response when you don't quite get the author's preferred wording, there are no major problems. Have a look if you fancy a five or ten minute puzzle, or better still, see if there's larger game by the same author. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: Yuzo Takada a.k.a. Dark Fiber NAME: Bastow Manor (The Secret of Bastow Manor) AUTHOR: Softgold EMAIL: ??? DATE: very early 1980's PARSER: Scott Adams Standard SUPPORTS: C64 and C64 Emulators (many platforms) AVAILABILITY: IF archive URL: ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/c64/bastow.gz Bastow Manor is one of those old classic Commodore 64 games. In a fit of nostalgia I hunted high and low for this and a bunch of other classic games (see the review of Mystery Island as well), some of which I managed to find with the help of Andrew Williams. Bastow Manor is one of those C64 text graphic games where the C64 ASCII character set is used to its full advantage to draw the graphics. This form of textgraphic was basically confined to the C64 genre of games. The graphics in this game (and the other Mountain Valley and Softgold games) are some of the best C64 textgraphic ASCII pics you're likely to ever come across. Every location has its own individual picture of about half screen height and full screen width (This changed in later games to half screen height and half screen width). All the Softgold and Mountain Valley games are very reminiscent of the Scott Adams games. They are very small sized games with few locations and objects. Most every location serves a purpose and every item has at least one use in the game. Bastow Manor uses the standard verb-noun parser. The story behind the game is err, I don't really know. You're not told in any introduction at the start of the game. Maybe there was a nice lead-in in the manual or documentation but none of that is available, so I shall give you what I assume to be the lead-in. The aim is to get into Bastow Manor and find its secret cache of gold and escape!! Err, yes. Were you expecting something else? Text in the game is minimal at best and I suspect the picture is meant to explain more about your surroundings than the "You are in a shed" "You are outside the manor wall" descriptions. Objects have no description whatsoever. A knife is a knife is a knife is a knife. An interesting side effect of the game is that it was very poorly programmed, so that you must "look" at an object multiple times to find out all you can about it. Take for example the mail box, you need to look at it twice or you will miss a valuable clue! There are a few other examples of this through out the game. Some of the puzzles in Bastow Manor are logical and some are stupid. One of the puzzles I'll give away to you here and now, as it's impossible to complete it without looking at the source to the game (an error on part of the programmer), in that there is a panel above the desk in the study. There is no mention of this panel anywhere in the game at all, and thats all I'll give away to you ^_^. Fortunately you don't have to play guess the verb to complete any of the puzzles. Like Scott Adams' games, Bastow Manor is small and well designed in places. Location exits and the layout of the house are fairly logical, i.e. the mad scientist's laboratory is not connected to the upstairs ensuite. Some of the puzzles are a bit frustrating and death is quick to follow a wrong move. If you don't save often before you try something you will find yourself back at the start of the game. It IS unfortunate that you have to die once or twice before you realise that it's a puzzle that needs to be overcome (re: the puzzle to do with the suit of armour, the apple puzzle). With exception of one dodgy puzzle (re: panel in the study) the game is fairly easy and can be completed in a few hours. The nostalgia factor is a good reason to play this game, if any, or if you have two hours to spare. If you already have a copy of this game but you did not get it from the IF archive, I strongly suggest you get the one from the archive as I have patched and bugfixed it so you can save/load at any point and some of the more nasty bugs were removed (the knife/clock bug for instance). Emulator users: PC64 is not a good choice for this game as it gets the colours wrong, well not wrong just not... right ^_^. Frodo or C64s get the browns and greens the correct shades. In scoring this game out of 10, note that I am using Scott Adams as a benchmark. I would give this game a 7 out of 10. The nostalgia factor gives the overall score a +1 so its really 6/10. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April NAME: Everybody Loves a Parade AUTHOR: Cody Sandifer E-MAIL: Dunno DATE: 1996 PARSER: TADS advanced SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD) URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/tads/Parade.gam VERSION: Release 2.1 Everybody Loves a Parade manages a difficult feat: it's an enjoyable and rewarding game in its own right, whose puzzles take real thought, but it also essays an important innovation in IF playing style and carries it off brilliantly. That innovation will not be revealed here, as the surprise is part of the value of the innovation and giving it away would spoil the fun for future players, but I know I was thoroughly caught off guard at a certain point late in the game. On the face of it, that development is only a small part of the game and its effect on gameplay is minimal--but when players who have completed the game remember it, I think it is safe to say that one particular moment, more than any other, will remain with them. At first, I questioned the author's judgment in engineering the moment in the way he did--but eventually decided that his approach, more than any other (well, aside from similar strategies), grabbed the reader's attention. The plot is entertaining and reasonably original. You are an engineer sent across the country to start a new job, but you bog down in the wilds of Arizona with almost no gas, stuck behind a parade for a "rock festival"--and no, Janis Joplin is not in town. The events that ensue are engagingly cartoony; though most of the parade elements amount to amusing but irrelevant sideshows, the silliness adds to the charm. (A gravel float? A tank full of jars of pebbles?) The characters are also well done, though better developed in some cases than in others; the humor value of the New Age bikers is considerable, but it might have been nice to see what they do when you ask them about things like inner peace, meditation, truth, etc. (Not to nitpick, but the line "The bikers toss an unruly customer out of the pub and forgive themselves for their trespasses" is a little silly. Since when do New Agers care about sin?) The encounter with the bikers does, if the randomized movements come out right, produce this exchange... As the words pass before your eyes, your spirit energies ebb and flow between hidden layers of conscious awareness, broken judgment, and unspoken truth. Once the trance lifts, your soul speaks of love and respect through haiku verse, the natural language of inner peace. The old man turns his pockets inside out to search for spare change. ...which one could take as a commentary on quite a lot of things if so inclined. At any rate, though the characters never lose the feel of being props or obstacles, they do provide considerable amusement. Everybody Loves a Parade is not extremely difficult once the first puzzle is solved -- but that first puzzle involves searching of scenery that just barely gets a mention, and as such might take quite a while to solve. Two other puzzles later in the game require a fairly large intuitive leap, and a willingness to pursue courses of action that don't seem initially helpful (and which are, well, largely motivationless), and those moments pose considerable stumbling blocks among mostly logical puzzles. (Though one solution in particular is rather clever, and rewards careful reading.) The quality of the puzzles can be appreciated once they are solved, but the intuitive leaps required can be a bit daunting at times. (I'm not sure what it says about me, though, that the final puzzle -- at least, the way to get the final 10 points -- seemed like a natural reaction to the previous line, and it was the first thing I tried.) There is much amusement to be had in the game even when stuck, though, just from wandering around and trying things -- it seems safe to say that this game has the most particularized responses to SMELL [object] in the history of IF. Mechanically, Everybody Loves a Parade works well; the TADS parser is adequate for the job, and there are several synonyms for most words. The writing is also quite good, though not exceptionally descriptive--few of the scenes actually came alive from the writing, though admittedly that would have been difficult given the bizarre quality of the situations. The author trades absurdity for realism, mostly, and does quite well with it--but creating absurd scenes is a different task from creating real ones, and it is therefore hard to compare the writing to a game that seeks to bring a place or event to life. Cody Sandifer creates a carnival atmosphere, but a carnival atmosphere is hard to sustain on repetition--a bouncy or silly room description fades on the tenth reading in a way that a menacing or dreary mood does not. All this is not, obviously, to say that Everybody Loves a Parade is not written effectively, merely that the intent is more to amuse and entertain than to create lasting images. Well, actually, as noted above, that isn't true -- there is one image that does last, and quite well -- but the circumstances for that are unusual. Mr. Sandifer clearly spent quite a while writing Everybody Loves a Parade: it's full of humor that indicates real thoroughness. There are several irrelevant objects -- "objects", perhaps -- that cannot quite be considered red herrings because it would be difficult to consider most of them potential solutions to problems, and which reduce the feel of "am I done coding yet?" that sometimes plagues IF. (An author who takes the trouble to code a "pulsing hunk of supernatural hypermatter" is an author who cares about his finished product.) That some scenes made me wish for more development is more a testament to the amusing ideas at work than any laziness about coding; I certainly can't say that there were many logical responses that went unprovided for. Perhaps of my initial objection to the twist alluded to above was that it didn't fit the game, but when I thought about it more, I revised that assessment. Only in a romp like this could the author pull the player up short in the way Mr. Sandifer does -- and there are (at least, it seemed so to me) very unfunny (as in, not a laughing matter) issues at stake when it does happen, both within and outside the game. There is certainly a place for games like "Tapestry," where the player has to shut his or her eyes and ears to miss the Important Underlying Message, but the IF world should not underrate the power of this game's approach in making the player think. There is, on the whole, much to like about Everybody Loves a Parade, and though there are slow points and though the humor slows a bit when the player has traipsed through the few locations several times, such is the nature of humorous IF; Mr. Sandifer carries off his ideas well. It is a testament to the author's skill that the player can look back on Everybody Loves a Parade as both entertaining and thoroughly thought-provoking. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: Yuzo Takada a.k.a. Dark Fiber NAME: Fish! AUTHOR: Magnetic Scrolls DATE: Mid-80's? SUPPORTS: See note below AVAILABILITY: Commercial (se note) Fish rocks dammit! Magnetic Scrolls kill Infocom dead! You heard me! This game is full to the gills with puns. The game is one big pun. Magnetic Scrolls is a Pommy company and all its games have that Pommy feel and "English" spelling. The story concerns you, who are an interdimensional secret agent whose job it is to warp into worlds and thwart the terrorists of the Seven Deadly Fins. The start of the game sees you relaxing inside the body of a fish in a fishbowl. Your first task is to solve three mini puzzles of an "intermediate" toughness, then its onto the "large" portion of the game in the land where everyone is a fish. The puzzles are very clever and logical and the text is very "Magnetic Scrollsish" and makes for a great read. The parser is probably the best of all the Magnetic Scrolls games and is as good, if not better than the Infocom parsers. I absolutley loved this game. { Editor's Note concerning Availability: The Magnetic Scrolls games were sold commercially. Second-hand copies occasionally turn up for sale in the games newsgroups. Reliable sources also tell us that they are available from certain well-known FTP sites (though not from the IF-archive). Of course, the illegality of such distribution channels forbids us from mention them here... The good news is that you don't need a semi-antique computer to play these games (however you manage to get a copy): Niclas Karlsson has written a portable interpreter called _Magnetic_ which runs on a variety of platforms. See ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/magnetic-scrolls/interpreters/magnetic/ } =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April NAME: John's Fire Witch AUTHOR: John Baker E-MAIL: baker-j SP@G ix.netcom.com DATE: 1995 PARSER: TADS standard SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters AVAILABILITY: Lunchware (buy author lunch to register) URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/tads/firwitch.gam VERSION: Release 1.01 There isn't a lot to John's Fire Witch; it's relatively short (250 moves or thereabouts required, and much of that is traveling hither and yon) and the puzzles and characters are simple. What's there, though, is refreshingly well put together, with very few obvious bugs or gameplay problems; as first efforts go, this is one of the better ones you'll find. You, the player, have come to visit your friend John Baker -- who, for an author included in his own game, takes quite a verbal beating; we certainly don't get a very good impression of John's habits and tastes. There is no sign of John in the apartment, though, other than junk scattered here and there and a diary left in the bedroom suggesting that John has stumbled into a confrontation between a Fire Witch and Ice Wixard residing in his basement. (This suggests to you about John that "years of heavy drinking have finally destroyed his mind.") Nevertheless, you investigate the hole in the basement and, sure enough, find all manner of strange things, none of them obviously supporting the claim that an Ice Wizard and Fire Witch are in the area (until the very end) but intriguing in their own right. The best of the puzzles is one involving a devil and the task he assigns you: the solution requires an intuitive leap of sorts, but a sensible one, if that makes sense; though most are fairly clever and rewarding to solve. There are few moments in John's Fire Witch that break the spell, so to speak, by drawing the player's attention to the mechanics of the game. One is a painful guess-the-verb moment, coupled with some illogicalities on the solution to the relevant puzzle (why one particular solution to the ring problem is deemed correct, and another incorrect, is less than obvious to me). There is a puzzle that cannot be solved until a certain number of turns have passed -- and if you move through the earlier part of the game efficiently, you may find yourself a bit puzzled about why there's no apparent way to move the game forward. (Or simply irritated about having to wait 50 or so turns for something to happen.) The inventory limit is fairly small and requires some step-retracing (arguably, this is more rather than less realistic, since the classic adventurer seems to have eleven hands, but it does complicate things), and there are a few situations that require somewhat exact syntax. But most nouns and verbs have several substitutes, though the game occasionally fails to fill in logical gaps (for instance, "sleep" with a bed in front of you puts you to sleep on the floor). Moreover, the game is free from scenery-object confusion, free from disambiguation problems, as far as I could tell ("which do you mean..."), and takes the trouble to code many specific responses to non-useful actions, lending to the polished feel. In short, even if there isn't much there, problems that distract from what is there are relatively few. The writing is mostly good, though it has its rough moments -- the death of an adversary is somewhat unnecessarily gruesome, something as unusual as a bridge made of ice gets virtually no description, and the game takes it upon itself to tell you when you stumble into a crystal grotto that "the overall effect is quite beautiful." Let me conclude that, John. You just tell me what's there. Still, most of the writing is solid, though some of the better descriptions are in the apartment rather than in the tunnels, which often feel, well, just a bit generic, and occasionally a tad clumsy. For example: Long Tunnel (1) This is a long tunnel leading north and south. It has definitely been purposefully made, being tiled with crafted stone. It looks like something that would have been created centuries ago. You can see the Red Crystal Grotto to the north, and a side corridor leads off to the east. Not awful, certainly, but there are more adept ways to suggest that the tunnel didn't just come about than "it looks like something that would have been created centuries ago." Like the rest of John's Fire Witch, though, the writing is good enough to keep the game enjoyable (and focus the player's attention on the puzzles, for that matter; more striking prose would give the game an exploratory feel, which might mesh oddly with its role as a diversion with some clever puzzles. And many moments have a certain deadpan charm, e.g. when you're about to be frozen: There is a loud and horrible rushing noise in your ears, and the room appears to be filling up with what you would describe as steam if it were not so very very cold. John's Fire Witch was designed as a short diversion, and it fills that purpose -- and more elaborate descriptions or development of the plot might distract from that purpose. As it is, the player need only grasp the essentials of what's going on (actually, not really even that) before plunging in and starting to solve puzzles -- and the unobtrusive writing is consistent with the overall feel. The ending points to a sequel, which may or may not be more elaborate -- but as s short "snack-sized" game, this one works quite well. Its general solidity (in comparison to much of what is produced nowadays) testifies to the undeniable truth that putting together workable, polished IF is not easy. On the whole, John's Fire Witch is not especially remarkable for anything in particular it does right, a few clever puzzles aside, but especially for a first effort, it deserves recognition for the many things it avoided doing wrong. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: Steve Bernard NAME: Mercy AUTHOR: Chris Klimas EMAIL: christopher.klimas SP@G washcoll.edu DATE: August 1997 PARSER: Inform SUPPORTS: Z-Machine AVAILABILITY: GMD URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/infocom/Mercy.z5 Your name is Dr. Peter Basham. Your job is Mercy, if you can call it that. There's nothing you or your colleagues can do about the recent outbreak of smallpox but help people to die as easily as possible. Once you were a pediatrician; now all you do all day is "euthanize" (the medical profession's nice term for "kill"). Chris Klimas' "Mercy" is probably my favorite of all the games to be released this year, including the competition. It can hardly be called a game, though. As the author says, it's more of a short story. It's heavily plot oriented, but flexible enough that the player can still make many choices along the way and take different branches. The character is predetermined with feelings and background supplied by the game, but it avoids the pitfall of simply telling the player that they feel a certain way. Rather, the character interjections fit so well with the plot and the atmosphere they never seem forced. The make-it-or-break-it aspect of "Mercy" is its lack of puzzles. That's right folks, "puzzle-less I-F"... That isn't to say that your actions don't affect how the story turns out, but it does mean no locked doors to open, no odd futuristic machines to operate, and no "find the smallpox cure in some obscure location" situations. But to be honest, I hardly noticed the absence of puzzles until after I was done. Seriously, the story and atmosphere are engaging enough that the inclusion of puzzles would probably take away from the game as a whole. Flaws? Well yes, there are a few. A couple spelling mistakes or extra typos occur here or there. There's a verb or two that could be recognized and a couple objects in room descriptions that the player might want to refer to but can't. Honestly, I assume the author has noticed or been notified of these things already. I just hope he'll put out a Release 2. It's weird, if I just described the game quickly (i.e. No puzzles, predefined character, clear plot from beginning to end...), it wouldn't sound very enticing. In fact, it sounds like it would be a bad game if you boil it down to just that. "Mercy" proves that these descriptions are not bad in and of themselves. By no means do the standard I-F conventions need to be adhered to in order to produce quality work. Chris Klimas says that he hopes "Mercy" is something new in the interactive fiction universe. I don't know if that's true or not, but it certainly was a breath of fresh air for me to play and it clearly is different. I love the feelings it stirs in me, the disturbing moodiness that hangs over the whole thing, the "love story", as it were... I kinda wish he'd kept it until the competition. It would have grabbed *my* highest rating. My Rating: I give it an 8.5. I felt guilty at first for giving it a rating comparable to such long, great games as Trinity or Jigsaw. Thing is, I really did like it that much. The comparison really isn't fair, though: you don't judge short stories against novels. I liked "Mercy" for different reasons. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April NAME: The Meteor, the Stone, and a Long Glass of Sherbet AUTHOR: Angela M. Horns, a.k.a. Graham Nelson E-MAIL: graham SP@G gnelson.demon.co.uk DATE: 1996 PARSER: Inform standard SUPPORTS: Inform ports AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD) URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/infocom/sherbet.z5 VERSION: Release 2 It is virtually a film cliche nowadays: early on, one character tells another everything the audience might need to know, sometimes in circumstances justifying such a tale but sometimes not. It's a clumsy device, but it keeps the audience from having to work too hard, always a vital element. Graham Nelson's Meteor... preempts that approach by setting out the plot in menu format, distinct from gameplay, a wholly laudable move in this particular game -- for the backstory that Nelson elects to give us is exhaustive enough that it would clutter gameplay considerably were it thrown in Hollywood-style. But it also catches the player somewhat off balance to find that the complicated setup is only minimally relevant to the game -- at least, to puzzle-solving; no puzzles require knowledge found in the backstory. Rather, Meteor... reduces the "solve puzzles because they're there to solve" feel by embedding the motivations for the player's action in the story, so that the plot makes sense of your actions while not requiring you to consult the setup constantly as a guideline. The game gives you an initial plot and set of motivations -- you are an ambassador from a small province sent to investigate strange doings while keeping relations amicable -- that provides credible reasons for your required actions. This is not to say that there are no holes or improbabilities, but there are remarkably few, considering how complicated the story become. It may not seem like the most notable feature of the game, but it's an element rarely seen in IF nowadays: a reasonably involved storyline that, suitably understood, makes sense of the game, even though the game is quite playable by itself. Well, mostly. Considering its authorship (*bow* *genuflect*), Meteor... is encumbered with a surprising number of gameplay problems, as in Stuff An Author Really Shouldn't Do. Among the less flagrant is a puzzle that involves waiting around, by my count, 23 turns before a solution is possible. Granted, there's nothing to do for those 23 turns anyway, and yes, a few things of some (but only some) interest happen while you're waiting around -- but given that the relevant event is not a one-turn happening when it does come along (you notice something that is henceforth there for the examining until you figure out what to do with it), it seems like the author could have hurried things along a tad. Now, yes, the point of the scene in question is to establish boredom, and it's certainly effective in that respect -- but mightn't effective writing have the same effect? In short, it's a questionable decision that risks annoying the player out of the game. More egregious are guess-the-verb moments -- a few relatively mild, one absolutely horrendous. (When you get there -- you'll know -- the relevant verb is "give." You're welcome.) It isn't at all clear what happened, besides, perhaps, that the author was rushed in putting the game together. There are other puzzling glitches -- some unlisted exits (one that made a puzzle's solution a complete surprise to me) and a description that I found wholly inadequate to convey the scene. (It relies on a better understanding of the term "scree" -- a Britishism? perhaps -- than I had, anyway.) One puzzle in particular toward the end of the game, involving the correct combination for a dial, is not blessed with huge whopping amounts of sense, and several other actions involve painfully exact wording that slows down the game. At one point, you lose some of your possessions unless you take steps to safeguard them -- but while it doesn't seem so unreasonable to have them appear again beside you if you've taken the right steps, the game requires a long circuitous route to retrieve the stuff. None of this makes the game unplayable or less than enjoyable, but it's a bit disconcerting in an otherwise strong entry. The puzzles are excellent; many involve a certain large-scale thinking, an awareness of how the game environment fits together as a whole, that feels genuinely fresh. A few, true, involve semi-suicidal actions, but they're so strongly hinted at by the game that they're more or less reasonable to try. (And what player really rejects actions on grounds that they're semi-suicidal anyway?) A few are a bit obscure, true, but not unguessable; the only one that seemed unfair was the result of a poor setup, as mentioned above, not the puzzle itself. The game is a tad inconsistent about what it rewards with points -- I was initially convinced I was wasting a needed resource on the wrong puzzle because I wasn't given a point for solving it -- but that's a minor blip on a set of very good puzzles. The reliance on physics and common sense recalls the appeal of the Zork series: the puzzles required understanding and using conventional objects to achieve your ends, even in fantastic settings, rather than mastering complicated systems or foreign concepts. In that way, the Zork games were always accessible -- lack of a scientific bent was never a bar -- and here, similarly, the puzzles reward logic and logical experimentation. (Particularly good is the problem requiring use of the stick, and the way you use the hornet is certainly intriguing.) The game manages to recapture the magic element of the Enchanter trilogy without making your puzzle-solving largely magic-based; a few of the puzzles involve magic, but few enough that trying all your spells in a given situation is not generally reliable. In short, the puzzles in Meteor... are generally good, and even memorable in a few cases. As for the format of magic itself, the "learn spell" routine -- well, it never troubled me much, but apparently it makes many weep and gnash their teeth. It fits the feel here, wherein magic is only being rediscovered, but it isn't, strictly, necessary. A game that purports to return to the Zork universe -- given, that is not Meteor's express claim, and its plot is far more involved than that, but that is part of its premise -- must understand and recapture its feel, and in that Meteor... succeeds admirably. The central location -- an inverted cedar -- is vivid and strikingly written: This is a slate-littered shelf high up at the northwest eaves of a dark, vaulted cave, from which a meadow-fresh breeze blows. The ledge broadens down a slab "staircase" to the east but wastes away into a tight squeeze southwest. Natural passages extend like tendrils into the rock all around this cavern, but only one is accessible from here, back north under the lintel. Hanging down toward the dim, distant cave floor is a flourishing, inverted cedar, its roots grappling the roof, its nearest outflung branch a good 10 feet across the abyss from here. Moreover, it is fantastic in a way that suits the genre well, intriguingly unusual but not so bizarre that the player can't imagine it easily. As with the Carousel Room in Zork II (or, even, the living room and its various entries in Zork I), mastering the layout means getting the hang of traveling through that location, and the geography here makes sense once the player accepts the premise. Just as successful is the bridge between fantasy and reality, especially since that relationship is central to the game -- the real-life element is thoroughly (if tediously) established before you, the ordinary fellow, are cast into the fantasy side, and the conclusion ties things back together nicely. As a result, the player need only suspend disbelief in a few elemental ways -- the existence of magic, for instance -- because the original "ordinary" persona is believable. It may not seem like much, but it's an element that the original Zork games certainly never tried to capture. And there is even a sense of perspective on Zork and its progeny, captured in an encounter with an adventurer's ghost that concludes thus: The Adventurer, having now acquired the whole nearby wealth of treasure, spreads his arms around the pile of loot. As he does so, he and they vanish like the dawn into the past where, perhaps, they belong. It might be said, therefore, that Meteor... returns you to the Zork universe but does not send you there as an adventurer, as such, merely a chance visitor, and even with the variety of Infocom references -- including the living room from Zork I and several of the original treasures -- the plot given, not "exploring the Zork universe," drives the story and keeps things moving along. As noted, the writing is strong, particularly in the way it conveys the hanging cedar and the surrounding scene; Nelson, as with the best game authors, paints each scene vividly in just a few sentences. Particlarly effective is the way the locations that are intermediate between ho-hum everyday life and the fantasy Underground Empire hint at the latter -- they point to something unusual but avoid telegraphing it in overly obvious terms. To wit: Bubbling Pool This is a red-brown earthy bole, a cavity in hardened soil with but a single crawl leading out to the southeast. The ground is covered with autumn leaves, russet and variegated. In the centre is a bubbling pool of spring water, glinting with shades and flickers of green phosphoresence. Intriguing enough on its face -- and why are there autumn leaves underground? Why is the pool "bubbling"? Nelson draws the player in through a series of increasingly intriguing discoveries, rather than throwing the entire Zork universe into one momentous discovery. There are a few somewhat overwritten moments... ...And suddenly, there is the Power! It crackles through your whole body, sparking at your fingernails and toenails, sending shivers along your limbs. You feel suddenly afraid to imagine, afraid that you can no longer tell imagination from reality. ...but only a few, and they don't distract much from the game. Moreover, the humor integral to Infocom's fantasy efforts is here in spades, with a wryness that avoids an "I'm being funny now" feel. For example: >examine elephant The magnificent grey beast is wrinkled and has a wise look (but then, after an entire day of Amilia's conversation, your average potato would have a wise look). His two great ears flap a little up at the front sides of the basket, his trunk curls and pokes at the air. Equally amusing are the dummy spells you can encounter late in the game, including "gloth," referred to in Spellbreaker (fold dough 83 times), and others to "paint picket fence orange" and "reduce herbs in over-spiced stew." As Infocom liked to do in its day, these bits help make magic amusing rather than fearful and awe- inspiring. And there are the usual Nelson touches -- an Eliot reference here, references to obscure science fiction authors there -- and there is a spell to "view the past" that allows perspective on every location in the game, givin the game a sense of completeness (though the spell is not necessary to win the game, nor is it even useful). As is in the case in the best games, there is much more going on here than the bare plot and puzzles; the wealth of extraneous details give Meteor considerable explorability and replayability, and allow the player to keep discovering more about the game on subsequent attempts. There are no alternate paths -- in fact, no puzzles have alternate solutions -- but there are many things to ponder along the way that the initial gameplay might not necessarily reveal. Just as importantly, though, even when the puzzles are simply there to solve rather than part of the story, the writing preserves the feel -- ordinary fellow discovers extraordinary things -- and reminds you now and again of who you are. (For example, upon reading a document: "Scratchy handwriting adorns this text, and the writing's in a dialect almost unrecognisable today. But, like any diplomat worth his salt, you've a way with language..." Touches like this diminish the sense of puzzles grafted into the game, and help merge plot and gameplay -- not entirely successfully, but skillfully enough. In sum, Meteor is a worthy return to, and comment on, the Zork world, and an entertaining game in its own right. While not as polished as many of Nelson's works, it certainly stands among the better games out there (though it was rather long for a competition entry, with more than 300 turns required). Glitches aside, there is enough Graham Nelson here to make it well worth any player's while. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: Yuzo Takada a.k.a. Dark Fiber NAME: Mystery Island AUTHOR: Mountain Valley Software EMAIL: ??? DATE: I would guess circa 1985? PARSER: Scott Adams Standard SUPPORTS: C64 and C64 Emulators (many platforms) AVAILABILITY: IF archive URL: ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/c64/ Aaaaah another classic C64 game I remember from my youth. This game, reaaally harks back to the Scott Adams days. Its a treasure hunt, which for a large percentage of IF players means you should hit page down to get to the next review. As with Bastow Manor, this game is by one of two "companies" that produced IF on the C64 using the text textgraphic format for a good result. Graphics in this game are good and if not in some places, above anything you would expect. Unlike Bastow Manor and other Softgold adventures, Mountain Valley Software uses the half screen height, half screen width for pictures. The top right quarter of the screen is used for the room graphic, the top left quarter is used to display your exits, visable items, etc whilst the bottom half is your text input area. Like Bastow Manor, there is not lead-in text or "what do I have to do to complete the game" type introduction. I have completed it so I can give you a rough synopsis. You are the lone occupant of this island you find yourself on and the aim is to collect the ten treasures scattered and hidden throughout the island. This is a treasure hunting game, the puzzles and items you will come across are not logical. The puzzles you do come across are of the push button, say magic word, store magic item variety. It plays a lot easier than Bastow Manor. There is nothing unique or outstanding in this game that comes to mind. What is obvious when you play the game is that it WAS designed. It's evident that the author did not just plonk items willy nilly around the landscape. Some of the items you must retrieve are give-me items and some you must work for. Where the games planning does fall down is that only one treasure you pick up is actually used! The rest of the treasures are just scoring fodder. Sudden death does not lurk around every corner but every second one. There are about 10 or so ways you can die in this game and some of them are only if you really do stupid things, other killing methods are the standard "do something normal and get killed" type things. Fortunatly those types of problems are here in a lesser presence than in Bastow Manor, and if you're good you won't actually die in this game before you finish it. Mystery Island does suffer from the same affliction as Bastow Manor in that you must look at things mutliple times in order not to miss items and clues. The puzzles in the game are very easy to overcome and if you've been taking notes whilst playing, the final "tough" puzzle is not very tough. This game is a lot easier than Bastow Manor, it's also not as bugged (i.e. I completed it without having to make any fixes to the code). The island itself is tiny with only about 15 to 20 locations and a few red herring items. The game is winnable inside 20 minutes depending on your typing speed, once you know what's what in the game, otherwise I'd say it would most likely take an hour or so to complete on your first go. A good beginners game. I will score this game 6/10, some harder puzzles would have pushed the score up to 7. Recommended for the nostalgia freaks and people of limited adventuring knowledge. Hopefully I will have finished Lost City Adventure and Castle of Mydor (which I think is Mountain Valley's version of Bastow Manor) by next issue! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: Yuzo Takada a.k.a. Dark Fiber NAME: The Pawn AUTHOR: Magnetic Scrolls DATE: Mid-80's? SUPPORTS: See review of "Fish!" above AVAILABILITY: Commercial (see above) Ahhh, Magnetic Scrolls first illustrated text adventure and, like Infocoms first official game Zork, is just about as famous unless you lived in America in the the late 1980's of course, which is a pity. The story: you have been bushwacked on the way home from shopping at the supermarket and you wake to find yourself in the land of Kerovnia. Things aren't all gold and cheese in the land of Kerovnia though, and you find out why later. The game starts off by not telling you what you are supposed to do, and you only find this out by talking to everyone you meet. The characters you get to meet are a colourful bunch, Jerry Lee Lewis (yes, yes, the one and only), Kronos the Wizard, a horse with no legs, Honest John and a bloody irritable princess. The parser is quite good but has its niggles. Especially in reference to English and some objects. The most noticable bug is the "white" one: you have in your inventory "you are carriny a white" which turns out to be a white light. Kinda dodgy and should have been picked up in bug testing. The puzzles are very crafty and logical. Hands up those of you who got stuck trying to move the boulder! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: agt20 SP@G phy.cam.ac.uk (Alistair G. Thomas) NAME: So Far AUTHOR: Andrew Plotkin AVAILABILITY: Freeware, gmd EMAIL: erkyrath SP@G netcom.com DATE: December 1996 PARSER: Inform SUPPORTS: .z8 compliant Inform interpreters URL: Story File: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/infocom/sofar.z8 Invisiclues: http://www.bioc.rice.educ/~lpsmith/IF/sofar.html So Far has been around for a while now, having been released in late 96, but for some reason it's never been reviewed in SPAG News. Magnus reckons we're all too daunted by it. Given that it won the awards for Best Game, Best Writing and Best Puzzle in the 1996 interactive fiction awards, organised by XYZZY News, I thought it was about time it was written up here. It's a noteworthy title, for a whole slew of reasons. IF's traditional features have been handled extremely well, in that the writing, the puzzles and the coding are as near flawless as they come. There are further aspects however, concerning the game-world and the player's place within it, that add new and thought-provoking elements. I'll go through all of these. In reviewing any adventure, there's a balance to be struck, between describing the game and giving the game away... In this case especially, where so much is so inventive, I really don't want to reel off the places and events that make up the story. I'll try and describe the style and the approach, and I'll quote a little, and hopefully you'll get some idea of what's different about So Far. On beginning, the first thing to strike you is the quality of the writing. Most of the text is in traditional fantasy style, i.e. plenty of adjectives, plenty of drama, plenty of verbal swoosh. From a writer of limited ability, this can be fairly cringe-inducing, but the author here brings it off extremely well. There are dramatic moments, exotic settings, and strange, half-understood events throughout this game, and the prose never flags. I would say this is the best writing, in this style, that I've seen in IF. West Portico More people are relaxing here, perhaps because of the kegman who sells his beer under the theater portico. The main street bakes in sunlight to the south; the front of the theater continues to the north, adorned by some decorative potted shrubs. A couple of people nearby are discussing the moons. That's right; tonight is the night that the astronomers have been going on about. You'll have to be sure to watch. Snuggled in a blanket, ideally... if you ever find Aessa. You feel the faintest cool breath of air. Wait. Wait. What's ever cool in this suffocating summer heat? It comes again, slight, smoky, deep with autumn. Impossible. >x sky You lean out of the shade and look up. The sun scorches you from one side of a metal-blue sky. The moons are also visible. Warel is already high; Amwal is just rising, but she will soon be catching up, approaching tonight's lunar event. Early in the game, the settings are pretty much fantasy staples, but they're varied and well realised. The player has no particular idea of their role, or even their identity, but without giving too much away, the game is a journey, an exploration of worlds weird and wonderful. While some of the places to be found are standard adventure-fare, frozen wastes, castle moats and the like, others are fresh and fascinating. These tend to be the inhabited stretches. The author creates the impression of some rich and living cultures, by virtue of things happening in the background, with virtually nothing in the way of Ask XXX About YYY. Coming across these people, observing their strange activities, it's eerily reminiscent of the early Star Treks, when Kirk was always beaming down to strange new civilisations, picking his way cautiously amongst the 'aliens'. These people are a good example, in fact, of the style the author has adopted throughout the game. The world is not there for the player's benefit. It does not revolve around him. On seeing a building, a street, a door, an object, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to do anything useful with it. It may well be there for some reason which doesn't concern you. This is not to say these things can't be referred to, or looked at or under or manipulated, just that they won't progress the story, or at least, not the story of the player. Conversely, as you find yourself in strange places, with strange items to be had, some of these things most definitely are useful, if only you can work out how to do whatever it is they do. >x box The box is strange, even stranger for being so simple. Just polished wooden sides, trapezoidal, no two faces parallel. But the joinings are precise; no seams show. The craftwork is exact. No mark shows on the rich reddish wood, except for the natural grain; and also a row of paler circles on each side. These seem to be inlaid discs of a blond wood, flush with the surface, each incised with a deep star-shaped mark. >x discs The discs are each about as long as the last joint of your thumb. They are arranged in precise rows of three discs each, one row on each face of the box. Each disc is incised with a mark in the shape of a three-pointed star. Often you'll have no idea why or how things do what they do, you just have to figure out how to make them do it Moving through things and places, that you know nothing about, but that you have to make some sense of to move on, gives the story an eerie, other-worldly feel. In the early stages this feeling, of things going on that no-one is telling you about, is evoked by impassable locked doors, streets the locals won't let you enter, arcane power sources for derelict machinery. You're reminded of Europe, in the later 19th century, where one of the influences that produced the Impressionists was the new availability of prints from Japan. These, shockingly, included pictures of objects half-in/half-out of the frame, cutting people or scenery in half, with seeming disregard for the careful composition of scenes characteristic of Western art until that time. In the real world, whatever you choose to look at, you catch unconnected things in shot. The author has achieved that effect here. It's a subtle, quite brave thing to do, pretty much new in IF. Later on, things become less conventional yet, and the familiar traipse round the map, looking for objects, becomes a fond memory. Read this example. In this dark place, seeing nothing, you're battered by sound, different sounds as you move around, some so loud that they block your progress, some deadly. The solutions to these problems depend on sound as well, but you never know just why or how they work, or exactly what you've done, or why this place is like this. Darkness It is too dark to see. You are nearly deafened by unseen clangor. A thousand bells might be roiling a foot above your head. The noise is dampened to the east, where you can hear an occasional sharp rap, and to the north, where an echoing plipping noise gives the impression of dripping water. >listen to the bells The noise is a thousand incessant bells, from an ice-sweet chime to a fierce, deep gongen. Not one of them pauses, for one moment. Somewhere behind the noise, there is an indistinct voice, chanting: "Hear the tolling of the bells... iron bells..." >listen to the bells Somewhere behind the noise, there is an indistinct voice, chanting: "What a world of solemn thought their monody compels..." >listen to the bells Somewhere behind the noise, there is an indistinct voice, chanting: "To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells..." >listen to the bells Somewhere behind the noise, there is an indistinct voice, chanting: "From the jingling and the tingling of the bells." Metaphysical moments come thick and fast towards the end. You find yourself drifting among clouds, with vague feelings of attraction and resistance interfering with your progress. You see shapes acting out scenes you don't understand; you don't know where you have to be. When they ask you questions, you don't know what they mean. In most games, this would mean you'd missed out the bit where you found out the answers. In So Far, the author has pushed the idea that in a strange world, the player might well face strange incomprehensible things, and to pass through that world, he might well have to figure out what they can do for him. He is not the focus of this world; it has its own history, its own concerns. The player will not get his hand held here. The idea that things need not be explained, as long as they exhibit an internal logic, is probably the defining characteristic of So Far. Metaphysical choices, vital and incomprehensible objects, whole worlds which aren't north-south-east-west-strolls: these really require a new view of the player's place in his world. It asks what IF does, what it can do, and so what it should do. And this, is Modernism. In IF. If this carry-on doesn't stop, we'll be a proper grown-up medium before you know it. Lordy. But moving quickly on now, um... puzzles. The puzzles are generally very good. There are only a few problems which come down to find & use, and even these tend to be unusual objects and uses. There are also some excellent, more complex problems, which are imaginative and very satisfying to solve. (XYZZY News voted the immense gate the best problem of 1996, although I preferred the bizarre animals. I had to consult the invisiclues for the light source...) These problems (and there are a few) involve several stages, and are thankfully well coded, with the possibilities arising from each step dealt with intelligently. There's very seldom a single action which the player has to find. More likely, a range of choices will be apparent, most of which will end with the player feeling rather sheepish, with the actual solution requiring quite some thought. Indeed, the range of things the player can do at each stage of one of these problems is part of what makes them difficult. And this is a difficult title. The puzzles are not re-hashes of things we've seen before, and the stranger ones will definitely have you scratching your head. The significant freedom the player has can let him screw things up completely. There is apparently a walkthrough available, although I haven't seen it, and in fact Lucian Smith has gone to the effort of producing some online invisiclues, which I had to use for the later sections, and would recommend above a walkthrough. Screwing up is generally worth doing a few times however, just to read what's gone wrong this time. Black humour, metaphysical angst... you'll be on the end of it all. On the technical side, coding is robust enough to deal with even the complex, multi-stage problems encountered. Basics like spelling and grammar are just about perfect, and guess the word problems are almost non-existent, although in some weird situations, you may find yourself producing weirder suggestions than the parser is expecting. In conclusion, I'd recommend So Far to anyone. Some of its new ideas won't be to everyone's taste, but they're certainly worth looking at. The more traditional parts are imaginative and involving and make a cracking game in their own right. Go get it. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April NAME: Space Under the Window AUTHOR: Andrew Plotkin E-MAIL: erkyrath SP@G netcom.com DATE: 1996 PARSER: Inform, thoroughly hacked SUPPORTS: Inform interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD) URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/infocom/sutwin.z5 VERSION: 2 Not sure if it's reviewable, but I'll try. Andrew Plotkin's Space Under the Window is a work of "experimental" interactive fiction, as part of a project that produced a variety of creative works under that title -- and it's hard to imagine how the others could have pushed the boundaries as much as this one does. The point of Space... is to let the player interact with the environment without conventional IF commands -- and what, exactly, is the player doing? It's hard to say, but it's certainly worth trying. The mechanics are simple: given a block of text, ranging from a sentence to several paragraphs, you type a word appearing somewhere within the text, which may or may not affect the narrative. If it does, the screen clears and you are given a new block of text -- sometimes changed only by a word or two, sometimes with a new paragraph, sometimes entirely different, and you start once again trying words. The effect is not quite EXAMINE [object], as the following shows: The window is open, so you climb down inside. The table is set for two. >two The window is open, so you climb down inside. The table is set for two -- a surprise; you didn't think you were expected. No one would type "examine two", but the change manages to elaborate on the concept, somehow, and suggest that you have learned more about the idea. The closest analogue in real life might be a storyteller whom you are invited to interrupt constantly to explain something more fully, though the storyteller apparently declines sometimes to elucidate whatever it is. (Sometimes, a word that led to development may not later, even if that word is still on the screen.) The progress is thoroughly nonlinear -- most words, if typed a second time, will reverse the effect of the first input, though that isn't always true. As a result, there is minimal need to restart even if you've sent the narrative somewhere you'd rather not, since you can undo the effects of any command (either with a well-placed word or "undo"), and a few commands can send the story back to the beginning. This could be mechanical and fairly dull without some imagination -- it could become conventional IF with only EXAMINE available -- but Plotkin is up to the task. Many words yield unexpected results, and trying to manipulate the story to do something in particular is almost invariably a failure -- it is more accurate to say that you discover the story as you go along. In that sense, this is closer to conventional fiction than traditional interactive fiction, since you only affect what particular story you see -- you are not, really, writing the story yourself. The levels on which you change the story, though, are several; there is a wide variety of input by which you can affect what you "see". One of the more intriguing involves light, and its effect -- this is one transition: The window is open, so you climb down into dimness. The table is set for two -- a surprise; you didn't think you were expected. The cold shadow lifts a little. Yes. An empty vase, white glass, stands beside a single lit candle. A smile touches you; it feels like the first one in some time. You are arranging your flowers when the door opens. >dimness The window is open, so you climb down into dimness. The table is set. An empty vase glows, white glass catching the light of a single candle. The rest of the room shades into obscurity. You are arranging your flowers when the door opens. (You slip back into the shadow of a corner.) A figure climbs out, and lowers the door closed. Primary among the adjustments for the seasoned IF player is losing the "goal" feeling -- the need to type in the right combination of commands that will produce a "You have won" or some equivalent. That, to say the least, is not the point of Space Under the Window, and insisting on it leads to frustration; there are certainly many endings to the story, but not many of them resolve much, such as who you are and what you're trying to do. Moreover, many of them are frustrating in some respect: they seem to represent failures of one sort or another. A lost connection here, an ignominious flight from an encounter there, distrustful silence that never gets broken. Those that aren't expressly negative are at best neutral, and the player learns to appreciate intriguing twists as developments in the story rather than goals achieved. Space... is superior in that respect to other "experimental" works of IF, such as "In the End", that never quite lose the feel of "accomplish something." The mechanics are part of it -- though you occasionally say things, the player has no control over the words, nor when they are said, and the effect is sometimes like a novel centered around a main character who is not always sympathetic. Not being able to exercise control over the character -- yet playing in the second person nonetheless -- is a strange and disconcerting feeling, and the haphazard ways that your input affects events reinforce the sense that you are witnessing rather than participating in the narrative. The result is subversive in its way -- it questions the assumption that you are sent to an interactive-fiction environment to do something concrete, make an effect, rather than experience what's there. In effect, it makes the scene itself, and what happens there, more important than you, the player (though you as the player are distinct from "you", the character), since your importance is mostly to enter commands that allow you to see more. In that the setting is almost entirely fixed in one location, Space... also forces the player to appreciate the minute details that Plotkin brings out. There are a few red herrings that I found somewhat distracting. One of the few choices you can make sends some signals suggesting it will affect the plot, but in fact it doesn't -- it merely affects a certain room description. There are plotlines that simply can't be followed -- it looks like they might lead to several-paragraph narratives, but they simply stop, and all input either reduces the text or sends the player down a different line. And it is best not to try to understand the cryptic bits of conversation by cross-referencing between different storylines, since the comparison yields little insight; it's ultimately more rewarding simply to regard the exchanges as cryptic and appreciate the way they change with your commands. At one point, a certain input will add to a fairly innocuous account of a woman's movements the following: "(Always careful, and always quiet. It took months before you saw past that.)" You never discover what the "months" reference meant, nor enough to say what you "saw", which certainly intensifies the air of intrigue; it's difficult to say whether Space... would be more or less satisfying with fewer unanswered questions. There is certainly intrigue aplenty in the movements you observe, all the more because they reflect a history unavailable to you. The above addition also provides a moment of insight into your own character -- the scorn in the tone of that statement reminds the player that he or she is not, despite the second person, dealing with a blank slate. The writing is skillful: Plotkin makes the scene changes reflect your input while limiting your ultimate control over what you see. (The experience is sometimes like throwing a rubber ball in the general direction of an object -- we know it will change things around, but we can't reliably predict how.) Sentences and phrases are added to existing text, with considerable effect: The window is open, so you climb down inside. The table is set for two -- a surprise; you didn't think you were expected. Yes. An empty vase, white glass, stands beside a single lit candle. >surprise The window is open, so you climb down inside. The table is set for two -- a surprise; you didn't think you were expected. The cold shadow lifts a little. Yes. An empty vase, white glass, stands beside a single lit candle. A smile touches you; it feels like the first one in some time. Again, the change is more psychological than perceptual; your character begins to perceive something differently, and the change affects later interactions. In the hands of a less effective writer, this sort of thing could feel clumsy, as if our attention were deliberately drawn to whatever it is that's affected -- but, here, an inattentive player might miss the significance of the change and how it influences later developments. An equally effective example is the difference between the following two descriptions, depending on a certain input earlier on: "I never dreamed it would." She tosses her head back suddenly. "It seemed appropriate, that's all. Here. Finally." The flame of the candle flickers uncertainly, but her voice is still steady. "...Shall we go?" "I never dreamed it would." She tosses her head back suddenly, her lips falling one more time into that wry smile. "It seemed appropriate, that's all. Here. Finally." The flame of the candle flickers uncertainly, but her voice is still light. "...Shall we go?" Not so remarkable when examined side by side, but it takes a good writer to know when to make changes minor rather than waving flags at the player that might disrupt the feel of the narrative. Plotkin's writing almost never intrudes on the structure of the story (the sequence with the flowers is one of the few exceptions), and it rewards close attention to the various paths. Perhaps the best thing about Space... is the spareness of it: the reader is left to infer details from the way various pieces of the setting flicker in and out with light changes. And there, as well, the writing is well-calculated to tell the player just as much as needed to paint the picture. It's hard to categorize this one, obviously; some will quickly grow bored with it on ground that not much happens, and some will be frustrated with how limited the player's control is, as if different commands opened pages of a novel at random. And the feeling of not having anything as such to do requires some attitude adjustment, true. But there is much to appreciate in Space Under the Window, notably some of the more satisfying or upbeat endings, and even without a "right" way to play it, finding a previously undiscovered narrative trail is just as intriguing as any new discovery in conventional IF. If you can set aside your assumptions for a little while, give this one a shot. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April NAME: Time: All Things Come To An End AUTHOR: Andy Phillips E-MAIL: pmyladp SP@G unix.ccc.nottingham.ac.uk DATE: 1996 PARSER: Inform standard SUPPORTS: Inform interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD) URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/infocom/tatctae.z8 VERSION: Release 6 As a reviewer should, I took it upon myself to replay Andy Phillips' Time: All Things Come to an End before reviewing it, thereby to produce a transcript. The exercise, such as it was, afforded some insight: when the solutions to puzzles are so illogical or obscure that they stump me completely -- even when I've _already_ finished the game once -- something is gravely amiss. When getting through the first half of the thing, even after I remember the solutions to the puzzles, takes many, many tries because I forget stupid little items that prove essential much later on, it says nothing positive about a game. And when I am unable to keep a coherent transcript because of all the saving and restoring required to get through the every-move-accounted-for sections, well, the resulting review will be less than glowing. Trashing Andy Phillips has, admittedly, become a trend of late, so I will try to be as positive as possible in reviewing Time... To wit: somehow, for some reason, I plowed through this thing to begin with; it kept me interested enough to forgive its faults and push on to the end. I can't explain what it was now, and I certainly don't feel compelled to slog through games I genuinely dislike. But on some level, for me at least, Mr. Phillips did manage to craft a game that held my attention, and he deserves recognition for that. On, then, to the game. As has been pointed out, Time... is an example of a heavily linear game, meaning that fairly narrow sections of the thing are available at any given time -- and, moreover, past sections become unavailable once apparently disposed with. Handled well, this sort of game can tell an interesting story and keep the plot moving along with the game; handled poorly, it can be both frustrating and dull -- because the confines of the plot can keep the player in a small section of the game for a long time, with nothing to do but examine the same objects over and over and beat his head against the wall. More importantly, if not designed well, the player can lock himself out of winning the game without realizing it. And Time..., I'm sorry to say, is linear in just about the worst way a game can be. Things like manipulating the scenery, holding onto objects that seem fundamentally single-use, and obtaining objects with no apparent use -- all are required actions for unforeseeable later events. Players are advised never, NEVER, to assume an object has exhausted its usefulness, or to leave a game area -- for the first quarter or so of the game, you'll be doing that every few moves -- without taking absolutely everything that isn't nailed down. Except, of course, for those objects that get you killed if you keep carrying them past a certain point. And then there's the object that you break in one scene but pick up and use later, and the murder weapon that you are expected to take with you and use in an unforeseeable way, and, of course, the many puzzles that you must solve for no other reason than that there are some strange objects sitting around... I trust the problems are becoming apparent. There are many and various puzzles in Time... that require knowledge obtained by death. The most egregious of them involves an apartment where, let's see, failing to hide your means of getting into the apartment (since they are noticed by a search that begins only after you enter the apartment) and otherwise cover your tracks before anyone actually starts looking for you, failing to realize that the police are outside watching the apartment and will charge at the least sign you are there, failing to realize that the police will kill you if you are holding certain items when they get there, failing to realize that another person will kill you if you are holding certain different items when the police get there, and failing to disable an bomb that will kill the police when they get there, all result in death -- plus, of course, there are items to obtain while you're there, and the whole thing is time-sensitive. If this one section of the game didn't screen out quite a few would-be players, the IF world is more persistent than I realized. The problem with learning by death, quite aside from the realism issue ("I'd better drop the gun because I remember from the last time that the police will kill me if I'm holding it when they get here"), is that it makes a game less enjoyable; there's nothing like playing through a scene 50 times to make it unspeakably boring. The advantage of linearity is that the author can control the story he tells, but Mr. Phillips largely sacrifices that advantage by making the puzzles so obscure that the story does not exactly move along. How unfair are the puzzles in Time?... There are sections where the plot resembles an action movie and the puzzles require action-movie suspensions of disbelief, like, say, that no one notices you stealing a helicopter, that you can learn to pilot the helicopter instantly (well, that a reasonably with-it first grader can pilot a helicopter, I guess), that you can get into a second-floor apartment using the materials that come to hand -- and these, while a bit annoying, are part of the genre. But there are far worse moments -- for example, the instructions at one point are that you should "use the stasis field," which I found less than helpful. You miraculously sense that a statue is actually something completely different in disguise, with no hints to that effect. You wait seven turns in a location for the means of solving a puzzle to appear -- though it was there all along; you just hadn't "noticed" it. Other things are likewise hidden until you type certain sensory commands, and so on. The game is largely devoid of helpful hints, requires absurdly exact syntax in many cases -- notably, getting out of the map room, which required both a huge intuitive leap regarding the procedure and a game of guess-the-verb for the final action. Another puzzle involving a crate is looking for a certain verb that is, in truth, used fairly frequently in IF these days -- but not in the context you find it here. Magical/technologically advanced objects (the line between them is fairly blurry here) do things that could not possibly be foreseen -- the same object, even, will have several uses that have little in common. There is a time-paradox puzzle that, well, seems frankly absurd -- not only for the objects that cannot logically exist, but for the reactions to you by someone who, even accepting the paradoz, could not have encountered you before. (It also serves no real purpose in the game -- it provides information that could easily have been provided another way.) One puzzle requires such a ludicrous disregard of scale that when I saw it in the walkthrough, I assumed I had missed something important earlier on. And whenever you are under duress -- meaning that someone is about to kill you, which is the case virtually every moment -- objects in your backpack are unavailable on grounds that you have more important things to do than "fiddling with" whatever -- and inventory management before the scenes (requiring amazing foreknowledge of what you'll need) is, of course, necessary. And then, of course, there's the writing. There are worse sins than the occasional comma splice, but the writing here is littered with them -- e.g. "A fire burns in one corner of the room, its red glow is highly appropriate to the surroundings." The syntax of many room descriptions is so tortured that the idea doesn't come across, as in: "To the north of you is the vast expanse of the park's solitary lake, looking dull, a reflection of the dark sky and equally dark feeling about this whole place." Er, what? There is a genuine attempt here to provide atmosphere, but too often it produces results like these: A well-worn road running from west to east, with the park gates to the north. Some distance to the east, the street ends in a bricked up wall, while it opens up into some kind of large square to the west. The area is deserted, almost as if the inhabitants have given up on this terrible world. You are in what appears to be the central area of the town, market stalls lie abandoned and a few people hurriedly walk from one area to another, as if in a hopeless attempt to avoid this apparent centre of the evil. Most areas have been cordoned off, except for the seemingly important stone building to the south. Good writing usually tries to show the reader the scene and let him infer from there, rather than telling him outright what to feel or think; the scenes above might have been quite effective if they had included, say, descriptions of passers-by who walk by with their heads down without speaking to each other, or if the player had encountered someone who was clearly afraid of a certain building and nervous about speaking too loud. As it is, the atmosphere here becomes self-parodying, since evil and menace are so obvious and ubiquitous that they become unremarkable. ("And our weather report: partly cloudy, with an undercurrent of evil throughout the afternoon.") At times, the author lays off the brooding menace and dread, and the results are effective... The moonlight casts eerie shadows onto the buildings that surround the central courtyard. The western edge is dominated by a building seemingly still in use, but the Schloss is otherwise deserted. ...but those moments are, alas, all too few. In one region, you are given the message "Somewhere nearby someone screams with pain, you don't even want to imagine the horrors taking place in these depths" so often, with no variation, that it loses whatever power it had to shock. Ho-hum, more screams of pain. Now and again, the prose turns deep purple: The shocking handiwork of your murderous psychotic enemy is evident again, notably from the red marks left by the murderous tool on the man's neck. From the depths of the lifeless eyes seems to come a pleading for mercy which was coldly rejected by the smiling sadist responsible for this barbaric slaughter. The point of all this is not simply to make fun of the writing, tempting though that might be after slogging through a game worth of it, but to show that bad writing can reduce enjoyment of a game by wrecking the scene it tries to set. True, many readers will forgive excess -- but when you force a player to inhabit a small section of the game for a while, and hence encounter the same descriptions again and again, it behooves you as a writer to make those descriptions effective -- or, at least, not ridiculous. The "enemy" is an obvious example here; she is everywhere, her motivations are wildly unclear, and upon your every encounter with her, she spouts bad-guy lines from action movies that break whatever tension had been achieved. ("You fools, did you really think you could oppose the ultimate race?" "You know, I'm going to have to put a stop to your interferences.") Said by someone like John Malkovich, things like this are forgivable; as written text, no. So often did I stop to chuckle at this or that in Time...that the plot became rather uninvolving after a while. And a game this big needs to be involving -- the writing needs to be passable -- to keep the player's attention. It should be reiterated that there are enjoyable moments in Time... -- one scene involving assumption of another's identity does build up tension well (even if the situation is a bit oversimplified), and there is a genuinely clever, if not wholly logical, puzzle involving the repair and use of a strange machine. And the author is quite good at the principle of providing payoff for puzzles solved -- virtually every discovery rewards you with a good bit of text and more things to explore -- which helps in a game with lots of puzzles. The climax is suitably climactic (though unfairly difficult -- very time-sensitive and involving a thoroughly obscure riddle), and even the overwritten scenes have their interesting moments, notably the segment in London. On the whole, though, there is more to learn here about what can go wrong in a game than about what can go right. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: Lars Jodal NAME: Unnkulia Zero: The Search for Amanda AUTHOR: Dave Leary EMAIL: dleary SP@G umabnet.ab.umd.edu DATE: 1993 PARSER: TADS SUPPORTS: TADS Ports AVAILABILITY: Freeware(!), GMD anytime VERSION: Version 1.2 Adventions has decided to make their games freeware. Since this should spur well-deserved interest in Unnkulia Zero (and since I just finished said game a few hours ago) a review seems due. The game once more brings us to the landscape known from Unnkulian Underworld, but this time back in the days of yore when the Valley King ruled. The king's betrothed Amanda has been kidnapped by the evil unnkulians, and you, the king's most trusted warrior, is given the task of finding her. Unnkulia Zero adds immensely to the universe set up in Unnkuliuan Underworld I and II, clarifying and expanding on old myths as well as providing new ones. Compared to most other adventure games Unnkulia Zero is very rich in text and has detailed descriptions of almost everything mentioned in the game. The plot may be a bit linear at points, but not more than should be expected when one wants a coherent plot. The puzzles in the game are generally tough but in most cases fair. A few of the puzzles cannot be said to be logical, though. At least they require the special unnkulian logic that in many cases turns things upside down. The player is adviced to read carefully, since the text contains many clues and subtleties. The weakest point of the game is that even the careful player can end up in a no-win situation without knowing it. Some objects may simply be overlooked until it is too late, others can too easily be lost during the game. In at least one situation you have to give up some objects at a time when you cannot be 100% sure of what will be needed later in the game. All in all Unnkulia Zero is a remarkable game that was fully worth the money when it was commercial and which is a must now that it is free! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April NAME: The Wedding AUTHOR: Neil Brown E-MAIL: Not available DATE: 1996 PARSER: Inform standard SUPPORTS: Inform interpreters AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD) URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/infocom/wedding.z5 VERSION: Release 4 Genuinely character-driven IF, as in stories whose plot and puzzles revolve around interacting with people rather than manipulating objects, is extraordinarily difficult to realize. Infocom's mysteries are some of the best attempts at this, but many of the characters even in those feel mechanical; it is all too obvious that there is a short list of keywords with appropriate responses. Neil Brown's The Wedding is not, admittedly, a fully character-driven game, but it does have that element -- and it illustrates just how difficult a goal it is to accomplish, even on a limited scale. On the whole, there are many good things about The Wedding -- but the moments that require interaction with the various NPCs simply fall flat. This is not to say that they are bad NPCs; they manage to be relatively realistic, to respond to an adequate variety of prompts, and even supply a modicum of humor. But, as so often happens, the puzzles involving them, though well-imagined, feel painfully artificial; they reduce the people to robots who will wait 100 turns for the next line of dialogue, say, or who don't notice notable events going on around them because they're not told to. One puzzle in The Wedding, in fact, requires that a character ask you a randomized question, you wander away surreptitiously and find out the answer, and then wander back and answer the question as if it were one conversation. Now, there is an attempt at realism here, in that the game mocks you if you try to find out the answer on the spot -- but it trades one silliness for another, in effect, in reducing character interactions to videotapes that can be stopped and returned to at will. The above is a minor absurdity, but there are more significant ones as well -- for instance, a certain character will (and must) follow you at a certain point, but not before then, and there is no logical explanation to the change. Another character's responses to you depend on your having discovered a certain fact about that character, regardless of what you do. The security guard positioned by the front door is so remarkably dense that it troubles him not a bit that you come out of that door repeatedly; he simply refuses to allow you back in. Again, it should be said that these and other flaws in "The Wedding" illustrate the difficulty of coding realistic people more than any inadequacy on the part of the author; simple move-the-objects games are far less taxing. But when it comes to realism (and let's face it, the major charm of character-driven games is that they can approximate real life in some measure), there are snags aplenty. It may be a side effect of building a game around characters rather than objects that there are quite a few plot holes, some of them acknowledged by the author in the end credits; one of the main things that puzzled me was why someone buried something obviously worthless. The plot of The Wedding is apparently simple: your school chum Malcolm, due to be married, has disappeared, and you have been called in to help out -- but, because of family tensions, your mission is secret, so secret that you have to figure out alternative ways of getting into the house because the guard hasn't been authorized to let you in. (My question: if you're such a good friend of this Malcolm fellow and you're invited to the wedding, why do you have to sneak into the house?) After a few elementary clues about what's going on, you commence solving puzzles in classic "here's a nail, so I'll go look for a hammer" style; you have a series of puzzles to solve because they're there, and some are not obviously puzzles at all. (A surly teenager won't say anything to you? Isn't that just a fact of life, not something to worry about?) Some of the puzzles are rather clever and involve use of household gadgetry that, while not wildly inventive in terms of common sense, requires some steps that few works of IF bother with. (Put another way: The Wedding is situated so firmly in the realm of everyday life that it takes some mental adjustment to solve such down-to earth puzzles.) One hidden item requires an annoyingly exact command to find, though, and it's possible to bog down and not realize what's holding you back, and another mechanical puzzle requires something of an intuitive leap for the proper verb -- but, by and large, the puzzles are fairly good. Trouble is, as noted, they use the NPCs in ways that make them little better than props. The gameplay is likewise a bit uneven -- lots and lots of useless scenery, for instance (for which you get "that's not something you need to refer to..." messages, mostly), and some illogicalities, like a supermarket bag that can hold anything and everything, including a spade. (There is one character who wants a certain food item -- but once you bring the food, you can drop it on the floor and he'll never pick it up, or you can eat it yourself without any protest from him.) The Wedding has the usual Inform benefits, along with a very limited hint menu (plus other limited sources of hints worked into the game), and there are plenty of synonyms for most words -- and the game itself is wide enough that there are at least a few puzzles to work on at any given moment. (One puzzle (the dungeon problem) that seems to cry out "I have more than one solution!" does not, though -- maybe in a later release?) Dialogue is a bit clumsy as well -- "yes" in response to a direct question doesn't work; you must type "answer yes" or "say yes to" whoever, somewhat grating in a game where you learn many things from the various characters. The writing is mostly good, though it has rough spots -- there are some things in room descriptions that perhaps shouldn't be. For instance, when you first reach the front hall, you get this: The great entrance hall of D'Arcy manor evokes a twinge of jealousy within you -- the grand wooden polished floors and staircase, the expensive chandelier hanging from the high ceiling, the priceless Compton painting hanging on a wall. Why can't you inherit something like this? Leaving aside feelings of bitterness... Fine. Well-written, realistic. Except that you probably shouldn't feel it the tenth or eleventh time you enter the room -- I mean, you've probably seen hardwood floors before. Most of the room descriptions are well done -- descriptive, but controlled -- though I wasn't sure whether this one was supposed to be straightforward or sarcastic: This room offers refuge from the tastelessness that seems to prevail around the rest of the house. Framed pictures of famous film actresses, Garland, Dietrich, Midler and Streisand in particular, hang proudly on the sky-blue walls, alongside two extra-large pink and red ribbons. The abundance of style extends to the curtains, the most attractive you have ever seen. If only the rest of the house, to the south, had been decorated as well as this. Me, I never saw Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand posters as the epitome of good taste -- nor, for that matter, huge pink and red ribbons -- but perhaps it's just me. (If this is supposed to be ironic, it's not well done.) These are quibbles, though, because the writing here is generally solid and effective -- reasonably atmospheric and genuinely funny. When you confront one character late in the game, you get this: "Okay, muggins," you say, "spill the beans, squeak, start talking, loosen your tongue..." Then you realise that you are getting carried away, and drop the tough cop act. Not laugh-out-loud hilarious, but amusing nonetheless. There are many such moments -- the game is littered with Easter eggs, some of which are pointed out in a "fun stuff" file available when the gane is done -- that illustrate real interest in making the game enjoyable. (A television has 8 different channels, all with 10-15 randomized funny scenes depending on the channel -- the soap opera channel is one of the best, I think.) Brown has a feel for compact but effective room descriptions, as in the following: Considering the high technology that has gone into guarding this area, the cellar is surprisingly lo-tech. One very dull fluorescent tube casts gloomy light over the brick walls. The air is damp; cobwebs line the ceiling. A tunnel disappears off into the darkness to the northeast, and a set of stone steps lead east up to the passageway. For a concept like The Wedding to work, it needs good writing -- there are few things duller than trying to interact with badly written characters, or inhabiting a small game environment where the author hasn't bothered to make the locations interesting or believable. And the writing here is easily good enough to keep the player involved and prevent the game from becoming tedious even when nothing is going on, puzzle-wise, though a few too many of the rooms break the description by inserting your thoughts or reactions. There are many genuinely funny moments, as noted, and the whole thing is mercifully free from signs of taking itself seriously. There is much to like about The Wedding, in short, and its shortcomings are more due to the difficulty of its undertaking than to poor writing or programming; there are enough clever puzzles and humorous asides for the game to be involving despite the shortcomings in the plot and setup. Despite its flaws, The Wedding is a solid entry in the IF library. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April NAME: Zork I AUTHORS: Marc Blank and David Lebling E-MAIL: WHO WANTS TO KNOW?! DATE: 1981 PARSER: Early Infocom SUPPORTS: Infocom ports AVAILABILITY: Commercial (GMD) URL: N/A VERSION: Release 88 Consideration of the relative merits of Zork I, in 1997, is difficult to undertake fairly. Infocom's achievement in publishing such a game in 1981 -- to fit the limitations of tiny microcomputers, in a language that they had written themselves -- was considerable, and flaws in the game cannot be considered in the same critical light as those of games written today. Numerous bugs have been corrected since the original release, but the game is still essentially the same -- none of the bugs addressed design flaws that affected the plot or structure of the game; its limitations were not serious enough to warrant fundamental changes. Nor was the popularity of Zork I a fluke. Novelty was part of its appeal, certainly, and the game suffers in comparison to later, more polished efforts, but the attempt to create a plausible game environment with only text was sufficiently successful that many, many people were genuinely absorbed -- by the challenge of the puzzles and by the story, such as it is. The versatility of the parser was doubtless part of it -- to get the true experience of playing Infocom's games in the early '80s, struggle through some Scott Adams or the like and its volume of "go tree" and "look rock" commands. The primitiveness of the game environment of Adams and the like is not an indictment, given cost and size limitations, but the wizardry of Infocom in overcoming those limitations should be recognized through the comparison as near genius. Graeme Cree's bug list inventories some of the design flaws of Zork I, some of which have been corrected, some not. My personal favorite, from the first release, involves "give troll to troll," whereupon the troll eats himself and disappears. There are some problems that live on, though -- for example, the player is given an extensive description of the jewel-encrusted egg upon first encountering it, but that description can never be reached again once the egg is moved -- it began with "In the bird's nest...", but the rest of the description relates only to the egg and would be relevant in any setting. Some of the synonyms are a bit off -- "examine passage" yields "there's nothing special about the way." Among the stranger red herrings are the tool chests at the dam, which "are so rusty and corroded that they crumble when you try to touch them," and they certainly do crumble -- after that response, the chests are gone, apparently melting into dust and blowing away. There are numerous small illogicalities -- how does one raise and lower a basket up and down a mine shaft from the bottom of that shaft? Remote control? How does it happen to be that one inevitably happens upon a small object when digging in a room, without prior guidance? Is the thief really so clever -- or are you really so dumb -- that he can steal your light source? Why is it that a room filling up with water obligingly stops filling and waits for you to return if you leave? Many of the rules that IF players have come to expect designers to follow came about as a result of bad experiences with the early games, and Zork I is no exception. Though the inclusion of alternate solutions to problems is welcome, some of the alternate paths are a bit strange -- it is handy to know the shortcut to the thief's hideaway, but there is no way of guessing that shortcut without taking the long, arduous route, and players might well feel they have been put through needless aggravation. There are quite a few save-restore puzzles -- the "squeaky sounds" are hardly adequate warning for the bat puzzle, nor is it obvious that you, the player, will be so dumb as to puncture the boat by boarding it with a sword or other sharp object. The maze is large and irritating -- and the addition of the thief to the mix, while an amusing innovation on Colossal Cave, makes things worse. And most frustrating of all, of course, is the randomized combat, with no way to improve your chances -- an element that Infocom largely set aside after Zork I, thankfully. The writing is somewhat uneven, frankly. There are many rooms whose descriptions are cursory -- whereas Colossal Cave had clearly drawn on explorers' accounts of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky in its attention to geological detail, providing a measure of realism, there are many Zork I descriptions like this: "This is a circular stone room with passages in all directions. Several of them have unfortunately been blocked by cave-ins." Such a variety of settings comes in such a short space -- chasm, canyon, lake -- and with so little description that the reality of the environment suffers at time. Most room descriptions begin with something like "You are in a small room," which says little. Like, how small, man? Bread-box? Closet? There are moments of fairly thorough description in largely irrelevant locales, notably the canyon outside, and there are places where the descriptions are so terse that one wonders whether the intent was humor: Land of the Dead You have entered the Land of the Living Dead. Thousands of lost souls can be heard weeping and moaning. In the corner are stacked the remains of dozens of previous adventurers less fortunate than yourself. A passage exits to the north. Here I am in Hades. *yawn* Wonder if there's a gift shop around. Well, back to the adventure. Examining the remains elicits the response "You see nothing special about the pile of bodies." But though Zork I had little of the atmosphere that would mark later Infocom efforts, the very spareness of its prose was sometimes effective, as in the Troll Room: This is a small room with passages to the east and south and a forbidding hole leading west. Bloodstains and deep scratches (perhaps made by an axe) mar the walls. A nasty-looking troll, brandishing a bloody axe, blocks all passages out of the room. Your sword has begun to glow very brightly. Where a more thorough description of blood and gore might have seemed excessive, the brief reference to "bloodstains and deep scratches" allows the imagination to conjure up the scene -- and the description followed by the mention of the troll, while provided to separate out objects from scenery, heightens the effect of first impression -- the ominous decor -- and sudden realization of the source of that decor, as if the player were peering around the room and saw the troll last. Equally effective is the experience of dying once past a certain point in the game and wandering around as a ghost -- being told that your hand passes through objects, finding exits from the dungeon barred; the feel is reminiscent of Sartre's "Les jeux sont faits." Though the lack of an endgame seems strange to experienced IF players, the final reference to the sequel is genuinely tantalizing. Zork I does work, in the end, though it's hard to pinpoint just why. Collect-the-treasures as a plot is a weary old device, and it doesn't only seem that way to IF players -- it had, after all, been the subject of innumerable fantasy novels and games before IF hit the scene. But its recurring presence points to some appeal that Zork I managed to tap into -- the allure of getting rich, and of obtaining things as diverse as the coffin of Ramses II, a songbird's bauble, and a dead adventurer's bag of coins, keeps the intrigue of finding the next treasure alive, somehow. Vital to the enterprise is, of course, the humor, even if the barrage of self-reference becomes wearying; responses like "Only Santa Claus climbs down chimneys" make the game feel more intelligent than a "You can't do that" response would have, and moments like the description of the vampire bat and the behavior of the thief break up the traipsing-from-room-to-room feel that sometimes plagued Colossal Cave. For my part, I still enjoy this response: >zork At your service! The variety of responses to "jump" -- a command with, of course, no practical value in the game -- and the provision for other nonessential verbs points to the pains that Infocom took from the very beginning to make the environment genuinely interactive, rather than the minimum of nouns and commands needed to get the player through the game. The value of that is hard to measure, but Zork I, with its many Easter eggs, is a good exxample of a game that felt worth the price because of its breadth -- much to do, many responses to try. Playing Zork I now is indeed worthwhile, both to see how far IF has come and to appreciate its origins, despite the annoyances. It is a credit to its design that it remains an enjoyable game, well worth its popularity. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April NAME: Zork II AUTHORS: Marc Blank, David Lebling E-MAIL: No, 'e don't DATE: 1982 PARSER: Early Infocom SUPPORTS: Infocom ports AVAILABILITY: Commercial (Masterpieces) URL: N/A VERSION: Release 48 Zork II picks up where its predecessor left off in many ways -- the beginning deposits you inside the barrow that had marked the end of Zork I, your trusty lamp and sword are by your side, and your mission seems at the outset to be more treasure-gathering. But Zork II parts company with the first of the series in a variety of important ways as the game progresses -- that sword is useful, but in a way far more interesting than hack-and-slash -- and the changes suggest that the folks at Infocom were interested less in putting out more of the same than in refining their product and heightening ths challenge. One way in particular that the designers of Zork II chose to raise the difficulty level bears mention because it seems to have been deemed a failure as a game device, and rightly so: the reliance on random events. Two major elements of Zork II are random -- the role of the Wizard and the function of the Carousel Room -- and while each can be disabled over the course of the game, each makes the normal course of gameplay rather tiresome while active. An ill-timed Wizard appearance can actually render the game unwinnable at several points, making Zork II the only Infocom game I can think of (well, Zork I had randomized combat, true, but unforeseeable random events -- meaning save-restore cannot be relied upon in the same way as with combat -- are different) where one can lose the chance to finish a game through no fault of one's own. Usually, this happens because his spells disrupt a time-dependent sequence that only happens once (actually, I just discovered that becoming the object of a "float" spell in the volcano spells death, though an amusing death), but there is one spell which, if cast, instantly cuts off the possibility of winning, in a way that the player could not possibly be expected to guess. This is a cruel trick indeed, and later Infocom games eschew unfairness of this sort -- but first-time players of Zork II should be warned that frequent saves are in order. While the plot, as noted, seems at first to be an extension of the scavenger theme, it turns out to be something quite different; the treasures have a use that marks a change in emphasis of sorts for your character, from gathering booty to exploring the deeper recesses of the cave -- and in that, perhaps, one might say that the plot thickens slightly over the course of the game. The paragraph at the end of the game suggests a larger mission, one that will come as a surprise to the merry treasure-hunter -- and yet it makes some sense, in that it suggests that the valor tha player has demonstrated in getting that far points to a more important goal. Magic is prevalent in Zork II, more so than in the original, appropriately so since it is a wizard's domain that you are exploring -- and the progress of the game moves you from object and victim of the magic to its controller, to some extent at least, in that you outwit a variety of magical traps and learn to use some magic items to your own ends. The magic is haphazard -- no hint of the more organized system of the Enchanter trilogy -- but there is a real sense by the end that you, the unskilled but savvy adventurer, have beaten the wizard at his own game, and it helps deepen the admittedly thin sense of a plot. Magic is also played up for humor value, including the wizard's failed spells ("There is a loud crackling sound, and blue smoke rises from the wizard's sleeve. He sighs and disappears.") and such sidelights as the "fudge" spell. (Though I was hoping that there would be amusing applications of the power you gain toward the end of the game, and I didn't find many.) Several of the puzzles are lifted from the original "Dungeon" mainframe game, though most of that had ended up in Zork I. (Though, at one point, you see, from a distance, a location that had existed in Dungeon but had dropped out of Zork I -- slightly confusing to the uninitated.) One of the puzzles has a drastically different -- and much more creative -- solution than in the original "Dungeon" game, though it's more a "wonder what happens if I do this" solution than an "oh, I know, I should do this" solution. The quality of the puzzles is uneven: one requires some trial and error, amusing in its effects when you get it wrong but trial and error all the same. The Bank of Zork puzzle has drawn some criticism for being possible to solve without fully understanding, though the rationale behind it is elegant enough that it seems a minor problem -- and another puzzle requires that one largely set aside one's knowledge of how liquids work (meaning that what I suspect was supposed to be among the easier puzzles stumped me completely when I first played the game). There is, of course, one notoriously bad puzzle toward the end -- bad for its "guess-what-I'm-thinking" aspect and for its inaccessibility to the non-American -- and for pretending to be a maze when not one. And the final puzzle is, I think, ridiculously hard -- the required action is motivationless and the game gives not the slightest nudge in the right direction. Infocom rated Zork II "advanced," but their sense of how to make a game hard without making it unfair was as yet not fully developed. Zork II feels much more polished than Zork I; the geography of the game is somewhat more coherent, there are fewer illogicalities, and the layout is less a series of puzzles than a set of locations that revolve -- literally -- around a central area. The writing -- substantially better than that of Zork I -- confirms that impression; there are virtually no rooms without a complete description, and at times the writer manages to paint quite a vivid picture. The tunnel at the beginning, while otherwise irrelevant, draws the reader in effectively and provides atmosphere and attention to detail that had been absent in the first game; it's as if the player has become less intent on treasure and more apt to notice the surroundings now and again. There are many locations worth picturing in one's own mind in the course of Zork II, this among them: North End of Garden This is the northern end of a formal garden. Hedges hide the cavern walls, and if you don't look up, the illusion is of a cloudy day outside. The light comes from a large growth of glowing mosses on the roof of the cave. A break in the hedge is almost overgrown to the north. A carefully manicured path leads south. In the center of a rosebed is a small open structure, painted white. It appears to be a gazebo. And this: Menhir Room This is a large room which was evidently used once as a quarry. Many large limestone chunks lie helter-skelter around the room. Some are rough-hewn and unworked, others smooth and well-finished. One side of the room appears to have been used to quarry building blocks, the other to produce menhirs (standing stones). Obvious passages lead north and south. One particularly large menhir, at least twenty feet tall and eight feet thick, is leaning against the wall blocking a dark opening leading southwest. On this side of the menhir is carved an ornate letter "F". Providing the salient details as the player looks around the room makes the experience more real and adds to the illusion of stumbling on a world rather than a series of puzzles; many of the most memorable images or scenes in the trilogy are in Zork II simply because the game authors gave the settings so much attention. (When I first played this -- I was 7 -- I had dreams about the Bank of Zork.) Even the after-death sequence was intriguing, and points to mysteries that unravel as the game progresses. Part of the appeal of the writing in Zork II is that it genuinely felt like a series of caves, with geological detail noted and occasional references to a natural light source. In summary, the appeal of playing Zork II lies less in the puzzles than in the game environment, and this installment is best enjoyed at a measured pace, with time to read room descriptions and visualize the scene. Notable for the way it changes the feel of the series, Zork II, despite its flaws, points to Infocom's developing skills. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April NAME: Zork III E-MAIL: One of the world's great mysteries DATE: 1983 PARSER: Early Infocom SUPPORTS: Infocom ports AVAILABILITY: Commercial (Masterpieces) URL: N/A VERSION: Release 17 To say merely that Zork III represents a departure from the first two entries in the series is to understate the case. Though much in this game will be familiar to the experienced Infocom gamer, and though it resolves the series reasonably coherently, Zork III works on a thoroughly different premise from the first two -- and to the extent that it succeeds, it does because the player is willing to set aside expectations built up by Zorks I and II. This is not, of course, to say that Zork III is a letdown, or not an enjoyable game, but it is hardly enjoyable on the same terms as the other parts of the series. The humor, to take an obvious example, is subordinate to the story in Zork III and appears at odd moments, Easter eggs typical of Infocom's writing (listening to the guards in the museum is a good example, or reading the plaque in the Jewel Room after you solve the puzzle). But there is little humor in the storyline itself -- nothing, for example, along the lines of cakes that cause you to evaporate, or wizards casting spells like "Fudge," or thieves making sardonic remarks, or a room that mocks mocks your your syntax syntax until until solved solved. There is one slightly jokey puzzle, true, but the game doesn't really play up the humorous aspect as it might; it is the resolution to a problem that is, like most of the game, thoroughly solemn. The main NPC of the game, when you encounter him toward the end, offers minimal interaction -- and it seems that, considering his identity, something amusing could have been coded in (I certainly never found anything). (No, the bugs involving what happens when he follows you around don't count.) Again, this is not to say that Zork III is humorless -- but the plot feels deadly serious and there is little of the comic in any vital element to the game. (Compare, for instance, the rainbow and bat puzzles in Zork I, or the lizard or Cerberus in Zork II.) The reasons for that are debatable, but my own feeling was that it was a product of the structure of the game; more on that in a moment. The writing reinforces the feel; most of the locations you visit are either on barren landscape or in abandoned rooms evocative of the decayed empire. Though the quality of writing is similar to that of Zork II, the mood created is different: where Zork II's images depicted a mysterious and slightly dangerous cave, with breathtaking views juxtaposed with cramped caverns, Zork III gives us gloom and emptiness. In a sense, though there are a few NPC interactions, no one is there; you are wandering around a region where no one is or has been for a while, and no one wants to be. For example: Land of Shadow You are standing atop a steep cliff, looking west over a vast ocean. Far below, the surf pounds at a sandy beach. To the south and east are rolling hills filled with eerie shadows. A path cut into the face of the cliff descends toward the beach. To the north is a tall stone wall, which ends at the cliff edge. It was obviously built long ago, and directly north is a spot where you could climb over the rubble of the decaying wall. Or: Scenic Vista You are in a small chamber carved in the rock, with the sole exit to the north. Mounted on one wall is a table labelled "Scenic Vista," whose featureless surface is angled toward you. One might believe that the table was used to indicate points of interest in the view from this spot, like those found in many parks. On the other hand, your surroundings are far from spacious and by no stretch of the imagination could this spot be considered scenic. An indicator above the table reads "IV". Mounted on one wall is a flaming torch, which fills the room with a flickering light. It is hard to put a label on the mood of Zork III -- "brooding," perhaps, but that would make it more ominous than it is. If anything, it seems like a T.S. Eliot scene, with its barren landscapes and wisps of mist and enigmatic encounters with unidentified characters. (As I spent last winter in Scotland -- on the North Sea coast, even -- the Land of Shadow description above feels familiar indeed.) The adjective "gray" never appears, as far as I can tell, in any of the room descriptions in Zork III, and yet there is a grayness about the game environment that makes the feel of the game far more real, more coherent, than the other two, even if the scenes themselves are less picturesque than those of Zork II. The description of the clifftop captures the study in contrasts: Cliff This is a remarkable spot in the dungeon. Perhaps two hundred feet above you is a gaping hole in the earth's surface through which pours bright sunshine! A few seedlings from the world above, nurtured by the sunlight and occasional rains, have grown into giant trees, making this a virtual oasis in the desert of the Underground Empire. To the west is a sheer precipice, dropping nearly fifty feet to jagged rocks below. The way south is barred by a forbidding stone wall, crumbling from age. There is a jagged opening in the wall to the southwest, through which leaks a fine mist. The land to the east looks lifeless and barren. A vivid scene, indeed -- a glimpse of the life above ground in full awareness of the bleakness of the setting, and, implicitly, color contrasting with drabness, the look up toward the hole in the cavern balanced against the look down, over the cliff. There is much to appreciate in the writer's ability to accent the pertinent visual details. The plot -- well, thereby hangs a tale. Though, as in the first two entries, you discover what the plot is as you progress, you are given a sense in the prologue of what you are looking for, and it quickly becomes clear that no crystal tridents or golden statuettes are at issue this time around. The scoring system -- you have seven major tasks to perform and are given a point for each, though the game will be far from over when the seven tasks are done -- reflects the new approach. "Seek me when you feel yourself worthy!" proclaims the figure of the prologue, and prowess is not established by a propensity for gathering loot. It can be argued that the substitute makes little more sense, but my own reaction was that I was on the trail of something more interesting than another chunk of gold -- and Zork III does try as well, though not very successfully, to put a different face on the skillful adventurer. (Suffice it to say that your final encounter gives a touch of Matthew 25:31-46 to the rest of the game.) There is a tension here between the two sides of what you are accomplishing over the course of the game, and my own feeling was that it would have been a more interesting tension with more development of the second, more subjective angle, the element not measured by items acquired. (As it is, there are still shades of the more tried-and-true scavenger-hunt approach, though the objects sought are different.) The outcomes in the museum and at the top of the cliff particularly play up how the player's assumptions must change -- in a sense, the central puzzles are those of a child presented with a cookie jar. It is certainly worth pondering how the nature of your escapade with the ring fits into the character-development angle -- and it seems like the sword-in-the-stone angle might have been reworked to fit that idea better. To discuss the plot any more specifically would give away too much of the game, but whatever the failings of the storyline in Zork III, it does offer food for thought, and brings the would-be looter, fresh from amassing two games' worth of bounty, up short. (And the ultimate ending offers, in a sense, the ultimate twist.) The puzzles vary widely -- some are memorable, some are nothing special, and some are just irritating -- and there aren't many. There is one that there seems little possibility of guessing -- the player hits on it by chance if at all. One required series of actions is time-sensitive in a thoroughly nonobvious way; it is easy to lock yourself out of victory simply by waiting too long to settle a certain matter. The infamous Royal Puzzle is not the hardest puzzle in the game; once the player grasps the mechanics, it is a matter of careful planning more than anything else. But small slips can, again, lock one out of completing it (and there is disappointingly little payoff to solving it, other than survival). Others -- the museum and viewing room puzzles, in particular -- are rather rewarding, though, and the latter even explains one of the odder red herrings from Zork II. And the mirror box, while it takes considerable mental aerobics to picture and use properly, is one of the more intriguing Infocom contraptions; mastering its more complicated purpose without help is no small feat. I found the last puzzle a bit unfair -- I learned later that a clue to it appeared where no clue had been before, but, silly me, I didn't think to check. But the novice should be warned that a few of Zork III's puzzles are difficult indeed, and require some trial and error -- considerable, actually -- to solve. There are many small things to enjoy along the course of Zork III, including the obligatory bits of self-reference; like Infocom or hate it, it certainly did come up with novel ways to plug upcoming games, and the advertisement for Enchanter in Zork III is no exception (though it's something of a bitter taste). Some of the problems involve Zork in-jokes of sorts, humor appreciable mainly for its cumulative effects through the first two games -- at the ocean and south of the lake, in particular, and upon examining the plaque in the Jewel Room. And there are genuinely riveting moments, in particular your last glimpse of the hooded figure from the Land of Shadow and your encounter, successful or not, with the Guardians of Zork. A game as skillfully written as Zork III need not describe every room elaborately, simply because the more lengthy descriptions are more than adequate to set the scene in the player's mind; I know I could picture the hallway of the Guardians of Zork vividly, though the room descriptions were fairly cursory. Though the gameplay is sometimes clumsy -- at one point, "enter the flaming pit" elicits "You hit your head against the flaming pit as you attempt this feat", and "climb wall" yields "There's no tree here suitable for climbing" -- the parser is usually strong enough to smooth things over. To appreciate Zork III, I think, the player needs to appreciate what the game authors were setting out to do -- and it was not simply to end the series, because a final spectacular treasure hunt would have done that perfectly well. To have solved Zork III is to have looked critically at some of the cliches of the fantasy genre, some obvious -- the treasure element -- but some less so, such as the expectation of spectacular or striking locations. By setting much of the game on what could be an English moor or heath -- the Crystal Grotto is a somewhat jarring exception -- or an American plain and mountainside, the designers subvert those expectations and make your quest, if anything, prosaic -- at least, prosaic relative to the expectations of the genre. The many locations that are not significant for any puzzle reinforce the same effect, as do details like "The ground here is quite hard, but a few sickly reeds manage to grow near the water's edge." There are few mighty deeds in Zork III -- no dragon to slay or gates of Hades to enter; instead, the puzzles involve cleverness or survival, and using fairly conventional tools to achieve your ends. Perhaps most interestingly, there is minimal magic in Zork III, and you have minimal control over anything magical; logic and mechanics are at issue in the puzzles. Certainly, not everything about the game is fresh -- the overarching plot is not, after all, especially original -- but the experience of playing the game yields something unfamiliar to the fantasy enthusiast. In a sense, the nature of the world of Zork III brings the person sitting at the keyboard into the game in a way that the Zork II player was not likely to feel, unless he or she was used to encountering wizards and unicorns. In the end, the success of Zork III depends on how open the player is to the game's peculiarities. The game is less fun in the most obvious sense than its two predecessors; it indulges in fewer amusing antics and has fewer rewarding things to do. But it ties up the series in a way that more of the same would not have; it marks the end of a process that had been hinted at in Zork II, a process whereby the player's interests and priorities change, and there is more impetus to see and understand than simply to secure what is valuable and bolt. The ending provides a certain perspective on the adventurer that was, particularly in light of the ending of Zork Zero, and the endgame -- centered around prison cells -- is appropriately down-to-earth for the feel of Zork III. There are many good things about Zork III, in the end, and perhaps the best of them is that, in most respective, it goes against the fantasy-game grain. READER'S SCOREBOARD---------------------------------------------------------- An apology is in order here: I have _still_ not updated the Scoreboard. Rest assured, however, that I'm archiving all ratings and will do my best to update the scores before the next issue. Notes: A - Runs on Amigas. AP - Runs on Apple IIs. GS - Runs on Apple IIGS. AR - Runs on Acorn Archimedes. C - Commercial, no fixed price. C30 - Commercial, with a fixed price of $30. F - Freeware. GMD - Available on ftp.gmd.de I - Runs on IBM compatibles. M - Runs on Macs. S20 - Shareware, registration costs $20. 64 - Runs on Commodore 64s. ST - Runs on Atari STs. TAD - Written with TADS. This means it can run on: AmigaDOS, NeXT and PC, Atari ST/TT/Falcon, DECstation (MIPS) Unix Patchlevel 1 and 2, IBM, IBM RT, Linux, Apple Macintosh, SGI Iris/Indigo running Irix, Sun 4 (Sparc) running SunOS or Solaris 2, Sun 3, OS/2, and even a 386+ protected mode version. AGT - Available for IBM, Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST. This does not include games made with the Master's edition. ADVSYS - Available for PC and Macintosh only, or so my sources tell me. (Source code available as well. So it can be ported to other computers.) HUG - Written with Hugo. Runs on MS-DOS, Linux, and Amigas. INF - Infocom or Inform game. These games will run on: Atari ST, Amiga, Apple Macintosh, IBM, Unix, VMS, Apple II, Apple IIGS, C64, TSR-80, and Acorn Archimedes. There may be other computers on which it runs as well. Name Avg Sc Chr Puz # Sc Rlvt Ish Notes: ==== ====== === === ==== ======== ====== Adventure 7.7 1.1 0.7 2 8 F_INF_TAD_ETC_GMD Adventure 350 6.5 0.0 1.5 1 x Adv. of Eliz. Highe 3.1 0.8 0.3 1 5 F_AGT All Quiet...Library 4.5 0.7 0.7 3 7 F_INF_GMD Amnesia 7.7 1.3 1.4 1 9 C_AP_I_64 Another...No Beer 2.4 0.2 0.8 2 4 S10_IBM_GMD Arthur: Excalibur 8.6 1.8 1.7 1 4 C_INF Awe-Chasm 2.4 0.3 0.6 1 8 S?_IBM_ST Balances 6.4 1.0 1.3 2 6 F_INF_GMD Ballyhoo 7.0 1.8 1.5 3 4 C_INF Beyond Tesseract 3.7 0.1 0.6 1 6 F_I_GMD Beyond Zork 8.1 1.5 2.0 3 5 C_INF Border Zone 6.7 1.4 1.4 4 4 C_INF Broken String 3.1 0.5 0.6 1 x F_TADS_GMD Bureaucracy 8.3 1.8 1.6 3 5 C_INF Busted 5.2 1.0 1.1 1 F_INF_GMD Castaway 1.1 0.0 0.4 1 5 F_IBM_GMD Change in the Weather 6.1 0.8 1.1 2 7 F_INF_GMD Christminster 8.6 1.8 1.7 3 F_INF_GMD Corruption 6.7 1.4 1.4 1 x C_I Cosmoserve 8.7 1.3 1.4 2 5 F_AGT_GMD Crypt v2.0 5.0 1.0 1.5 1 3 S12_IBM_GMD Curses 8.3 1.3 1.7 7 2 F_INF_GMD Cutthroats 6.4 1.4 1.2 5 1 C_INF Deadline 7.0 1.3 1.4 4 x C_INF Deep Space Drifter 5.5 1.4 1 3 S15_TAD_GMD Demon's Tomb 7.4 1.2 1.1 2 9 C_I Detective 1.1 0.0 0.0 4 4-5 F_AGT_GMD Detective-MST3K 6.0 0.6 0.1 3 7-8 F_INF_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 Issue #4 Dungeon of Dunjin 6.2 0.5 1.5 2 3 S20_IBM_MAC_GMD Electrabot 0.7 0.0 0.0 1 5 F_AGT_GMD Enchanter 7.1 0.9 1.4 5 2 C_INF Enhanced N/A 0 2 S10_TAD_GMD Eric the Unready 7.4 1.5 1.4 1 x C_I Fable, A 2.0 0.2 0.1 1 6 F_AGT_GMD Fish 7.1 1.2 1.5 1 x C_I Forbidden Castle 4.8 0.6 0.5 1 x C_AP Gateway 7.5 1.6 1.5 1 x C_I Great Archaelog. Race 6.5 1.0 1.5 1 3 S20_TAD_GMD Guardians of Infinity 8.5 N/A 1.3 1 9 C_I Guild of Thieves 6.8 1.1 1.2 1 x C_I Gumshoe 6.3 1.3 1.1 2 9 F_INF_GMD Hitchhiker's Guide 8.0 1.6 1.6 5 5 C_INF Hollywood Hijinx 5.7 1.0 1.5 4 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 7.0 1.4 7 1-2 C_INF Inhumane 3.6 0.2 0.7 1 9 F_INF_GMD Jacaranda Jim 7.0 1 x S10_GMD (Uncertain) Jeweled Arena, The 8.0 1.5 1.5 1 x ? Jigsaw 8.7 1.6 1.6 3 8,9 F_INF_GMD Jinxter 6.7 1.1 1.3 1 x C_I John's Fire Witch 7.2 1.1 1.6 5 4 S6_TADS_GMD Journey 6.9 1.3 0.8 1 5 C_INF Jouney Into Xanth 5.0 1.3 1.2 1 8 F_AGT_GMD Klaustrophobia 7.3 1.2 1.4 4 1 S15_AGT_GMD Leather Goddesses 7.8 1.4 1.7 5 4 C_INF The Legend Lives! 8.2 0.8 1.5 1 5 F_TADS_GMD Lethe Flow Phoenix 7.5 1.7 1.5 1 9 F_TADS_GMD The Light: Shelby's Ad. 8.0 1.6 0.5 1 9 S?_TADS_GMD Lurking Horror, The 7.1 1.4 1.3 5 1,3 C_INF MacWeslyan(PC Univ.) 5.6 0.7 1.0 1 x F_TADS_GMD Magic.Zip 4.5 0.5 0.5 1 3 S20_IBM_GMD Magic Toyshop, The 3.6 0.5 1.0 1 F_INF_GMD Mind Electric, The 5.1 0.5 0.8 2 7-8 F_INF_GMD Mind Forever Voyaging 8.5 1.4 0.6 4 5 C_INF Moonmist 5.9 1.4 1.3 5 1 C_INF Mop & Murder 4.9 0.5 1.0 1 4-5 F_AGT_GMD Multidimen. Thief 5.6 0.4 1.0 3 2,9 S15_AGT_GMD Mystery House 4.1 0.3 0.7 1 x F_AP_GMD Night at Museum Forever 4.1 0.0 1.0 3 7-8 F_TAD_GMD Nord and Bert 4.8 0.5 1.0 2 4 C_INF Odieus': Flingshot 3.3 0.4 0.7 2 5 F_INF_GMD One Hand Clapping 7.1 1.1 1.3 2 5 F_ADVSYS_GMD One That Got Away, The 6.4 1.2 0.9 2 7-8 F_TAD_GMD Oo-Topos 5.7 0.2 1.0 1 x C_AP_I_64 Path to Fortune 6.8 1.4 0.8 1 9 S_INF_GMD Pawn, The 6.5 1.0 1.2 1 x C_I_AP_64 Perseus & Andromeda 3.4 0.3 1.0 1 x ? Planetfall 7.5 1.7 1.6 6 4 C_INF Plundered Hearts 7.8 1.4 1.3 2 4 C_INF Quarterstaff 6.1 1.3 0.6 1 9 C_M Sanity Claus 9.0 1 1 S10_AGT_GMD Save Princeton 5.8 1.2 1.3 2 8 S10_TAD_GMD Seastalker 5.5 1.1 1.0 4 4 C_INF Shades of Grey 8.0 1.3 1.4 4 1-2 F_AGT_GMD Sherlock 8.2 1.5 1.6 2 4 C_INF Shogun 7.1 1.5 0.5 1 4 C_INF Sir Ramic Hobbs 5.0 1.0 1.5 1 6 F_AGT_GMD Sorceror 7.3 0.6 1.6 5 2 C_INF South American Trek 0.9 0.2 0.5 1 5 ?_IBM_GMD Space Aliens...Cardigan 1.8 0.5 0.4 4 3 S60_AGT_GMD Spellbreaker 8.2 1.2 1.8 4 2 C_INF SpellCasting 101 7.0 1.0 1.2 1 x C_I SpellCasting 201 7.8 1.5 1.6 1 x C_I SpellCasting 301 7.5 1.4 1.5 1 x C_I SpiritWrak 6.6 1.0 0.6 1 9 F_INF_GMD Spur 7.2 1.4 1.2 1 9 F_HUG_GMD Starcross 7.0 1.1 1.3 5 1 C_INF Stationfall 7.6 1.6 1.6 5 5 C_INF Suspect 6.2 1.3 1.2 2 4 C_INF Suspended 7.5 1.3 1.2 4 8 C_INF Theatre 6.8 0.9 1.2 3 6 F_INF_GMD TimeQuest 8.6 1.5 1.8 1 x C_I TimeSquared 4.3 1.1 1.1 1 x F_AGT_GMD Toonesia 6.3 1.1 1.2 2 7 F_TAD_GMD Tossed into Space 3.9 0.2 0.6 1 4 F_AGT_GMD Treasure.Zip N/A 0 3 S20_IBM_GMD Trinity 8.8 1.4 1.7 8 1-2 C_INF Tube Trouble 3.3 0.5 0.4 1 F_INF_GMD Uncle Zebulon's Will 7.6 0.9 1.3 3 7 F_TAD_GMD Undertow 5.2 1.0 0.8 1 F_TAD_GMD Undo 1.9 0.1 0.4 2 7 F_TAD_GMD Unnkulian One-Half 7.0 1.3 1.7 4 1 F_TAD_GMD Unnkulian Unventure 1 7.1 1.2 1.6 5 1-2 S10_TAD_GMD Unnkulian Unventure 2 7.2 1.4 1.5 4 1 S10_TAD_GMD Unnkulian Zero 9.0 1 1 C25_TAD_GMD (Demo) Waystation 5.7 0.7 0.9 2 9 F_TAD_GMD Windhall Chron. 1 - See Path to Fortune. Wishbringer 7.6 1.3 1.3 4 5-6 C_INF Witness, The 7.2 1.7 1.2 5 1,3,9 C_INF Wonderland 7.5 1.3 1.4 1 x C_I World 6.5 0.6 1.3 2 4 F_SEE REVIEW Issue #4 Zanfar 2.6 0.2 0.4 1 8 F_AGT_GMD Zork 0 7.1 1.3 2.0 2 x C_INF Zork 1 6.0 0.7 1.5 9 1-2 C_INF Zork 2 6.4 0.8 1.5 7 1-2 C_INF Zork 3 6.1 0.6 1.4 5 1-2 C_INF -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- The Top Five: A game is not eligible for the Top Five 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 8 votes 2. Jigsaw 8.7 3 votes 3. Christminster 8.6 3 votes 4. Mind Fvr Voyaging 8.5 4 votes 5. Curses 8.3 7 votes Bureaucracy 8.3 3 votes CLOSING REMARKS-------------------------------------------------------------- That wraps it up for this time. I'm aiming to make the next issue the Competition Special - provided, of course, that I receive enough competition game reviews to fill an issue. Keep 'em coming. And, last but certainly not least: A Merry Christmas to all SPAG subscribers! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for helping to keep text adventures alive!